“Please.” Ellie reached out and laid a hand on Malone’s forearm. She didn’t have time to think about it. He looked like he was about to turn and walk away and she couldn’t let him. Her fingers gripped his arm. Soft skin over hard muscle. Her cool fingers on his heat. There were still tiny grits of sand in the hairs there. He smelt of the ocean. Her mouth was suddenly dry and she swallowed. Ellie wondered if groping a handsome man was a crime, even if it was for a good cause.
He lowered his voice. “You don’t give up, do you?”
And then she let go of him. Surreptitiously checked her fingers for scorch marks. Pulled herself together.
“No, I don’t, Mr. Malone. I don’t mean to bother you. You seem to be on holiday. But I have a favour to ask.”
He glanced around. He seemed to be checking out if anyone else had heard their exchange. No one in the queue ahead of them had turned to see what was going on. Everyone was minding their own business, as if gorgeous men like Malone dropped in every day of the week. Ellie glanced over her shoulder and Bron was the only one seated in the café. Ellie’s friend raised her eyebrows in a question and smirked.
Malone pushed his hair back on his head and it settled in soft waves by his ears. Ellie willed herself not to look too closely at his cheekbones or his eyes, lest she lose the power of speech.
“You want a favour?”
Ellie took a deep breath and let the words spill out. “I’m helping to organize a fundraiser. Back in Sydney. It’s for a really good cause. I wondered if you would be so kind as to donate one of your photographs for our charity auction. We’re having a ball in a month and I know if we could put it up for action, we would raise so much money.”
Malone reached for his sunglasses and slipped them on, like a shield. “Sorry.”
He hadn’t even taken a minute to consider it.
“What do you mean ‘sorry’? Is that a flat out no?”
He took a step closer to her and lowered his voice another notch. “It’s a flat out no. Now look, I really just want to get a coffee and go back to Sydney. Thanks but no thanks.”
Ellie crossed her arms over her chest. “So that’s it.”
Malone shook his head, reached inside the pocket of his shorts and pulled out his car keys. “That’s it.” He shot her a sharp look. “I guess I’m not getting that coffee today.” He turned and strode towards the door.
“I guess it’s true what they say,” Ellie called after him. A couple of people in the queue turned in her direction with polite interest.
He stopped, looked back over his shoulder. “And what’s that?”
Ellie eyed him up and down. His hard body had lost its attraction, seeing as she now knew there was a hard heart inside it.
“You should never meet your idols. You’ll only be hugely disappointed.”
Malone glanced down at his bare feet and then back at her. Ellie felt her heart beat faster again. She wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He looked at her for a long moment, the muscles in his jaw clenching and tightening. He didn’t seem to know, either. Then, he flipped the keys into his palm with a jangle and left.
Ellie spun on her heel and walked back to Bron at the table. She sat down and shook her head ruefully. “He said no.”
“I know,” Bron said with an open mouth. “I heard every word.”
“I thought he’d be nicer than that. Given the things he’s seen around the world. You’d think someone like that would understand about charity and compassion. And you know, once he heard my compelling argument, I thought he’d hand over his whole back catalogue.”
Bron reached over, covered Ellie’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You know what those guys are like, Ellie. Photojournalists like him are the lone wolves of the news business.”
“Oh, I know, Bron. Those guys are tough and single-minded and slightly obsessed about what they do. They’re ruthless. They’ll do whatever they can to get the shot, no matter how dangerous.”
*
Bron sighed. “That sounds so hot.”
Ellie laughed at her friend. “You’re married. You’re not supposed to think anyone is hot, except for Peter.”
“C’mon. I may be married but I’m still a woman. Don’t you think he’s hot? I mean those shoulders. That hair.”
“All cancelled out by him being so rude, I’m afraid.”
“You’re right.” Bron’s phone beeped and she swiped the screen. “And you’re not the only one who thinks so.”
“Huh?” Ellie felt like she’d lost track of their conversation. “What are you talking about?”
“I may be a new mum, and slightly sleep-deprived, but I’ve still got the newshound in me. I snapped a photo and posted it. It’s already had 105 likes.”
Ellie froze. Sat bolt upright. “You’ve what?”
“Check this out.” Bron scrolled on her screen and turned her phone around so Ellie could read it.
Bron had taken a paparazzi style photo of Chris, snarling at Ellie, with the caption: “Turns out World famous Aussie snapper, Chris Malone, is really a Mr. Scrooge. My bestie, Ellie, just asked him to donate to a charity fundraiser. And guess what? He said no!”
Ellie could see it had already been shared twenty times.
And then her phone rang. She reached inside her handbag and found it, checked the name on the display.
“Hi, boss.”
“Is he still there? Malone?” Her editor, Kerry Mills, would find one of her reporters at the bottom of the ocean if there was a story that needed chasing.
Ellie chuckled in shock. “How’d you find out about that so quickly?”
“I follow you on Facebook, remember? Bron tagged you. Say hello to her, by the way, and kiss the kid. Now, here’s what I need from you. Another photo and an interview. Ask Malone why he turned down the charity thing, and if it’s true he’s engaged to that European princess.”
