by Annie Seaton
She’d opened up to him on the long flight home—they’d flown Singapore Airlines to avoid a transit stop at Dubai—and she’d told him about her father’s murder and the impact she now realised it had on her life.
‘It must have been a very hard time for you,’ he said. ‘Then that bloody Al Tayer. You’ve done it tough, Dru.’
‘It was. I find it very hard to trust anyone.’
‘I know what you’re saying. My experiences turned me into a loner.’
Dru had lowered her gaze for a moment. When she looked up at him, she reached for his hand. ‘Me too. But you know what? Despite all the drama in Dubai, and your investigation—’ a cheeky smile lifted her lips and her eyes lit up ‘—and the superb accommodation in Antwerp, I’ve really enjoyed your company over the past few days. I feel comfortable with you.’ She squeezed his fingers and Connor looked down at their joined hands. A strange feeling settled in his chest.
‘You make me comfortable being me. It might sound funny, but that’s how it feels,’ she said. ‘And I haven’t felt like that for a long time.’ She leaned back in the seat and looked at him. ‘In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like that. Not since Dad died anyway.’
‘I know exactly what you’re saying. You’re very comfortable to be with too.’ Connor squeezed her fingers back and held her gaze. ‘Not something I’m used to either.’
Dru was the first to look away. ‘Look, we’re coming in to land.’
But Connor wasn’t thinking about the journey, or the comfortable feeling that Dru had described. For the first time since he’d left the Federal Police—and Nina—he was attracted to a woman. And the feeling was one he wasn’t sure he could get used to.
Now as Dru put the key into the door of her apartment, guilt trickled through him. He knew he had to tell her that he had broken in here a few weeks back. It was the right thing to do. If they were to remain friends—or maybe more—he had to keep things completely open and truthful between them.
Dru opened the door and stepped inside before ushering him in. ‘I’m not going to be much of a hostess. I don’t know what’s here in the way of food or cold drinks. I haven’t shopped for ages.’ She covered a huge yawn. ‘Anyway, welcome to my place.’
‘It’s okay, we’re only here for one night. We can eat out. Looks like there’s plenty of restaurants close by.’
‘I’m too tired to go out again. Let’s order in.’ She dropped her keys on the coffee table and put her bag on the floor. ‘It’ll be good to have some clean clothes.’ An expanse of bare, pale skin appeared above her jeans as she lifted her arms and stretched. ‘And I’m looking forward to getting back to work. I miss the place.’
Connor turned away. Forget work, forget diamond investigations and forget dinner. All he wanted to do was slide his fingers over that bare skin and hold her close. ‘Dru. I need to tell you something.’ He cleared his throat.
‘Yes?’ She tipped her head to the side and Connor took a step towards her. He held his arms rigid by his side so he couldn’t touch her.
‘I want to be totally honest with you.’ Connor drew his breath in as Dru stepped closer. ‘I’d like to stay friends after this is all over.’
‘That sounds good. I’d like that too.’
If she touched him he would be a goner. He stared over her head at the view of Darwin Harbour and took another deep breath. ‘You need to know I was in your apartment a few weeks back.’
‘What?’
He clenched his hands as confusion filled her voice.
‘I was here. When I thought you were involved in taking the diamonds.’
‘How did you get in?’ Cold laced her words. When he looked at her, her blue eyes were glacial and her mouth was set in a straight line.
‘I broke in.’
‘You bloody broke in to my apartment?’ Now her hands were on her hips. ‘What did you look at when you were here?’
‘Not a lot.’ He shrugged. ‘You don’t have much here.’
‘Did you go through my personal things? My underwear? My toiletries?’
Her voice was shaking; he hated seeing her distressed again.
‘I was looking to see if there was any evidence that you were involved.’
‘So did you find it in my knickers drawer?’ She shoved at his chest with both hands and Connor grabbed them. ‘Jesus, Connor, I don’t know if I can forgive you for that.’
Connor held her hands firmly as she squirmed against him. ‘It was part of my job. I needed to tell you. I wanted to be upfront with you.’
