Millionaire Dad's SOS (4 page)

‘He works at the resort?’ Meg asked. The imaginary huffy bees were back, swirling about her head with increased volume and intensity.

Ruby said, ‘He owns this one and lots more all over the world. He’s going to take me on his plane and show me all the others one day. He promised. Just not right now. I have school when I’m not sick. But some day.’

Meg heard not much more than
blah blah blah
as she stared down at Ruby. The dark hair, the wary dark eyes, the natural intensity that even a supposed sore throat couldn’t dampen. Once she saw the similarity it was so blaringly obvious she felt like a fool for not noticing it sooner.

Her blood pounded so loudly in her ears her voice came out rather more flat than she would have liked when she said, ‘You’re Zach Jones’s daughter.’

Ruby’s eyes flashed with the first spark of real
enthusiasm and Meg knew she was right even before the girl said, ‘Do you know my dad?’

Did she know Ruby’s dad? Not a jot.

Zach Jones had a daughter. A daughter whose mother was gone.

Hang on, he had a daughter with a mother Rylie hadn’t even known about and Rylie was such a proficient muckraker she probably already knew who really killed JFK and was awaiting the right moment to reveal all.

He had a daughter who was at home sick, or pretending to be. And the only reason Meg saw that Ruby might not want him to know was in case he only proved to her he didn’t give enough of a damn about her to care.

Meg’s fists clenched at her sides, a scene to end all scenes threatening to erupt from within.

She’d seen it time and again listening to stories told by countless women at the Valley Women’s Shelter—men, focused on themselves, on their work, on their local bar, who blithely disregarded their children’s need to be loved. Hell, she’d seen it with her own eyes. She’d felt it with her own heart.

Thankfully she’d taken measures in order for it never to happen to a child of her own. Conclusive measures. Unfortunately none of that helped her from feeling threadbare watching neglect happen to someone else.

Her gaze cleared to find Ruby was still looking up at her with her father’s uncompromising gaze. And while she knew the second she’d found out who Ruby’s dad was she should have walked away, she still said, ‘As a matter of fact I met your dad only this morning.’

‘What did he say about me?’

What did he say? Well, he was actually pretty darned arrogant. He said back off. He said lie low. He said…

Meg’s fingers unfurled from her palms. He’d said he was determined that the privacy of
all
staying at the resort remained upheld.

He was talking about himself. Him and his anonymous daughter. A daughter who no longer had a mum.

She closed her eyes to hide the mortification that she had beamed her flirty little smile at a man who’d lost his…wife? Lover? Ex? What did it matter? He’d lost the mother of his child.

Far too many adult-only concepts to share with a seven-and-a-half-year-old.

Instead, she gathered up her cheeriest smile and said, ‘I’m such a yabberer I’m sure I didn’t let him get a word in edgewise. If he’d had the chance I’m sure he would have said plenty. How could he not? A daughter who lets her nanny make chocolate muffins even though she doesn’t like them but her dad does. You’re a gem!’

Ruby tried for a smile herself, but her slight shoulders drooped, giving her away. Meg’s heart twitched far harder than she liked for the little girl. She couldn’t let herself get attached. There was no way it could end well.

She opened her mouth to say her long-overdue goodbye when something out of the corner of Ruby’s eye had her springing from the rubber seat like a jack-in-the-box. ‘I have to go!’ she shrieked.

Meg glanced up at one of the small detached rooms to see the wooden blinds snap shut. A flash of silver hair, not dark and curling, meant her heart didn’t stop, but it certainly thundered hard enough for her to know she’d pushed her luck far enough.

Ruby took a last quick step forward. ‘You won’t tell my dad I was on the swings, will you?’

Meg laughed. ‘Not a chance.’ Probably best for her continued health if she didn’t bring any of this up with the man at all.

‘I won’t tell him you were here either, okay?’ Ruby said.

Meg laughed again. ‘That would be fine with me.’

Ruby gave a quick, sweet, girlish wave, and then ran off towards the flickering blinds and freshly baked chocolate muffins, her long hair swinging behind her as she skipped up onto the longest rope bridge and was soon consumed by her astonishing home.

Meg spun on her heel and vamoosed back along the makeshift path, through the gap in the rock wall
and out onto the manicured grass of the resort proper. She headed in a direction she thought was probably south. If it wasn’t, someone would put her to rights soon enough.

