A Bride For The Maverick Millionaire (Journey Through The Outback #2)

by Marion Lennox

  For a moment he felt her resist.

  ‘We need to hold,’ he said gently. ‘I’m as scared as you.’

  She tugged away from him a little at that, and gazed at him in the moonlight. This time he did see disbelief. ‘You are not,’ she said. ‘You’re a Boy Scout. Boy Scouts are prepared—not scared.’

  ‘If I was prepared I’d have brought a condom,’ he said mournfully, and she gasped—and then choked on laughter, which was just the reaction he wanted.

  ‘Dream on,’ she said. ‘Condoms or not, that scenario is definitely in your dreams. You should only prepare for possibilities.’

  ‘Or hopes?’ He sounded...hopeful.

  ‘Not even that.’ Her smile deepened. Strangely, the mention of an absent condom seemed to have broken the ice.

  ‘You really were a Scout?’ she asked.

  ‘A Cub,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t get to the big boy stuff.’ By the time he’d reached the age for Scouts he already had a part-time job and there was little time for pleasure. His mother was dead and his grandparents were struggling. His grandfather had found him a job in the shipyard and he’d learned more on the job than he ever would at Scouts.

  ‘Where were you raised?’ she asked, and he tugged her close again because it seemed the most natural thing to do. She hesitated, but then she obviously decided not to be dumb, to take what both of them needed. She curved against him, her back to his chest, spooning to gain maximum warmth.

  Maximum comfort.

  But, for him, there was more...

  He could feel every inch of her body under the flimsy nightdress. A lesser man...

  He wasn’t a lesser man—and he didn’t have a condom.

  The world seemed all wrong. What seemed right was taking this woman to him, right here, right now.

  It was not going to happen.

  What had she asked? It was impossible to concentrate on words when she was just... She was just...

  Concentrate. Where had he been raised?

  ‘Maine,’ he managed. ‘On the East Coast of the US.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Anything you want to tell me,’ she said, as if he was dumb. ‘I’ve never left Australia. How big is it? Did you live near the sea?’

  These were commonplace questions. He forced himself to relax. He held her close and her warmth made him feel as if his defences were crumbling.

  Defences?

  He did have defences, he thought. Maybe he always had. He rarely talked about his background. Why should he?

  But then he thought about Maine and the childhood he’d loved, and he thought he could go there.

  ‘My grandfather was a boat-builder, so we lived by the sea,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t anything Pop couldn’t do with his hands, and when he wasn’t building boats he was sailing them. That was my life. He taught me all he could and then he found me an apprenticeship with the best wooden boat-builder he knew. He had a yacht he’d built himself—wood, of course, and he took me sailing from the time I first remember. I was his shadow. His shipmate, he called me.’

  ‘He sounds lovely.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘He’s dead?’ she asked hesitantly, and he figured that was another question he could answer. Talking was what Rachel needed. Maybe talking was what they both needed.

  ‘My mom was born late,’ he told her. ‘She was the child my grandparents never dared to hope they’d have. They adored her, but when she died Gran fell apart. Gran died when I was fifteen and Pop died soon after.’

  ‘Did you get to know your dad’s parents?’

  Whoa. Stop now, he thought. There’s no need to go on. There’s no need to tell her more.

  But, strangely, his need to talk was stronger than his customary need for reserve. And Rachel wasn’t a stranger. Rachel was the woman he was holding in his arms.

  ‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘I didn’t even meet my dad. He never wanted to meet me.’

  ‘I never knew my dad, either,’ she told him. ‘Maybe he’s still alive.’

  ‘Mine’s definitely dead.’

  ‘Is that good?’ she asked cautiously, and he found himself smiling. The way she’d asked... As if the question might bite but she was going there anyway.

  She was asking him to open up—as she’d just opened up.

  ‘I guess it is,’ he admitted. ‘He didn’t treat my mom very well.’

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’

  This was an extraordinary conversation. It was a conversation he’d never had with anyone. Until now.

  ‘My mom’s health was always fragile,’ he said. ‘When she was nineteen, influenza turned into pneumonia. She took ages to recover; and, when she was finally on her feet, Gran and Pop sent her on a cruise to the tropics. It was mid-winter in Maine and the doctor told them it’d do her good. Only, of course, there was no money for them to go with her. So off she went, half silly with the excitement of it, scared of being alone but determined to enjoy herself. And of course vulnerable is too small a word to describe how she must have appeared to my father. She came back pregnant, and of course my father didn’t want to know. They hadn’t invented DNA testing then. Not that Mom or my grandparents would have wanted it. They just got on with the job of raising me as best they could.’

  Silence. And then...disbelief? But not of the story he’d just told. Her look in the moonlight was much more searching, as if she was trying to connect the dots and they weren’t in the same dimension.

  And suddenly he realised what she was thinking. ‘So now you have two kids conceived the same way?’ She tugged back and stared accusingly down at him in the dim light. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Whoa, that was a mistake. What to do? Tell her the truth?

