Jealousy & a Jewelled Proposition

by Yvonne Lindsay

  “And that is?”

  “About what happened earlier on, and in Tahiti. It has to stop. In fact it’s going to stop. There’s no way I want the entanglement of another relationship, or even marriage. The situation with Marise has taught me to hold on to what I love and hold it fast. Nothing and no-one will ever jeopardise Blake’s wellbeing again. Ever. And, as it seems I can’t keep my hands off you, and I clearly can’t offer you what you seek with me, as soon as your mother returns from Wanganui I’ll start looking for your replacement and let you get back to your life as you asked.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what I seek with you’?” Rachel pulled together every ounce of courage she could muster. She couldn’t let him see how drastically his words had affected her if she was going to be successful in carrying off the biggest lie of her life. “We can be adult about this, surely. I certainly don’t expect a relationship from you. We go back far too long for me to think that. Don’t worry. I know exactly where I stand.”

  She pushed up from her chair and painted a smile on her face that made her cheeks ache.

  “Rachel, be honest. I’ve abused my position as your employer, abused your trust. I don’t want my actions to be misconstrued by you into thinking I want a relationship with you.”

  Rachel managed to force a gentle laugh from her constricted throat. “Oh, don’t worry about me misconstruing your actions. You’ve made your position quite clear. Let’s just say it was an aberration. And as for abusing my trust, it was nothing of the sort. We both have needs that temporarily overtook our reason. Let’s face it, it’s been a while for you, right? Me, too. Can we please just leave it at that?”

  Matt watched Rachel’s stiff back retreat as she walked from the room and turned for the stairs. Yeah, it had been a while. A long while. Things between him and Marise had been strained for months before she’d gone back to Australia. Marital relations were nonexistent for the better part of the year—hell, if he was honest with himself he had to admit that Marise had actively avoided sex after Blake’s birth, arguing that no form of contraception was a hundred percent safe and that she didn’t want another child so soon.

  Despite Rachel’s departing statement, there was more to it, he was certain. Just as he was certain that his behaviour with her was no aberration. He was in the company of beautiful women on a regular basis. He’d never once had the urge to take one against the side of the nearest vehicle the way he’d nearly done with Rachel.

  And that urge still simmered below the surface. It was only a matter of time before they’d be hot and naked, relieving this awful pressure that had been building inside since she’d taken over as Blake’s nanny—and that would be disaster, because he was certain once would never be enough.

  As soon as her mother was back he’d release her, whether this thing with Blackstone Diamonds was in the bag yet or not. She could go back to her life in the UK. That way the temptation would be gone. He’d meant every word he’d said when he’d told her he wasn’t in the market for a new relationship or marriage ever again. He’d allowed his instincts to overrule good sense only twice in his life, once with Rachel after her high school ball, the other time in the intoxicating whirlwind of courtship with Marise. Both times had proven to be damnably wrong. He wasn’t fool enough to go three for three.

  Matt straightened up from the workbench and examined, from every angle, the pearl and diamond ring his team had been working on. The platinum setting brought out the best in the colour of the large semi-hemispherical pearl.

  Technically named a blue pearl, it drew from the myriad colours found in the species of abalone found in New Zealand waters, called Paua, and usually reflected pinks through to purples and blue through to green. This particular pearl, nine millimetres in diameter, was predominantly green, with a hint of blue here and there. He’d drawn from a 1930s jewellery catalogue when perfecting and personalising this design, and surrounded the pearl with twelve old-mine-cut diamonds. While the old-mine cut didn’t offer the flash and fire of the more modern brilliant cut it was more in keeping with the sedate beauty of the pearl.

  He nodded his satisfaction. This was perfect, exactly as he’d imagined it. It would be the crown in his collection of brooches, rings, pendants and earrings all modelled on designs from the 1930s. The drawings for his next range release, inspired by the earlier Victorian trends in jewellery, and which would incorporate the delicate white and pale-pink pearls he’d sourced from Japan earlier in the year, were in his office awaiting his final inspection before coming into the workroom.