Her breaths shook as the adrenalin she’d held at bay finally spilled over.

What if when she’d smiled her flirty little smile Zach had smiled back? What if when she’d made him laugh she’d let herself join in? What if when he’d touched her he’d liked it too much to let her go? What if things had happened between them and she’d gone in deep before he’d decided to let her know that he had a little girl?

It had taken her nearly thirty years to get to the point where she finally felt as if she had a handle on her celebrity. There was no way she would knowingly expose a child to it.

It gave her the perfect excuse to wash her hands of the whole situation, get on with her holiday, and forget the lot of them even existed.

Damn him! He’d started this. By including her in his convoluted duplicity he’d made her a part of it. And having met Ruby, talked to her, looked in her eyes and seen herself mirrored right on back she couldn’t let it go.

He might not know it yet, but Zach Jones needed her help. And for the sake of a bright, sweet, adoring little girl who needed him it appeared he was going to get it.

M
EG
rushed to find the Wellness Building to meet the girls for that day’s internal reflection class. While they tried to locate their
chi
she had every intention of pretending to meditate while dreaming up the perfect way to broach the subject of his daughter when she bumped into Zach Jones again.

With an objective in sight, despite the flat shoes and sore muscles, she had a decided spring in her step when she rounded a thick bank of head-high reeds.

Until she came face to face with a human rear-end.

Male it was, bent from the waist. Knee-length khaki cargo shorts sculpted a magnificent rear belonging to a tanned, solid man fiddling with something in a cooler. And even though she couldn’t see the colour of his hair, or the breadth of his shoulders, or the shape of his arms or any of the other bits that seemed to be permanently imprinted on her mind, she knew it was Zach Jones.

Her heart hammered in her ears, and her palms grew slick. She and
chi
might well be incompatible, but there was simply no denying this man’s life force was so potent it radiated from his very pores.

He stood, stretching out his limbs. Sunlight glistened lovingly off the expanse of perfectly sculpted muscle, as he was naked from the hips up.

His large hand was wrapped about a condensa-tion-covered bottle of beer. He tilted his head and downed half the bottle in one slow go.

Meg’s gaze remained stuck on the muscles of his throat, pulsing with each large swallow, with each heavy thud of her heart against her ribs.

Once done, he let out a deep, satisfied
ah-h-h
that seemed to echo across the distance between them, then he wiped a tanned, muscular arm across his forehead. He might as well have been sliding that arm around her waist for the reaction that shuddered through her.

‘I must have done something horrible in a previous life to deserve this,’she murmured beneath her breath.

As though the slow, hot, summer air carried her whisper to him too, he stilled. Then his body twisted at the waist until his eyes locked on hers.

The colour of expensive dark chocolate. The colour of strong espresso coffee. Right there in those eyes she saw everything she hungered for. Unfortunately half a second later she also caught
the full force of his disapproval simmering beneath the urbane surface.

Then she remembered why.

She’d been seriously kidding herself in thinking she might be able to convince this man he needed her help. If he had any idea she’d stumbled upon his daughter he’d probably already decided which exact spot in the surrounding rainforest would be the best place to hide her cold dead body.

Her tongue darted nervously out to slide along the chip in her tooth. His gaze slipped to watch the movement, his dark eyes turning almost black.

She was pinned to the spot, unable to move as he reached out and grabbed a T-shirt from beside the cooler, then slid it on in that particular way men did such things. The soft cotton casually sculpted his muscles and if at all possible he was even more intimidating fully dressed.

When Meg finally found her voice again she said, ‘This isn’t the way to the Wellness Building.’

‘No,’Zach said, his deep voice rumbling through her very bones. ‘It’s not.’

She frowned. ‘Where am I exactly?’

‘The lake.’

‘There’s a lake?’ she asked. ‘Wow, I really don’t know how to read a map.’

‘I’ll give you a hint,’ he said. ‘It’s the big blue bit at the bottom with “Lake” written in the middle of it.’

Her cheeks, if possible, grew warmer still. Her voice was dripping with sarcasm when she said, ‘Thanks. You are as ever the gracious host.’

‘Was there something else you wanted from me?’

‘Look, you can relax. I really didn’t mean to invade your beer-drinking time. Stumbling upon you was pure accident.’

‘Obviously fifty acres isn’t quite as much room as it sounds.’

‘So it seems.’ She began to back away. ‘If you’d be so kind as to point the way—’

‘I was just about to head out for a row. Want to join me?’