“What European princess?” Ellie had followed his career religiously for years but that particular rumour was new to her.
A pang of something that felt like jealously jarred her. She wasn’t jealous for herself, mind, simply for all Australian women who’d clearly been relegated to the scrapheap, because he’d found someone better in Europe. Probably rich. With a tiara. One who could afford to keep him in hair care products.
Not that Chris Malone needed a European princess to keep him in anything. Ellie knew all about his background. He was the eldest of three sons from one of Sydney’s wealthiest families and had attended the most expensive school in the country, the one with harbour views from each classroom and enough cricket pitches so that every son of Sydney’s finest families could have his own team if they wanted it. He’d grown up in one of the city’s most historic harbour side homes, the kinds that were known by their names, not their addresses. The Meadows hadn’t changed hands in seventy years.
Ellie had seen it once when she’d caught a ferry to have lunch for a friend’s birthday at a restaurant in Watson’s Bay. As they chugged past on the boat, she wondered curiously what it would have been like to grow up with all those acres of rolling lawn and gleaming white yachts and tuxedoed butlers.
Because surely there would have been butlers. And maids and probably more than a few nannies. None of that impressed Ellie. What she was awed by, the reason she was such a fangirl, was that he’d mysteriously turned his back on it all and picked up a camera instead of a polo mallet.
“Ellie, pay attention. Find him and ask him about the princess. Now.”
“Okay, boss. Got it.” She jumped to her feet, grabbed her phone, and hoped like hell he was still in the street somewhere.
She pushed her way through the plastic strip curtain hanging from the cafe door. There was no sign of him. Then she remembered he’d had car keys in his hand. In the time she’d been lamenting his bad manners with Bron, he’d obviously gone.
She sighed. Her run in with the famous Chris Malone hadn’t left her feeling as excited as she thought it might. He wasn’t at
all how she’d imagined him to be.
That photo on her screensaver? The one he’d taken? First thing tomorrow, she was replacing it with Grumpy Cat.
Three
‡
By the time Chris arrived back in Sydney, to his small house in the city’s inner-west, his phone had almost gone into meltdown.
He hadn’t taken it with him surfing that morning and seriously considered not answering any of the messages that nagged at him from the screen. For ten years, phones and cameras and laptop computers and chargers had ruled his life. One for each phone. One for his camera. Another for his laptop and then spares and then a universal charger. A photographer in the digital age without a charged camera was useless.
And now, back home for the first extended period of time in a long, long while, he didn’t want to be held hostage to them. He’d come back to Australia to get away from everything for a while, and that meant offers of work, icy conversations with his father, and demands from the slightly older of his younger twin brothers, Callum, that he attend whichever board meeting happened to be on that week. Callum liked to be in charge and Chris liked to remind his brother right back that no one was in charge of him. How was he supposed to clear his head and think if he was catapulted right back into that world? It was always a total headfuck, and getting worse every time, to go from poverty and disaster and revolution right back into the luxurious folds of his family. He couldn’t drive up to The Meadows anymore, without feeling embarrassed as hell about the mansion. Sometimes, he wanted to throw a hard right off the long driveway and carve up the manicured lawns with his car, just like the time he did before he was kicked out for good. His family home wasn’t home anymore, hadn’t been for a long while. Not since Nate.
Nate was Chris’s best friend from high school. They’d played cricket together and surfed. But after school, they’d gone their separate ways, but when Nate was in trouble, deep trouble, he reached out for Chris’s help. He was struggling with a crippling addiction, a drug debt, police charges for dealing, and a family who’d washed their hands of him. Chris had asked his father for some money to get Nate the help he needed, so he could go to rehab instead of jail. The answer had been a blunt no.
Somehow, the news got out and rumours linked the Malones to Sydney’s drug scene. Chris’s father had come down hard on his oldest son, who was doing nothing more than trying to save a mate. Chris left. By the time he found enough money to help Nate, his friend was dead of an overdose. Chris used the money to buy a camera and a plane ticket instead.
Chris was ashamed of all the riches his family were so proud of. What good was it all, if their money didn’t help anyone? He was mostly angry at himself. He’d never been able to persuade them to spend any of it on anything useful. None of his attempts in the past ten years had moved them an inch. Not one of his photos of the raggedy slums of Kolkata, natural disasters in Indonesia, or refugees in Africa had convinced them.
He looked at his phone and the habits of a lifetime caught up with him. He listened to his voice mail while he walked to the kitchen.
“You have fifty-two new messages,” the anonymous woman announced.
Chris opened the fridge and pulled out a cold beer. While he sipped it, he listened and deleted most of them, especially the ones from the media. It was the same bullshit from ten different reporters about his supposed engagement.
There were more offers of work. A stringer he knew in Paris was heading to Syria and wanted to know if Chris wanted to come along for the ride, to split some expenses and share the costs of a local fixer; and there was another offer from one of the big international photographic agencies to shoot protests in Ukraine. A part of him, the old Chris Malone that would have jumped on a plane in a hot second, at the thought of being in the middle of those stories, pricked up his ears. But weariness won and he deleted them. He wasn’t ready to go back to that yet.
