When Only Diamonds Will Do (6 page)

‘I wouldn’t call him that,’ Fiona murmured.

‘You mightn’t but I would,’ her husband insisted.
‘What does he know about wine, about grapes? He was born in a boundary rider’s hut on some godforsaken cattle station. And he had the nerve to offer me a pittance. For Balthazar!’

‘Upstart or not,’ Damien Theron said moodily, ‘he’s made a fortune.’ Damien had inherited their mother’s dark eyes and hair and their father’s height but not his bulk. He was whip-thin but that was deceptive—when you saw him on a headstrong horse, you couldn’t doubt he was strong. ‘You have to admit that, Dad,’ he added.

Frank turned angrily on his son but Kim intervened.

‘Just a minute. If he was born in a boundary rider’s hut, how can he be offering…Even a pittance for Balthazar has got to be quite a sum!’

‘Mining,’ Frank said succinctly. ‘He bought a mine no one else wanted and the rest—i.e., a fortune when he sold it—is history. Now he specializes in buying run-down companies. He waits until they’re on their knees, then comes in like a scavenger.’

Kim’s lips parted and a shiver ran down her spine as a dreadful premonition took her in its grip …

‘What’s his name?’ she asked with a dry throat.

Her father waved a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t concern yourself, Kimmie.’

‘I must.’ She swivelled her gaze to her brother. ‘S-so…so you rejected his offer?’ Her voice shook.

Damien sighed and nodded. ‘Not only that, he’s bought Clover Hill. I heard the news yesterday. I don’t suppose he’ll be interested in another property in the same area.’

Kim dropped the papers she was holding. ‘Bought Clover Hill?’ she whispered. ‘What’s his
name
?’

‘Richardson,’ her father answered shortly.

‘Reith Richardson,’ Fiona contributed. ‘Rather unusual…Kim, dear, you look dreadful. Is there anything the matter? Anything else, I mean?’

I
T WAS
two weeks after she’d learnt the true state of affairs at home before Kim saw Reith again.

Which turned out to be plenty of time to find herself in even greater turmoil than she’d been in before he’d taken off for ‘points north’.

She couldn’t forgive herself for not sensing that things were badly wrong at home a lot sooner than she had. It made her flinch to think that Mary, the housekeeper, had been concerned for her mother, who was eating poorly, whereas she herself had not even noticed it.

It hurt her to think she’d not interpreted her father’s pent-up rage correctly or even taken much notice of it. And she could have kicked herself for not realizing Damien’s heart wasn’t in the winery. True, she and Damien had never been that close—there were five years between them—but all the same …

Then Reith rang and suggested dinner.

She suggested lunch instead.

They met at a country pub, also her suggestion, not far from Saldanha. She drove there in an estate station
wagon; she’d sold her convertible. The money had been like a drop in the ocean but it had made her feel she was contributing something to the mountain of debt facing the family.

She walked into the pub, wearing jeans and a check shirt and with her hair fish-plaited. Her heart banged once at the sight of him, also in jeans and a black T-shirt, but she ignored it and pulled out a chair …

‘Kim.’ He stood up and studied her closely. Somehow the dimensions of her face were different, the changes wrought by stress, blue shadows beneath her eyes, but the whole beautiful although in a new way, and he went still. ‘You know,’ he said then.

She sat down. ‘I know,’ she repeated. ‘When, as a matter of interest, were you thinking of telling me?’

‘Today,’ he said laconically and signalled to the barman, who brought over a bottle of wine and poured her a glass. Reith had a tankard of beer. The pub, adorned with ancient saddles, bridles and other horse memorabilia, was empty apart from them.

‘Oh, that’s easy enough to say, Reith,’ she taunted.

‘It’s true.’

She stared at him with her lips working, then took a sip of wine to steady herself. ‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?’

He sat back and rested his arm along the back of the chair beside him. ‘I …’ He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘Did it matter if you knew who I was or not?’

‘Of course it did! My father regards you as public enemy number one. He feels you’ve offered him a pittance for Balthazar, but not only that, you don’t have
the…the expertise to do justice to what is a famous name.’ She stopped, frustrated. Because, at the back of her mind, although she was employing her father’s arguments, she wasn’t a hundred per cent convinced they were correct. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘my father—’

‘Thinks I’m an upstart from beyond the black stump? It’s OK, I know; he told me,’ Reith drawled. ‘As for your brother, with his polo ponies and his old school tie—we might as well be on different planets.’ He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘I was hoping you mightn’t share their opinion.’

‘Were you? Were you really, Reith? This is my family we’re talking about. This isn’t just a winery and an estate, not to me it isn’t. It’s something that goes way back …’

‘Look, Kim—’ he broke in ‘—that’s all very well but sentiment is no match for cold hard facts. It doesn’t pay the bills.’

