When Only Diamonds Will Do

‘As a wife, especially for a billionaire, I’ll be superb.’

They stared at each other, and it became a prickly, tense, heart-stopping moment.

‘Do you mean in bed?’ Reith queried at last, with a significant scan up and down her figure.

‘Now, that,’ Kim said, ‘might depend on you—
if
it happens. What I mean is that I will run your homes beautifully, I’ll handle the entertaining, I’ll look the part and …’ she paused ‘… I’m good with kids.’

Reith said slowly, ‘I’ve got an apartment in Bunbury. I’ll lease it to your parents rent-free and I’ll set up an allowance for them—for as long as you stay with me, Kim.’

She drew a breath. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

‘You’re not exactly playing softball yourself,’ he said.

LINDSAY ARMSTRONG
was born in South Africa, but now lives in Australia with her New Zealand-born husband and their five children. They have lived in nearly every state of Australia, and have tried their hand at some unusual occupations, such as farming and horse-training—all grist to the mill for a writer! Lindsay started writing romances when their youngest child began school and she was left feeling at a loose end. She is still doing it and loving it.

In 2011, Lindsay’s book THE SOCIALITE AND THE CATTLE KING won a R*BY award in the ‘Short Sexy’ category.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE GIRL HE NEVER NOTICED
THE SOCIALITE AND THE CATTLE KING
ONE-NIGHT PREGNANCY
THE BILLIONAIRE BOSS’S INNOCENT BRIDE

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

When Only
Diamonds
Will Do

Lindsay Armstrong

www.millsandboon.co.uk

R
EITH
R
ICHARDSON
slammed his phone down and swore beneath his breath.

His secretary, Alice Hawthorn, grey-haired and in her fifties, raised her eyebrows. ‘Francis Theron,
I
gather?’

‘You gather right,’ Reith agreed. ‘He doesn’t believe I’m a suitable person to be—’ he paused and grimaced ‘—within a hundred miles of his beloved winery, no doubt. Despite the fact he’s in dire straits, despite the fact my offer is the only one he’s got and he could end up bankrupt in the near future.’

‘Hmm …’ Alice mused. ‘
A
very socially prominent family, the Therons of Balthazar and Saldanha. Very proud.’

‘You know what they say about pride and the proverbial fall,’ Reith murmured. ‘
OK
, Alice, I’m withdrawing the offer
I
made. I’ll leave the Therons to their fate.’ He bundled the papers before him into a stack and handed them over to her.

‘There’s a daughter, you know,’ Alice said, as she packed the papers into a folder. ‘An absolute stunner, I believe. About twenty-two.’

Reith shrugged. ‘Maybe they need to find her a rich husband who can save them all.’

‘There’s also a son.’

‘I know, I’ve met him—all the right schools, top polo player, seriously into horses, in fact, but singularly unblessed with any business sense,’ Reith replied dryly then he smiled a crooked grin. ‘Maybe they need to find
him
a horsy but rich wife.’

Alice laughed and got up. ‘Will you be in Perth or Bunbury for the next few days?’

‘Bunbury, probably, there’s a stud down that way I’m interested in. Alice,’ Reith said with a frown as he looked around his office, one of his new luxury suite of offices in Perth that overlooked the Swan River, ‘I don’t like the artwork the interior decorator’s supplied. I don’t know why, it just doesn’t do anything for me.’

Alice looked around at the Impressionist landscapes and marine life on the walls. ‘Well, perhaps you ought to choose it yourself?’ she suggested.

Reith got up and strolled over to the windows. ‘All right, when I get the time,’ he said wryly. ‘Thanks, Alice.’

She took the hint but when she got back to her desk she sat deep in thought for a while. It wasn’t often her boss backed a wrong hunch—made an offer that was knocked back, in other words. In fact his timing was usually impeccable and he was little short of a genius when it came to buying businesses in trouble and turning them around. It was how he’d consolidated a small fortune made from a mining venture into a very large fortune, but this was obviously different. This was something that involved pride and history; the Therons went back a long way to their Huguenot ancestors in South Africa and viticulture ran in their veins.

Whereas Reith Richardson went back to a cattle station beyond the black stump …

Alice shrugged and patted the folder she was about to file away for the last time. Concerning her boss, there were times when she fervently wished herself twenty years younger, and other times when she felt rather motherly. This was one of those motherly times, she decided. A time when she wished he would be a little more understanding, a little less the steel-hard businessman.

What he really needed, she mused, was a softening influence in his life, like a wife. And heaven knew there were plenty of women who found his tall, dark looks fascinating but of course his disinclination to marry any of them could be due to the fact that he had lost his first wife.

