My arms were around his neck and he tried to close the minute distance between us. The computer in my lap proved an obstacle, one which I quickly removed, wanting to feel his heartbeat next to mine. This rare display of PDA elicited a satisfied groan from Blake, telling me just how happy he was to see me. Or so I thought until he gently pulled back from the embrace.
“That is an awfully nice way to be greeted,” he said with a smirk, his forehead resting against mine.
“You’re welcome,” I replied cheekily.
Planting a brief kiss on the tip of his nose, I settled back in my seat before all sense of propriety and decorum went out the window. Unless I wanted to be arrested for indecent happenings in public, I needed to put some space between myself and that sexy mouth.
Our physical relationship had been slow at the start, and was still progressing at a snail’s pace when compared to those of my friends—if the stories were true, anyhow. But just because we had yet to actually rip each other’s clothes off, didn’t mean the heat between us wasn’t there. Because it definitely was, and lately, the temperature had been reaching inferno levels.
Our connection was deeper than lust, though. I cared deeply for Blake Greyfield, no question. I just still wasn’t quite ready for that…yet. He’d asked me to go to DC with him when he went to check out Georgetown in a couple of weeks, and I had a good feeling about the trip. His smoldering emerald eyes told me that he did too.
A safe distance between us, Blake and I fell into an easy chatter. In the eight months we’d been together, I never tired of listening to his perspective on the world and his plans and hopes for the future.
“How were your morning classes?” Blake asked.
When he reached up to brush a loose hair back from my face, I took his hand and wove our fingers together.
“Okay,” I said.
“Just okay?” Blake cocked an eyebrow.
Concentrating on our joined hands, I shrugged.
“Was it because you were watching the clock, counting down the seconds until you could see me again?” he joked.
It was meant to be a joke, but he’d hit the nail on the head. I had missed Blake. I always missed him when we were apart.
With my friends and mother spending more time in the Hamptons than the city, the summer had been amazing. Blake and I spent every day together. We explored museums, discovered no-name bands, and I was free to live life as if my last name wasn’t Kingsley. New York was our oyster, and we took full advantage of the pearl inside.
But now that senior year had started, we were back to stolen moments and hidden dates. My mother was back to being my watchdog, and my time with Blake was extremely limited. I longed for a time machine so I could relive the best summer of my life.
I thought Blake felt the same way, but was too nervous to ask.
Me, Lark Kingsley, worried about what a guy thought of her. It was a first.
“What? Three months with me never leaving your side wasn’t enough?” Blake teased, playfully nudging my leg with his.
“Hmm,” I pretended to think. “Yeah, I’ve pretty much had enough. I suppose I might be able to stand another day, two tops—”
Blake’s mouth was on mine, his kiss cutting off the rest of my snarky comment. He pulled back after a brief but intense moment, just enough to speak. His lips brushed mine when he said, “Well, I for one, have not.” The next kiss was longer, deeper, and stole my breath. “No offense, sweetheart, but you’re a liar if you try to say otherwise.”
I laughed. “Three days?” I asked coyly. “Would you believe that?”
“Honestly, Lark. I don’t know if there is any length of time that would ever be enough,” Blake said, the light, joking tone from a moment ago gone.
When his gaze met mine, the intensity sent chills through me and I blushed. Actually blushed.
When did I become this girl? I wondered, and then decided I liked this girl, a lot.
“The feeling’s mutual,” I finally replied, matching his serious tone. I wanted him to hear the truth of my words.
Blake held my gaze a heartbeat longer, then his gorgeous face split into a wide grin. “No surprise there. I had you at hello,” he joked, earning him a swat in the arm.
“Well aren’t you just Mr. Sassy Pants today,” I said sardonically.
“Nope. I am Mr. Sassy Pants every day.”
“I know,” I said with a mock sigh. “That’s why I l—”
Shit. Did that really just happen? Had I almost just said those three words? Shit.
