The Millionaire

by Victoria Purman

  Chris looked up to Ellie on the stage. Her mouth had dropped open in shock and she looked like she might faint. He pushed his chair back and stood.

  He lifted a finger. “Sixty thousand dollars.”

  The crowd erupted.

  Callum looked at him. “Seventy thousand dollars.”

  The auctioneer peered down at them. “Wait one minute, I do believe… why yes, the photographer himself – Chris Malone – is bidding on his own work. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it!”

  At that moment, the house lights went up to reveal the two Malone brothers, staring each other down.

  “Back off, Callum,” Chris said under his breath. “This isn’t about Malone Enterprises and the goddamn family name.”

  Callum laughed and Chris fought the urge to smack the smile right off his face.

  “Eighty thousand.”

  Chris looked to the stage. Ellie was fanning herself.

  “I get it,” Callum shouted to be heard above the applause. “This is about her, isn’t it? That Ellie Flannery?”

  “You bet your ass it is. That’s why I don’t want you hijacking it as part of some lame attempt to protect the family’s name. I won’t let you throw your money around on a piece you’ll just put into storage.”

  The crowd had become silent, watching the two brothers battle.

  “Ninety thousand dollars,” Callum called and then he leaned in close. “It’s not about the company, Chris. This is about what you said in my office a few weeks ago. You said Malone Enterprises has never given away one red cent to anything worthwhile. Not to kids or sick people or medical research. I looked into it and you were right. I’m changing that, starting tonight.”

  Chris stared his brother down. “One hundred thousand dollars.”

  “We’ve reached one hundred thousand dollars, in case anyone at the back of the room didn’t hear that. One hundred thousand. My goodness me, that’s… well, that’s incredible, ladies and gentlemen. Do we have another bid?”

  Chris challenged Callum with a glare.

  Callum shook his head and slowly reached out a hand to shake his brother’s.

  “One hundred thousand. Going once. Going twice. Sold to Mr Chris Malone.”

  The crowd erupted and it wasn’t long before there was a crush of people gathered around Chris, patting him on the back, shaking his hand, kissing Vilma on the cheek and introducing themselves to Trev. He heard his name whispered in a hundred conversations but all he wanted to do was find Ellie, but when he looked up to the stage, it was empty.

  He dug out his phone and called her but it went through to her message bank, so he made his excuses to the strangers still gathered around him and walked out of the ballroom in search of her.

  Chris tried to work his way through the crowd, but was stopped at almost every step. There were more congratulations. Hearty handshakes. Pats on his shoulder. Warm kisses on his cheeks and people asking him to pose for happy snaps on their phones. He tried to smile and be part of it. So he’d opened up his wallet and splashed around some cash. It was such a Malone thing to do, he realised, nothing to be exceptionally proud of. But when he actually took a moment to look at the people who’d stopped him, his thoughts shifted. There were sun-kissed and weathered country faces. Crowds of men and women who talked excitedly about how closely their hospital worked with the Flying Docs. There was a group of firefighters in uniform, talking to other emergency services personnel and a group of young children clutching teddy bears, playing by the large windows of the reception area.

  They were people rallying for a good cause. They weren’t out to see or be seen. They weren’t impressed with him because he was a Malone. They were thanking him for supporting a service which was so important to them.

  Just like Ellie. She’d given her time and energy over the past six months to say thanks for the care her grandfather had received. Him, and thousands of other patients, were what tonight was about.

  Ellie had seen through his name and his fame and found her way to his heart, had wrapped herself around it like an embrace.

  He had to find her. As the crowd around him thinned, he saw her at the bar with a glass of champagne. And Callum.

  Something shifted inside Chris. His throat tightened and so did his fists. He strode over to them and when Ellie realised it was him, she took a huge gulp and stared at the bubbles.

  “Ellie, I’ve been calling you. You disappeared on me.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but stopped. She waved a hand at him and then, with her free hand, wiped her cheeks.

  Callum laid a hand on his arm. “It’s all my fault. Ellie dragged me out here to discuss other ways in which Malone Enterprises might assist, given I was outbid at the auction by my big brother. She’s quite persistent.”

  “So you were serious about what you said, in there.” Chris looked from Ellie to Callum.

  “Damn serious. And I can’t think of a better cause. You and I know better than anyone that money doesn’t keep you warm at night. I’m hoping the warm inner-glow from donating some of it might help me with that.” Callum slipped a hand into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Here’s my card, Ellie, with my private number. Please pass it on to your colleagues and get them to call me next week. I’d like to get the ball rolling as soon as we can.”

  He then held out a hand to his brother. “Chris. It’s a magnificent portrait. Congratulations.” They shook hands before Callum disappeared into the crowd.

  Chris turned his full attention back to Ellie. He stopped the words which were about to fall from his mouth and looked at her instead. She was a glittering jewel in this crowd of people and he wanted her all to himself. For one more night.

  She filled the silence between them. “He’s a very nice man, your brother.”

  “He’s not bad for a Malone.” Chris ran his fingers down her cheek, felt her tears. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  Ellie half-laughed and half-sobbed as she gripped his forearm. “Why? You need to ask me that after what just happened? After what you did?”

