When Only Diamonds Will Do (9 page)

‘You didn’t, but you didn’t have to, you looked it. Or—’ he’d shrugged and pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers ‘—maybe it was just being compared to me in any way that you objected to.’

Kim had set her teeth as she rolled her brush in her
hands. ‘Will you please tell me what you’re talking about, Reith?’

‘On the days you work in the Cellar Door shop, the takings increase by nearly thirty per cent.’

Kim’s lips had parted.

‘Which led me to believe you have a flair for parting people from their hard-earned dosh,’ he added, ‘to put it mildly.’ He smiled.

She’d sucked in a breath. ‘I don’t do that. It sounds awful. All I do is—’ she gestured ‘—make some suggestions.’

‘Good ones, obviously. But if you have that kind of sales flair, you may have been wasted as a teacher, my dear.’

Kim had turned back on the stool. ‘I enjoyed teaching,’ she said, and lifted her brush, determined not to engage in any more infuriating conversation with her infuriating husband.

But her eyes had widened as he stepped up behind her and calmly removed the brush from her hand.

‘Oh, much more genteel, teaching, I agree,’ he’d said and threw the brush onto the bed, then ran his hands through her hair.

They’d stared at each other in the mirror, Kim wide-eyed and frozen. ‘Looks much better a bit mussed up,’ he drawled. ‘Mmm—I could almost imagine that you’ve just got out of bed.’

He’d glanced significantly at her bed, she’d followed his glance and, to her horror, an image came to mind of the two of them writhing against each other, of her being wild and wanton in her love-making, electric but
silken at the same time, and he wielding the strength of his beautiful body lightly at first and then more powerfully until …

She’d felt the breath rasp in her throat and a rush of sensation fizzed through her so that a pulse beat rapidly and she felt hot all over.

‘Then again,’ he’d drawled, ‘I’d need a very vivid imagination, wouldn’t I, Kim?’

He’d turned on his heel and walked out before she could think of a thing to say.

But when she’d calmed down, she had retaliated.

She’d appeared on the terrace where they were to eat, just as the first guests had arrived—with her hair tied back severely into a bun.

Only to see him looking stunned for a bare second, before his dark eyes had flooded with laughter.

She came back to the present and clicked her tongue because the whole incident still had the power to make her feel foolish.

There were other things that made her feel not so much foolish as—well, yes, she had to concede—like an ostrich intent on burying its head in the sand, but not in the way Reith had meant it. More to do with the questions she hadn’t asked, about Darcy’s mother, for example.

Where and how had he met her? How old had she been? He would have been about twenty-four. Had it been love at first sight? Was she the love of his life? Was that how he’d been able to propose a marriage of convenience to her? Because he knew he’d never be
able to put another woman in Darcy’s mother’s place in his heart?

She finished her coffee and went upstairs to shower and change but her internal monologue refused to subside.

They were questions she
should
have asked, she told herself as she finished washing and turned the needle-sharp spray of the shower to cold so her skin tingled.

Yes—she stepped out of the shower and started to dry herself—instead of being as haughty about it all as only she could be, instead of being scared to the core of her being, but determined to put a brave but angry face on it, she should have asked some pertinent questions.

She rubbed her hair, then dropped the towel and reached for her underwear, matching bra and tiny panties in apple-green silk. She paused for a moment to consider her day—morning in the garden, afternoon at the Cellar Door, getting ready for the fashion parade—she donned jeans with a fresh pink cotton shirt and sat down at her dressing table.

These days, it often seemed like one of life’s little ironies that she should, as a married woman, still be using the bedroom she’d used as a girl and one that was several doors away from the master bedroom. But in the early days of her marriage it had seemed like an excellent idea to stay put.

Anyway, in the early days, Reith had stayed at Clover Hill. And it was only when she’d explained to him, in casual tones but with her eyes an arctic blue, that if he thought he could bribe her into his bed by allowing her to believe he’d bought Clover Hill specially for her, he
should have another think coming, that he’d retaliated by moving into Saldanha. This had caused her some frustration. Life had been easier the other way around.

But it was no longer a blue room, her bedroom.

Now she had ivory walls and white French colonial furniture on a thyme-green carpet. On one wall hung an intricate silk tapestry of a garden and a beautifully carved sandalwood chest stood at the end of the bed.

