Claimed (Diamond Tycoons 1)

Seriously, why even bother?

She waited another minute, her stomach clenching despite the fact that she told herself that it didn’t matter. Over and over again. Until she almost believed it.

After all, what was he supposed to say? If she’d tried to text him, she wouldn’t have a clue what to say—or how to refer to what had happened between them.

Not when there were no established parameters.

Not when the closest thing they had to a relationship had ended six years before.

She’d just put the phone down on the bed next to her—and reburied her face in the pillows—when the damn thing buzzed three more times in quick succession.

Marc: I’ll see you at Bijoux headquarters at noon today.

Marc: That is, if we’re still on?

Marc: Also, I had a really nice time. Hope you did, too.

A nice time? He’d had a nice time? What the hell was that supposed to mean? A trip to the park was a nice time. Going to a movie with a friend was a nice time. Totally fabulous, completely toe-curling, absolutely mind-blowing sex was not a nice time. It wasn’t close to being a nice time. And while she’d already established that she didn’t know what it was, she definitely knew what it wasn’t. And it simply was not a nice time.

Shouldn’t Marc know better than to call it that? Especially if he wanted more fabulous, toe-curling, mind-blowing sex in the near future. Which, judging by the way he’d kissed her goodbye, he absolutely did. Although why he’d want sex with her when it was merely “nice,” Isa didn’t know.

She debated answering him, debated sending him a text that was as innocuous and insipid and soul-crushing as the ones he’d just sent her. She could tell him what a “nice time” she’d had, as well. Might even mention how much she’d enjoyed the seven orgasms—not that she’d been counting—that he’d given her. She could even say that she looked forward to running into him sometime at GIA. That would certainly get her point across.

But in the end, she did none of those things, because the truth was, she didn’t have it in her to play games with him. She never had—she just wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed dangling a guy on a line simply to watch him squirm. It was why she and Marc had done so well together in the time they’d been a couple. He’d never been interested in artifice, either, had always been a straight shooter. Or at least until now. Until he’d sent her a text that said he hoped she’d had a nice time.

As if.

Though she’d originally flopped into bed with the hopes of catching an hour of sleep before going to work, she was now way too wound up to even think about sleeping. Her brain whirred at a hundred miles a minute as she tried to figure out just how big a mistake she’d made in sleeping with Marc, not just for one night, but two.

So instead of taking a nap, or sending him a return text, or relaxing after what had been a mentally and physically grueling thirty-six hours, she forced herself to get up and go into the bathroom for a quick shower.

After drying her hair and putting on a quick swipe of mascara and lipstick, which was all the fuss and muss she had the energy for today, Isa settled herself at her kitchen table with her laptop and a cup of coffee. Once there, she pulled up all the known data she had on the diamonds coming out of Canada—including the composition of impurities from the different mines. And then she got to work.

Besides serial number and mine symbol, the impurities were the best way for a gemologist to determine where a diamond actually came from. For example, African diamonds had impurities that were made of certain kinds of sulfides while Russian diamonds had impurities made largely of nitrogen. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you looked at it, Canadian diamonds had neither—and very few impurities in general when compared to other diamonds in the world. This was good for the Canadian mine owners, because while the diamonds coming out of Canada only accounted for about three percent of the bulk sales of diamonds worldwide, they also accounted for over eleven percent of the revenue. This was due to their exceptionally high quality and low level of inclusions.

Which was very nice for Bijoux and all of the other companies with mines in Canada, but it certainly was a pain for gemologists trying to prove definitively that a diamond came from any of those mines. Which wasn’t to say that it couldn’t be done. It could. Just not in the normal way used to identify most diamonds.

The first thing she had to do was check the serial numbers on a wide range of the diamonds in Bijoux’s vault, making sure that they matched up exactly to the ones from the Canadian mines. She had the binder, but she also had a USB stick with each of the serial numbers on it—she inserted it into her computer and downloaded the information into a program on her hard drive that would allow her to easily match up the numbers from the mine with the numbers on the diamonds in the Bijoux vault.

Next, she pulled up all the documentation on which levels were mined at which times, including the exact dates each level was declared extinct. As she did this, she checked to make sure that she had the exact mineral makeup of the soil found at each level. In most cases the soil compositions were similar or identical, but every once in a while one of the lower levels differed significantly from what was above it. Tomorrow, when she was in the lab, she would compare the silt samples she’d taken with her previous documentation—and then she’d look at the makeup of the Bijoux diamonds and ensure the probability that they came from these mines.

It was an important step in the process—both were—but the fact of the matter was neither would give her, or Marc, the definitive answer they were looking for. Diamond sourcing was a tricky business, made so by the nearly identical mineral composites of the stones no matter where in the world they were found, and by the less than up-front business dealings so many of the world’s diamond traders engaged in.

Which left her with one final thing she was looking for—one final thing to try. It couldn’t be forged, couldn’t be erased and was, quite often, overlooked by people trying to pass off blood diamonds as conflict free: hydrogen atoms or isotopes on the surface of the diamond. These atoms were deposited on the stone by rainwater that sank into the ground around the stones before they were mined. They clung to the surface of the diamonds. Once there, they were notoriously hard to remove.

While the presence of isotopes wasn’t enough to prove that a stone came from a certain region, the chemical makeup of the individual isotopes definitely could. The exact makeup of rainwater differed from place to place around the globe and because of this, the hydrogen isotopes deposited on the diamonds also differed so that each region had very different isotopes attached to its diamonds.

Years of research—from her and other gemologists who specialized in diamonds—had provided a pretty decent mapping of these isotopes. On her computer, she stored a breakdown of rainwater composition in all the major diamond mining areas—including Canada’s Northwest Territories. So while she would, of course, scrutinize Bijoux’s records, serial numbers and the impurities of their diamonds, it was these isotopes that she was counting on to prove Marc’s case. Or disprove it.

She really hoped it wasn’t the latter.

Not because she was sleeping with him and not because she had a past with him, but because—despite how things had ended between her and Marc—she had always thought of Bijoux as one of the good guys. In an industry that was both highly dangerous and highly monopolized by companies that didn’t mind trading in blood, terrorism and child labor, Bijoux had always been clean. Or, it had been for at least as long as Marc and Nic had been in control. From the very beginning, the brothers had run the company differently from most other gem companies, ensuring that they did as little harm, and as much good, as they possibly could.

Both men had a strong environmental conscience and an even stronger social conscience, both of which leant themselves to making sure the Bijoux mines were the safest in the world, both ecologically and for their workers. For years, she’d held up Bijoux in her classes as examples to strive for in a business that far too often lacked heroes. After all, gems were pretty but for most companies, the mining—and trading—of them was anything but.

To find out that the Durand brothers had given up on the beliefs they’d always espoused—simply to line their already too-full pockets—would destroy the last of her already flagging idealism.

With that thought uppermost in her mind, Isa spent the next hour and a half poring over every piece of recorded data she had, or could find, about the diamond mines that Bijoux did business with.