  He held the ring up to the light one more time, savouring the chameleon-like beauty of the pearl, the blues and greens showing a faint shimmer of gold here and there. What you initially saw was not necessarily what you got with these stunning pearls. Each one was a precious gift of colour. This one in particular was exquisite.

  It reminded him of Rachel.

  Hell, where had that come from?

  He placed the ring in its display case and snapped it closed and wished he could turn off the thought as easily as he’d shut the lid on the box.

  Rachel. She invaded his thoughts on a regular basis. Not just his thoughts, he admitted to himself. There was an ache deep inside that she’d awakened—an ache he’d suppressed since the estrangement with Marise and which he’d kept firmly tamped down in the months since her death.

  Damn. It was wrong, unforgivably wrong, but he wanted Rachel with a longing he dared not give in to. No, he had to remind himself it was an abuse of trust, an abuse of her position in his home. He was a father first, head of House of Hammond second, and on the verge of having the controlling say in the company of the man who’d brought his family nothing but pain and regret. That was enough. It had to be.

  Matt returned the ring to the vault, slipping it into the drawer housing each of the pieces of the collection.

  He paused in his actions to savour the sense of anticipation that came with imagining the Blackstone family’s collective reaction when he achieved his goal. He’d given his vow over Howard Blackstone’s grave that Blackstone would regret having messed with the Hammonds. Matt’s next move against them would show them all he was a force to be reckoned with. Howard Blackstone would spin in his grave if he knew that a Hammond would be pulling his company’s strings very shortly.

  Back in his office Matt attended to his paperwork, most urgent of which was a press release waiting for his approval. He skimmed over the details. In it his PR team issued the DNA results and thereby quelled any further speculation about Blake’s paternity. They also stated that the family had no further comment and wished to continue with their lives uninterrupted. Matt scrawled his initials on the sheet in approval. He was about to fire the sheet into his out-box when he suddenly hesitated. The timing of the release could be important. To ensure it had maximum exposure, he decided to wait a few days.

  He pushed his chair back from his desk and leaned back, staring at the photo on his desk. He’d become so accustomed to its presence he barely even looked at it these days. Taken early on in his marriage to Marise, it was one of those fun candid shots that take a slice out of time and preserve it forever.

  They’d known she was pregnant when the picture was taken, and he’d been ecstatic about the news. Marise had been more reserved. It had happened far sooner than she’d expected; in fact, she’d already been expecting when they’d exchanged vows in a rapidly cobbled-together wedding earlier that year. Looking back, they’d rushed everything, so they hadn’t taken a moment to see the cracks that formed early on in their relationship.

  Matt picked up the photo and held it in his hand, one finger tracing the outline of Marise’s face. With her lush red hair pushed back off her face by the breeze, she was a picture of feminine beauty, but that old familiar pull that he’d felt when he’d first met her was gone. She’d been like a sought-after precious and rare gem and he’d had to have her. He’d believed that all he needed to complete his life was a wife and a family. Kim had urged him to
be cautious when she’d heard of the romance, calling him from Auckland when news of his liaison hit the tabloids. But he’d been drunk on the power of passion and excitement, and it had clouded his judgement just as effectively as alcohol would.

  He thought back to the first time he’d seen her. She was tall and slender, a lot like her sister, Briana, in build. But where Briana was blonde, Marise had red hair. A red so rich and intense it had perfectly offset her fair skin and green eyes. Everything about her had been full of energy and activity, yet underlined with an air of fragility that had appealed to his masculine instincts on every level. And then there was her charm, which had melted even the stoniest hearts.

  She’d loved her job at Blackstone Diamonds’ marketing division and had been intensely proud to be associated with them. He’d taken her away from all that. From everything that had given her life and vigour. He’d believed his love for her would be enough to compensate for it all. But he’d been horribly wrong.