  “Well.”

  She tangled a hand through her hair and found her earring. “I guess I don’t have to ask you how you can possibly afford it.”

  “That would be impolite.”

  Ellie sighed. “You are an incredible man, you know that?” She reached her arms around his neck and pulled him close so his forehead met hers.

  He didn’t want to argue with her, but she was wrong. Ellie Flannery was the incredible one.

  So why was he about to leave her behind in Sydney?

  “I want to take you to bed,” he told her.

  “But we haven’t even had a dance,” Ellie said, feigning a protest as she gazed in his mouth.

  “I don’t dance. And I want to get you out of that dress.”

  “I want to get you out of that tuxedo,” she murmured back to him.

  “Let’s go.”

  *

  An hour later, a country couple from western New South Wales was fast asleep and exhausted after their big night. Callum was at home, alone, feeling better about being a Malone than he had almost his entire life. And in a hotel room high above the sparkling city of Sydney, a midnight blue tuxedo and a crimson ball gown were tangled in each other in a pile on the plush carpet.

  Chris and Ellie lay together, neither wanting to fall asleep.

  “When’s your flight?” Ellie asked.

  The elephant in the room was now stampeding towards Chris. This was the conversation he’d been trying to avoid. “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Ellie yawned. “It’s already one a.m. When were you planning on getting some sleep?”

  How the hell could he sleep when Ellie was within arm’s reach, when she was naked next to him, when she was… when she was simply Ellie? The past few weeks with her had been the best thing to ever happen to him. He hadn’t experienced the peaceful normality of life for so long he’d given up on it. His life had become transient, fu
ll of dodgy flights and flea-bitten hotel rooms in dusty shit holes. Not knowing where he would be from one week to the next. As he thought back over the time they’d spent together, he realised it was the little things he’d missed. That damn sofa of hers, so soft, so comfortable he wanted to sleep on it, and did, often. Her kitchen. It was still a surprise to him to open a door and see food he recognised. Her front door and the way it opened every evening and she was there, smiling at him, her eyes bright and alive, her arms around him, kissing him, holding him. Her bed, where they’d made love and laughed and slept and eaten breakfast and drank wine.

  She made this city home for him. And he was going to leave home once more.

  And leave Ellie Flannery.

  He turned on his side to face her, his jaw propped in his chin. “Listen, Ellie. There’s something I want to say.”

  Ellie turned to face him. The sheet was low on her body and he traced his fingers over the curve at the top of her thigh, to the dip of her waist and then to a breast. With his thumb and forefinger, he grasped her nipple and it hardened almost instantly. He leaned down and took it in his mouth, sucked it, flicked it with his tongue, savoured the exquisite taste of Ellie.

  “There’s something I want to say to, too.”

  “What’s that?” he said as he lifted his eyes to gaze into hers. He was overcome by the sudden urge to make her come again, one last time. He enjoyed the power it gave him, liked the way she opened up and surrendered to him, gave him her trust.

  Ellie took a deep breath. “This… you and me… it’s been fun.”

  There was an unfamiliar feeling slamming Chris’s chest. Was this… nerves? He’d been shot at, for God’s sake. Crashed to the ground in a helicopter and pulled his bloodied colleagues from the wreckage. He’d stared down dictators and despots and almost been blown away by tropical cyclones.

  But this? There was a portent in her words that he didn’t want to hear, something very past tense about what she’d said: It’s been fun.

  “And I want to say goodbye.”

  Seventeen

  ‡

  Chris’s eyes narrowed. “Goodbye?”

  Ellie had been trying to be so strong about saying goodbye to Chris. They’d never talked about their future for a very good reason, because they didn’t have one together. They’d carefully skated around it, artfully dodging it. She knew men like Malone. They were lone wolves, always on the hunt, never happy in one place, with things or people tying him down. She knew reporters like that, too, always on the scrounge for the next scoop, who grew restless if they were behind their desks for too long. They were hunters, people like Chris. It was no surprise he wanted to be back out there somewhere in the world finding that one shot.

  But the look on his face, stricken, confused, almost undid her.

  “You are getting in a plane in a few hours to go be brave and famous again. I want to wish you luck.” Please God let him not need it.

  “It’s not luck I need. It’s you, Ellie.”

  Ellie closed her eyes to stop the tears. “Don’t.”

  “I’m coming back, you know.”

  “Whenever that might be.”

  “I want you to wait for me. I want to know you’ll be here when I get back. I need to know that we’ll make love again. Because we’re not done, Ellie. You know that.”

  “You don’t have to make promises to me, Chris. I’ve known all along that you’ll leave. I’m in the news business too, remember?”

  “Ellie. I want you to wait for me.”

  Ellie shook her head. “I know the risks you take. I can’t be back here, checking the news sites every two seconds waiting for something terrible to happen to you. Crashing in a helicopter? Being shot at? What if you’re taken hostage somewhere? Photographers and reporters are being killed every day in the places you’re going, so some fanatic can score a headline.”

