When Only Diamonds Will Do (3 page)

‘Thank you,’ he said formally, ‘but having narrowly escaped death on the road because of you, I don’t think I’ll take any more risks. Do you dance?’

She turned round with a frown. ‘Of course I dance! What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Silly question,’ he murmured. ‘Do you take Sunny Bob out dancing with you?’

‘Of course
not
,’ Kim denied and had to stifle a chuckle at the mental image this conjured up. ‘Why?’

‘I thought if we went dancing it might be easier to get close to you without there being any misunderstandings with your dog.’

This time Kim didn’t even try to stifle her laughter.

‘It’s not that funny,’ he assured her.

‘What exactly did you have in mind?’

‘Sorry to fall into the category of your typical “businessmen” but I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me and then we could go on to a nightclub.’

‘I am also sorry,’ she said and directed a sparkling blue look up at him, ‘for all the dangerous situations I’ve put you in, Mr Richardson. As for your suggestion, I like the sound of it very much and I will attempt to keep things safe for you.’

He grimaced.

‘But I’ll have to go home to get changed and then drive back into Bunbury—’

‘I’ll send a car for you,’ he said, interrupting her.

Kim looked at him with a faint frown in her eyes as she wondered why he didn’t pick her up himself.

He gestured. ‘I have a heap of stuff to deal with—the penalty for taking a day off.’

‘Well, OK. Thanks.’

‘Seven-thirty suit you?’ He raised an eyebrow at her.

‘Fine, but really, I could drive in.’

‘No.’ He said it lightly but quite definitely.

‘If that isn’t an example of how you like to get your own way, I don’t know what is,’ she commented a little dryly.

‘Not at all,’ he denied. ‘It’s concern for your welfare, that’s all.’

Several expressions chased across Kim’s face, exasperation being foremost. Then her lips twisted and she looked rueful. ‘Hoist by my own petard. All right.’

He laughed.

T
HERE
was no one home when Kim got back to Saldanha from Margaret River.

There was nothing unusual in this. Her parents travelled frequently as well as socializing often and they were currently in Perth.

Kim taught at a boarding school down the coast at Esperance so she’d moved down there for term time but she spent the school holidays at home.

Fortunately, most of her formal clothes still resided in her bedroom at home and she was able to have a choice of what to wear for dinner and a nightclub with Reith Richardson.

Her bedroom was always a comfort to her. Her mother had given her carte blanche to redecorate it when she left school and she’d created a blue room, saying, ‘If you can have a green room, why not a blue one?’ And it was not only where she stored her clothes and slept, it was where she read, dreamed, played her harp and wondered sometimes what kind of a wife and mother she would be.

She showered and washed her hair while she thought
what she would wear, then, decision made, thought back over the day. And she was a little startled to feel a tremor run through her just at the thought of Reith Richardson …

I’m falling, she thought. In love or prey to a massive physical attraction? Strange, he didn’t lay a hand on me today, other than just before…‘You made your intentions clear,’ she said to Sunny Bob, who was lying on the carpet beside her.

The dog lifted his head and thumped his tail, then went back to sleep.

Kim grimaced and pictured what would have happened but for Sunny Bob. She would have revelled in Reith’s arms, she knew. Just the thought of it now made her blush and she picked up her perfume bottle and touched the cool glass to her cheeks.

Whoa, she thought then. Take it slowly, Kim. Don’t let this get out of hand. You need to know a lot more about this man …

She put the bottle down and picked up her brush, turning it slowly over and over in her hand as she thought of some of her actions today. Such as, for example, her precipitous dash from the cool and shade of the umbrella down the beach to the water earlier.

What had prompted that had been embarrassment. Yes, she wanted to know more about him but, in hindsight, asking him if he was married
had
sounded juvenile, and then intrusive, especially in the light of learning he had lost his wife.

So what was it about him that threw her off her usually even keel? she wondered. That underlying
disapproval she’d sensed in him from the start? But why would he disapprove of her? Unless he thought she was completely wacky. But, if so, why would he want to keep on seeing her …?

Perhaps that was part of her enjoyment in his company, however—the light-hearted sparring she, at least, undertook, to challenge his perception of her?

