When Only Diamonds Will Do (5 page)

The stud-master sat with them on a stand in the parade ring and gave them a run-down on the horses’ breeding as the little ones pranced around the ring.

‘Will you buy today?’ Kim asked Reith.

He shook his head. ‘Some of them are barely broken in to lead, some aren’t, but it’s interesting to be able to
keep track of them from an earlier age, before they hit the sales ring.’

‘Do you have your own trainer?’

‘No. I spread them around: Perth, Melbourne, Sydney.’

Kim frowned. ‘How many horses do you have in training?’

He rubbed his jaw. ‘About twenty.’

Kim swallowed. She had a very good idea how much that would cost. ‘Many winners?’

‘Not yet.’ He looked down at her amusedly. ‘Haven’t been in the game that long.’

‘Rescuing businesses in trouble must be profitable,’ she commented.

He said nothing and they walked in silence for a while. They were on their own now; the stud-master had left them after inviting them to have a wander around.

It was a cool, overcast day, unusual for the time of year. Kim wore jeans, boots and a navy leather bomber jacket, whereas Reith had a lined anorak over his shirt and jeans and suede desert boots.

Kim remembered him handling the horses when they’d visited the foals still with their mums in the paddock. It was obvious he knew his horses—a man after my own heart, she thought with a fleeting smile.

Now, as they strolled along a swept path, a sharp little breeze got up and she moved closer to him.

‘Feels as if it’s come up from the Antarctic, that breeze,’ she said with a shiver.

He put an arm around her and drew her towards a creeper-covered shelter with a bench inside. Inside, as
they sank down onto the bench, they found themselves protected from the breeze but he pulled her closer.

She breathed deeply and nestled against him but at the same time she had no idea what was coming next between them.

‘So, back to work tomorrow,’ he murmured.

‘Mmm …’

‘Looking forward to it?’

Kim hesitated and, rather than answering, asked a question herself. ‘What will you be doing?’

‘I’m off to points north for a few weeks.’

A little of the Antarctic chill seemed to enter her soul, let in, she thought, by the casualness of his words but, not only that, by the lack of detail.

The thought transferred to a larger issue between them—the lack of
all
she knew about him. And refused to ask now, yes, she acknowledged, despite how close she felt to him. She couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be than sitting close to him, breathing in his essence, conscious of his bulk and strength, but there was a huge mental divide between them.

She moistened her lips and asked another question. ‘Reith, how did we come to this?’

‘You don’t think we should have come to “this”?’ he queried.

‘I’m just a bit surprised, but that’s not what I meant,’ Kim confessed. ‘To begin with I saw us more as adversaries…well, maybe not that so much, but enjoying fencing, verbally, with each other. Now—’

‘You tend to forget—’ he interrupted ‘—that one glimpse of your legs nearly drove me into a tree.’

Kim laughed softly. ‘You were furious with me at the time, though,’ she reminded him and deepened her voice.
‘Lady—are you mad?’

He grimaced.

‘But this is what I still don’t know—are you trying to seduce me or not?’ She leant her head on his shoulder.

He loosened one hand and slipped some strands of her hair under her cheek. ‘I can’t tell a lie,’ he conceded. ‘Well, the thought of going to bed with you, Kimberley Theron, is, paradoxically, keeping me awake at night.’

She moved her cheek on the fabric of his jacket. ‘I must say I’ve also thought about it.’ She looked up into his eyes. ‘You must know that. Not—’ she pulled herself out of his arms and sat up ‘—that I’m going to do it.’

His lips twisted and he looked down at her quizzically. ‘No?’

She shook her head. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘Does that mean to say I’m on a promise?’

She chuckled and leant back against him, growing serious. ‘What I mean is, I think we need to know each other better.’ She paused. And suddenly realized that she meant it. This uncertainty about what he felt for her and vice versa—about what would become of them—had become like an emotional roller coaster for her and she had to find a way to get off.

‘What would you like me to know about you?’ he queried.

‘I would like,’ she said somewhat darkly, ‘not to be classified as a spoilt socialite, a ditsy redhead or—at least you can’t accuse me of being a dumb blonde—’

He interrupted her by the simple expedient of putting
a finger to her lips. Then he bent his head and started to kiss her.