  He could, but that’d lead to more questions. Maybe it needed to stop now.

  ‘Believe what you want,’ he said softly.

  There was a long silence then, and her gaze turned thoughtful. Intelligent. And, finally, she looked as if she knew the answer. ‘You told Maud that to scare her off,’ she said slowly. ‘Because of the matchmaking. There are no kids.’

  ‘There are kids, Rachel.’

  ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Connie and Richard.’

  She glowered. ‘I don’t like guys who lie to me.’

  ‘You don’t have to like me.’

  ‘Are you kidding? How about that whole condom conversation?’

  ‘Is having sex liking?’

  That produced another silence. That had been a blunt question. A cruel question. A question to drive her away.

  Like he’d driven women away in the past.

  This was crazy. It had been an instinctive reaction to her probing. An instinctive defence. He didn’t need to drive her away. He didn’t even want to.

  Did he?

  But maybe he hadn’t. She was still watching him, calmly assessing. Instead of retreating, her gaze was asking more questions.

  He was starting to feel exposed, as if she could see into places he’d long kept hidden. The feeling was...disconcerting. ‘What were you doing with your phone camera back on the ship?’ she demanded suddenly, and he stilled. It was as if she’d discovered one lie and was looking for more.

  ‘Taking photographs of drug runners,’ he admitted.

  ‘You were expecting them to be there?’

  ‘I...yes.’ She’d work that out. He might as well be as honest as he could. ‘I heard the ship stop and knew it wasn’t supposed to. It stopped a couple of nights before as well, so I thought I’d investigate.’

  She was still staring at him, trying to work him out. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, her eyes never leaving his face.

  ‘Me,’ he said
simply. ‘Finn Kinnard.’

  ‘Not a cop? But not a boat-builder either. Investigator?’

  ‘Of a sort.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Why the secrecy? Are you one of those secret service guys with false moustaches and security clearances that make ordinary people’s eyes water?’

  ‘Um...no,’ he said and grinned. ‘Not a single moustache.’

  ‘But there’s something,’ she said shrewdly. ‘I think...’

  ‘You don’t need to think,’ he said gently. ‘We both know there’s more behind everyone’s façade than meets the eye. As far as I can, I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘But there is more?’

  ‘There is,’ he agreed. ‘Like you. There’s so much I don’t know about your life. What about letting your barriers down?’

  ‘Like...’

  ‘Like telling me about your baby,’ he said gently. ‘Like telling me what broke your heart.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FOR a long while Finn thought Rachel wouldn’t answer. She stayed staring at him in the dim light, as if she was trying to figure him out. Whatever conclusion she came to, it obviously wasn’t cut and run. Finally she sighed and lay down again. He put his arms around her and tugged her close.

  She lay stiff for a while, but finally he felt her relax.

  ‘You’re not being honest with me,’ she said. ‘Why should I be honest with you?’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ he said softly into the night. ‘I’m just trying to distract us from lack of barley sugar.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning’s breakfast is roast lizard,’ she said, and he felt her body relax even more. Good. They both needed contact, the feeling that they weren’t alone. They also needed food. A breakfast of lizard was something they could laugh about, even if the laughter was kind of hollow. He really was hungry.

  ‘Do we know how to cook roast lizard?’ he asked.

  ‘We could check it out on the Internet,’ she suggested. ‘If you have an Internet connection on your Boy Scout’s knife. Or we could use the method my grandma taught me.’

  ‘Your grandma taught you how to cook lizard?’

  He heard her smile, and their bodies moved infinitesimally closer.

  ‘In theory. We never got to practise. There was a dearth of lizards in the apartments where we lived. Come to think of it, there was a dearth of campfires, too.’

  He lay and held her and let the thought drift. A grandmother teaching a child how to cook lizard...

  She’d told him her grandma was Koori. Rachel wasn’t all Koori but the best parts of her must surely be. The lovely dusky skin. The gorgeous dark eyes...

  ‘Your grandma was a lizard cooker?’

  ‘Extraordinaire,’ Rachel said and chuckled. ‘And fire maker. If she were here she wouldn’t have needed a sissy knife.’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, and she chuckled again and nestled closer. The laughter died. The silence grew deeper. ‘You really want to hear about my baby?’ she asked into the stillness, and his breath caught in his throat.

  He was being offered something, he thought. Why did it feel like...a gift without price?

  He should say now. He didn’t get that kind of close. He’d only asked to divert her, but now...

  He did want to know. He badly wanted to know. ‘If you want to tell me,’ he said, and waited.

  ‘I sort of do,’ she confessed. ‘I don’t talk about her very often but... If I talk about her, somehow she’s real. She is real. I don’t want her to be gone for everyone except me.’

  ‘So tell me about her,’ he said softly, and she heard the sincerity in his voice.

  So he held her close and listened, while she talked about falling for the principal dancer in the company her sister belonged to, about emerging from the academic world she lived in to become a lovesick kid who couldn’t see past the fact that this gorgeous male dancer wanted her. She talked about a marriage—brief, fiery—and a guy’s temper that made her afraid.