Alice stopped her thoughts at this point as her phone rang and she was completely unaware that, at the same time, her boss was staring at a framed photo on his desk and thinking about his lost wife.

It wasn’t a photo of his wife but a boy, a freckled, fair boy who went by the name of Darcy Richardson. His only son, his only child. Born of a girl who had been little more than a child herself except in years. She’d been nineteen when they’d married because she was pregnant, twenty when she’d given birth to Darcy and died from unforeseen complications.

And he very much doubted he’d ever get over the guilt he felt. Guilt because it had all happened so quickly. He’d never expected a pregnancy but he should have sensed that she was being naïve when she claimed she was protected; a country girl who’d stopped taking the Pill when it made her sick. But most of all guilt over her dying—as if he’d caused it.

And now the guilt over Darcy, his son, who’d been mostly brought up by his maternal grandmother until six months ago when she’d died. Darcy, who wore a polite protective shell around him that he, his father, could not get through.

Darcy, who was coming soon from his boarding school, not only to remind his father of his mother, who he looked a lot like—not that he knew it—but also to be the perfect guest in his own home.

Reith Richardson dug his hands into his pockets and breathed savagely. Give him sterile business relationships rather than complicated, tense, still-waters-run-deep, personal relationships any day.

And thinking of that led him to think of Frank Theron and what he’d said on the phone…
Not only have I got my family to think of but I’ve got my pride …

You’d be better to concentrate on your family and forget about your pride, Mr Theron, he reflected, much better. And his expression hardened as he thought of Francis Theron and his son Damien …

‘L
ADY
—are you
mad
?’

A complete stranger said this as he got out of his car. He was breathing heavily.

There was dust swirling around them, dust raised when the stranger, in response to her signal for help, had almost driven his car into a large tree. He’d only corrected the situation at the last moment. The car was a late model gun-metal luxury four-wheel drive.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said hastily. ‘My name is Kimberley Theron and I’m in a dreadful hurry but the thing is I appear to have run out of petrol. Would you be able to help?’

‘Kimberley Theron?’ the man she was addressing repeated.

‘You may have heard of…well, not me so much but the name?’ She looked at him searchingly, and her eyes suddenly widened.

Talk about tall, dark and handsome—no, not handsome; that was too bland a way to put it—rugged and interesting said it much better, she decided. He looked to be in his middle thirties. He was tanned with wide
shoulders and an admirable physique beneath cargo pants and a grey sweatshirt. He had dark eyes and short dark hair.

‘Kimberley Theron,’ he repeated and studied her comprehensively from top to toe, then her silver convertible, its cream leather upholstery now coated with dust. ‘Well, Miss Theron, has no one—’ he folded his arms across his chest ‘—ever told you that dancing into the road pulling up your skirt and exposing your legs could cause…chaos?’

‘Actually—’ she paused for a moment and screwed up her forehead ‘—no one ever thought to mention that!’ She looked down at her legs, now demurely clothed beneath her denim skirt. She looked up and her sapphire-blue eyes were laughing. ‘I am sorry,’ she said contritely, however. ‘But I guess there is a funny side to it. I really couldn’t think of any other way to make
sure
you stopped.’

He didn’t look amused. He swore beneath his breath instead and looked around. It was a country road with lion-coloured paddocks running along either side of it. There was no sign of any habitation in either direction; there was absolutely no sign of any traffic. The sun was beating down.

He said, ‘I can’t siphon off any fuel for you because I run on diesel; you don’t. Where are you going?’

‘Bunbury. Are you—You
are
going in the right direction. Is there any chance I could get a lift with you?’

The stranger looked Kimberley Theron up and down again. Early twenties, he guessed, and she
was
stunning, with red-gold hair, those sapphire eyes, a good figure, not to mention, he thought dryly, sensational legs.

There was also an innate liveliness to her you couldn’t mistake, even if she had just about caused you to collide with a very big tree.

There was more, though. Behind the liveliness and whimsical humour lurked a…what was it?…an unshakeable conviction that she was no mere mortal—she was a Theron! And, consequently, begging a lift from a complete stranger posed no hazards.

He grimaced. ‘All right, but are you just going to leave it here?’ He gestured to her car.

‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Here’s the other thing, my phone has run out of battery. Would you have a mobile on you? And, if so, could I borrow it to call home and get them to come and pick the car up? I would pay for the call, naturally. And, naturally, I would pay for the petrol to get to Bunbury.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘I insist,’ she told him with an imperious little toss of her head.

He looked at her then shrugged and pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. Moments later he was treated to a one-sided Theron to Theron conversation.