  His finger stilled as the last image he remembered of Marise poured back into his mind—of her body, cold and lifeless in the steel drawer of the mortuary. The glorious red hair lank and matted against the side of her head.

  Matt slid the photo into his briefcase. He’d give it to Blake to keep in his room. Rachel had said that every night they “told” Marise what Blake had been up to that day. Perhaps the photo would help delineate the line between Rachel and his mother in the little boy’s mind. Make it easier for him when Rachel left for good.

  As he went to shut the case, his eyes lingered on the photo one more time. Something niggled beneath the surface of his mind. Something he just couldn’t put his finger on. It wasn’t until he was in the Mercedes and heading over the Auckland Harbour Bridge that the niggle developed into a full-blown realisation.

  Marise had usually worn her hair in layered feathers brushed forward to frame her face, but in the photo he’d had in his office her forehead and hairline had been exposed by the wind. Although her widow’s peak wasn’t as prominent as Blake’s it was, nevertheless, there. The documentary piece the other night had laboured the point, ad infinitum, that such a hairline was hereditary, but to Matt’s knowledge, neither of Marise’s parents had such a hairline, nor did Briana.

  He slammed his hand on the steering wheel in disbelief that he hadn’t realised the importance earlier. He had to be sure before he could make any kind of statement, but if he was right then everyone had been barking up the wrong tree all along.

  Howard Blackstone had indeed fathered a child out of wedlock. But instead of it being Blake, could it have been Marise?

  Eight

  Matt splashed a generous measure of whiskey into the cut-crystal tumbler on his desk, then lifted the single malt to his lips.

  He was right. He knew he was. Now all he had to do was prove it. His desk was scattered with photos and news clips. Pictures of Marise, of Howard, of Blake—and of Barbara and Ray Davenport, and of Briana.

  It was all there in front of him. Proof.

  He picked up the picture of Barbara and Ray and studied it carefully. They looked happy enough together but if his theory was correct it hadn’t always been so. Barbara Davenport had been Howard’s secretary thirty years ago. It was looking more and more likely that she’d been a lot more than that.

  So how, then, had she managed to get hold of the Blackstone Rose necklace? Had she been at Ursula’s thirtieth birthday party that night? He knew his parents had been there, but after the distress it had caused Katherine to relive the evening the other night, he knew he couldn’t ask her. Maybe Briana would know. Granted, she hadn’t yet been born when the necklace was stolen, but things had a way of being discussed in families that over time left dormant knowledge sitting in a child’s mind.

  He looked at his watch and judged the two-hour time difference between Melbourne and Auckland. It wasn’t too late to call. He lifted the phone from its cradle. It’d been too long since he’d talked with his brother, Jarrod, anyway. This way he could kill two birds with one stone.

  An hour later Matt reset the telephone handpiece in its stand. With what Briana had been able to tell him, he was convinced that Barbara had been pregnant by Howard. What had driven her to steal the necklace he could only speculate, but he would lay money on the fact that Howard had rejected his secretary once she’d told him she was expecting his child.

  Marise’s birth date was circled on the sheet of paper in front of him, together with the date of Ursula’s party and the time he now knew Barbara had left her position as Howard’s secretary. Given the timeline of when Temana Sullivan’s father had acquired the pear-shaped stone, now safely in Danielle Hammond’s creative hands, coinciding with the date the Davenport girls were enrolled for a private-school education, it all made sense.

  Had Marise had some idea of the ramifications of the possession of the four round pink diamonds that she’d secreted in Briana’s safe? Had she suspected, or even known, that Howard Blackstone was her real father?

  All this time Matt had been plagued with the belief that he had failed Marise in some fundamental way, that the collapse of their marriage had been his fault entirely and that he’d been too focussed on business to hold on to his wife in the months before she’d left. But now he realized many of the failures in her life had occurred long before he’d come onto the scene. She’d been raised living a lie. Possibly even spurned by her real father before her birth.

