“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“I thought you might have cashed it in,” she retorted. “Although if property values in the eastern suburbs are still on the rise, then I suppose it’s a smart investment.”
“That’s not why I kept it.”
“Why did you?”
Surprised she would ask such a leading question, he opened his eyes and turned to look at her. She’d pushed her glasses on top of her head, and her candid green gaze and the intimacy of lying side-by-side—as close as if they shared pillow talk—kicked him low and hard.
“Because I like living there.”
Something flitted across her expression and was gone before he could catch it. And when she replaced her sunglasses and rolled onto her back to stare up into the blue summer sky, he knew that moment of connection was gone. Even before she sniped, “If you like your home so much, why do you spend so much time here?”
“Ahh.”
Kimberley turned to glare at him through her designer lenses. “What is ahh supposed to mean?”
“Sonya mentioned you had problems with the ‘standing guard.’”
That comment she’d made at yesterday’s breakfast. She should have known he would hear about it. Not that she wouldn’t have said the same to his face, but she hated the thought of her words being repeated behind her back. “Do you and Sonya discuss me often?”
“Would it be much of a disappointment if I said no?”
Damn him and the dark silkiness of his voice. Damn him for coming down here parading his assets in those Daniel Craig swimmers. Damn her foolishness for watching those powerful assets rise from the water, for wanting to know about his house, for longing to say yes, I loved living there, too, even for such a short time. For that split second of yearning for a place they’d once been, a time they could never wish back. Too much had been said, too much unsaid, too many years had passed.
“No,” she said finally in answer to his question. “Not if it’s the truth.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched, broken only by the murmur of traffic from the streets far below and the mournful hoot of a distant ferry in the harbour. Kimberley closed her eyes but she couldn’t shut him out. She felt his narrowed gaze on her face. Dissecting her expression, divining for emotion.
Damn him.
She shoved her feet to the ground, but he stopped any further retreat with one mildly delivered comment. “Walking away again?”
“That’s a cheap shot,” she snapped over her shoulder.
“A fair observation, I’d say.” With a seriously distracting play of muscles across his abdomen, he pushed upright. “Care to tell me what’s really bugging you?”
Kimberley’s gaze snapped back to his knowing blue eyes. Oh, yes, he’d noticed her distraction. “Do you mean what’s bugging me right now?”
“About me being here.”
He didn’t mean here, now, on the pool deck. She knew that. And she was glad, because admitting she was bugged by his state of undress would seem petty in the least. Revealing at the most. She didn’t mind telling him what bothered her about his continual presence at Miramare, however.
“It’s not just you, it’s the endless waiting.” She lifted her hands and let them drop in a gesture of undistilled frustration. “You and Ryan and Garth—at least you’re kept busy with taking calls and keeping up with what’s going on with the search. I didn’t realise how hard this would be, just sitting around and waiting and feeling … excluded.”
“We’ve kept you updated.”
“Exactly. You’ve had control, you’ve done the updating, which shuts me out no matter how much information you pass on. I can answer a phone. I can speak for the Blackstones. I wouldn’t find it any hardship to say ‘no comment’ or ‘no further news.’”
“And if the person on the phone is Tracy Mattera or Max Carlton or Jamie O’Hare. Would you have no-commented them?”
“How can I say? I don’t recognise the names.”
“Mining production manager, human resources manager, Howard’s driver,” Ric supplied matter-of-factly. All three had called him that morning. He hadn’t plucked the names out of thin air, although the doubt on Kim’s face suggested he had done exactly that. “All real people, all employees of Blackstone’s.”
“Which I am not,” she said tightly. “I get the message.”
Ric watched her turn away and get to her feet, her shoulders as tight as her voice, her backbone rigid. He could let her walk away again. This wasn’t the time or place for this discussion, but she had provided the perfect opening. She wanted a purpose. She needed something to occupy her mind.
Perhaps this was the right time….
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Kim.”
She swung back around, her hands stilled in the process of tying a lime-green sarong around her hips. “Are you suggesting I return to Blackstone’s? When I have a job I love and a home in New Zealand? Why would I even consider doing that?”
“Because you’re a Blackstone.”
“That hasn’t changed.”
“Other things have,” he said with quiet resolve, coming to his feet and meeting her gaze across the width of the loungers. “The board of directors is seven strong. Currently that’s Ryan, Garth, your uncle Vincent, David Lord, Allen Fitzpatrick.”
“You—” she tapped finger against thumb, counting off number six “—and my father.”
Ric inclined his head in confirmation. “Chairman, managing director … and, with Ryan and Vincent, one of three Blackstones required on any sitting board, according to the articles of constitution.”
“And you’re thinking about a replacement?” With her quick brain, she’d caught on immediately. But the dark flash of her eyes and the tone of her voice indicated that she didn’t like the taste of that catch one little bit. “Isn’t that a little premature?”
“The board is due to meet Thursday this week. I imagine we will have news by then, and the directors will look at appointing a replacement. That may sound callously quick, but as directors we have a duty to our shareholders and our staff—
at the moment that duty is projecting stability in the face of press that’s suggesting otherwise.”
“The power struggle between you and Ryan?”
Obviously she’d read today’s business pages. Ric’s jaw tightened. “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Kim. The board will decide Howard’s successor as head of the company, when and if it has to. There won’t be any fight.”
She had a comeback—something acerbic, by the flare of her eyes—but the melodic chime of a ringing phone distracted her. With a quick, “Excuse me, I’m waiting on a call,” she ducked down to retrieve the flip phone from beside her lounger. The distraction in her eyes turned to something like relief when she read the caller ID.
“I have to take this,” she said shortly, already turning away.
Hammond, Ric surmised, cursing the timing. The last person he wanted in on this decision.
Phone at her ear, she’d already started to walk away, but in several long strides Ric caught up and put a hand on her shoulder.
Kimberley whirled around as if she’d been scalded. “One minute,” she said into the phone. Then to Ric, “Excuse me?”