All of it couldn’t have been further from her mind, however, as she rested her chin on her hands and voiced the thought she’d been fighting to avoid ever since she’d stepped out of the car the night before under the portico …

‘Who’s he with?’

Was it realistic to imagine that Reith was living like a monk while she held onto her pride? Or, as he himself had said, was that being naïve? But was there one mistress, or several?

What did she look like, if it was one? Did he prefer blondes or brunettes? Redheads weren’t that easy to come by—Oh, stop it! she commanded herself. It’s insane to be thinking these thoughts. It’s crazy to be jealous of some faceless woman, or a dozen of them, for that matter, when for ninety-nine per cent of the time you hate the man.

T
HERE
was no sign of Reith and the fashion parade was upon them.

Kim dressed in some of her Chilli George clothes, a gorgeous taupe silk tunic with long sleeves and a ruffled neckline and slim ivory trousers, but she kept her eye on the window as she dressed because it was apparent from the moment she’d woken that the sun wasn’t shining for her …

It was raining, but not gently—it poured. It literally teemed so that just getting people into the Cellar Door from the flooded car park became an exercise in logistics.

Then there was a power failure and candles had to be lit before the backup generator kicked in.

‘Keep the champagne flowing,’ Kim’s mother advised.

Kim grinned but agreed and it was a strategy that worked. The crowd remained good-humoured, despite all the delays and inconveniences.

Good humour was hard to come by behind the scenes, however.

There’d certainly been nothing in any of their meetings that had suggested to Kim that Chilli George would work herself into a state of near hysteria over the weather, the delay in getting the generator going and the non-appearance of her wardrobe co-ordinator and assistant, who’d both been caught on the wrong side of a flooded creek.

‘Look, it doesn’t really matter,’ Kim said soothingly. ‘The girls must know roughly what they have to wear.’

But suddenly she wasn’t so sure as she looked around the colourful behind-the-scenes chaos of the dressing room. There were armfuls of clothes everywhere. There were cosmetics strewn across every flat surface. It was hot, despite the rain. There was a hairdresser torturing, by the look of it, one of the model’s hair into ringlets with a hot hair iron.

‘It matters,’ Chilli stated through her teeth. ‘The models need someone behind the scenes. You must do it, Kimberley!’

Kim opened her eyes. ‘Do what?’

‘Co-ordinate the clothes.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know the ins and outs of the outfits, how they do up, what shoes—I’ve got no more idea of what goes with what than…than the man in the moon!’

‘Then we must cancel.’ Chilli flapped her arms, then buried her face in her hands.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Kim remonstrated this time. ‘I’ve got a hundred people sitting out there dying to see your clothes! They’ve paid a small fortune and some of them nearly
drowned
getting here. Look, I know you were
going to compère and you probably know it off by heart, but if you’ve got some notes, I’ll do that and you can stay behind the scenes and sort things out here.’

‘Won’t like that, but here,’ one of the models murmured in an aside to Kim and put a sheaf of printed notes into her hand, a numbered description of all the outfits.

‘No!’ Chilli said dramatically. ‘You couldn’t possibly handle the compèring.’

‘‘Specially not with the most gorgeous, sexy man I’ve seen for years sitting in the front row!’ came another aside, beamed Kim’s way.

Kim frowned and peered through a crack in the makeshift wall. There was only one man sitting in the front row to date—Reith, sitting with Molly Lawson, chatting away comfortably.

Kim stared at him through the crack and discovered she could have killed him. He was wearing jeans and a navy leather jacket. His hair looked damp but he was entirely at ease as he and Molly chatted. Not only at ease but, with his tall body squashed into a folding chair, he still managed to look formidably attractive, dark and exciting and enough to take your breath away …

Then they laughed, he and Molly, and she thought furiously—how dare you, Reith Richardson? How dare you carry on as if there’s nothing amiss? How dare you not be here for
me
when I needed help with generators and all sorts of things earlier?

How dare you turn up now and steal the show so they’re even talking about you backstage?

Then she froze because he looked up and seemed to
be looking straight at her. A tremor ran through her and she was rooted to the spot for a long moment until she turned away and made a decision—no hysterical fashion designer was going to dictate anything to her, let alone be offered the chance to drool over her husband.

She grimaced immediately as the irony of this hit her but it also hit her at the same time that that was what she’d been unable to put her finger on in Chilli George at Molly and Bill’s dinner party—a very subtle but nonetheless perceptible interest in Reith. And she didn’t care if it made no sane, rational sense but that annoyed her all the more.