  Still, Marise must have convinced Howard of the truth. The vast private jewellery collection she’d been bequeathed was worth millions. A man like Blackstone didn’t just give something like that away to someone as ephemeral as a mistress.

  Had it been Blackstone’s idea that she divorce Matt and go for full custody of Blake? Anger coiled tight and low in his belly. He’d lay odds on that being true.

  He owed it to Marise to prove it. Theirs might not have been the happiest marriage on the planet but failure came on both sides of the marital bed. If he could do anything for her now, it would be to prove that Howard Blackstone was her father.

  But a photo alone wasn’t proof. Somehow he had to convince the Blackstone children to release their father’s DNA information so it could be proven without a shadow of a doubt that Marise had been his child. With the current climate between them, and with what they had coming to them when he achieved the majority share holding he was after, he doubted they’d be forthcoming. But in all his years of business he’d learned one thing was paramount—if you waited, nothing came to you. If you wanted something, you had to reach out and take it with both hands.

  “Matt? What are you doing still up?”

  He wheeled around at the sound of Rachel’s voice at the door. She was wrapped up in a voluminous dressing gown, her hair tousled and a pressure mark on her cheek from her pillow case. His fingers itched to reach out and touch the pink line on her face. Instead he gripped the tumbler in his hand that much tighter.

  “Just expanding a theory.”

  Rachel moved around the desk, and he watched as her eyes scanned the pictures and papers he had spread there.

  “A theory? I thought you’d sorted out the whole thing about Blake to your satisfaction. You can’t go much further than the DNA result you got. What are you trying to prove now?”

  Rachel reached for the picture he’d brought home from the office and he watched as her expression changed slightly, a quizzical frown appearing between her brows. Had she noticed what he had?

  “I haven’t seen this picture before,” she said.

  “I brought it home from work today. I thought Blake might like it in his room.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  The frown on her face deepened.

  “I never saw her with her hair like this before. Is that a widow’s peak at her hairline?”

  “Yes, it is. I don’t know why I didn’t consider it before.” Matt took the picture from Rachel and laid it back down on the table, next to the one of Howard Blackstone that he’d printed off f
rom an archived newspaper article on the internet.

  “My goodness! Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Her voice was laced with incredulity.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  If Rachel had made the same connection he had, then it lent weight to his theory.

  “The hairline.” She pointed with her finger to first Howard’s photo, then Marise’s. “The shape of their foreheads, their eyes. Granted her nose and chin are different, but anyone could be forgiven for thinking they’re related.”

  “I think they’re related, all right. I believe that Blackstone was her father.”

  “Her father! But how?” Rachel snapped up the pictures again and studied them more closely.

  “Marise’s mother, Barbara, worked as Blackstone’s secretary back in the late seventies. She resigned in seventy-eight. Marise was born a few months later.”

  “Why would no one have noticed the resemblance before? Why now?”

  Matt took a sip of his whiskey, then put the glass down; he didn’t really feel like drinking anymore. Instead, his senses were being drummed into awareness by Rachel’s closeness, by the warmth that radiated from her body so close to his, by the subtle scent she wore and which wove around him like a silken trap. He stepped away from the desk and sat down in his chair on the opposite side.

  “No one had ever looked for it before. Barbara and Ray moved to Melbourne when she left Blackstone Diamonds. They’d been married a few years. It was only natural to assume that Marise was Ray’s daughter.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to prove that Marise wasn’t having an affair with Howard Blackstone.”

  “Is that the only reason? To prove that she wasn’t being unfaithful to you?”

  “Isn’t that enough? Don’t you think it’s better for Blake to know that his mother wasn’t an unprincipled money-grabbing tramp like the media have referred to her since before the crash? One day it’ll all come out again. You know it will. For all her faults, he needs to know she wasn’t that kind of person.”