Vows & a Vengeful Groom

by Bronwyn Jameson

  She squeezed her eyes shut in a vain attempt to block out the picture he painted, but she couldn’t block out his low, gruff-voiced intensity. She couldn’t block out the realisation that this was his dream—not success in the business world or chairmanship of the board or her return to his life and his bed, but this family that he’d never had. It seemed so simple, so attainable, and yet it was the very thing she could not give him. That knowledge drove a shard of pain right through her heart, as she lifted her chin to face him.

  To tell him.

  “I’m not the woman in that picture, Ric.”

  His head came up, jaw rigid with determination. “Why not? Is it this place?”

  “No. This block is—God, you know what it is!” He might as well have reached right into her heart and plucked it out. “I can’t give you everything you see here. I am not your future, Ric. I can’t be. I can’t have those children.”

  Kimberley thought she’d reached rock bottom when forced to acknowledge her love, but that was before Perrini revealed the future she would share with him in a heartbeat if she thought that future could be happy. That was before she told him that any conception would be a miracle pregnancy and he couldn’t disguise the shock of raw regret that crossed his features.

  Then she struck rock bottom.

  Recovering rapidly he demanded details of her surgeries, first for endometriosis and then to remove the resultant adhesions, and she recited facts and statistics. True to form he steamrolled over medical opinion, stating they would see fertility experts, investigate IVF, whatever it took.

  Kimberley was starting to despise that phrase. “And if I don’t want to have babies?” she asked, her heart breaking with the lie. “Have you considered that I might not share your vision of happy families? That my dream may be something else entirely?”

  His head came up, and his gaze narrowed. “Because of your mother’s postnatal depression? Are you afraid of history repeating itself?”

  “No,” she said softly, unable to latch on to that ready-made excuse. “My mother lost a baby. She must have suffered incredible guilt.”

  “Then what?” When she would have turned away, he closed in on her, taking her stiff shoulders in his hands, forcing her to face him. “The truth, Kim.”

  “I can’t give you what you want, Perrini. Can’t you accept that?”

  His grip and his features tightened with a combination of frustration and determination. “Our future isn’t dependent on you having my babies,” he asserted. “You can’t chase me away that easily.”

  Chin high, she gathered together the tattered shreds of her resolve and faced him down. “I have fulfilled my end of the deal. I came here. I listened. And I’ve made up my mind. Now, please take me home…to Miramare.”

  Ric took her to the Vaucluse mansion, as she demanded. When he parked the car and handed her the keys, she gave him a bewildered look. After the tense silence on the drive back from Manly when she’d shut down his every attempt to discuss her stance, he figured any look she gave him, other than total acquiescence, would have set his teeth on edge.

  Unfortunately doe-eyed bewilderment didn’t.

  “The car’s yours,” he said roughly, folding her stiff fingers around the keys. “Happy birthday.”

  She puffed out a breath. “I…I don’t know what to say. I can’t—”

  “‘Thank you, Ric,’ would do for a start,” he said over the top of her protest.

  There was only so much rejection a man could hear in one day and Ric had reached his limit. If he hadn’t just handed her the keys to the only ready transportation, he would have turned and walked away. Not for good—he was far from done with Kimberley Blackstone—but for now.

  Turning on his heel he took the steps to the mansion two at a time, ignoring the protests that followed in his wake, and greeted Marcie with a strained smile as she opened the door. “Is Sonya in?”

  “She’s out the front, in the garden.” The housekeeper shot a worried look out the front door. “Is Miss Kimberley all right?”

  “She’ll be in shortly. She’s just deciding what to do with her new car.”

  As he strode inside he took his phone from his pocket and switched it on, frowning at the list of missed calls. Ryan, more than once. He checked the text messages and stopped in his tracks.

  Halfway back across the foyer he met Kim coming in. Her phone was in her hand and her eyes sought his, wide with the unasked question. He nodded. Yes, he’d got the same message. Although he saw the shield come up in her eyes, he kept on walking and took her resistant body into his arms.

  They’d identified Howard’s remains. The waiting was over.

  He helped her through the formalities with the coroner’s counsellor, stayed for the family meeting to discuss funeral arrangements, and for the dinner Sonya insisted they eat. Afterward Kim suggested he looked tired. He ignored the thinly veiled hint. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Kim’s right,” Sonya said, reaching across to place her hand over his. “You do look worn-out. Why don’t you go home? It was lovely having your company for dinner, but you don’t have to stay and babysit me. In fact, I’ll be going upstairs myself soon. So, please, both of you, go home.”

  “I’m staying here tonight,” Kim said after a beat of awkward silence. Then, for the first time since they’d received the news six hours earlier, she met his eyes. “You can take the Porsche. Please.”

  “The Porsche?” Sonya asked, looking between them with curiosity. “Do you have a new car?”

  “An early birthday present.” His eyes locked on Kim’s, daring her to disagree. “Thank you for the offer of its use, but I don’t need a car. If you’re staying, then so am I.”

  Her eyes flared, her lips thinned, but in front of Sonya she said nothing. Several minutes later, while he answered Sonya’s question about why he’d chosen that particular car, she quietly excused herself. Suspecting she would lock her bedroom door, he didn’t allow her too much start and caught up on the first-floor landing.

