Millionaire Dad's SOS (5 page)

She wondered if he could see the same impulse in hers.

She wondered what might happen if they both pulled at the exact same time.

His large hands curled back around the worn old wooden sticks and he slid the oars back into the water, pushing off with such grace and power Meg was sent to the back of her seat. Smart move. Pushing was much more sensible.

A cooling wind fluttered past her warm face. Streaks of gold dappled the rippling silver water where the sun burst through fluffy white clouds. The edges of the lake were completely obscured by the thick, green rainforest spilling into water.

Time stretched and contracted. She realised she had no idea how long she’d been gone. Or why he’d taken her out there onto the lake alone in the first place.

‘I don’t mean to say this isn’t entirely pleasant, and so generous for the owner to give me such a personal tour of the blue bit on the bottom of the map,’she said, ‘but how long were you planning for this outing to be?’

‘We can turn back now if you’re getting too hot.’

Only then did she even consider that, while he
looked like a sun god, she must have looked an utter treat—in his floppy hat, her hair plastered to her face after her hike to the end of the resort and back, her Irish skin pink as a rose.

She wasn’t used to feeling so discomposed; her voice was rather sharper than she intended when she said, ‘I’m only thinking of you.’

He raised a solitary eyebrow. ‘You’re thinking of
me
?’

More than you know.
‘Many a poor fellow has ended up reportedly engaged to me after spending far less time in my company, and I have been made quite aware how highly you regard your privacy.’

‘I do at that. Which is why I have not left any stones unturned in an effort to protect it. You needn’t worry on my behalf.’

‘I need not?’

His cheek twitched. ‘The forest has eyes. Trackers flushing out the perimeter in search of poachers.’

‘Poachers? There’s nothing for miles bar a few birds, some lizards and a bunch of resort guests in matching tracksuits.’

And then she got it. Her jaw dropped. ‘Are you saying you have people posted about the place to ward off anyone turning up here to take a photo of
me
?’

‘We both know it’s not you I am trying to protect.’

His gaze was steady. Not a hint of humour. Not a hint of a smile. While Meg’s cheeks grew so flushed even her teeth began to feel hot.

Ruby
.

Of course. This,
all
this, the thoughtful blanket, the helpful hat, the beautiful scenery, the long brooding looks, were all about his daughter.

He wasn’t thinking of her at all.

Zach couldn’t remember a time in recent history when he’d been so furious. And mostly with himself. For since the moment he’d turned and found Meg Kelly standing on the jetty in her completely inappropriate pink party dress he’d thought of nothing but her.

He hadn’t been exaggerating when saying he rowed to clear his head. The sport had saved him from being just another scrappy, angry kid with a chip on his shoulder and had turned him into a man who knew how to focus, create goals and push himself to the absolute limits to achieve them.

He needed a clear head now more than ever. The St Barts government was still playing hardball with the building inspections on his latest site. It was balanced on a knife’s edge with his only achievable contributions controlled by the whims of local telephone operators. Because he was trying to run a multimillion-dollar international business from a laptop and a three-room bungalow in the middle of nowhere.

For Ruby. So she could be in a familiar place. So she knew her world was solid and secure. Ruby, who, despite his best intentions, had been compromised.

When Ruby’s nanny had called to say she’d had a visitor he’d almost popped a gasket, believing the woman had blatantly gone out of her way to punish him for not bowing and scraping and rolling out the red carpet. When he’d calmed down he’d realised the only way she could possibly have found Ruby in such a short amount of time was by stumbling out of the forest in one great cosmic accident.

Either way, rather than putting himself as far from Meg Kelly as he could, he now had no choice but to be on her like a rash until the day she left.

So as far as he was concerned Meg Kelly could sit out in the hot summer sun all day, her knees knocked in chagrin, her ridiculous dress getting splattered with water spray, his dilapidated green hat sloping low over her face, leaving only her down-turned mouth in sight.

Except of course it had only given him enough time studying that mouth of hers to know it was all natural. And so was she. Her skin was as pale as it ought to have been with a smattering of freckles across her nose make-up couldn’t, and needn’t, hide. Her curves were as God gave her with apparently a little bit of help from occasional disco. The woman was pure, wholesome femininity and irrepressible audacity and ingenuous sex appeal.

He was beginning to wonder if she’d been sent to test him. After dedicating his entire adulthood to purely selfish pursuits, was he really man enough, strong enough, self-sacrificing enough to resist her? To put aside his needs for the needs of one girl?

When Ruby had landed on his doorstep, her small hand held tight in the hand of a weary-looking social worker, she was alone in the world, orphaned and in shock. She’d been on the verge of replaying his cold, lonely, disjointed past through her future. There was no way he could let that happen to her and look himself in the mirror ever again.

But had he been the right person to save her?

He let out a long, hard breath and realised that beneath the brim of his hat Meg was watching him. Those sharp blue eyes constantly calculating.