She shook her head and stood up and got dressed. Her choice was a pair of dark grey palazzo pants and a silvery-grey halter top with wide lapels at the front and a low back. She wore no jewellery and no bra. Her shoes were high black sandals, her hair was sleek and smoothed back in a chignon.

Not over-dressed, not under-dressed, just right, she thought as she studied her reflection. The sun and the surf had given her a glow but there was still a frown in her eyes, indicating some inner unease.

She wandered over to her harp and plucked the strings. Romance, she conceded, had been a slightly bumpy road for her until she’d learnt to sort the wheat from the chaff—sort the men who were on the make and drawn by her wealthy parents and background more than by her soul, she thought with a dry little twist of her lips.

And, sadly, there had been more of the ‘on the make’ kind than the other with the result that she was very wary these days and on the lookout for fortune-hunters. Wary, somewhat hardened and definitely cynical. But did Reith Richardson fall into that class?

On the surface, it appeared not. He didn’t seem to be at all interested in her background, but of course they’d
only known each other for a short time. Yet there was something—her brow creased—a sort of stamp of authority about him that was impressive. There was also a reserve she sensed.

She sighed and picked up her purse at the sound of a car on the drive. ‘Just—take it very slowly with this man,’ she advised herself and went downstairs to be driven into town.

A few hours later, she stirred in his arms and said in a low husky voice, ‘Do you ever take your own advice?’

He swung her round on the small, darkened, crowded floor with its coloured spotlights above, and they came together again. They’d danced for hours. It was the height of sophistication, the nightclub, on the second floor of a beautifully restored old building in Bunbury, and the music had been sensational.

‘Sometimes.’ He looked down at her rather wryly. ‘How about you?’

‘Not always.’ She laid her head on his shoulder as, rather than dancing, they swayed to the music and, as she’d suspected, she revelled in being in his arms.

In fact, when she’d first laid eyes on him, when she’d walked into the restaurant and he’d stood up in a dark suit, the jacket of which had moulded his broad shoulders, she’d missed a step because he’d been so darkly attractive. From that moment on she’d been physically conscious of him in a way that had taken her by storm because she’d never felt this way before, never had her senses so stirred up by a man.

At the same time as a river of rhythm had flowed
through her veins, so had a river of sensuality. His hands on her hips had ignited a swathe of sensation up and down her body. And to rest her body against his, to feel the hard strength of him, the power, had made her feel as light as a feather and giddy with pleasure.

‘Not always, which is very stupid of me. I—’

The music stopped, the band announced they were having a break and some recorded music took over.

Kim didn’t finish what she was saying and sighed as they drew apart, then she led the way back to their table.

‘More champagne?’ he queried.

She shook her head. ‘Just some iced water, thanks.’

‘Not a bad idea,’ he agreed. ‘Why stupid? Now? At this moment in time?’ he queried.

Kim put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her clasped hands. ‘I was going to take things very, very slowly with you, Mr Richardson,’ she said. ‘That was not supposed to include dancing the night away.’ Kim smiled austerely. ‘Do you have the same problem I have?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘The disinclination to keep my hands off you?’

‘Something like that,’ she said ruefully and thanked the waiter who brought them two glasses of iced water with slices of lemon. ‘But perhaps we should—’ She paused.

‘We should look before we leap?’ he suggested with some irony.

Kim narrowed her eyes as she caught the irony and said tartly, despite it being not what she wanted to do at all, ‘My sentiments entirely.’

He put his head on one side and studied her. ‘That annoyed you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘That I should feel we need to stop and think?’ he persisted.

‘Well…no, we should! But—’ she paused ‘—you didn’t sound entirely genuine. More, in fact, as if you were paraphrasing, with sarcasm, what you thought I would say.’

‘It was the awful euphemism I used that offended me,’ he said.

Kim stared at him. ‘Look before we leap?’ she murmured, then her lips curved and she started to laugh.

He put his hand over hers on the table and laughed with her, his dark eyes glinting with amusement.

Then he looked at his watch. ‘Your car will be here shortly. I ordered it for midnight.’

Kim removed her hand. ‘That solves that. I can go home feeling like Cinderella.’

He ignored that. ‘Do you have any more time off?’

Kim blinked at the change of subject. ‘Two more days.’

‘Tomorrow, would you like to help me select some classy artwork?’

Her lips parted.

‘You did say you had a good eye for art.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘Some offices—some new offices in Perth. I’m not that keen on what the interior decorators have come up with.’

