LITMIR.BIZ

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her cousin guessed astutely.

      Kimberley nodded. Yes—Ryan.

      Returning from his porter’s errand to the second floor, Ric was halfway down the ornate marble staircase that rose from the grand foyer when Danielle and Kimberley came through the front door arm-in-arm. But he only saw one woman.

      Dark hair slicked back in an efficient ponytail. Green eyes so recently awash with tears now clear and sparking with renewed resolve.

      She’d rebounded from the tearstorm. Good. Bringing her home had not only been necessary but also essential, for her, for Sonya, for all the family. And now that she was here, she was staying. Whatever it took.

      “There you are.” Danielle released her hold on her cousin’s arm as Ric descended the last of the stairs. “I was just taking Kim out to the terrace to find Ryan.”

      He knew this would be the difficult part of this reunion, hence the warrior-woman look on her face. “I’ll take her,” he said, smoothly stepping in to claim her hand. “Could you let Sonya know to bring our coffee out there?”

      Danielle left them alone, but only after a raised-eyebrow look that took in his proprietary clasp on Kim’s hand and a murmured comment he lip-read as “Nice work.”

      By the darkness that suddenly appeared in Kim’s eyes and the jerk of her hand against his, he gathered she didn’t miss that knowing look, either. “There’s no need to take me anywhere,” she said frostily. “I know my way to the terrace.”

      “I didn’t imagine you wouldn’t.”

      “Then let go of my hand. You’ve already given Danielle the wrong impression.”

      He raised an eyebrow. “That being …?”

      “Don’t pretend to be dense, Perrini. It’s not becoming.”

      “Are you still hung up on what your brother thinks about us together?”

      “Since we’re not together anymore, no.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And wasn’t it you who said this wasn’t about us?”

      “Throwing my words back at me? That’s not like you, Kim.”

      Her emerald eyes shot fire at him and she tugged harder at her hand. Ric didn’t let go. Instead he used the leverage to pull her closer, close enough that the flared skirt of her dress brushed his thighs and her eyes widened with apprehension. In the cool quiet of the atriumlike foyer he imagined he could hear the wild race of her heartbeat … or perhaps it was his own.

      He thought about kissing her. When her mouth opened on a silent note of outrage, he ached to bend into that kiss. He imagined he’d get slapped for his efforts, but fear of that didn’t stop him. The flicker of vulnerability in her eyes did.

      The fierce determination was just a front for facing her brother. Beneath the veneer she was emotionally exhausted by the day’s revelations and he knew there would be more to come, if not today then tomorrow or the next day. It was only a matter of time before the wreckage was located and the bodies recovered.

      No, he couldn’t take advantage of her weakness. Not now. As a compromise he lifted the hand trapped in his toward his lips. He felt her resistance, saw it snap in her eyes even as he turned her arm and delivered a chaste kiss to the inside of her wrist. Briefly it crossed his mind that she might slap him anyway, with words at the very least, but the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps broke the tension and he released her hand as Garth Buick strode into view.

      Kim gasped, her surprise this time tainted with delight as she launched herself at the Blackstone company secretary who was Howard’s closest and oldest friend. The fact that they’d remained friends for so long was a testament to Garth’s character and loyalty and remarkably even temperament.

      He wrapped his arms around Kim with genuine affection, but the eyes that met Ric’s over her head were shadowed with gravity. “Ryan’s just taken a call from Stavros.”

      Their contact at police headquarters. Ric’s heart stilled.

      “Bad news?”

      “Nothing on Howard,” Garth assured them both. “But we finally have confirmation of the passenger list.”

      “Was it Marise they found?” Kim asked. “Was she on the plane?”

      The older man nodded heavily. “Yes. They’ve just brought her body in to the morgue.”

      Three

      “Her body?” Kim’s voice rose on a note of shock. Confusion clouded her expression as she looked from Garth to Ric. “You said she was alive. A survivor. You said they—”

      “She passed away on the rescue boat,” Garth said gently, “shortly after they took her on board. I’m sorry, Kim. I know you were close.”

      “No, not really.”

      A deep sadness imbued her comment and Ric wondered if she was thinking about Marise or her husband Matt, the Hammond Kim was close to. Or perhaps the couple’s son. His jaw tightened. Dammit, he’d hoped there’d been a mistake. That they’d learn the woman wasn’t Marise Hammond, the mother of a small boy, too young and innocent to be the victim of such a tragic loss.

      “Are they certain it was Marise Hammond?” he asked.

      “Certain enough that Stavros told us before the formal identification process. Unofficially, of course,” Garth added.

      “When you called me in New Zealand, you mentioned a foul-up with the passenger list.”

      “Initially there was a Blackstone employee listed,” Garth said. “Jessica Cotter. She manages the Martin Place store and was supposed to be going to Auckland for the opening.”

      The name wasn’t familiar to Ric, but he hadn’t worked in the jewellery side of the business for almost eight years. “She couldn’t be the one they found in the sea?”

      “Wrong build, wrong hair colour, wrong clothing. It seems Ms. Cotter had a change of mind and got off the plane at the last minute. Hence the initial confusion over the passenger list.”

      “So it was Marise Hammond.” Sonya’s voice cut into the conversation, and Ric swung around to find her standing in the archway leading toward the kitchen. Although her eyes looked shell-shocked, she stood tall and poised and even managed a passable attempt at a smile. “Why don’t you go through to the living room? Danielle and Ryan are there and I think we should all be together to talk about this. I’ve made tea and coffee but if anyone would prefer something stronger, please let me know.”

      Ryan Blackstone looked like he needed something stronger.

      Ric eyed the younger man narrowly, taken aback by the gaunt grey cast to his normally tanned features. It was never a surprise to see Ryan wound tighter than a newly forged spring, especially in Ric’s presence, but in all his years at Blackstone’s Ric had never seen him unravel once.

      Today, as his stark green gaze met his sister’s across the wide expanse of the mansion’s living room, he looked perilously close to that point.

      “Coffee, Ric?”

      Sonya distracted him with the proffered cup—black, strong, welcome—for only a second, and he turned back to see Kim bound so tightly in her brother’s arms that he thought she might snap. It was a brief, silent embrace with none of the exuberant warmth of her reunion with Sonya or Danielle or Garth, but what it lacked in length and words it more than made up for in intensity.

      Feeling like an intruder on this deeply private moment, he looked away and saw that Danielle had done the same. The significance of this particular reunion hit him suddenly and with all the force of a runaway ore truck.

      It had nothing to do with their chequered history or Ryan’s disapproval of Kim’s defection. Nothing to do with any prior competition for their father’s

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