Her deep green eyes snapped. “How?”
“As part of the force that determines how Blackstone’s goes forward into the future.”
Kimberley had so many questions, so many rejoinders, but Perrini silenced them all with the latent power of that last statement. She watched him stride back toward the house, her heart beating too fast and too hard as the implications raced through her brain.
She could make a difference. She could solder broken links. She could make up for her father’s mistakes.
Then his long, decisive strides carried him inside and out of her sight, and she felt as though she’d walked into the shadows. Reflexively she rolled her shoulder, which still bore the imprint of his touch, and remembered the phone call. Matt. Damn. For the past three days they’d been playing phone tag, and now, finally, they’d managed to connect and she had left him on hold.
Just because Perrini had unsettled her again, first with the heat and the texture of his hand on her bare skin, then with the juicy enticement of righting the Blackstone wrongs toward her uncle and her cousin.
“Matt?” She swung around, phone to her ear. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
She released a soft gust of relief. “Thank you for holding. I was just in the middle of something.”
“I can call back.”
“No, no. It’s okay. He’s gone. I’m done. I’m just so glad I’ve finally found you with feet on the ground … your feet are on the ground?”
“I’m in Sydney,” he said in short, succinct contrast to Kimberley’s delivery. She was pacing, too, unable to stand still. “Landed this morning.”
“Where are you staying? The Carlisle Grande? Why don’t I come in. We could have coffee or even dinner, if you’re free. Is Blake with you?”
“This isn’t a trip I’d bring my son on.”
His cold, clipped tone brought Kimberley’s pacing to a brickwall halt. She palmed her forehead in her hand. How stupid and thoughtless. He’d come to identify Marise’s body, lying cold and lifeless in a city mortuary. How could she have asked about bringing Blake?
“I’m so sorry, Matt.” She didn’t know what else to say, so she said it again. “So very sorry for your loss. Especially this way.”
“Is there an easy way to lose your wife?”
“Good God, no, of course not! I meant the headlines and the tabloid frenzy. I can only imagine that’s as bad for you as for us.”
“No,” he said after a heavy beat of pause. “I don’t think you can imagine.”
He was right, and she felt too choked up with emotion—and with the foot she couldn’t seem to keep out of her mouth—to answer for several taut seconds. In person this would be easier, the same as it had been with coming home and seeing Sonya and Ryan. “Can we meet for coffee?” she asked again.
“I won’t be here any longer than it takes to arrange a funeral.”
The shock of that last word turned to ice in Kimberley’s veins. She rubbed her free hand up and down her arm. How could her skin be so warm when she felt cold to the core? “When you’ve made the arrangements,” she said stiffly, “please let me know when and where. I would like to be there.”
“It will be a private burial. No cameras. No headlines. No Blackstones.”
Kimberley understood his point. She knew pain had honed his voice to that diamond-hard edge but she still felt the rejection like a slap. It brought her head up and put a sting into her response. “I’m sorry I won’t be there, for you, for Blake, for Marise. But with Howard gone, surely it’s time to put this Hammond-Blackstone animosity to rest so we don’t have to choose sides. I hate that—I’m sure Sonya does, as well. I’ve been approached about a possible position on the board of Blackstone Diamonds, and perhaps that is a good place to start mending the broken links.”
“A conflict of interest with your position at Hammonds, wouldn’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think that has to be the case. The business rivalry has only come about through the old feud and personal bitterness, some of which was between Howard and me. With that over now—”
“No.” Matt’s objection was low, but delivered with such chilling finality that it sliced right through Kimberley’s argument. “It’s not over. After what Blackstone has done to my family, it can never be over. Not until everything the bastard took from us is restored to Hammond hands. Since one of those things is the wife I’m burying next week, I don’t give that outcome a chance in hell of succeeding. Do you?”
Five
“That’s all for now. Thank you, Holly.”
Ric closed his office door behind the PR assistant who’d delivered the press clippings from Tuesday morning’s papers. It didn’t matter that there’d been no new developments in the search for the jet’s wreckage or that no further bodies had been found, the headlines kept on coming. This week the focus had shifted from the present to the tragedies in Howard Blackstone’s past, everything from the kidnapping of two-year-old James Hammond Blackstone thirty-one years ago to Ursula Blackstone’s suicide and the disappearance of the Blackstone Rose necklace.
“This isn’t news,” Ryan said as he tossed a national broadsheet onto Ric’s desk with barely concealed fury. “I expected better from them.”
Ric didn’t expect anything from the media except more sensational headlines. They’d stalked Howard Blackstone throughout his life and now they haunted him in death, with the biggest scandal—the possibility of an illicit affair with Marise—still hovering over them like a fat black thundercloud. So far they’d reported nothing beyond her positive identification, running poignant photos of Matt Hammond’s grief-ravaged face as he arrived in Sydney to claim her body, but following tomorrow’s supposedly private burial the storm of speculation would build. As sure as thunder followed lightning.
They had to do more than wait it out. Ric owed that to Howard, to his staff, to the shareholders.
He didn’t return to his desk but chose a central position where he could face the other two men, the seated Garth and the prowling Ryan, to explain why he’d called them to his office at the company’s Sydney headquarters after days of monitoring the search from the Blackstone home. “We’ve waited as long as we can but in the absence of new developments, it’s time to move on. We—”
“Move on?” The words exploded from Ryan’s mouth. “No. We’re not giving up yet, Perrini. Who are you to say we abandon my father?”
Ric met the sharp spear of the younger man’s gaze without flinching. He’d been prepared for the hostility. Ryan wouldn’t like him taking the initiative in calling this meeting any more than he’d like what Ric had to say. “I’m not suggesting we give up anything. Not the search and not this company your father built up from nothing but an exploration lease and his belief that diamonds were there to be found. Howard wouldn’t appreciate us sitting on our hands, waiting for an outcome of a search that could go on for weeks.”
Garth made a sound of agreement. He folded the paper he’d been scanning and placed it neatly on top of the others. “I can hear him now, growling in horror at the share devaluation.”
“The price is still sliding today?” Ric asked.
“Down another five since opening. At this rate every second analyst will be tipping us as a prime takeover target by the end of the next week.”
“It’s not the raiders I’m concerned about.”
Ryan turned in front of the window, hands on hips, framed by the city skyscape