She glared at him, then closed her eyes briefly. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said tonelessly. ‘But perhaps,’ she added with more fire, ‘you could never understand how we feel unless you’ve been in a similar position. Not only that, I always suspected you were impossible to get through to.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

She paused, then said, ‘That there’s an exclusion zone around you I would never have got through on a personal level and this is just an extension of that.’

Their gazes clashed.

‘Did it not matter one way or another who I was?’ she asked and her eyes widened. ‘Or was it precisely
because I was a Theron, a member of a family you had cause to despise, that you…that you…Oh! Of course!’ She blinked. ‘That explains it. Why I got the distinct impression you didn’t approve of me even while you were…you were …’ She stopped breathlessly but her eyes were accusing.

There was a brittle little pause, then he said dryly, ‘How we came to meet was due to a wacky episode of
your
making, Kim. I would never have sought you out. Come to that, if I could have got out of giving you that lift I would have, but did you honestly expect me to leave you there?’

‘You didn’t have to ask me to dinner,’ she reminded him bitterly.

He looked away as a party of men in khaki clothes and boots came in and threw their dusty hats down.

He looked back at last. ‘Well, you see, Kim, by then I was wondering what it would be like to make love to you. Whether, like the rest of your family, you’d be an arrogant Theron—even in bed.’

She gasped. She did more. She picked up her wine glass to dash the contents in his face but he caught her wrist and held it in an iron grip until she was forced to put the glass down.

‘No violence, Kim,’ he warned softly.

She subsided and he released her wrist. But he could see the blue fire in her eyes and the
hauteur
in the set of her mouth, both clear indications that he was now persona non grata in her estimation, and he discovered he had a devil riding in him with regard to Kimberley Theron.

He still wanted her. In fact he wanted her more than ever …

He was also reminded of something he’d said to his secretary on the subject of Francis Theron’s apparently stunning daughter—
maybe they need to find her a rich husband
…How ironic, he thought to himself.

‘Besides, I’ve got a proposition to put to you,’ he said to her.

‘Obviously not a business one,’ she retorted.

He shrugged. ‘You could say so.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But I thought you’d withdrawn your offer. I believe you’ve bought Clover Hill instead!’ Her eyes challenged him. ‘Something else you didn’t see fit to tell me.’

He grimaced. ‘I hadn’t entirely made up my mind then but, yes, I did buy Clover Hill.’

‘So?’ she queried impatiently.

He took his time and allowed his dark gaze to roam over her. ‘Marry me,’ he said slowly. ‘If you do, I’ll save your parents from bankruptcy.’

Three weeks later, they stood side by side at a register office and were pronounced man and wife.

Kimberley Maria Richardson née Theron wore a filmy dress splashed with oversized blooms in cream and rose-pink on a pale grey background. The dress had a blouson bodice with a dropped waistline and a three-quarter skirt and carried a very famous designer label. It lived up to its label in every way so she looked marvellous, although she was a little pale.

Reith Richardson—no middle name, Kim thought; is
that significant?—then chastised herself for being ridiculous, but the fact of the matter was her mind was turning crazy circles. It had been since the day she’d agreed to marry Reith because she couldn’t bear to think of her parents ending up in the poor house, so to speak.

They had no one to witness their union so the magistrate obliged, then they were seated side by side in his car and speeding towards Saldanha for the next momentous encounter—breaking the news to her parents.

She’d insisted on doing things this way, although now she was beginning to regret the decision. Beginning to regret not taking his offer to break the news himself.

‘What can
you
say?’ she’d taunted. ‘In exchange for your daughter I’ll get you out of hock?’

‘No,’ he’d replied. ‘I could say that an intense attraction has sprung up between us and—’

She’d turned on him. ‘Believe me, it’s died an instant death!’

He’d watched her impassively for a long moment then he’d shot her last hopes down in flames. ‘Kim, I don’t know about you but the alternative for your parents would be disastrous. Both Balthazar and Saldanha would go into receivership. This way, my offer for them will clear the debts, your father’ll have a place on the Balthazar board in an advisory capacity and
you
will get to play lady of the manor at Saldanha.’ His eyes had mocked her.

She’d gone white. ‘If you think insulting me is going to help, you’re wrong. Why can’t Mum and Dad stay on at Saldanha?’

‘It would never work.’

‘I don’t think they’ve got anywhere else to go,’ she’d objected. Then she’d bitten her lip and said painfully, ‘They may be able to clear their debts if they sell to you but I don’t think there’ll be anything left over.’ She’d pressed her hands into fists at the thought of the absolute mess she’d found her parents’ personal finances to be in; at the thought of them honourably solvent rather than bankrupted, but only just, only a hair’s breadth from being out on the street.

He’d noticed the gesture. ‘Your brother,’ he’d suggested.