She turned back. ‘That’s my last offer, Chilli,’ she said coolly. ‘But I’ll help you pack up if you like, if that’s what you really want to do. We’ll have to refund—’

Chilli came to a hasty decision. ‘No. But, for heaven’s sake, get me a glass of…something and I don’t mean a soft drink.’

Kim smiled more warmly at her. ‘What a great idea! I’ll have one too.’

Hours later, Kim drove back to Saldanha.

It had stopped raining but the night air was misty and cool.

She threw her car keys down onto the hall table, stretched, kicked her shoes off and hesitated.

She could see partly into the lounge, with its lovely lamps that Mary would have lit. With its beautiful rugs on the shining parquet floor, the linen settee covers and the bowl of magnificent roses on a drum table. And she
smiled as she thought how well wine, grapes anyway, and roses went together.

But did she want to go straight upstairs to bed or did she want a nightcap to round off a difficult day? A nightcap to perhaps dull the sting of not knowing where Reith was. She’d seen him walk out of the Cellar Door after the parade and that was the last she’d seen of him.

She shrugged and wandered into the lounge, and stopped dead.

Reith looked up from the paper he was reading. There was a brandy in a balloon glass on the occasional table beside him.

He said nothing.

Kim came to life. ‘That’s where you are,’ she murmured and walked over to the bar to pour herself a brandy.

‘So we’re talking? I wasn’t sure,’ he said dryly.

She merely looked at him and sat down in an armchair.

‘OK, let’s try this—you thought I should have stayed and helped? That’s what you’re mad about?’ he queried.

She shrugged. ‘It would have been a help, but no.’

‘No? You don’t think I should have stayed or—you’re not mad?’

Kim tensed inwardly, bitterly regretting getting herself into this but she felt exhausted and didn’t have the will to go away—where to, anyway? So she took refuge in her drink. She took a sip and stared into her glass.

‘Next minute you’ll be telling me there’s nothing wrong,’ he said softly. ‘One of the all time favourite lies women employ when they’re hiding huge grievances.’

She looked up, her eyes glittering like sapphires in the sudden pallor of her face. ‘Of course you know this from your extensive experience of women, I presume?’

He laughed. ‘Thought that might flush you out, my dear Kim. So, why don’t you go on and spill the beans?’

‘There’s—’ She closed her mouth, nearly biting her lip, and took another sip of her brandy.

‘Nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Is that why you didn’t look at me? Not once while you were doing your stint on the microphone. Then or later. I might have been nonexistent—’

‘Why should I acknowledge you?’ she broke in. ‘I don’t even know where you are half the time. I had no idea you’d be back for the parade. I had no idea where you went the two nights you were away but, no, I’m not so naïve as to imagine you’re living like a monk.’

‘I spent the first night, what was left of it, in the apartment, alone,’ he said harshly. ‘And the second night, last night, I got permission to take Darcy and some of his mates to a rugby game and they slept over.’

‘That’s—’ her voice shook ‘—not what you intimated when you drove off.’

‘No?’ He stared at her with his mouth set. ‘Then our lines must have crossed. I was intimating that spending another chaste night in this damn house with you was not going to work for me. That’s
all
.’

Kim took several distressed breaths. ‘I…I’m sorry if I got it wrong but—’

‘Why would it bother you if I
was
sleeping around?’ he cut in to ask with a frown. ‘I thought you hated me.’

Kim stared at him. Then she got up and paced the
room. Finally she stopped in front of him with her arms crossed over her beautiful taupe silk top. ‘Reith,’ she said carefully, ‘yes, there are times when I hate you quite…a lot.’

A nerve flickered in his jaw. ‘I did save your family.’

‘You could have done it differently.’

‘No, Kim. I know what you’re going to say. I could have given your father an active position—’

‘Why not?’ she broke in intensely.

‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ he said flatly. ‘You know as well as I do, he would have hated any innovation, he would hate anything I suggested. As for your brother,’ he went on cynically, ‘didn’t any of you realize it’s not wine and viticulture he lives and breathes, but horses?’

Kim flinched. ‘Well …’

‘Not only that—he’s quite clueless when it comes to business.’

She walked back to her chair and took up her glass, turmoil clearly etched into her expression. ‘I still can’t—’ She paused, then heaved a sigh. ‘They’re still my father and brother.’