‘Hello, Mum, it’s Kim. Darling, be an angel …’

And there followed all the details of Kim Theron’s predicament, plus the indication that she wasn’t completely impractical as she gave a short but accurate description of his car, including the registration number. Then she ended the call and handed his phone back to him with a rueful expression.

‘Sorry, I hope you didn’t mind me giving my mother some details about you, but she’s a worrier.’

He looked at her ironically.

‘And that explains that, so I don’t have to feel completely stupid!’ she went on. ‘My mother borrowed my car and neglected to replace the petrol she used. I didn’t even think to check the gauge because I was in such a rush.’

‘Why are you in such a rush?’ he enquired.

‘Can I tell you as we go along?’

He hesitated briefly, then gestured for her to get in.

‘My friend Penny,’ she said, settling herself into the passenger seat and doing up her seat belt, ‘one of my best friends, is pregnant and the baby is—
was
due in a fortnight but she’s gone into labour this morning. Her mother’s in Melbourne—other side of the continent—her husband’s driving a barge out from Port Hedland. She has no one else and it’s her first baby.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Did it cross your mind, once you’d phoned home, to wait for one of your family to come and rescue you?’

She shook her head. ‘Saldanha, where I live, I mean, is half an hour’s drive the
other
way and by the time they’d organized things—’ she gestured expressively ‘—I could have lost hours.’ She turned to him. ‘Do you
mind
doing this?’

He changed gear to negotiate a sharp bend and wondered what she’d say if he told her that the last person he’d wanted to meet was a member of the Theron family of Saldanha and Balthazar …

‘I was going to Bunbury anyway,’ he said.

Kim watched him for a long moment, then, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Reith.’

‘That’s unusual. What is it? Welsh?’

‘No idea.’ He shrugged.

‘How strange,’ Kim murmured.

He flicked her another ironic little glance. ‘I suppose you know exactly where your name comes from?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ she said gravely, although her eyes were sparkling. ‘I was named after a diamond mine.’

‘That’s—’ he paused ‘—curiously appropriate.’

‘What does that mean?’ Kim queried.

‘You look like a diamond kind of girl.’

‘I’m so glad you didn’t say I look like the kind of girl whose best
friends
are diamonds,’ she responded and tossed her red-gold hair. But she went on, apparently not seriously offended, ‘Want to know which diamond mine?’

‘Let me guess. The Kimberley mine in South Africa.’

‘Got it in one! You are clever…er…Reith. Not a lot of people—in Australia—know about Kimberley in South Africa although, of course, a lot of them know about the Kimberley area up north, also associated with diamonds.’

He said nothing.

‘May I borrow your phone again?’ she requested then. ‘I could ring the hospital and find out how things are going.’

Things were going apace at the hospital and Kim was blinking rapidly as she ended the call. ‘I’ll be lucky to get there in time!’

‘Hold on,’ he recommended.

She held on and the next ten minutes were breathless until they hit the outskirts of Bunbury and finally made the hospital.

‘Thanks so much,’ she panted. ‘I—’

‘Just go.’ He gestured.

‘Wait here, though,’ she ordered, ‘I’ll get the news. At least you deserve to know if everything’s all right. Besides I owe you some money.’ And she flung herself out of the car and up the hospital stairs.

Reith Richardson grimaced, hesitated for a moment then put his car into gear and was about to drive off when Kim reappeared and danced down the steps.

‘Seven pounds, ten minutes ago, a boy, mother and son are both fine—’ she beamed through the window ‘—and I can’t thank you enough. However, here’s the thing, I can’t
pay
you because I forgot to bring any money!’

‘I never expected to be paid for a couple of lousy phone calls, so forget it, Miss Theron.’

‘Well, I wish I could but I didn’t bring anything, actually.’

He stared at her. ‘You mean—no credit cards, no cash card?’

‘Nothing,’ she said ruefully. ‘Not that it’ll be a problem when my car arrives—but I just would love to take some flowers with me when I’m allowed in to see Penny. They have a florist here but—’

She stopped as Reith reached into his pocket and pulled out a hundred dollars.

‘Oh, thank you so much! But look, I need your address so I can repay you.’ She fished in her pocket and brought out a scrap of paper and a pen.

Reith Richardson opened his mouth to tell her to forget it again, but he changed his mind as he put the money into her hand. ‘Have dinner with me, only if you feel like it.’ He named a restaurant and a time and, as she stepped back looking thoroughly surprised, he drove off.

At ten to seven that evening he was sitting at a table for two in a luxury restaurant that overlooked the bay. It was a blue and tinsel evening, deep blue sky and water through the wide windows, silver-white patterned moon looming in the sky.