  “I will see you in the morning,” she said stiffly, turning to her door as if she expected him to continue upstairs to the room he normally used.

  “No.” He closed the space in six easy strides. “You’ll see me now.”

  “Don’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t handle this fight, not tonight.”

  The fragile edge to her request cut him to the quick. He lifted a hand and touched his knuckles to her cheek, to the dark fall of her hair, and then he bent and kissed her forehead. “I’m not here to fight, baby, I promise you that.”

  Too drained by the day’s emotional seesaw to resist, Kimberley let him into her bedroom. The idea that he might use sex as a weapon to wear down her defences should have stirred her to anger, instead it only deepened the ache in the middle of her chest.

  She showered quickly and when she unlocked the bathroom door to an empty room, she breathed a sigh of relief. He stood outside the French doors on her small balcony, out of reach of the one bedside lamp, and when she slipped into bed she turned that off, too.

  Four nights she’d spent at his Bondi home, and already she felt the strangeness of lying alone in bed. In the dark her heartbeat sounded too thick, too fast, too needy. She heard him come inside, heard the rustle of clothes as he undressed, and she held her breath. But he didn’t come straight to bed. He showered, too, with the door open and the light slicing across the bedroom while the air filled with the sound of running water and her body softened with images of his naked body and her heart ached with the pictures he’d painted on an impossible future.

  Then the water shut down, the bathroom light went out. Tension held her limbs rigid, her fingers curled into her pillow, while she waited for the dip in the mattress, the flutter of the sheet, the heat of his body behind hers, his arm closing over her and drawing her back into the spoon of his body.

  “Relax,” he murmured near her ear and she shivered at the touch of his hair still wet from the shower. “I’m just
going to hold you.”

  She closed her eyes, willed her body to relax. He didn’t just hold her. He held her and he talked to her, random memories of her father that were in turn funny and infuriating, irreverent and respectful. When the tears finally came he held her more tightly and soothed the tremors with long, calming strokes of his hands.

  Afterward she tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let her. Patiently he broke down her defences and made love to her with heartwrenching tenderness, filling the hollowness with his healing heat, and opening her heart to a deeper, stronger ache. This was the man she wanted, the only man she had ever loved, and she could not give him what he most wanted.

  Much later, when his body felt slumberously heavy against hers, she hugged his arms tight to her chest and whispered into the dark, “I can’t give you what you want.”

  And she felt the press of his lips to her neck, the stir of his breath as he spoke. “Let me be the judge of that.”

  The following days swept by in a blur of activity, with ongoing funeral arrangements and the preparation of press statements and the continual stream of condolence calls. Kimberley smiled graciously through each and every one until her cheeks ached with the effort. Through it all Ric remained at her side, a source of solid support and extra despair.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she whispered on Monday night, after he’d stormed her defences again with his body and his sweetly destructive tongue.

  “You could give up this intransigence,” he replied sleepily. “You will in the end. You know it, I know it. I’m not going away.”

  Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she was being falsely stubborn, obstructing what was meant to be. But there was something holding her back, a complex combination of the babymaking issue and her lingering mistrust of his motives in wanting her back.

  “I need a sign,” she muttered as she traipsed along Pitt Street on Tuesday morning. She’d been on her way to the jewellery store when Garth called and asked if she could meet him at his office. Another detail to sort out for the funeral, no doubt. She’d turned back and had almost reached the Blackstone building when she caught sight of Ric crossing the street, his stride long and purposeful, his expression creased in concentration. Her heart did a little bump, just from the unexpected sighting. Ridiculous really, when she’d seen the man step naked from her bed that morning.

  Perhaps this was the sign she’d asked for. As infinitely simple as that I-see-you bump of her heart. Her heartbeat accelerated with the thought, wanting with a painful kick of intensity to believe that it could be this simple.

  As straightforward as him crossing the street on this block at this precise moment.

  She stopped, a smile starting to curve her lips as she prepared for the moment when he stepped onto the sidewalk and saw her. Perhaps she should walk right up and kiss him—not a quick hello peck but a passionate embrace right here in the middle of Tuesday morning. Her smile kicked up, contemplating his surprise, but then a woman pushing a stroller brushed past her, blocking Ric from view momentarily.

  When she saw him again he was picking up something from the footpath—a tiny, pink shoe—and handing it to the young mother. The woman’s harried expression turned to a smile when he hunkered down to put it back on the toddler’s foot. Then he straightened and the expression on his face—a concentrated dose of purest longing—trampled Kimberley’s heart to the street.

  The sign she’d asked for was simple after all. As simple as a baby’s dropped shoe.

  Ric saw her ahead of him hurrying into the Blackstone’s lobby, but when he called her name she kept on moving. He increased the length of his stride, concentrating his effort on intercepting her at the elevators. He didn’t know how much detail Garth had given her, if any, and before she stepped into that office she deserved some warning.