Reith picked up his drink and looked sceptically into the tawny depths. Then he grimaced. ‘It’s hard to be objective about one’s family, I guess. For example, I’ve gone the other way. I’ve never forgiven my parents, but—’ he gestured ‘—be that as it may, what about the rest of the time?’

She blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘You said there are times when you hate me quite a lot.’ He looked sardonic. ‘What about the other times?’

Kim hesitated, then sat down and finished her
brandy. She put the glass down precisely in the centre of the round occasional table. ‘I …’ She looked across at him and came to a sudden decision. ‘Reith, I often feel I’m working without a script. You seem to know all my answers but I don’t know yours. Tell me about your first wife.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you want to know about her?’ It wasn’t said patiently.

Kim gestured. ‘How you met. How long you knew each other, that kind of thing.’

‘Kim, it’s over ten years ago; it can’t have any bearing on us.’

‘Reith,’ she said stubbornly, ‘I want to know. I don’t like being married to a stranger, which is what you are, to all intents and purposes. You always were.’ Sudden tears blurred her vision. ‘If you really want to know, I bitterly regret getting myself into this ridiculous position with you.’

‘All right,’ he said through his teeth, ‘she was a country girl; she’d lived all her life on a cattle station. She would have been struck dumb in your company, but put her on a horse and she had her own kind of…class. Six months after we got married, though, we had nothing to talk about but she was pregnant and then…and then there was Darcy—but she was gone. She would have loved Darcy, but even more so because I think she knew—’ He stopped.

‘Knew you didn’t love her any more?’ Kim whispered, her eyes wide with horror.

He looked away. ‘Yes, if ever. But she didn’t even have that consolation.’

‘And you don’t think,’ Kim said through her tears, ‘that has left its mark on you?’

He stared at her with that nerve flickering in his jaw again. ‘Of course. It has no bearing whatsoever on you, however.’

‘You may not think so but,’ she said tautly, ‘I always knew there was an exclusion zone around you and now I know why.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ he said roughly. ‘I—’

‘Believe me—’ she interrupted ‘—if I’d had that kind of tragedy, or I’d caused that kind of tragedy in my love life, I’d have an exclusion zone.’

‘Caused,’ he repeated harshly and picked up his brandy glass and swirled it impatiently.

‘Oh, not wittingly.’ Kim gestured. ‘Lots of people fall out of love or they were never really in love in the first place, or their love is one-sided. But it’s enough to make you—’ she paused as she gathered her thoughts, then, still pale but more composed, she eyed him as if struck by a new thought ‘—enough to make you force someone to marry you for all the wrong reasons, though?’

She let the question dangle in the air as she stood up, tall and elegant, with her red-gold hair a little dishevelled—just as he liked it—but her eyes very blue and steady.

‘No,’ she said, ‘not enough for that. Not in my book. So what’s left? The way my arrogant family treated you? Was that enough for you to force me to marry you? No. You can hold your own anywhere, Reith, even if it involves an old school tie and a polo team, and you know it.’

‘So what’s left?’ Reith said as he stood up and faced her.

‘What’s left?’ Kim murmured and shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. All I’m telling you is I don’t accept that I should be obliged to make this a real marriage unless you can come up with a vastly better reason for it.’

She turned on her heel and walked away.

‘Kim.’

She hesitated mid-stride, then turned back to him, a frown and a question mark in her eyes.

He was standing with his hands pushed into the pockets of his jeans. His deep blue shirt was open at the throat. He was tall and dark and enough to make you catch your breath even when you were questioning his every motive, his every rationale. Even when your heart was aching for the wife who’d died knowing he’d fallen out of love with her, if he’d ever been in love.

‘Yes?’

‘You didn’t have to do it,’ he said.

She licked her lips. ‘You mean …?’

‘You didn’t have to marry me.’ He waited to see her reaction, which was to suck in an unsteady breath. He smiled unamusedly. ‘You could have ridden off into the sunset, so to speak, with your parents and your brother. At least your pride would have been intact even if you’d all been penniless.’

A tide of colour rushed up her throat and into her cheeks because, of course, he was right. But how to explain she couldn’t have done it to her parents? ‘I never wanted any of your money or
anything
from you,’ she said hotly, ‘but I couldn’t do it to my parents; I just
couldn’t
.’

He ignored the last bit. ‘You haven’t seemed to mind spending my money,’ he said dryly, with a significant little look around.