He should have known better than to believe what he’d heard about her in the press. Assuming she’d be a lightweight adversary had been a huge tactical error. It served him right that it had come back to bite him where he’d feel it most.

The ante had been upped. It was time he showed his cards.

He used the oar on the starboard side to head the boat back to civilisation. ‘So, Ms Kelly.’

‘Yes, Zach.’

‘What possessed you to trespass inside my private residence this morning?’

‘Your yard,’ she shot back as though the words had
been waiting to explode from inside her. ‘I never went any farther than the very,
very
edge of your yard. Once I knew it was yours I was out of there.’

‘I don’t give a flying fig if you were sitting on my rooftop. What the hell were you doing so far from the boundary of the resort that we now have to have this conversation?’

‘Please,’ she scoffed, her voice cool, her eyes electric. ‘It was an honest mistake. It’s not like there’s a ten-foot-high electric fence separating the two.’

‘There’s a rock wall and a whopping great big gate!’

‘A gate? Not today there wasn’t.’

Zach swore beneath his breath. That meant Ruby had been out again. What would it take to make the kid understand that it was for her own safety that she stay put and not gallivant about the resort? Hell, all he wanted was to keep her clear of those who would have her believe that because her childhood had not been perfect she was damaged from the start. He was fast running out of ideas.

The boat rocked beneath them as he pulled harder on the oars. Meg’s hands whipped out to the sides and held on tight.

‘For a woman who thinks lying on the couch listening to disco is a form of exercise, the hike to my place makes no sense.’

‘Fine,’ she said, throwing her arms in the air, rocking the boat so that he had to steady them with some fancy flicking of the oars. ‘I was casing the grounds in search of chocolate.’

‘Give me a break—’

She lifted her chin as though a haughty bearing could make the words seem less undignified. ‘I warned you. Caffeine is a staple in my diet. And I never expected to have to go cold turkey this week. So actually it was all your fault that I ended up there.’

His laughter again came from nowhere and again surprised the hell out of him. And a few local birds that screeched as they scattered from the treetops nearby.

Gorgeous, plainspoken and stimulating. Delilah herself couldn’t possibly have been more tempting.

Thankfully he’d long since proven himself invulnerable to the lure of apparently easy promise. He’d learnt early on not to trust the feeling as far as he could throw it. So long as the bright, breezy, easy warmth in this corner of the world hadn’t rotted away his indoctrinated dubiousness he’d be just fine.

‘Z
ACH
,’ Meg said, and by the tone in her voice Zach wasn’t sure he’d be keen on what came next.

‘Okay,’ she continued, ‘I was hoping to get around to the fact more gracefully, but since I have no idea how long you intend to keep me hostage out there let’s get to the point. You have a seven-year-old daughter named Ruby who, it seems, nobody knows anything about. There. Now it’s out there. So what do we do from here?’

Zach slapped an oar into the water at such a rough angle it covered them both in wet spray. ‘Don’t get cute, Ms Kelly.’

She waved a hand across her face as though swatting away a fly. ‘Stop being so formal. I’ve practically been in your house, I’m on first-name basis with your daughter, and you’ve seen me in this hat. Call me Meg.’

Through gritted teeth he said, ‘If you saw yourself in that hat you wouldn’t be half so concerned.’

She blinked up at him. Hell. So much for proving himself invulnerable. Now she was sitting there gawping at him as if he’d outright told her how lovely she was.

‘Okay then,
Meg
,’ he said, his voice coarse, ‘if formalities are now to be tossed aside, then I’ll be blunt.’

‘All this time you were being polite?’ Something in his expression must have made her catch her tongue. She mimed zipping her mouth shut. That mouth…

‘I want you to tell me in avid detail about every second you spent in my daughter’s company. And don’t miss a moment.’

She blinked at him. ‘Relax, Zach. We didn’t talk about sex, drugs or rock and roll if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Sex?
Drugs
? He ran a hard hand over the back of his neck, which suddenly felt as if it were on fire.

‘She’s seven, for Pete’s sake. The
High School Musical
soundtracks are as extreme as her rock and roll tastes go.’

She hooked a thumbnail between her teeth and looked up at him from beneath her thick dark lashes. His gut sank so fast he pressed his feet into the bottom of the boat. What wasn’t she telling him?

By age seven he’d already stolen his first pack of cigarettes, he’d kissed his first girl, he’d been hit so hard by one so-called parent he’d gone to school with a hand print bruised into the back of his thigh.

He’d known Ruby barely seven months. There was a fair chance he didn’t know his kid at all. His voice was unsteady as he said, ‘Ruby’s situation is…sensitive, therefore it’s imperative that I’m kept informed.’

‘Just informed? Not present? Not available? Not her first port of call?’

The riddles finally became too much and his frustration got the better of him. ‘Meg, I’m her father. If I don’t know everything I’m going to imagine the worst and then go quietly out of my mind.’

A smile spread across her face—a radiant thing that made the sun beaming down upon the lake pale into insignificance. ‘Well, now, that’s just about the best news I’ve heard all day.’