Absolutely mortified, I busied myself with retrieving my laptop from the coffee table and starting it up again. My plan was to pretend it never happened, that I hadn’t almost blurted out my feelings. That I hadn’t almost just said, “I love you.”
“You what?” Blake asked softly, grabbing my arm and forcing me to face him.
“I like you,” I answered lamely, unable to admit the feelings I’d been blissfully unaware of until just moments before. “It’s why I like you.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, I detected an impish twinkle in his eye. Was he going to tease me about it? As the heat crept up my cheeks once more, I fought back a smile, torn between embarrassment and affection for the way he teased me endlessly, the playful banter between us.
“Really? You like me? That’s what you were going to say?”
I knew it, I thought. Here come the jokes.
“Yes,” I said simply, refusing to rise to the bait.
“Well, that sucks.”
I stared at him, waiting for the punchline.
“I love you, Lark Kingsley,” Blake declared, all traces of joking cast aside. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, I mean, how to tell you. I’d hoped to do something romantic, to show you, but….” Blake shrugged his shoulders. “I do, I love you.”
I thought my jaw was on the floor, but I wasn’t sure. The only thing I was sure of was that the handsome, mischievous, sweet, playful, funny, and kind man in front of me was mine, all mine. As absurd and cliché, and just…ridiculous as it sounded, I felt like the luckiest girl on earth. My heart felt like it was ten seconds from bursting.
Apparently Blake felt the same way, but for opposite reasons. The light left his eyes, as if a curtain had been drawn. Before my brain could process why, it dawned on me that I’d been silent for the ninety seconds since he’d said those magical words.
“Wow, you really don’t feel the same—”
I closed the distance between us, pressing my lips firmly to his and hoping Blake didn’t see the moisture brimming in my eyes. I wanted him to know that I did feel the same way, just not that I was on the verge of having a totally sappy rom-com moment.
With the first exhaled breath as we parted, I answered him.
“I love you, too.”
Watching the expression grow on his face was like watching a flower bloom and become awash in good cheer. His eyes were soft and sensual, with love churning on the surface, on display for me and everyone to see.
“Well aren’t I a very, very lucky guy?” he asked, beaming.
A witty quip was on the tip of my tongue, I changed my mind at the last second and opted for sincerity.
“I’m the lucky one,” I said softly.
It was because I truly felt that way, not to mention the fact that I needed to be free from the pearl marionette strands tied to my limbs, that an idea had been brewing inside my head, growing stronger every day. Instead of the future that lay ahead of me, every stone in the path carefully arranged by my parents, I wanted to go to school in DC. I wanted to be near Blake, always.
After several more just-shy-of-too-steamy-for-public minutes, we agreed to put the love fest on hold in order to get some studying done.
As Blake busied himself getting set up, I returned my attention to my own laptop. Just as the internet search page was materializing on my screen, my handsome guy leaned over to plant a tender peck on my cheek. When I turned to smile at him, he wasn’t looking at me.
“There’s another ‘e’,” he said suddenly.
“Huh?” I asked, confused.
Behind the blinking cursor on my computer was the search I’d been about to start when Blake arrived: Kimberly + United Nations + 2002….
“Kimberly. There’s another ‘e’ in it.”
“Um, not always,” I replied, unsure why he was bringing up an alternate spelling of the name. Sure, there were plenty of derivations, but I was purposely using what I believed to be the most common spelling.
“Oh, sorry,” Blake said quickly. “I saw the year and UN, and just figured you were researching the Kimberley Process. What are you searching for?”
“Kimberley Process?” I asked, not bothering to come up with some lame excuse in response to his question. As I spoke the words, long-buried facts began to unearth themselves within my mind.
“Yeah, you know…conflict diamonds?”
Clips of conversation between my father, McAvoy, and the other board members began whizzing through my head. I must have looked confused, because Blake continued, “Blood diamonds? Like the movie? You know…Blood Diamond. Leonardo DiCaprio. Some other actors I don’t know the names of off the top of my head. Any of this sound familiar?”