Her feet stumbled to a halt. ‘Excuse me?’

While his eyes seemed to skim the view behind her in search of prying eyes, he waved an inviting arm towards the end of a jetty that was shrouded in tall reeds wilting in the heavy heat. ‘After many months of wrangling with a guy on the end of the phone, my old row boat has finally arrived from a storage lock-up in Sydney and I’m taking her for a spin. You game?’

Game for
what
? Concrete shoes? A speedboat containing Rylie, Tabitha and their ready packed bags? Or worse, an intimate boat ride with a man whom she couldn’t want; who didn’t much like her; who still managed to give her uncontrollable stomach flutters that only grew more intense with each and every meeting.

A whimper from her self-preservation instincts had her licking her lips in preparation to say thanks but no thanks, until her mind filled with the memory of a sprawling house in the forest, and a lonesome, brown-haired girl with his eyes.

The most decisive reason for her to walk away was the one reason she finally could not.

‘Sounds lovely,’ she said with the distant but polite smile she used on those who shamelessly accosted her in the fruit and veg section of her local supermarket asking for an autograph.

His eyes darkened all the more, as though he knew it too, but he still slipped the strap of the cooler over his shoulder, then turned and walked towards the lake.

Meg did all she could do and followed.

Once she rounded the thick reeds she saw a small, fat, wooden boat bobbing merrily on what turned out to be a massive lake. The boat’s missionbrown paint was faded, the red floor was scratched and fatigued, and the benches had seats worn into them from a lifetime of accommodating bottoms.

It was ancient and imperfect. So not the kind of sea-faring-type vessel any of the men in her family would be caught dead in. She loved it.

She crouched down and ran a hand over the stern to find it smooth and soft. ‘She’s really yours?’

She glanced up to find Zach watching the rhythmic movement of her hand. She curled her
fingers into her palms and pushed herself back to standing.

He had to bend past her to unhook the rope from the jetty. She leant back to give him room, but not far enough not to catch his scent. She breathed it in. She couldn’t help herself. It was drinkable.

He wound the rope around his hand and elbow, muscles contracting with every easy swing. ‘
Marilyn’
s been a faithful companion since I was about eighteen.’

‘
Marilyn
? Are you serious?’

His cheek twitched into one of those almost smiles that gave a girl unfair hope there might be more to come. ‘She came with the name.’

‘Sure she did. You haven’t thought to trade her in for a fancy schmancy yacht with all the trimmings?’

‘I’ve got one of those too. A hundred footer moored off St Barts right now.’

‘The
Norma Jean?’

And there it was. The holy grail. His mouth tilted into a slow smile complete with brackets that arced around his beautiful mouth and creases fanning out from the edges of his delicious dark eyes. Boy, were they worth the wait.

‘I called her
Lauren.
’

‘Bacall?’

‘It was my mother’s name.’

Of course it was. Meg looked down at her shoes
instead of into those too discerning eyes. ‘And a tad extravagant to use for a paddle about the lake.’

‘Just a tad.’

She glanced up, and for a brief moment Meg swore she saw a glint warm his dark eyes before it was gone. He ought not to bandy those about unless he meant them. It was hard for a girl not to get ideas.

Zach threw the rope into the boat, then held out a hand. Unless she wanted him to know her mouth turned dry at the thought of him touching her again, she had no choice but to take it.

A slide of natural warmth so out of sync with the constant cool in his eyes leapt from his hand to hers. She gripped on tight as she stepped into the wobbly vessel, but the second she had her backside planted on a bench she let go.

He stepped in after her and tossed her a cosy, redchecked, woollen blanket. It was too soft to be freshly washed, too fluffy to be new. It was the kind of thing a man might keep at the end of his bed, or the back of his couch. She imagined it covering his long bare legs as he lay back—

She cleared her throat. ‘What exactly am I meant to do with this?’

‘Slide it beneath your backside or you’ll get splinters,’ he ordered. ‘That or that dress of yours will be shredded.’

Of course. So what if it carried a faint lingering
scent of him—he hadn’t given it to her as some sort of come-on. It was near forty degrees out! She lifted her backside and planted it back on the folded blanket.

‘This too,’ he demanded, throwing her a soft khaki fisherman’s hat, which was frayed to the point of falling apart.