Kim was lost. Lost beneath the finesse of his touch as he cupped her face and his fingers slid down the side of her neck, causing her to shiver in delight and anticipation.

‘You do that so well,’ she whispered when their lips parted.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured, but added, ‘You expected me to do it like the local yokel or a country hick, Miss Theron?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not at all. I just didn’t expect you to do it better than anyone else I’ve ever known.’

He lifted his head and looked down at her with a glimmer of humour in his dark eyes. ‘Either you haven’t been kissed a lot or—’ He stopped.

‘Or what? I’ve made lousy choices in men?’

‘You said it,’ he returned ruefully.

‘You thought it.’ Kim leant back against him. ‘But it could be true. I’d hate to think what you could do to me if you really tried. But—’ she hesitated as some sanity returned and she recalled her conviction that she had to get off the roundabout ‘—Reith, we don’t need to rush into anything, do we?’

She felt him move against her.

She took a breath. ‘Do we?’ she queried, at the same time conscious of an alarm bell going off inside her.

He hesitated. ‘Has something gone wrong?’

‘No.’ As she said it, it occurred to her that it wasn’t quite true but how to explain her reservations accurately?
Or should she lighten up a bit until she could be more articulate?

‘Tell me a bit more about you, though. Where do you actually live, for example?’ she asked teasingly.

He laughed. ‘I spend so much time on the move it’s hard to say. But I have an apartment in Perth where my offices are and it’s where Darcy comes home to for the school holidays.’

‘Darcy,’ Kim said on an unexpected breath. ‘So…he’s at boarding school? But he’s only ten.’

‘And he’s not the only ten-year-old boarder.’

‘True,’ Kim conceded slowly, ‘although we have very few that young in the school where I teach.’

‘He’s only been there for six months since his grandmother died.’

‘Your wife’s mother?’

He nodded. ‘She more or less brought him up. But he seems to have settled down well.’

‘I hope you spend a lot of time with him,’ Kim said severely.

‘As much as I can.’

‘Talking of time,’ she added, ‘I need to spend a bit of time at home.’ She frowned as it occurred to her that something had felt different about ‘home’ lately but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it.

‘You don’t live at home?’

‘For the last year I’ve been living in Esperance, that’s where I teach, so I’ve been out of the home “loop”, so to speak,’ she said slowly, then shrugged. ‘But it’s school holidays in a week or so.’

He paused, then picked up her hand. ‘I can’t visualize you as a teacher.’

‘Neither could I, at first.’ She shrugged. ‘Then I found I had a knack for it. I really like kids.’

‘I thought something entrepreneurial would be more in your line.’

‘Oh, a friend and I have opened a gallery in Esperance. Not paintings but metalwork, pottery, papier mâché, really creative knitting, et cetera.’ Her eyes glinted. ‘Satisfied?’

He took her chin in his hand and dropped a light kiss on her lips. ‘Yes.’ Then he looked narrowly into her eyes. ‘We’re not parting on bad terms, are we?’

She looked up at him, completely sober now, and knew that this man, this mystery man, could be the one to lure her onto the rocks. The rocks of loving him without being loved in return.

She had no idea how she knew this; it was an instinct that somehow told her he was a loner…Yes, there was no doubt he was quite cagey about his life—for that matter, so was she. Apart from one mention of Saldanha, she’d told him nothing about her family, nothing about Balthazar.

Come to that, she thought with a blink, he hadn’t asked her a single question about her background.

She grimaced and returned to this loner she sensed in him, this
something
that told her he maintained an emotional exclusion zone around him …

And yet they were always good together; they seemed to have a rapport, a similar sense of humour, a similar sense of what was fine, even a similar taste
in music. And now it even seemed as if he could read her mind. As if he could sense her uncertainty beneath her attempts to make light of it. So
where
did this feeling come from?

‘Kim?’

She came back from her thoughts. ‘No. Not on bad terms. Guess what?’

He looked at her.

‘Penny’s settled on a name for their baby. Reith.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Because I gave you a lift?’