He’d seen too many innocent people killed – and for what? Their shattered faces, captured by his lens, still haunted him.
And he’d seen too many people ruined by the chase and the craving and the post-traumatic stress disorder that came with being up that close to death, and cruelty of the most unimaginable kinds. Some hadn’t made it; had chosen to end their lives instead of living with what they’d seen.
He’d seen one too many lives wasted.
He was worried his might be the next. That was why he’d come home.
The next message began playing and it was a voice he recognised. Callum.
“Were you going to tell me you were back in the country?” Judging by the tone in his brother’s voice, he hadn’t been gone long enough.
“Well, hello to you to, little bro,” Chris replied to his phone. Then the thought hit him like a rogue wave. How the hell did Callum know he was back?
“Tell me this. Why do I have to read about it online? Our PR people have been dealing with calls from the media who’re describing you as Australia’s biggest bastard, because you turned down some charity request from the Royal Flying Doctor Service. What the hell’s going on, Chris? Call me back.”
Chris put down his beer. He ran a furious hand through his blond hair.
It was amazing what he picked up when he travelled as much as he had. He could order food, beer, and curse in about a dozen different languages. But right now, English was the only one to hit the spot.
“Holy fucking hell,” he said tightly, the pain in his jaw getting tighter again.
He strode from the kitchen to the small front room that served as his office and fired up his battered laptop. He googled himself and there it was, exploding all over the internet. Each news site was running a variation of Callum’s summary of events and a close up image of him in a white T-shirt and jeans. He looked closer. It was from earlier that day. It was the café at One Mile Beach.
And it was that woman. The one with the stubborn mouth and the big brown eyes and the legs, who’d followed him up from the beach. The one who’d got so nervous she’d jabbed him in the ribs instead of shaking his hand. When he took a closer look at the photo, he was unsettled by what he saw. He did look like a mean bastard. He’d clearly hidden his amusement at her very well, because all the image revealed was a big scowl on his face and his mouth twisted in a hard expression.
He stared at it for a while. He didn’t recognise that guy. The lines on his face, pale traces inside the tanned folds around his eyes and mouth, weren’t from laughing, but from squinting down a lens and holding in the horror.
Man, he really did need this holiday.
He closed his laptop. Grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone and locked the front door behind him.
*
The lift doors opened on to the 75th floor of a gleaming Sydney office tower, and Chris stepped out in thongs, jeans, and a T-shirt. Looking around, he realised the place hadn’t changed since he was a kid. His grandfather and his father had liked it this way. It reflected them and their attitudes exactly: intimidating and rich. If his brother thought differently, he hadn’t made any moves to change it in the two years he’d been running Malone Enterprises. Rich mahogany wood panelling lined the reception area; there was a singular and well-worn chesterfield sofa pushed against the left wall and a collection of subtle watercolours hanging on the right. Up ahead, fifty feet from the lift, there was a large antique desk, upon which sat a computer, a jug of water and a glass, and one potted plant. A cactus.
A crisply efficient receptionist looked up from the front desk and nodded in his direction.
“Christopher.” Her voice echoed in the cavernous space.
“Hi, Evelyn.”
Chris had never seen the woman with another hairstyle. She kept it short and, over the years, it had slowly changed from dark brown to a silvery grey. Everything about her remained as stylish as ever. He’d loved coming into the office when he was a kid. Evelyn had always kept a jar of sweets under her desk and would slip the Malone boys a jelly bean or two whenever they came in. The sweets had disappe
ared years ago when the boys had grown but her big heart was still in evidence.
“Mr. Malone told me to expect you.” She was trying to hide her smile.
“Which one?” He raised his eyebrows and winked.
“Your father is playing golf this afternoon. I’m talking about your brother.”
“Ah, Callum,” Chris said with a sigh as he propped himself on the edge of the desk. He reached over and touched one of the cactus’s spikes. “I reckon he sleeps in the suit, don’t you?”
Evelyn looked at Chris over the top of her bold, red glasses. “You each followed your own path, however long and winding. Don’t judge him for that, Chris.”
He played at looking taken aback at her words as he thumped an open palm to his chest. “I don’t know what you mean, Evelyn.”
“Yes, you do. He feels your judgment, you know, but he’ll never tell you. Someone had to stay here in Sydney and run the company. You’re off god knows where, almost getting yourself killed.” Evelyn’s voice hitched and damn if there weren’t tears welling in her eyes. “And Cooper… where is your youngest brother this week?”
Chris had to think a moment to remember. “Last I heard, he was surfing in Wales.”
“There’s surfing in Wales?”
“Apparently so.”
“And what about you? When did you get back?”
He didn’t want to admit he’d been back a month and hadn’t even seen her. A flare of guilt hit him. “Hey, I almost forgot to ask. You a grandma yet?”
Evelyn’s face broke into a beaming smile. “Two months to go. I can’t wait. My son and his wife aren’t half as excited as I am.”
The Millionaire Page 2