She gripped the hat between tightly coiled fists. All that commanding was beginning to get on her nerves. Her voice was sugary sweet as she asked, ‘And where, pray tell, am I supposed to put this?’

His hands stilled. He glanced up. The smile hovered; the glint loomed.

And it hit her as if the lake had suddenly thrown up a tidal wave over the boat. Zach Jones might prefer her to be far, far away, but a certain part of him took a purely masculine pleasure in having her close by.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and blinked up at him. The smile faded and the glint disappeared without a trace.

‘Just stick the thing on your head, will you?’ he growled.

‘Aye aye, Captain,’ she muttered.

The hat smelled like the sea and fitted over her head like velvet. Atop her sateen cocktail dress it must have looked a treat.

He slapped an old cap atop his curls, shoved a foot against the jetty, pushing them off before easing down onto his own bench.

She tucked her knees tight together and pretended to pay attention to the ripples fanning out through the flat silver water, and not how close his knees were to hers, as he picked up the oars and pushed them effortlessly out into the lake.

Within seconds the wilting reeds shielded them from the rest of the world and they were alone.

The sun beat down upon Meg’s back, making her glad of the hat. The soft swish of the displaced water created a slow, even rhythm. And as Zach built up a sweat every breath in gave her a fresh taste of his clean cotton clothes and some indefinable heat that was purely him.

Like this, all easy silence, all effortless masculinity, it was hard not to imagine he might be exactly the kind of guy she could happily spend oodles of time with. A beautiful sailor who slept in late, didn’t believe in making plans, and just went with the flow.

It was hard to believe he owned and ran a huge multinational business that no doubt took long hours away from home. That took the kind of relentless ambition that meant everything else in life came a distant second. Family included.

Her brother Brendan was trying to do the single father thing. Running the Kelly Investment Group and raising two young daughters. And though she’d never tell him so to his face she knew in her heart the half of his life he was letting slip from his grasp was his girls.

Zach’s eyes slid from some point over her shoulder to find hers. His dark, deep, unfathomable eyes. Their gazes held a beat longer than polite. Two beats. She held on, trying to sense regret, bereavement, concern for his little girl. All she got for her trouble was the sense that
she
was getting more entangled by the second.

She breathed in slow and deep through her nose. Could she ask him about Ruby now? Should she? Would she be doing it to be helpful? Or did she know he’d react badly, so she could use Ruby to save herself from feeling the way she did when he looked at her like that?

In the end she lost her nerve and said, ‘So you’ve been on two runs today and now rowing. I feel tired just thinking about it.’

He went back to staring at the water. ‘I like to be on the move. Eyes forward, nothing but the wind and the sun to keep me company. It clears the head. If you don’t run or do yoga, what do you do?’

Mmm. She had proven that day that exercise made her hurt, and wobble and crave sugar.

‘To clear my head?’ she said. ‘Disco music.’

One dark eyebrow rose and his hot, dark gaze slid back to hers. ‘Disco?’

‘Blaring from my iPod directly into my ears. Ten seconds into any Donna Summer or Leo Sayer song and the rest of the world fades away.’

They said music soothed the savage breast, and so
it had done for her, many a time in her teens when she might have otherwise given in to mounting frustration with her life and done something she’d later regret. Ultimately disco could only soothe so much hurt.

‘Even if you’re lying on the couch your feet can’t help but bop. Your head clears of everything but the music. It’s kind of like exercise only more relaxed.’

When he merely blinked at her she gave him her ‘greeting line’ smile, with a full showing of teeth, twinkling eyes and dimples. ‘You’re going to give it a go the moment you go home, I can tell.’

And while most people, even members of her own family, could no longer tell when she was ‘on’ and when she was just being herself, the slow rise of the corner of his mouth told her she hadn’t fooled him for a nanosecond.

How did he
do
that? How was
he
able to see straight through her? Again she felt exposed, as if she’d walked into a ballroom with her dress tucked into the back of her undies.

He stopped rowing and the boat’s sleek glide slowed so that she rocked forward on her seat.

‘I’m game. I’ll give disco a go,’ he said. ‘But only if you take the oars right now.’

She imagined splinters. She imagined aches in even more as yet undiscovered muscles. She imagined her hands brushing against his as she took him up on his offer.

‘I’ll pass.’

Zach laughed. The column of his throat moved sexily beneath the sound. It faded all too soon in the wide-open space, and his eyes once again grew so dark they drew her in while they pushed her away.