She pulled one hand free and hit at his shoulder. ‘I am just so bloody cranky. I don’t know what to think.’
Connor grabbed her hand again and held it tight. ‘Settle down.’
‘Settle bloody down? What else do you have to confess?’ She narrowed her gaze. ‘Was it you creeping around in my donga at the mine last week?’
‘No. What do you mean?’
‘I told you I was going to leave the door open, so you waited until I went to sleep and then you came in.’ She tried to jerk away from his hold. ‘So did you have a good look? Didn’t find any fucking diamonds there either, did you, Connor.’
‘I didn’t come into your room. When did that happen?’
‘The night of Rocky’s accident. I thought I’d dreamed it but it was you, wasn’t it?’
‘No. It wasn’t. I promise. I’ve been honest with you. There’s nothing more to tell.’ Anger simmered in his chest. ‘I won’t apologise for doing my job. And just for the record, I didn’t get my jollies going through your underwear.’
Dru put her head back and glared at him. The sexual tension in the air was so thick Connor found it hard to catch his breath. He put his arms around her and pulled her hard against him. When she reached up and grabbed his head, her lips were a breath away from his. He lowered his mouth and her lips opened to welcome him.
He walked her backwards until she was up against the wall, and then he slid his hands up under her shirt. The skin of her back was warm and soft beneath his fingers. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to touch you.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she murmured against his mouth. Her voice was low and husky and the spark of desire fired in Connor again.
He lifted his head and rested his forehead against hers. ‘You’ve gotten into my blood, Dru, you know. What are we going to do about it?’
*
‘Yes, what are we going to do about it?’ Anticipation and desire had dispelled Dru’s tiredness. ‘I think we need to go and lie down. You already know where my bedroom is.’ She couldn’t help the smart-arse comment. Connor was hard against her stomach. Pushing herself against him, Dru lowered her hands to the clasp on his jeans, but before she could undo them, he put his hands beneath her bottom and lifted her.
She wrapped her legs around his thighs. ‘Do you know how much I weigh?’ she said with a laugh.
‘Don’t worry, I work out.’ He carried her into the bedroom before gently lowering her to the bed. He grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head.
Dru let her eyes feast on his muscled bare chest. ‘Obviously.’
A shiver of exquisite pleasure ran through her as he stepped out of his jeans and stood before her.
‘Commando?’ she murmured.
*
The light reflecting on the window woke Dru the next morning. She opened her eyes slowly and rubbed her cheek against the soft pillowcase before she rolled over. Connor was on his side, facing her and breathing evenly, still sound asleep. Dru sat up slowly and leaned back against the bedhead. They’d ordered in a pizza delivery just after midnight, and not gone to sleep until the early hours. Her body ached deliciously in all sorts of unfamiliar places and her skin was tingling where Connor’s stubble had scraped over it.
‘Good morning, Drusilla.’ His voice was lazy and she looked down at him with a smile.
‘Good morning, Connor.’ She knew her lips were swollen and her hair a tumbled mess around her head.
He looked bright and his eyes were clear. A sexy smile crinkled the skin around his eyes. ‘You look like you had a busy night.’
‘Let’s say it beat watching termites.’
Connor rolled over onto his back with a mock groan. ‘Oh, you’re a cruel woman. What a comparison.’
Dru slid down in the bed and put her head on his chest, listening. ‘Maybe it was the best thing that’s happened to me for the last few years. But I don’t want you getting a big head.’ She lay there quietly listening to the steady, slow thump of his heart. ‘Want to go out for breakfast?’ she murmured sleepily.
‘I thought we’d have breakfast here.’ His voice was full of amusement and Dru smiled against his bare skin.
‘What did you have in mind?’ She lifted her head and arched her back as his lips trailed up her shoulder and along her neck.
‘More of the same. What time’s our flight to Kununurra? Noon?’
With a slow nod, Dru lowered her mouth to his. ‘Then, I guess, breakfast in bed it is.’
