Diamonds Are For Lovers: Satin & a Scandalous Affair

“You called them Mum and Dad?”

“They are my mum and dad,” Quinn said, bemused.

“Well, yes, but how long were you with them?” She looked confused.

Quinn scratched his head. “All my life. I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I wasn’t a foster kid. All the other kids were.”

Dani’s face cleared. “Oh, I see. So you and your parents ran a foster home?”

“Something like that,” Quinn agreed. “They have a big old villa in Newtown, off King Street. Lots of rooms, all in various states of disrepair, and a kitchen that’s the size of a hotel dining room.”

“Not at all what I imagined for you.”

She moved back to her seat, but her enticing floral scent lingered and he sniffed carefully, keeping it for himself. “What did you imagine?”

Dani grinned. “A grand old mansion with a butler. Everybody dressed for dinner and speaking very na-i-cely.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry but you’re just so damned refined.”

Quinn chuckled. “My parents would love that. They are the most unpretentious people I know. Old hippies, very socially aware. They don’t care about money or nice things, only sharing what they have with the less fortunate.” He paused. “I’m sure I embarrass them, successful capitalist that I am. Not that they don’t hit me up every couple of months with some harebrained fund-raising scheme or other.”

She crossed one shapely leg over the other, snagging his attention, holding it for seconds. What was this hold she had over him? She was younger than him by seven years, but that wasn’t the allure. He’d found her his equal in maturity and intelligence.

“You must have seen some sad things, though.”

“Kids are selfish.” He opened his bottle of water. “I was too busy marking my territory.”

“Is that how you broke your nose?”

Quinn gave her a resigned smile. “Yep. That was Jake Vance, actually.”

“Jake?” She sat up.

“You know him?” Something in him bristled. He’d be surprised if she didn’t know of Jake; he was one of the most talked-about entrepreneurs in Australia. But as he was his best friend and also quite the ladies’ man, Quinn wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of Jake and Dani being friendly.

“Not very well. I met him a couple of times. He was at Kim and Ric’s wedding, with Briana Davenport, actually, pre-Jarrod.”

Quinn nodded, relaxing. “I’d heard that.”

“Tell me about the broken nose,” Dani prompted.

“We didn’t see eye to eye when he first came to stay.” Quinn absently rubbed the bridge of his nose, recalling the mother of all his teenage fights.

“Jake Vance was a foster child?” She sounded disbelieving.

He supposed it was difficult to think of Jake like that when the whole country associated him with immense wealth.

“Not exactly. He had a mother, but there were some problems, mostly to do with his stepfather. He ran away from home, looking for work in the city and things didn’t pan out the way he’d hoped. Ma and Pa got to talking to him on the streets one day so he turned up at home.”

Quinn as a teenager was well used to sharing but liked to be asked nicely. Jake didn’t ask nicely. Quinn wasn’t about to lose his standing as top dog in his own house. The battle was epic, and at the end of it, neither boy could stand. And that was the start of a long and valued friendship.

“He’s my closest friend now. He and Lucy my foster sister. She was abused from the start. Came to us when she was eight and just stayed.” He caught her horrified look. “She and Jake had a thing a few years back, but now she lives in London. Corporate banker,” he finished proudly.

“How awful.” Dani shuddered. “What makes people such monsters?”

“I don’t suppose people start out that way,” Quinn said thoughtfully. “But it’s not that hard to be careful if you don’t want a baby.”

Dani nodded sadly, and he realised that was probably close to the bone for her. “Not these days, anyway,” he qualified, not meaning to suggest her mother and the mystery lover had been careless.

“So have the things you’ve seen and heard put you off having kids?” Her voice trailed off when a shadow passed over his face. “Oh, I’m sorry, Quinn.” Dani looked very uncomfortable suddenly.

“That’s okay. I was married, yes.”

“I remembered as soon as I’d asked. Laura Hartley, wasn’t it? I only know because she was at PLC around the same time as Kim. I was a couple of years after.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I didn’t know that.” PLC—Pymble Ladies College, a private college on the North Shore—had an excellent academic reputation, but it was strictly for rich kids.

“I’m sorry,” Dani repeated quietly. “I remember now hearing that she’d died.”

Quinn stared out over the waves. “We married when we were still at university. Laura wanted to be a social worker, whereas her parents …” his voice hardened as he continued, “They had other ideas. Sure, they sent her to a nice school and tolerated her going to uni, but they didn’t intend their daughter to get her hands dirty. She was only marking time till the right rich husband came along.” He smiled bitterly. “When she moved in with me on the cheap side of town, her family disowned her.”

“What was the family business again?” Dani’s brow wrinkled. “I remember they had stores all over the country. I think they were friends with Howard.”

“Soft furnishings.” Quinn swallowed, but it didn’t erase the familiar burn of anger that flared up at the mention of Howard’s name. He may not have caused Laura’s death, but he sure influenced how she felt in those last days.

“How old was she when she died?”

“Twenty-six. It was sudden, only a few months from the first symptoms till the end.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again, her golden eyes pools of sympathy.

“Don’t be. I wouldn’t swap those few years for anything, not a bit of it.” He leaned forward and poured a little wine into a glass, mindful that he was skippering the boat. “She loved our life, my parents. She loved that we took in the unwanted and the street kids.” Some of the good times flooded in, making him smile. “Every time I turned around, she was sitting in a corner, talking to some snot-nosed kid. They confided in her, told her everything.

More than Mum and Dad, even.” He looked down at the wine in his glass, swirled it around before tossing it down in one gulp. “That was the hell of it. She would have gone places, helped so many. Why she had to die is beyond me.”

It was his one taste of true failure. He couldn’t understand how it could happen, how she could be taken.

How could he not have saved her?

He rubbed his chin. Part of him would always love Laura, or more accurately, love that time of his life, when he was young and silly enough to believe in forever, believe he and Laura were invincible.

But Howard Blackstone had tainted the memories. He’d never forgive him for that.

And as he tried and failed to swallow the hard knot of bitterness, he found himself wanting to justify it to Dani. He called himself a swine for doing it, for doing what Howard had done to him. Tainting the memories.

But he wanted her to know. “You want to know why I hate Howard so much?”

Dani blinked at his harsh tone.

“The bastard ruined the last weeks of Laura’s life.”