CHAPTER ONE
July, ten months later …
AMBER’S teeth clenched hard in her jaw as she checked her phone for messages again. Still nothing from Warwick. She punched in his mobile number and was told for the umpteenth time that his phone was not available. She didn’t leave a message. There was no point. She’d already left three, each one sounding more frustrated than the last.
When she’d suggested a romantic dinner for two tonight rather than a restaurant meal, Warwick had promised to be home by seven-thirty. But then he’d messaged her shortly before six saying he’d been delayed and that he might be back a bit late, maybe by eight o’clock.
It was now almost nine and still there was no sign of him. No more messages, either.
‘Surely you have time to call me,’ Amber muttered under her breath as she returned to the kitchen, threw her cell phone onto the black granite counter-top, then switched off the oven in which the already overdone beef stroganoff had been keeping warm.
At least she hadn’t started cooking the rice. Maybe the meal was still salvageable. Though her own appetite had long gone.
Opening the oversized stainless-steel fridge, which never held all that much food—not much point when they rarely ate at home—Amber reached for the bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, which had become her favourite, and poured herself a glass. Carrying it with her and sipping at the same time, she made her way back through the dining room, grimacing as she passed the beautifully set table before heading for the balcony and the hopefully soothing effect of the water view.
Using her free hand, she slid open one of the glass doors that led out onto the huge curving balcony and that fronted the entire apartment, providing a spectacular view of Sydney Harbour. Unfortunately, it was freezing out there, the stiff breeze that came off the water quickly making a mess of Amber’s long hair. Grimacing, she turned and hurried back into the temperature-controlled interior, shutting the glass door behind her. She’d forgotten for a moment that it was winter, Warwick always keeping the apartment pleasantly warm.
Putting her wine glass down on one of the glass-topped side tables that flanked the white leather sofa, Amber made her way across the plushly furnished living room and into the vast expanse of the master bedroom. Her chest tightened as she took in the turned-down bed, the cream satin sheets and the scented candles she’d placed on the bedside tables, in anticipation of the evening ahead.
‘Bastard,’ she muttered, and marched on into the cream marble en suite bathroom where she took a brush out of the drawer on her side of the twin vanities and began attacking her ruffled hair with angry strokes.
It didn’t take her long to put order into her hair which was easily managed, being long and straight with a blunt-cut fringe.
Her ruffled emotions, however, were not so easily controlled.
Amber could still remember the first time she’d stood on this very spot, looking into this mirror, her blue eyes wide with excitement. It had been the night she’d gone to dinner with Warwick, the night her life had changed for ever.
He’d taken her to a five-star restaurant first, where he’d impressed her with the very best of food and wine, along with his highly entertaining conversation. It’d been impossible for a twenty-five-year-old girl who’d only left Australia for family holidays in Bali and Fiji not to be impressed with this man who’d been everywhere and done everything. Impossible not to be flattered by the fact that someone of his intelligence and status would choose to be with her: Amber Roberts, receptionist.
Afterwards, he’d brought her back here, without bothering to make any excuses, his intentions perfectly clear to Amber as they had been from the moment he’d asked her out.
She’d tried not to appear too blown away, either by his Italian sports car, or his multimillion-dollar Point Piper apartment, which he’d bought two weeks earlier, fully furnished. But she was an ordinary working-class girl who’d been brought up in the western suburbs of Sydney. She wasn’t used to this kind of luxury living. She certainly wasn’t used to this kind of man.
He hadn’t just swept her off her feet and into his bed that night. He’d taken possession of her with a power and a passion that had left her, not only reeling, but ready to say yes to anything he wanted.
But what he’d wanted had been slightly surprising. She’d feared, when she’d woken in his king-sized bed the following morning, that that might be that. She was sure it would be a case of hasta la vista, baby.
Instead, he’d pulled her to him, told her he was crazy about her and asked her to become his girlfriend. Not just in a casual relationship, either. He wanted her to move in with him, travel with him, be with him all the time. She wouldn’t be able to work, of course. She had to be ready to accompany him at a moment’s notice. He travelled quite a lot, both for business and pleasure.
She’d been about to blindly say yes when he’d qualified the terms of the relationship he was proposing.
‘Just so you don’t get the wrong idea,’ he’d added. ‘I don’t do marriage and children. And I don’t do for ever. I have a notoriously low boredom threshold. Twelve months is usually my limit when it comes to any woman. Though with you, my sweet lovely Amber, I just might make an exception. To be honest, you’re already one big exception. Up till now, I’ve never asked a woman to live with me. I dare say it’s going to cost me dearly in the end, but there’s something about you which I find totally irresistible. So what do you say, beautiful? Do you want to get aboard the Kincaid roller-coaster ride, or not?’
She should still have said no, despite the seductive flattery he’d included in what was really a totally appalling and extremely selfish proposition. But how did a girl say no to more of what she’d experienced the night before? Amber had never known such excitement, or such pleasure. There were things Warwick knew about lovemaking that had quite blown her away. He’d been able to turn her on and keep her that way for hours, reducing her to total mush.
So of course she’d said yes, and now here she was ten months later, still his live-in girlfriend. Or his mistress, as Aunt Kate had once caustically called her.
But for how much longer?
This was the third time lately, Amber conceded as she stared blankly into the vanity mirror, that Warwick had let her down. A couple of weeks ago, he’d cancelled a weekend getaway to the Hunter Valley that she’d been looking forward to, instead jetting off by himself to New Zealand with two of his business associates to go heliskiing, a high-risk, thrill-seeking, extremely dangerous sport that had recently cost other lives and that had left her worried sick all weekend. But his worst transgression, in her opinion, had been when he’d refused to accompany her to Aunt Kate’s funeral last week, claiming he’d had important business to attend to that day, then adding insult to injury by saying that the old duck hadn’t liked him and he hadn’t liked her, either!
Which was totally beside the point. Amber had been very fond of her aunt Kate and terribly upset by her aunt’s rather sudden death of a stroke. She’d only been seventy-two, hardly ancient.
It had been horrible, sitting in that church all by herself, then having to defend Warwick’s absence afterwards. Her relationship with him had already alienated her from her family to a degree. He’d only accompanied her to two family gatherings during the time they’d been together, Christmas Day at her parents’ house in Carlingford, and then last Easter, to a family barbecue at her aunt Kate’s place up at Wamberal Beach on the Central Coast.
And whilst he’d been quite polite to everyone, he’d somehow made it obvious—to her at least—that he’d been bored rigid. On both occasions they’d been the first to leave.
Amber’s two older brothers