Chapter 33
Matsu Diamond Mine
On the flight back to Kununurra, Dru and Connor had both agreed it was necessary and appropriate to resume a professional relationship while on site. It sounded sensible, but in the time they’d been back, Connor was doing it tough. He was finding it hard to stay away from Dru.
After nearly two weeks of investigation and several conversations with Greg and with John Robinson about the mysterious Australian woman, they were no closer to the thief. As well as following up the woman in Antwerp as best he could with such scant information, Greg was digging up what he could about the GCH company.
‘Jesus, mate. You’re giving me the hard stuff. GCH!’ Greg had been vocal in his protest. ‘There’s probably hundreds of companies with those initials.’
‘Add it to your bill,’ Connor said drily. He had no doubt Greg could crack it eventually. Although a connection had been set up with Interpol, Connor was frustrated. It was difficult to share some of the information they had, as Greg’s methods of gaining it were highly illegal. Similarly, the flow of information from Interpol back to John Robinson was almost non-existent. On the bright side, Zayed Al Tayer was being grilled by Interpol, but that still didn’t aid in the identification of the thief at Matsu.
Connor turned the ute into the car park beside Dru’s demountable office. He was heading for the tailings dam on the pretext of dropping off an updated safety document. He also wanted to talk to her about Rocky and suss out the area around the dam where the older man seemed to be spending a lot of time. But if he was honest, the main reason he’d come here this afternoon was to see her.
Dru’s ute was parked at the northern side of the dam and she was walking along the edge of the water with one of the workmen. Every few metres they would stop and Dru would crouch down and examine something on the ground before resuming her walk and stopping again a little bit further along. As he watched, her hat blew off and when she bent to retrieve it the sun caught the silver glints in her hair. Connor could still feel the soft silkiness of her long hair against his fingers.
He leaned back in his seat and waited till they walked around the dam; it was too hot to leave the air-conditioned vehicle.
The heat was messing with his head. With his concentration. It was the looming wet. What did Greg call it the other day?
Mango Madness.
That was a good explanation for why he was working so slowly, and visiting the tailings dam when he didn’t really need to. The whole trip was a bloody pretext just to spend a few minutes in Dru’s company. It bothered him that he couldn’t control this feeling; he’d never felt this way about a woman before.
His relationship with Nina had been different. It was clinical, logical—a natural progression after a year spent working together and seeing each other socially. But he realised now that his emotions hadn’t come into play back then.
This intensity that heated his blood, the constant craving to be with Dru was unfamiliar to him. When he was with her, he felt invincible, and there was another unfamiliar emotion that he guessed some people would call happiness. She made him laugh; she made him feel. He’d tried to rationalise it, and when his emotions let him think rationally—usually when he was away from her—he was putting this feeling down to a guilty conscience for judging her, and the need to protect her.
Whatever it was, it had forced him over here today; he could have seen Dru after work in the mess tonight. He pulled on his seatbelt. There’d be an opportunity to talk in private sometime after dinner.
Last night, he’d slipped into her room after dark. He hadn’t intended to stay long but it was after midnight before he’d gone back to his room to work. Sex in a single bed brought back teenage memories.
Damn it, he was here now, he might as well stay. He pulled the key from the ignition as someone tapped on the window.
‘Connor!’ Dru had walked over to the car while he’d been bloody daydreaming. He pressed the button to open the window and the burst of heat that slammed in was almost solid.
‘I don’t know how you work out in that heat all day.’ He waited till she stepped back and he opened the door and climbed out to a welcoming smile.
‘What can I do for you?’ She flicked a glance at the workman who was gathering the tools and putting them in the back of her ute.
‘A couple of things.’ He reached into the passenger side and pulled out a folder. ‘This is the report I was telling you about.’
‘Ah,’ she said with a smile. ‘That report.’
Connor pointed to the dam. ‘What were you doing over there?’
‘Come and I’ll show you.’ Dru called out to the guy who was standing beside the ute. ‘Mick, can you take that vehicle back to the demountable please? I’ll get a lift back with Connor.’