“Never seen it,” I replied absently, mind elsewhere.
“Really? Ironic, given your family’s business.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled quickly, suddenly anxious to change the subject.
“So why are you researching the Kimberley Process? I mean, isn’t your father a better source? He’s got to be something of an authority on the subject. He didn’t teach you all about it while grooming you to be his Mini-Me?”
Though Blake was teasing, I answered his question seriously.
“No,” I replied, taking a minute to really think about it. “He’s taught me about the quarterly sales they hold for selling the diamonds, how they choose distributors, how to manage client relations, stuff about the retail end of it…things like that. But we’ve never really talked about the actual mining….”
Leaning forward absent-mindedly, I gave him a quick kiss before turning back to my laptop.
“Get to work, young man,” I said with a wink, forcing myself to keep the rising panic contained. Thankfully, I knew quite a bit about compartmentalization.
With a better understanding of what, not who, Kimberley was, I changed the spelling and search terms. Results ranging from the history of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme to the practical implications of having it in place populated the computer screen. One of the top hits gave an early timeline of its inception. After several years of summits and proposals, the United Nations passed the final resolution on the Kimberley Scheme in 2003.
Given the wild thoughts and general chaos going on in my head, I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around the entire issue. What exactly were conflict diamonds?
Switching from the internet encyclopedia site to the official website for the KPC, I found a pared down summation of its purpose. Basically, the certification was put in place to ensure that any revenue from diamonds didn’t fund violence by rebel movements seeking to undermine legitimate governments.
What I still couldn’t comprehend was how this, the identity of the elusive Kimberley, was a threat to Kingsley Diamonds and my father? I mean…they said…if it…no, no, it wasn’t possible.
They’d have to close the doors.
Without warning, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Bursts of light waltzed across my vision, whirling and twirling like the aftermath of flashbulbs going off in my face. Tossing my laptop onto the table, I jumped to my feet and scanned the room for an escape. I needed air. Pronto.
“Lark? Everything okay?” Blake asked.
We might have just crossed the bridge into I-love-you territory, but I was far from ready to share dark family secrets with him. I swallowed over the lump in my throat and flashed Blake the fakest smile ever to adorn my lips—and that was saying something.
Fake, fake, fake, resonated through my mind, though not referring to my facial expression.
“Seriously, Lark, you okay?” His voice sounded distant, as if a giant chasm had suddenly formed between us.
No, not a chasm, a diamond mine, I thought wryly.
My head bobbed up and down jerkily in response to Blake’s concerned question. “I’m good,” I heard myself say, though “good” was far from an accurate summation of the not “good” feeling in the pit of my stomach.
It took every ounce of concentration I had to put one foot in front of the other as I staggered towards the bathroom. On autopilot, fragmented thoughts guided my actions: push open the door; straight to a stall; slide the lock; turn; find the toilet. Just in time for all of the questions, answers, thoughts, feelings—not to mention, my lunch—to be purged like sins on judgment day. As if the world was ending. Because mine was.
It was fake. It was all fake. Everyone I knew danced through life with a façade of pretty shiny things. Sparkling. Always sparkling. Sparkling with death and blood and—
Bile burned my throat and I got sick again, as though the lies were too great to physically contain inside my body any longer.
When there was nothing left inside of my stomach, my body still heaved painfully. I was a fake, too, I realized. Kingsley Diamonds was my past, present, and future. The company, my family’s company, had defined me—for better or worse—for so long. If it was fake, then so was I.
Sinking to the floor, I found my purse beside me, where I’d apparently dropped it. Though I didn’t remember grabbing the bag before I left the couch, I was now grateful I had.
Water. I needed water. My hand closed around the plastic bottle immediately, as if led by an unseen force. I gulped the lukewarm liquid. It did little to soothe the searing pain in my throat, but it was something.
