LITMIR.BIZ

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of his family history and his business and his marriage, at a time when he should be mourning the loss of his wife in peace.

      What mattered was another child not understanding why his mummy hadn’t come home. He would forget her face and her cuddles and her laughter, but later he would grow inquisitive and seek answers. Sadly they would be clouded by every scandalous supposition printed and gossiped about and adopted as truth.

      Kimberley knew all about that and the thought of her godson going through the same distress chiselled open a chasm of pain in her heart. She’d been the same age as Blake when her mother hadn’t returned from a break at their Byron Bay holiday home. Many years later she’d read all the conjecture over Ursula Blackstone’s apparent suicide, her inability to cope with two young children while stricken with grief and remorse over the abduction of her firstborn son. How her depression had deepened over the rift between her brother Oliver and her husband following a loud and belligerent confrontation at her thirtieth birthday party.

      At least Blake had a father who loved him unconditionally, who would protect him and explain the truth about his mother. Matt was a good man, a fair man, and a wonderful father. His only mistake was marrying the lethally beautiful Marise.

      Familiar footfalls on the sandstone terrace broke into her reverie. Damn. After ten years she shouldn’t remember such minute and significant detail, but her consciousness refused to forget the cadence of his stride. Or the intense scrutiny of his gaze on her face as he settled by her side.

      “You can’t enjoy the view with your eyes closed,” he said after several seconds.

      “I’ve seen the view a thousand times.” Kimberley kept her eyes firmly closed. “I was enjoying the solitude.”

      “Pity.”

      Perrini fell silent, but she felt the brush of his sleeve against hers as he leaned forward. She pictured his hands planted wide on the balustrade, his azure gaze narrowed as he surveyed the amazing view. It always blew visitors away, this picture-perfect vista that stretched down the harbour to the famous bridge and beyond.

      “I thought you might have been thinking,” he said after a moment.

      “About?”

      “Marise and Howard. You didn’t offer an opinion inside.” He paused, a deliberate hesitation before delivering the million-dollar question. “Do you think they were having an affair?”

      Reluctantly she opened her eyes and felt the impact of his perceptive gaze—narrowed and as blue as the harbour—ripple through her senses.

      Double damn. She couldn’t escape this. She couldn’t walk away.

      “Anything is possible,” she said, choosing her words with care.

      Perrini’s expression tightened. “Stop pussyfooting around, Kim. You knew Marise better than any of us. What was she doing in Australia these past weeks?”

      “She came over for her mother’s funeral. As far as I know she stayed to tie up some matters with the estate.”

      “Over Christmas and New Year’s?”

      “Her mother passed away in December—I doubt she had much choice. I believe her father isn’t well and her sister was away on a modelling assignment.”

      “And if there was money involved in her mother’s estate,” he mused, “Marise struck me as a woman who’d be all over it.”

      Kimberley exhaled through her nose. She would not respond. Speaking ill of Marise now seemed uncharitable and purposeless. She’d survived a plane crash, spent terrifying hours in the water, only to pass away among strangers. No one deserved that, not even a woman who’d deserted her husband and child for weeks on end with scant excuse for her absences.

      Not even a woman who might have done so as cover for an affair.

      “I don’t know Marise as well as you seem to think, so I don’t know what she might or might not have done,” she said. “But I do know what my father is capable of.”

      “You don’t think your stance on Howard is slightly jaundiced?”

      A humourless laugh escaped Kimberley’s lips as she met his gaze. “You know it is. And you know why.”

      “Ten years is a long time, Kim.”

      Staring into his shadowed face, she wondered about that. So much hadn’t changed, including the way he sparked her temper and her body’s dormant hormones with equal ease. Just by standing a little too close. Just by looking into her eyes a little too long. Just by pressing his lips to her wrist and stirring insistent memories of other kisses, against other skin, far more intimate.

      “Did he tell you about the last time I saw him?” she asked, regathering her concentration. “When he came to New Zealand to try and snare me back to Blackstone’s?”

      “I’d like to hear your side.”

      Oh, he was smooth. He wouldn’t give away how much Howard had shared about that horrendous meeting. He’d been the same inside, she realised belatedly. Assuming control of the discussion, asking the leading questions, drawing opinion from everyone else but never offering his own.

      She could call him on that—later—but for now she wanted to share her side.

      She wanted him to know exactly what Howard Blackstone was capable of.

      “When I refused his job offer,” she said, getting straight to the point, “he sweetened the salary package. More than once. When I told him money wasn’t the issue, he asked what it would take. I said an apology.”

      “I gather you didn’t get one?”

      “Have you ever heard Howard Blackstone apologise? For anything?”

      Something tightened in his expression, but he simply said, “Go on.”

      “He rejected any notion that he’d done anything wrong, but then he accused Matt of stealing me from Blackstone’s. He called him a thief like his father, and brought up the whole sorry raft of accusations from Mum’s party.” Shaking her head, she blew out a heated breath. “That was thirty years ago. I can’t believe he still thinks Oliver Hammond stole the Blackstone Rose necklace that night.”

      “You don’t think Oliver took the opportunity to reclaim what he believed should have been Hammond property?”

      “No,” she replied with absolute conviction. “Oliver wouldn’t have taken that necklace if it was handed to him on a silver platter. He despised Howard for cutting up the Heart of the Outback stone and making it into such an ostentatious piece. He hated that he’d put the Blackstone name to the necklace, when it came from a diamond found by a Hammond. And he despised Howard for making such a blatant show of owning it, with all the magazine spreads and having Mum photographed wearing the necklace at every opportunity.”

      “From what I understand, your grandfather gave the diamond to Ursula. It was her prerogative to do with it as she wished. Eventually it would have passed to her estate,” he said with emphasis. “If it hadn’t gone missing, the Blackstone Rose would be yours, Kim.”

      She gave a strangled laugh and shook her head. “No, that was never going to happen. Howard was the sole beneficiary of my mother’s estate. And as of last month, I believe I am no longer named in his will.”

      “He said he was striking you from his will?” Perrini whistled softly through his teeth. “That must have been some argument.”

      “You might say that.”

      His lips quirked at her dry comment but his brows were lowered in serious contemplation as he caught her gaze. “Surely you didn’t believe he’d go ahead with it once he cooled down?”

      “Maybe not, but what about his other threat? He still doesn’t accept that I walked away from Blackstone’s—” and you “—because of his actions. He blames Matt for actively recruiting

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