When Only Diamonds Will Do. Lindsay Armstrong
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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.
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