  Chris smoothed a hand over her shoulder and she hated that she still goose bumped under his touch. Hated that she would have to be without him. Hated that he wouldn’t be there in her house when she got home from work, his arms and his heart wide open to her.

  Hated that she loved him.

  Of course she did. The desperate longing she’d felt for Chris had transformed into love for him, so strong and so deep that she was overwhelmed by it. The past two weeks with Chris, even knowing that he would leave, had been more than she’d had with any other man. She was changed for loving him. And would never change back to the person she was before.

  “You are an amazing photographer. But you know what? You are so much more than being a Malone. You are so much more than your photographs. You are worth so much more than the front page of Le Monde or the New York Times.”

  Ellie sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She didn’t want him to see her face. When she could breathe, she walked to the wardrobe and tugged one of those ridiculously soft bathrobes from its confounded hanger and slipped into it. She knotted the tie at her waist and watched him from across the room.

  “You are loving and beautiful and kind and spectacular. And none of that is about money or photographs.”

  Chris sat himself up in bed, his tanned chest so stark against the white sheets, even in the dim lamplight. His eyes were dark.

  She tangled her fingers together, felt her voice hitch. “I can’t come to the airport to say goodbye.”

  “I don’t want you to.” Chris stayed where he was.

  Ellie didn’t trust herself to take a step. If she moved, she feared she would run to him, beg him to stay. Tell him the truth about how she felt.

  But that would do her no good, nor him.

  “It’s been…”

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  Wordlessly, Chris got dressed in his crumpled tux, slipped on his shoes, and left.

  *

  Chris had said a few too many goodbyes in his life. To women too numerous to remember, after something meaningless and desperate in somewhere dangerous. Sometimes at an airport. A few too many times at a funeral. He should be used it to by now.

  So why had a hole opened up inside his chest at saying goodbye to Ellie?

  As he walked Sydney’s streets in the drunken early morning, he thought over his months back to Sydney in his imminent departure. The thrill he’d survived on, that shot of adrenaline at the next job, was missing. Now, it felt more like an obligation, a duty. Something had changed in him. His world had shifted and resettled and he wasn’t sure if he wanted it to return to his kind of normal. That world was fight or flight. Shoot or be shot at. That world didn’t have Ellie Flannery in it. In that world, his heart would have to clamp shut so he didn’t feel. And that meant shutting Ellie out of his life.

  A cab approached and Chris hailed it down. As he slid into the backseat and gave the driver directions, he dropped his head back and stared out the window at the lights of Sydney. They were a blur through his tired eyes. His eyes that had seen so much pain and horror over the years, and were about to fly right back into it.

  Because that’s what Chris Malone, does, right? He runs from family, from responsibility, from women like Ellie Flannery and the chance of a life with someone beautiful and lovely. He’d had everything he wanted: the funny, the beautiful, the dogged and the snippy. She’d managed to throw him a curveball with flirtatious and passionate, too. And what had he done with the gift she’d given him?

  When he got home, he stumbled to his office, fired up his laptop and plugged in one of his hard drives. He opened a folder and scrolled through the images that had made him famous. Looking down a lens, he’d been immune to what he’d seen, or so he’d thought. But now, in a horrific slideshow of all that he’d been so proud of, he felt nothing.

  Flickering images, black and white, vivid bloody colour, crowded his vision and he quit the folder.

  The photograph that replaced it had him sitting back in his chair in wonder. He linked his hands together on top of his head and blew out a deep breath.

  He�
��d forgotten he’d saved it as his screen saver when he was processing all the photos from the shoot.

  It was Ellie at her grandparents’ property. He’d been looking down the lens on that blazing afternoon, framing old Trev with sheep in one corner and the old windmill in the other, when she’d called out to the old man from behind him.

  “You’re looking so handsome, Grandpa! C’mon, smile!”

  She’d managed to get the old man to crack a smile and that had been the shot. The exact moment when she’d laughed, Trev had curved his lips upwards and Chris had got it.

  And then he’d turned around and snapped a shot of Ellie without her knowing it. Looking at it now, all these weeks later, he could still hear the sound of her infectious laughter as she teased Trev. The colours of the bush were bold reds and blues behind her, her white shirt was caught by the wind like a sail. Her hands were planted on her hips and she’d thrown her head back as she’d laughed. Her hat had tipped up and gleaming eyes shone with humour.

  The shot he’d taken that day, of Trev out there in the back paddocks, with the perfect light and the perfect camera assistant, had reminded him what joy photography could be. He’d looked down the lens and had seen hope and a future for the first time in a long while, instead of destruction and despair.

  He was about to fly away from her and all that she was.

  He was about to fly away and run from being who he was, a Malone. He’d tried it on for size tonight, doing something with his money and it had been easier than he thought. There was only one person he’d been trying to impress. And he realised he didn’t have to drop a wad of cash to impress Ellie.

  He snapped the laptop shut.

  Since when had he been such a fuckwit? It wasn’t the danger of his old life he craved anymore.

  It was Ellie Flannery he craved. She was the kind of excitement and passion he wanted in his life.

  At that moment, he knew for damn sure he wasn’t getting on that plane.