Rather than the moon, he was contemplating the beer he’d ordered and a few other things. Would Kimberley Theron take up his invitation? Why had he issued it in the first place? Was there something about her that intrigued him—obviously, he thought impatiently—but what was it?

Her looks, her body, her legs? Had to be more than that …

‘Penny for them?’ the object of his thoughts murmured as she pulled out the chair opposite.

He stood up and had to smile in admiration.

She’d changed from her denim skirt and cotton blouse into a dusty-pink linen dress, sleeveless and round-necked, which she wore with a string of bauble-sized
glass beads and emerald cork-soled platform sandals. Her hair was loose and casual and a pair of diamond earrings nestled in the red-gold strands.

She looked sensational but she also looked different, a more mature—no, that was the wrong word, he decided—a more sophisticated version of Kimberley Theron.

She slid into her chair with a sigh of relief, looked appreciatively at the moisture-dappled bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and said, ‘How nice. Nice to sit down, nice to think of a deliciously cool glass of bubbly. Today,’ she added as he sat down, ‘has been one of my wackier days.’

He poured her champagne. ‘Wacky? How are mother and son, by the way?’

‘They really are fine, despite his early arrival. And despite me arriving too late—not your fault,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘Wacky? Yes. When I got Penny’s call, she sounded so lost and scared I just dropped everything and…well—’ she smiled at him ‘—you know the rest of it. Incidentally—’ she reached into her purse and withdrew a hundred-dollar note, which she slid across the table towards him ‘—thank you so much.’

He let it lie on the table.

‘I gather you’ve got your resources back?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, my car got delivered to the hospital so I was able to go home and change, et cetera.’ She sipped her champagne. ‘Mmm…Delicious. Tell me something, Reith—what do you do?’

‘This and that.’

She looked comically askance at him but she was
frowning. He’d changed his cargo pants and sweatshirt for jeans, a navy shirt open at the throat and a beautifully cut finest tweed sports jacket. And he wore a sports watch that would have cost a small fortune. All in all, he looked right at home in this very expensive restaurant, not to mention darkly attractive.

‘That sounds rather evasive.’ She traced the rim of her glass with one slender finger as she withdrew her senses from the masculine onslaught of the man and thought of his answer to her question.

‘It’s also true.’ He shrugged. ‘I specialize in buying and rescuing companies in trouble.’

Kim frowned. ‘What’s the appeal in that?’

He studied her for a long moment. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, usually one has a vocation; you’re drawn to medicine or law or farming or something.’

‘It’s the challenge,’ he said. ‘It’s always a learning curve but some business principles, supply and demand, for example, always stand whether you’re dealing with fashion or minerals or sheep. What do you do?’

She took another sip of champagne and looked thoughtful. ‘I teach. English,’ she said and smiled at his expression. ‘Thought that might surprise you,’ she murmured.

He grimaced. ‘Why?’

‘Why did I think it would surprise you? I get the feeling you don’t approve of me, Mr…um…Reith.’ She eyed him with a glimmer of wry humour in her blue eyes. ‘It’s quite a strong feeling,’ she added gently.

‘You did nearly cause me to wipe myself out,’ he reminded her.

She laughed. ‘Yes, well, I’ve already confessed to having a…an unusual kind of day. I’m generally a much more organized person.’

His lips twitched and he shrugged.

Kim planted her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. ‘You couldn’t have said it more eloquently if you’d actually spoken the words.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’

‘You find that hard to believe?’

‘I …’

Kim sat back and interrupted. ‘Not that I mind. We’re a bit like ships in the night, aren’t we?’

He didn’t answer, merely studied her.

‘Would you mind if we ordered dinner?’

‘Not at all.’

‘That’s the other thing I messed up today,’ she confided. ‘I haven’t had a thing to eat since breakfast. And do you mind if I order lobster? I always have lobster here; I can thoroughly recommend it.’

‘Be my guest,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s not cheap so I insist on paying for my dinner. Actually, I’d like to pay for yours too!’

As a way of cutting me down to size? Reith wondered. As a way of being a Theron and making others aware that they’re not quite in the same class?

‘As a way of saying thank-you for the lift today and for lending me money for flowers and suggesting dinner,’ Kim murmured.

Their gazes clashed.

Had she read his mind? he wondered, then became aware of a resolve forming within him that he didn’t think he’d be able to ignore—he wanted this girl in his bed; he wanted to find out how she liked being made love to, whether she was still a Theron to her fingertips when she was hot and excited and writhing beneath him.

‘Do you surf?’

They were out in the cooling night air, strolling towards the car park, when Reith asked the question.