I focused on one of the shades covering the bright lights in the ceiling, concentrating hard enough to burn a hole through the plastic. A moan escaped my pursed lips. Suddenly my head was too heavy, my neck too weak to support its weight, and I let it fall back. My skull came to rest on the wall behind me with a bang. It should have hurt, but I felt no pain. I was utterly, totally, and completely numb on the outside. Inside, that was a different story. Inside, nerve endings were alight. Disbelief. Shock. Disbelief. Shock. Doubt, suspicion, distrust. Shock.
Trying to string together entire thoughts was a struggle, but I fought to make some sense out of what I’d learned. Tears pricked my eyes, but I brushed them away before they fell. Crying would change nothing.
The ramifications of the statements on the videos were unthinkable. My father and that cretin McAvoy thought they’d have to shut down the company if the UN adopted the Kimberley Certification scheme, if it became illegal to sell diamonds that were funding insurgents. Did that mean that our mines funded rebel movements? That was insane. The father I knew, my daddy, would never support that.
Maybe I hadn’t seen that movie Blake had referenced, but I knew about rebel movements. The working conditions in mines run by insurgents were often deplorable. Soldiers forced men, women, and oftentimes children, to work at gunpoint, the threat of imminent death hanging over their heads just as surely the barrel of the assault rifles used to keep them in line.
No. Daddy would never allow that to happen in our mines, I tried to tell myself.
But why else would he have worried about Kimberley passing? If all of our mines were operating above-board, there wouldn’t have been emergency board meetings and late night phone calls to discuss the ramifications for Kingsley Diamonds should the certification scheme pass.
My head throbbed, the pressure so great it felt like a vice-grip had hold of my skull.
Was it seriously possible that my father was not the man I’d grown up knowing?
Was it possible that instead of being good, and kind, and generous, my father was greedy, bloodthirsty, cold, and…evil?
AN HOUR LATER, Asher and I stood in front of 3685 14th Street NW, staring dubiously a
t the neon sign over top the door. The lights that would’ve illuminated the ‘r’s in Larry’s name were burnt out, so it appeared to be ‘Lay’s Pawn’. A set of metal bars partially obscured the grimy glass storefront, adding to the sense of foreboding swirling in my stomach.
Wow, Lark. You really know how to pick ‘em, I thought.
Slipping my fingers into the pocket of my khaki shorts, I made sure the claim ticket was still there. Feeling restless on the walk over, I’d been checking and rechecking every thirty seconds to make sure the scrap of paper didn’t fall out. It felt smooth and slightly worn, as if someone else had done the same thing before me.
“So…,” Asher began, crossing his arms over his chest as if to protect his white polo from the dirt wafting off of Larry’s Pawn.
“So…,” I echoed hollowly.
“You ready to do this?”
Unsure, I sighed.
“No…. Or, maybe yes? I don’t know. But we just walked a mile to get here so it’s a little late to back out.”
Just like the moments leading up the discovery of Lark’s previous clues, I was feeling a mix of giddy anticipation and near-paralyzing anxiety. Unlike the previous discoveries, though, a lot of the anxiety had to do with the location. The neighborhood was even more on the ‘coming’ end of up-and-coming than the Gibson Street apartment. Not to say that I felt unsafe. I might have, if Asher weren’t standing so close that the hairs on his arm brushed my skin. It was more that I felt wary, like I was crossing the line from the girl-next-door to common criminal. Because, of course, in the books I’d read and movies I’d watched, people only frequented pawn shops for nefarious reasons.
Get it together, Raven. It’s a pawnshop, not a den of inequity.
“We could grab a cup of coffee first. You know, give you a little time to psych yourself up.”
Asher’s tone was playful. Clearly, he was trying to put my mind at ease. If I had to guess, I’d say that part of him was worried about how I’d react to whatever was about to be revealed. Particularly after my meltdown the night before. Summoning my best happy-go-lucky attitude, I smiled, hoping that the small gesture conveyed the immense gratitude I felt for Asher and his company.