‘No. Because it’s unusual and she likes it. When are you going?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Then I won’t see you until you come back.’

He grimaced but said, ‘I’ll look forward to it. Kim?’

‘No, Reith,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s how we should leave it.’

‘Or…like this.’ He gathered her in his arms and kissed her deeply.

Then he surprised her. He rubbed his chin on the top of her head and said, ‘What do you think of this place?’

‘Clover Hill?’ She looked around the paddocks and their horses, at the roses and the creeper-covered homestead, at the Darling Hills in the background, and she breathed deeply and smiled. ‘It’s special. Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Just asking. OK, time to go.’

But after he’d watched her drive off, Reith didn’t leave immediately. He leant back against the car and attempted to think things through.

Such as being accused of a stop/start approach in his attempts to seduce Kimberley Theron.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and chewed his lip. She was right, of course. Every now and then his conscience pricked him. And every now and then he felt guilt associated with Sylvia, his wife, the guilt he’d felt at wanting her but not being able to love her. As for Kim, he’d even once asked himself why he hadn’t rung for roadside assistance for her that first day and simply driven off when he well knew her family would hate him having anything to do with her.

For that matter, why hadn’t he just told her? He’d been on the brink of it several times. But, despite his growing respect for her, he knew well enough that that could lose her to him. The more you got to know Kim Theron, the more evidence there was that loyalty to friends was paramount with her. It made sense that loyalty to her family would be the same. But she was no fool, so …?

He left the question hanging in the air, but one thing he did know was that he wasn’t prepared to lose her.

Not yet.

He grimaced and got into his car. But, instead of driving away from Clover Hill, he drove from the stables round to the house …

Two weeks later, Kim made a discovery that horrified her.

She’d been preoccupied since her parting from Reith. Up in the air and down in the dumps described her alternating state of mind accurately. Would she ever see
him again? Why did life seem dull and sepia because he wasn’t around? Could you fall deeply in love in four days?

Should she have got some contact details at least, instead of allowing her mobile number to be the only link between them? Although he did know where to find her.

Then school had broken up and she’d come home for the holidays. A couple of days later, she came home one evening to find her father slumped on the floor in the lounge, apparently unconscious.

She checked his pulse and flew upstairs to get her mother, gabbling at the same time about how he must have tripped on the rug or …

‘No, darling, he’s drunk,’ Fiona Theron said sadly as she twisted her thin hands and stared down at her comatose husband.

‘Drunk?’ Kim echoed incredulously.

Fiona nodded. ‘It happens a lot these days.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re going under, sweetheart. I begged him to tell you but he keeps…well…hoping for a miracle.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ Kim whispered. ‘Why didn’t Damien tell me?’ Damien was her older brother and her father’s second in command.

‘Damien …’ Fiona gestured helplessly. ‘But anyway …’

‘No! Tell me about Damien,’ Kim insisted.

‘Damien—’ her mother swallowed painfully ‘—oh, look, Damien is not a businessman, Kim. You must know that. Horses are his life.’ Fiona paused and burst into tears.

The next morning at ten, Kim held an emergency family meeting. She looked so pale, and still so confused, her father and brother, both of whom would have preferred to be a million miles away, thought twice about it and attended.

‘Tell me, Dad,’ she begged. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

Frank Theron was a big man, silver-haired now but still good-looking, although he had a livid bruise on his cheek from his collapse last night, and other signs Kim hadn’t noticed that all was not well—red veins in his cheeks, prominent pouches beneath his eyes.

‘Kim,’ he said on a heavy sigh, ‘the last five years have been very difficult. We’ve had several outbreaks of powdery mildew and you know how that can affect not only the grapes but wine quality. We’ve had a drought, then floods, then a fire. We’ve had a global financial downturn.’ He stopped to sigh again. ‘And we live quite an extravagant lifestyle.’

Damien, her brother, looked down. He maintained a stable of polo ponies. Kim looked at the lovely designer dress she wore and thought of her sports car, her twenty-first birthday present …

‘So?’ she queried.

‘So we put the winery on the market,’ Frank continued, looking animated for the first time, although angrily so, ‘and attracted the attention of a complete upstart!’