When Only Diamonds Will Do
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.
CHAPTER THREE
‘SLEEP well?’
‘No,’ Kim said flatly.
‘Neither did I, if it’s any help,’ Reith Richardson offered.
Kim switched her attention from the painting she was studying and looked up at him. She wore a fitted leather miniskirt in peach with a loose scarlet top in a filmy material. Her shoes were high cork wedges, her hair was looped back in a roll, she had big diamond-studded gold hoops in her ears and there were the faintest blue shadows beneath her eyes.
She looked, he thought wryly, gorgeous, from her red-gold hair down to those sensational legs, but moody. And he was presented with a sudden mental picture of her waking up in his bed with that same moody expression. Could she maintain it, though, if he cupped her breasts, then drew his hands down her body and made love to her slowly, very slowly, until they were both on fire? Careful, he warned himself, remember who this is …
She said, ‘Why should it be any help?’ then gestured as if to erase the words. ‘It doesn’t matter. Look, it’s very difficult to choose art when you have no idea where it’s going to end up.’
‘I’ve got some sketches.’
‘You’ve also got to be in the mood,’ she added.
He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m getting some pretty distressed vibes here so, starting at the top, is it that time of the month?’
‘No,’ she snapped.
‘Is it the lack of really good sex then?’ He shrugged. ‘Can give you the blues.’
Kim beamed a glance of the opposite—pure blue fire—his way but at the same time a mental image of her lying naked in his arms and as aroused as he was streaked through her mind. And she couldn’t for the life of her decide what annoyed her more—the tingle that went through her, lovely though it was, or the fact that he could do this to her after shipping her home last night.
‘No,’ she said through her teeth and was about to add a pithy comment, although she hadn’t actually thought of one, but he interrupted.
‘Have you had breakfast?’
She closed her mouth, then opened it again. ‘What makes you think I didn’t?’ she answered.
‘Did you?’
She looked mutinous. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘I went for a ride, then I was running late.’
‘Another wacky day in the making,’ he commented, and put his arm through hers. ‘Come.’
‘Where? We haven’t picked a thing yet.’
‘You’ll see.’
She shrugged again, as if to say she didn’t give a damn one way or the other, and walked out with him.
An hour and a delicious mushroom omelette later, Kim looked around at the rustic restaurant he’d brought her to and said ruefully, ‘You were right. Sorry. I feel much better.’
‘Good. Is that all it was? A lack of food.’
‘Don’t start that again,’ she warned, then grimaced as she recalled her turmoil of the night before. ‘Not entirely, but I do find it hard to be miserable for long.’
‘Miserable?’ He frowned.
‘Confused. Not one hundred per cent sure what game you’re playing, Mr Richardson, put it that way.’
He raised an eyebrow and waited. When she offered no more, he said questioningly, ‘Game?’
‘I can’t work out whether you’re trying to seduce me or not.’
Their gazes clashed.
‘There’s a certain—’ she moved her hands around each other ‘—stop/start approach you employ that I find a bit strange.’
‘Are you suggesting we should jump into bed?’
Kim smiled but there was a touch of frost to it. ‘No. But perhaps I should let you know that the disapproval and reserve is not all on your side.’
‘That’s what you think it is—disapproval?’
‘Yes. Besides which, I have the feeling you’re a loner at heart!’ She said it almost jauntily.
‘Would you prefer it if you had to fight me off?’ he asked.
‘Naturally not. Look, I’ve had enough of this conversation—you’ll have me all gloom and doom again if we’re not careful. Show me your sketches,’ she commanded.
He pulled some papers out of his jacket pocket and handed them over to her.
She smoothed them out. ‘Hmm …’ she said eventually. ‘Not bad. Do you have any preferences?’ She opened her hands. ‘Do you like your art conventional, for example, or could you live with a bit of—’ she broke off and smiled suddenly ‘—wackiness?’
He stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘I don’t mind a bit of wackiness.’
‘Good,’ she approved briskly. ‘Do you have any pet hates? For example, I don’t like—sorry, I know you love it—but I don’t like seascapes. With a passion.’
He looked amused. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps you just can’t capture the movement of the sea in paint. Any of those dislikes—or anything you particularly like?’
He rubbed his jaw. ‘I’ve seen some Aboriginal art that has a sort of mysterious power that draws you in—it’s hard to describe but it makes you feel it’s alive.’
Kim put her cup down and sat up, her expression heavy with frustration. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me this sooner?’
‘You have access to it?’
She nodded. ‘I have friends who get right to the source, painters who still live in their traditional areas and are able to transfer the sheer magic—’ she clenched a hand and her face glowed ‘—of their culture onto canvas.’ She opened her purse and pulled out her phone. ‘Hold thumbs they’re not out in the desert.’
They weren’t out in the desert so Kim took Reith to their gallery and they spent nearly the whole of the rest of the day going through canvases, making choices and deciding on frames.
Finally, he suggested dinner.
Kim agreed but told him she’d like to shower and change. ‘And don’t worry about sending me around in great big black limousines,’ she told him. ‘It doesn’t do much for my mood. Anyway, I’m used to driving in and out of Bunbury.’
He looked at her, smiling. ‘OK. What do you suggest restaurant-wise?’
She thought for a moment, then she told him with a toss of her head that she had a craving for pasta and nothing else would do. She also named a restaurant.
‘So be it,’ he said gravely.
Kim suffered a moment’s disquiet. ‘Do you like pasta? If you don’t I suppose we could—’
‘It would not be game to dislike pasta,’ he broke in to say.
She looked disconcerted for a moment, then pulled a face at him and retreated to her car.
A couple of hours later, she parked her car in Bunbury and walked towards the restaurant.
She’d changed into a long, floaty flame-coloured dress streaked with white, and nude platform shoes. She’d left her hair loose and she carried a boxy little gold bag.
Reith was waiting for her and she walked towards him with her long free stride and her dress billowing around her, only to slow down then come to a stop a couple of feet away from him.
She shivered suddenly as his dark gaze roamed up and down her. Because there was something completely riveted about him and the way he was examining her body. In fact, she got the feeling she was naked beneath that compelling gaze, that he’d mentally undressed her, even dispensing with her underwear, and it was tense, yet, at the same time, incredibly erotic. It sent her pulses racing and tremors of desire running through her.
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