She thought for a moment then she shrugged. ‘All
right. Yes, I’d like to. I have a couple of favourite galleries. You know—’ she looked at him consideringly ‘—you’re clever.’

He looked surprised. ‘Why?’

‘You’ve defused us. There we were, a pretty hot item on the dance floor, but now we’re talking art and I’m about to be shipped off home.’ She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands and narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m just not sure why you’re taking this course but you’re right,’ she said mischievously, ‘you should
always
look before you leap.’

‘Kim—’ he pushed back his chair and stood up ‘—come with me.’

She raised her eyebrows but shrugged when she got no response and rose to follow him. He led her out of the main room, along a passage and onto a secluded balcony overlooking the street.

There Reith paused and looked up and down the street. Whatever he saw—nothing—must have gained his approval because he turned back to Kim, took her in his arms and kissed her swiftly but at the same time comprehensively.

So comprehensively she clutched him when their lips parted and she could only say his name on a note of stunned amazement as tremors of desire ran through her body.

‘Kim?’

‘You…I…I mean,’ she stammered, ‘why did you do that?’

His dark eyes rested on her lips, then the lovely line
of her throat and the curves of her breasts beneath the silvery-grey silk of her halter top.

‘Why?’ he repeated and smiled suddenly, a wicked little smile full of masculine arrogance. ‘I wanted to.’

Kim gasped. ‘That’s…But I thought…
You
were the one who…hosed us down!’

He shrugged. ‘You were the one who thought she was being shipped home like Cinderella.’

Kim touched her lips and opened her mouth to speak as a long black limousine pulled into the kerb down below.

She eyed it, then turned back to him. ‘So?’

‘I just wanted to make it clear that, while I believe we should exercise some caution, I’d much rather not be shipping you home.’

Kim stared up into his eyes and saw they were amused, wicked, but also just a shade rueful.

‘You…You’re serious,’ she said incredulously.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘That…that makes me feel a bit better,’ she conceded. ‘OK—time and place for tomorrow?’ she added huskily.

‘You name it.’

She thought for a moment, then did so.

‘Fine.’ He bent his head and kissed her lightly. ‘Goodnight. Sleep well.’

Kim donned black silk pyjamas and sat down at her dressing table when she arrived back at Saldanha.

‘It’s just you and me,’ she murmured to Sunny Bob, who’d accorded her an enthusiastic but slightly puzzled welcome because of the strange black car.

‘Puzzling days, you’re right,’ she said now as she smoothed cleanser onto her face and wiped it off with a tissue. ‘For example, Sunny Bob,’ she continued her conversation with the dog, ‘I thought I felt better when he said he’d kissed me because he wanted to, and he wasn’t that keen on shipping me home. Now I’m not so sure.’

She moistened a cotton pad with toner and patted it onto her skin, enjoying the cool feel of it.

Because the thing is—I do feel shipped home, she continued her monologue internally. What’s more, I feel as if I’m the one making all the running, so to speak—how dare he do that to me?

Am I? she asked herself next, as she massaged a night cream into her skin. Making all the running?

No, look here, he keeps suggesting things,
he’s
the one who keeps pushing us onwards and upwards.

She grimaced at her choice of words, then she thought, with a frown, yes, he does, but he’s also the one who holds back. Why? Is there a sort of no-go zone around him or is it only my imagination? Why would that be, though, if it was so? Am I still a rather ridiculous little rich girl to him?

Am I being observed like some sort of scientific phenomenon he hasn’t experienced before? Or is this stop/start approach meant to entice me on?

She put the tub of night cream with its gold top down with a little thump as a flash of annoyance at the thought claimed her, and she got up and roamed around the room.

Finally she got into bed and turned the light off but
her thoughts took another direction, one not greatly removed, however.

Should she call it off?

Should she pull a really arrogant, if not necessarily rich, stunt and simply not turn up tomorrow?

Or, even better, have a message delivered to him as he waited for her, to the effect that she’d decided she had better things to do …

She sat up suddenly as it struck her—forcibly—that it had only been two days—she’d only known Reith Richardson for two days! How could she be going through this level of turmoil for a man she barely knew?

She lay back and commanded herself to breathe slowly and calmly but it didn’t work in helping her to fall asleep.