Only, when the kiss finished, one thing was clear. Jake’s kiss had been just a kiss. And by the wry glint in his eye he knew it, too.
“I think you’d better get some sleep,” he said, tapping her on the end of her nose with his index finger. And then he pivoted and headed back to the elevator.
Briana watched him go with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Jake was an extremely handsome man who knew how to treat a woman right. And he knew how to kiss. It was just a pity she hadn’t felt anything when his lips were on hers. Not like she would if Jarrod Hammond had kissed her.
Of that she was certain.
Two
The next morning Briana caught a taxi to Quinn Everard’s office and left the diamonds with his office manager. Then, after another couple of days in Sydney, including lunching with her agent, she caught a plane back to Melbourne on the Wednesday, and drove to her father’s house to check on him first. Then she’d go home to her apartment on the other side of the city. She still had to prepare for the Moomba Fashion Show this coming Labor Day weekend at the casino.
So it was mid-afternoon by the time Briana parked in the driveway of the solid brick home that her parents bought when they’d moved to Melbourne from Sydney nearly thirty years ago. They’d never been rich but had been comfortable. Her mother had even insisted on sending her and Marise to one of the top private schools here in Melbourne, after a spinster aunt had left her some money.
Now, when Ray Davenport opened the front door to her, Briana noted with concern that her father was looking tired. He’d been through so much, having kept her mother’s secret of the cancer that ravaged her body, until the end, when her mother had become so ill he’d finally told their daughters she was dying.
“Want some coffee, honey?” he asked, walking ahead of her into the kitchen.
“Thanks, Dad. That would be lovely.” She followed him, noting the stoop to his shoulders. “By the way, I dropped those diamonds off for an appraisal.”
He looked over his shoulder with a frown. “Diamonds?”
“The ones Marise left in my safe.”
His face cleared. “Oh, that’s right. You found them in your safe after the plane crash, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Overcome with grief, she’d nearly forgotten Marise asking for the safe combination to keep some jewelry in there.
Briana had thought nothing of giving the combination to her sister. She’d also let Marise stay in her Sydney apartment once she and her father returned to Melbourne, after Barbara Davenport had been buried next to her own parents in Waverley Cemetery. It was then that Marise seemed to go off the rails, those last few weeks before the plane crash. Their mother’s death had devastated Marise, but for her sister to remain in Sydney had been unwarranted.
Especially after she’d started to be seen around town with Howard Blackstone.
Especially when she had a husband and a small son back in New Zealand waiting for her.
No wonder Matt had said he didn’t give a damn about any jewelry belonging to Marise. But she knew her brother-in-law wasn’t thinking straight, and that was part of the reason she’d decided to get them appraised. Perhaps if they were valuable they’d be worth keeping for Blake as a memento of his mother. Or maybe one day Matt would forgive his late wife and want the diamonds back. In the meantime, getting the diamonds valued was something she could do for her dead sister.
“So you’re getting them appraised, you say?” her father said now, bringing her back to the moment. Again she noticed he didn’t look well.
She stood in the kitchen doorway, her forehead creasing. “Dad, are you okay?”
A moment crept by.
“Dad?”
He looked up at her then, and there was a despairing look in his eyes that had her sucking in a sharp breath. “I’m a thief, Briana. I’ve stolen some money.”
The breath caught in her lungs. “Wh-what?”
“I stole from Howard Blackstone.”
She stared in astonishment. “My God! How much?”
He paused, then let out a shaky sigh. “One million dollars.”
* * *
Briana was still reeling from her father’s confession as she sat at the roulette table at the casino on Saturday evening. It had taken such an effort to keep her mind on the fashion show today, then again at the cocktail party this evening, but somehow she’d put a professional smile on her face. Afterward, not ready to go home to an empty apartment, she had stayed on.
It wasn’t every week a daughter learned her father had stolen a million dollars. And from a “secret” account he’d been told about while working as an accountant for one of Australia’s richest men thirty years ago, after Howard’s previous accountant had passed on that bit of information.
Nor was the reason her father had taken the money in the first place enough to stop Ray Davenport from going to jail. Medical expenses for his wife’s cancer, then a world cruise after a terminal diagnosis would garner immense sympathy, but in the end, the law would not condone embezzlement.
A lump wedged in her throat. With the newspapers continuing to report on the anonymous buy-up of Blackstone shares, she could just imagine how the media would hound her poor father, not to mention herself. They’d already gone through that after the plane crash. She didn’t want to go through it again.
Besides, it wouldn’t look good that her father had never forgiven Howard for firing Barbara when she’d become pregnant with Marise. Yet even after the Davenports had pulled up roots and moved from Sydney to Melbourne, the Blackstones had ended up an intrinsic part of their lives. In the latter years, Marise had worked for Blackstone Diamonds in sales and marketing, then Briana had found herself a model and the face of Blackstone Diamonds. And then Marise had been with Howard on the flight to New Zealand, and had died in the aftermath of the crash. It was crazy, but it was as if destiny had somehow wanted the Davenports and the Blackstones to keep a connection.
And how ironic that his supermodel daughter couldn’t help Ray out with money when he needed it. Her new million-dollar contract with Blackstone’s was due to be renewed in three months’ time, but nothing was ever certain until it was signed. Until then she had just enough to live on, thanks to her ex-business manager and lover, Patrick, who had convinced her to invest nearly all her money in an unbuilt apartment complex. It had sounded like a good investment at the time, until the developers had gone bust and she’d lost the lot.
She’d never told her parents about it, feeling like a sucker. They’d known she’d invested her money. They just hadn’t known she’d lost it.
All at once someone sat down on the seat beside her, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She turned toward the man who suddenly and completely filled her vision.
“Jarrod!”
“Briana,” he murmured, his blue eyes trapping hers for a heart-stopping second.
She moistened her mouth even as she realized something. “You knew I’d be here, didn’t you?”
One brow rose. “Did I?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise,” she said, letting him know she wasn’t being hoodwinked.
He shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Her forehead creased. “You want to see me?”
“Oh yes,” he drawled, his gaze going over her long, blond wavy hair that tumbled around her head, before dipping to the creamy expanse of her neck and shoulders above the black cocktail dress, then further down and over the gathered bust held together by a diamond