  As he passed through the security scanner he called her name again, but her sage-green dress and the swing of her dark ponytail disappeared into a lift. With a last Herculean dash he managed to get his hand in the gap between the rapidly closing doors, reversing their direction at the last second. As he stepped into the car, she sucked in a breath that flared her nostrils and widened her big green eyes.

  He swore softly. “Garth’s told you already.”

  “I’m on my way up to this office now, so, no. What is this about, Ric?”

  “Your father’s will,” he said shortly. “There’s been a new development.”

  “New development?” she echoed.

  “A lawyer from Ian Van Dyke’s firm called Garth this morning.”

  “The lawyer who was on the plane.”

  Ric nodded. “That’s right. An estate lawyer who’s been doing work for your father for some time now. Apparently a new will was drafted and signed that day, before they got on the plane.”

  “And they’ve just found it?” She choked out a laugh. “Did it fall behind a filing cabinet?”

  “I don’t know what happened. I imagine this meeting will shed some light on why this document took so long to come to light, and its contents.”

  “I don’t think the second part is too much of a mystery, do you? He told me he was writing me out.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Kim. This could be anything from a complete shake-up to a few cosmetic changes. I think the second is more likely, given the thing was signed and witnessed in an airport lounge.”

  “The documents that delayed the flight,” she said softly.

  The lift stopped at the top floor. The doors glided open, but he could see by the pallor of Kim’s face and her white-knuckled grip on the charm pendant around her neck that she wasn’t ready for this meeting. “Ryan’s not here yet,” he said, turning her toward the boardroom. “Come and sit down for a minute.”

  A minute probably wasn’t going to do it, Kimberley thought, as she sank into a chair in the director’s lounge. Ric had gone to let Garth know she’d arrived and where to find them when Ryan showed up. Whether it was a minute or ten, she appreciated the chance to collect herself.

  She knew in her heart what this lawyer would tell them, but it wasn’t the threat of imminent disinheritance that had knocked the wind from her lungs. It was the sum of all that had happened this month, and the realisation of all she’d changed and all she stood to lose. She’d left the job she loved at House of Hammond, thinking she had a personal stake in the future of Blackstone’s. In the process she’d lost the respect and friendship of her cousin Matt. She might never see her godson grow up.

  And she’d learned what had forged Perrini into the man he was today, a man with a mark to make on the world and a need for family, a man she loved for all he’d become and all he could be. A man she didn’t believe she could ever make truly happy.

  The door opened and he came back into the room, his eyes instantly finding hers. Whatever he saw in her face meshed his brows into a tight frown. He pulled a chair over in front of hers and sat, close enough that their knees bumped when he leaned forward to take her hands in his. He held them tightly for a moment until the trembling stopped.

  “If I’m not a stakeholder in Blackstone’s,” she said finally, picking the one thing she could focus on without falling apart, “this whole month has been for nothing.”

  He studied her silently for a second. “Let’s assume that this new will is what you suspect. That doesn’t have to change your position or your directorship at Blackstone’s.”

  She huffed out a breath. “How can I stay on knowing my father didn’t want me to have any part of the company?”

  “Do you want to stay?”

  “It isn’t that simple.”

  “It can be,” he said, gripping her hands more firmly and shaking them with a quiet insistence. “If you would just accept that things don’t always have to be difficult.”

  “Things, such as?”

  “Let’s start with this will. If your father has disinherited you, it’s because you had a blow-up row. He hated that you wouldn’t play by his rules in his sandbox.
He hated who you chose to play with instead. That doesn’t mean he didn’t love you or that he wouldn’t be damned pleased to see you back here.”

  “It would seem I have a problem recognising love.”

  “It would seem,” he said dryly, but his expression tightened with his trademark strength of purpose. “I gave everything I thought I could offer the other day, but maybe I should have stuck to the simple, and the simple truth is this—I don’t care if it’s Manly or Bondi or Janderra or the moon, I just want to make a home with you, a life with you.”

  “And if I don’t believe it’s that simple? If I believe it’s a family you yearn for?” Her voice grew thick, choked with emotion that swelled in her chest and squeezed her heart. “I saw your shock when I told you I couldn’t have babies.”

  “Hell, yes, I was shocked. You were telling me about surgery, about your inability to conceive, about big things in your life and your body that you’d never mentioned before. Of course I was shocked and concerned—for you, not for me.”

  She shook her head slowly, not wanting to reject the sincerity of that message, but not ready to accept. “I saw you out in the street before, when you picked up the little girl’s shoe. I saw your face when you held little Ivy, when you bowled a cricket ball to Cam. You say you just want a home and a life, but I saw the look on your face. I can’t give you that, Ric, and that’s about me, not you. I want to be able to give you happiness. Maybe that’s what love is. It tears me in two because I can’t give you what you want.”

  “Kids? A family? Yes, I want, I’m not going to lie about that, but there are other means, other methods, and if that doesn’t work out we foster or we adopt from overseas or we do whatever it takes, because you’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted as my wife and the mother of my children. No one else can give me what you do.”

  “Difficulties?” she asked on a hoarse exhalation, not quite a laugh, not quite a cry. “All those pain-in-the-backside qualities you mentioned I’d inherited? I guess no estate lawyer can take those from me!”