Kim had shaken her head. ‘Damien has no more resources than I have.’

She’d taken a deep breath then and risked saying, ‘I don’t think you’re rating me highly enough, Reith, to be honest.’

‘Oh?’ He’d raised an eyebrow.

‘No. As a wife, especially for a billionaire, I’ll be superb.’

They’d stared at each other and it became a prickly-tense, heart-stopping moment.

‘Do you mean in bed?’ he’d queried at last, with a significant scan up and down her figure that effectively stripped her naked but not in a humorous way at all.

‘Now, that,’ she’d said, inwardly threatening to shoot herself if she blushed but in fact she was way too angry to blush, ‘might depend on you so I’ll suspend judgement until it happens…
if
it happens. What I meant was that I would run your homes beautifully, I’d handle the entertaining a billionaire might find appropriate with
ease, I’d look the part and—’ she’d paused ‘—I’m good with kids.’

Reith had said slowly, ‘I’ve got an apartment in Bunbury; I’ll lease it to your parents rent-free and I’ll set up an allowance for them—for as long as you stay with me, Kim.’

She’d drawn a breath. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

‘You’re not exactly playing softball yourself,’ he’d said derisively.

She’d opened her mouth to protest that it was no such thing but said instead, ‘Why shouldn’t it be a game two can play?’

‘Indeed. Why not?’ he’d responded with a flash of humour that had infuriated her. She hadn’t been mollified when he’d added, ‘But you certainly deserve full marks for standing behind your nearest and dearest, Kim Theron.’

Now, as the miles got chewed up, as the roads became country ones and they got closer, she became less and less certain she was doing this the right way round. Less certain that she shouldn’t have warned her parents first …

‘Stop,’ she said suddenly. ‘Please stop. I feel sick.’

He pulled up on the side of the road. There was a fairly broad grassy verge, then a fence and a line of bushes beyond, indicating a water course of some kind.

Kim swallowed frantically several times, then pushed her door open precipitously and stumbled out, and there followed a painful little interlude for her, during which she lost what little she’d eaten that day.

Eventually she staggered back to the car and sat down on the seat sideways.

‘Here.’

She squinted upwards to see Reith minus his suit jacket and with his tie loosened and his shirtsleeves pushed up, offering her a wet towel.

‘Where…How?’ she stammered.

‘The towel’s been in the back since we went surfing. And—’ he gestured behind him ‘—there’s a creek over the fence. The water is flowing and clean.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ She took the towel gratefully and held it to her face and neck. ‘Sorry but—’

‘Don’t be,’ he said, interrupting her, and took the towel from her. ‘I’ll wet it again. There’s also a bottle of drinking water in the console.’ He leant past her and pushed a button, revealing a plastic bottle of spring water.

Half an hour later they were on their way again.

Reith had tossed his jacket in the back seat and Kim had done what she could to restore herself.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he advised after glancing at her. They were proceeding, she noticed, at a much slower pace. ‘You look fine,’ he said. He added very quietly, ‘You always do.’

She turned her head to look at him and their gazes clashed briefly before she looked away.

What does that
mean
? she wondered.

Should I be complimented? Complimented enough to forgive him for forcing me to marry him? Does he honestly think that’s all it’s going to take? Still, he was
kind just now, and helpful—if
only
I knew exactly what I was dealing with.

‘What are you going to say to your parents, Kim?’

She tensed as his question broke the silence, and pleated the silk chiffon of her skirt. ‘I don’t know.’

‘That doesn’t sound particularly like you,’ he observed with a tinge of sarcasm.

She bridled but forced herself to simmer down. ‘I was just going to…to present it as a fait accompli, but I don’t think that’s going to work, now that I come to think of it,’ she said. Then she took a breath. ‘Perhaps,’ she said slowly, ‘what you had in mind to say is…the best way to go.’

‘At least it’s honest.’

‘No, it’s not honest, Reith, from the point of view of getting married because of it but—’ she hesitated ‘—all right; I’ll go along with it.’

‘We don’t have to make such heavy weather of this, Kim. Not that long ago, we were good together,’ he said as he changed gear and swung into Saldanha’s driveway.

She took a very deep breath. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, and took some more deep breaths as she prepared to face her parents.

In the event, however, the encounter proved to be catastrophic.

Kim groaned as they pulled under the rear portico. ‘Damien’s here.’ She pointed towards the parked racing-green sports car. She frowned.

‘We might as well get it all over and done with.’ Reith switched the engine off and got out of the car.
He retrieved his jacket from the back seat, fixed his shirtsleeves, fiddled with his tie and came round to open her door.

Kim didn’t move for a moment as she stared down at the shiny gold band now on the ring finger of her left hand—she’d refused an engagement ring. As she did so, she thought of her parents, thought of all they’d done for her, and she found the strength to slip out of the car without his assistance.