‘Okay, boss.’
As they walked across to the dam, the sound of crunching gears drifted down the hill.
‘Uh, maybe not such a good idea letting him drive,’ Dru said with a grimace. ‘I might need a new ute.’
Connor ignored the feeling that ran through him when she touched his arm and pointed across the dam with her other hand. She left her fingers on his arm.
‘See over there. That’s the fence line where the traditional owners want the new boundary to run.’
‘It won’t take much land from the site at all, will it?’ He stared out over the flat land surrounding the dam.
‘No, just the dam and a small area where we’ve finished the rehabilitation work. Rocky’s behind the whole push to get the site back.’ Dru was pensive. ‘Something worries me about his attitude, the way he’s gone about it. I’m not really convinced about his motivation.’
‘So why are they so interested in that land?’
‘The tailings are a major pollutant on a mine site. That’s why we’ve focused the rehabilitation work over here to begin with. When Rocky and those two lawyers presented their proposal, I did a bit of hunting around in the literature. If the new processes that are used in South African diamond mines were put into place here, with the advances in separating, sorting and crushing equipment, very small diamonds could be recovered from the residue of the original diamond-bearing ore. Almost a million carats of diamonds were recovered that way in one year at just one mine.’
He glanced over his shoulder. The other two workmen were far enough away not to hear them. ‘Do you think Rocky wants the tailings dam for the diamonds that could be in there? Is there any chance he could have got the Antwerp diamonds from there?’
‘No, none at all.’ Dru shook her head. ‘It’s only residue. Only tiny diamonds.’
‘John Robinson said there was a possibility that some big diamonds might still be in the dam.’
‘I doubt it,’ Dru replied.
Connor looked over at the dam where the shimmering heat was lifting from the ground. ‘So what’s your gut feeling about Rocky?’ There’d been no sign of him since they’d come back from overse
as, and when Dru had asked one of the workmen, he’d shrugged and said he was on leave. He reworked his question. ‘What I meant to say was, do you think there’s a possibility that we will find evidence that Rocky took the diamonds?’
‘Not a chance. I’d put money on it. And besides, he doesn’t have the contacts to be selling diamonds in Dubai or Antwerp. Whatever he’s up to, it’s got nothing to do with the missing diamonds. He wants that sacred site returned to his people.’
‘Back to square one. I hope to God Greg comes good with something soon. He’s working through the security staff again, and looking for GCH.’
Dru smiled up at him. ‘Come on, let’s go grab some lunch. I’ve got the makings of a sandwich in the fridge in the demountable. Bring your paperwork with you and we can make it look like a meeting.’ All thoughts of missing diamonds fled as Dru whispered, ‘I missed you today.’
*
Dru yawned as she walked up the hill to her donga the next day. They’d been back on site for almost a full roster and Connor’s frustration with the progress of the investigation was obvious. She’d racked her brains trying to think of ways that the diamonds could have been stolen but they were no closer to a solution even with her knowledge of the plant and the staff. Tiredness dogged her footsteps. She’d slept in her own room last night. Connor, she knew, had spent all night on the laptop in his donga, trawling through the information that his friend had gathered. Looking for something he may have missed.
Her sleep had been fitful, and around 3.00 am she had jerked awake. It had sounded as though someone was trying to open the door to her donga. Heart pounding and mouth dry, she’d climbed out of bed, switched the light on and tiptoed across to the door before switching the outside light on as well.
‘Connor,’ she’d whispered, but there’d been no reply. She’d taken a few deep breaths and worked up the courage to open the door but there had been nothing to see in the moonlight spilling across the road to the car park. There was a slight breeze coming from the Matsu Range and a loose sign at the edge of the pool building creaked as she watched and listened. Finally her heart rate returned to normal, but when she went back to bed, she couldn’t sleep. Zayed’s face and voice filled her thoughts and she made a conscious effort to block him out. She was at Matsu, and she was safe. She was home in Australia, and she was safe. He wouldn’t risk coming here.