  He held her while she talked about the times when the company was in recess and Ramón wasn’t dancing—and the drinking and the escalating violence.

  He held her while she talked about a night, a car, a crash—and waking to find her daughter being born. Named Elizabeth after Rachel’s grandmother. Twenty-eight weeks’ gestation, and battered, too small to survive.

  ‘I was awake enough to hold her,’ she whispered. ‘I remember her breathing. I remember her tiny finger curled around mine. For that short time I had her and I held her, and she’s in my heart for ever. I’d been injured but I can’t remember hurting. I can’t remember anything but my baby, and I’ll always be thankful to the doctors for holding off treating my injuries until my baby girl no longer needed me.’

  She fell silent. She lay cocooned against him, and he didn’t know what she was thinking.

  Or maybe he did. One tiny girl who might have lived.

  And what this Ramón had done—it made him seethe.

  He knew he wanted to do violence to something, someone, for letting this woman suffer.

  He knew he wanted to hold her until...until...

  He couldn’t go past that thought.

  He held her. After a while she slept and still he held her.

  The fires needed stoking. He didn’t know how to let her go.

  He didn’t know how to want to.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she murmured as she drifted to sleep, and he thought, So am I.

  Why was he keeping his defences against her?

  He couldn’t, not for much longer.

  * * *

  He needed to keep the fires burning. Intermittently during the night he had to disengage himself and leave her. She murmured a protest in her sleep. She tried to hold and he kissed her—because it seemed natural and right and it seemed to give her reassurance—and then he made his way around their tiny island to stoke up their beacons.

  Rachel had heaped huge loads of fuel beside each fire site. While he’d struggled with making the fire itself, she’d clambered down and up, down and up the shale cliff, collecting generations of driftwood caught among the rocks on the shoreline.

  He’d hated her doing it. Okay, the risk of crocodile attack was tiny. Crocs were creatures of habit, and habit wouldn’t have them hunting here. But they’d use these low-lying rocks to rest or to devour their prey. There’d been a risk.

  It had taken him hours to get the fire alight—as the raw skin on his hands still told. He’d had to do it. Rachel had needed to gather firewood—there’d been no choice about that either—but she’d done it with no complaint and she’d collected more than he could possibly have expected.

  She had an injured hip. She’d climbed up and down most of the day. No wonder she was sleeping now.

  How much must she be hurting?

  He thought of her as he stoked the fires, and he kept on thinking. His body was still achingly aware of her, even though he was on the far side of the island.

  Something was twisting inside him, something deep and primeval, and he didn’t understand it. He didn’t know what to do about it.

  When he’d first seen this woman he’d reacted with distrust. Little, cute, vulnerable. Like his mother and grandmother. Like all his father’s ‘victims’.

  But there was nothing victim-like about Rachel. She was a geologist with an injured hip and a grief that was heart-deep. She was a woman who made him smile. She was a woman who made his body burn.

  He should have told her all the truth, he thought. She didn’t believe he had children. She knew he’d said it to make Maud lose interest.

  He’d explain the kids.

  But the rest? That he owned this cruise line?

  Maybe not
yet.

  And maybe that was because he wasn’t sure of the way he was feeling. He didn’t understand it—all he knew was that he didn’t want anything to mess with it.

  And money did mess with relationships. He’d seen that over and over, since he’d inherited his father’s fortune.

  When his father died he’d been dating a girl who lived next door to his grandfather—dating in a light-hearted way. They’d been friends more than lovers.

  But the moment she’d heard about his inheritance she was deathly serious, hysterically excited, clinging. She’d always assumed they’d marry, she told him. Of course she had.

  And when he’d backed away, saying, ‘Slow down, I’m not sure,’ she’d threatened to sue.

  The way she’d reacted to his money appalled him. It made him wary of telling anyone he was more than a boat-builder—he didn’t now, unless he had no choice. He didn’t much like his new persona as wealthy shipping magnate, and he didn’t like the way women reacted to it.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d used his half-brother and sister as a shield. ‘I’m already caring for kids. I’m not in the market for a relationship.’

  He’d carefully reinforced his armour. He’d decided he was destined for bachelorhood.

  So now...Was he prepared to shed the armour he’d so carefully constructed? After knowing Rachel for less than a week?

  The logical part of him said it didn’t make sense—but the logic wasn’t operating right now.

  It must be trauma that was making him feel like this, he decided, as he stacked logs onto the fires. It was adrenalin rather than hormones. Nothing else explained it.

  It wasn’t sensible—but something inside him was saying sense didn’t come into it. What was front and foremost was that Rachel was unlike any woman he’d ever met.

  She made him feel different. She made him want to believe.

  In what? In happy ever after? In rainbows and nightingales and confetti?

  He straightened from loading the largest of Rachel’s logs onto the fire—how had she dragged this up the cliff?—and managed a wry smile.