He shook his head, hoping for clarity. None came. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘The fact that you
want
to know is a good thing. A wonderful thing.’

She even reached out and patted his hand, as if he’d accidentally given her the password to a treasure he didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t the kind of touch he wanted from her.

‘Then hurry up and tell me.’

‘I’m not going to break her confidence that way. Come on.’

Zach glanced at the clouds above Meg’s head. Who in heaven had he screwed over to be made to live through this day?

‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘every girl needs her mysteries, especially from her father. It’s character building. So long as she knows you care enough to
want
to get to the bottom of them, to the bottom of her, then you have nothing to worry about.’

Nothing to worry about.

She couldn’t possibly have known that of all the four-word combinations that could placate his exasperation with her, that was it.

Still, time and again in his life, just when he’d begun to get comfortable, that was when fate pulled the rug out from under him. Foster families he’d felt as if he’d connected with had let him go. His knee had given way a week before the World Championships and he’d been forced into early retirement from competitive rowing. The momentum and success of his resorts had him finally living his life in such an easy groove, then along came Ruby.

He couldn’t accept things could be that simple. That certain. There always had to be a catch. What was he missing?

Aw, hell.

‘What did you tell your friends about her?’

‘Nothing!’

‘One thing I’ve learned from Ruby is that girls like to talk to their friends. A lot. About everything.’

‘We do. A lot. But here’s the thing—I have the feeling the reason you accosted me this morning was tied up with wanting to keep your private life
separate from your working life. And Ruby would naturally be a big part of that. Right?’

He didn’t say no.

‘If so, believe me, I’m not going to be the one to out her. She’s your only secret kid, I assume. Lone heiress to all this?’

Zach still didn’t say no.

Meg said, ‘Well, I know better than anyone what she’d have in store for her if the world found out. I wouldn’t bring it on any young girl.’

Crazy as it sounded, he believed her. ‘Thank you.’

‘My absolute pleasure.’ She smiled. That lush mouth. Those stunning blue eyes. He had a sudden need to know what they’d look like bathed in moonlight as she spilled apart in sheer pleasure in his arms.

He hooked the oars back into their loops and aimed for the resort, and every stroke felt as if he were pulling them through wet cement. ‘You seem perfectly comfortable in the limelight. Are you implying that’s all an act?’

‘Oh, no, did that just sound all woe is me? Please tell me it didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m blessed in, oh, so many ways. And I am perfectly at peace with the contradictions that came with being notable. But I wasn’t born twenty-nine and world wise. You haven’t heard the story of my glittering debut?’

Zach shook his head.

‘Well, here it is. I must have been three at the most. My father was giving a press conference to announce that he’d bought the George Street building in which the Kelly Investment Group was housed and was renaming the thing Kelly Tower. Mum had taken us all along to see him in action. All trussed up for the big occasion, my hair in ringlets, wearing my favourite navy velvet dress and black patent shoes, I got away from her. I made it to the podium mid-announcement, clambered up, tugged on my father’s trousers and whistled through the gap in my front teeth that I needed to tinkle. Needless to say my father wasn’t all that impressed at being upstaged, but the press ate it up. I haven’t been able to tinkle since without the world knowing about it.’

Her smile was cheeky, but as he seemed able to do with this woman from the outset he felt the undercurrent stronger than the surface words. On the outside it was a cute story about a girl and her dad. For her it was a story of innocence lost.

He pulled the oars harder through the water. ‘Just because a spotlight follows you doesn’t mean you have to perform for it.’

She raised both eyebrows in challenge. ‘You really believe that? Do you really want to know the God’s honest truth? Or are you pushing my buttons in an effort to continue to punish me for the whole Ruby thing?’

He felt a smile coming, but this time didn’t bother trying to put a stop to it. ‘Both.’

‘Fine.’ She took a breath. ‘The only reasons I am telling you any of this is recompense for Ruby. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Fame is a funny old thing. It’s not like I’ve done anything to deserve being remembered. I haven’t invented something, or cured anything or broken any world records. But my name has brand recognition, which gives me not only a certain power, but responsibility as well. Say the name Kelly and what do you think?’

Wealth. Charm. Beauty. But also excessive influence. Secrets. Lies. Scandal. Everything he wanted Ruby nowhere near.

She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘I had to figure out early on how to deal with all that baggage. I have no interest in running the company like Brendan. Or owning the city like Cameron. And the rush Dylan feels every time a new client is lured into the KInG net is a mystery to me. I wouldn’t even begin to know what drives King Quinn himself. But what I can offer with a splash of perfume, a flash of designer skirt and a dash of feminine glamour is a much-needed counterpoint to the excess of testosterone my family exudes. A way to use some of that power for the greater good. And, boy, am I good at it. So good I could sell tickets. But unless you know a guy with a good line
in wigs and fake noses it’s twenty-four hours, seven days a week, barely a holiday in sight.’

‘Why do it at all?’

She blinked, clearly thinking him obtuse. ‘For them. For each other.’

‘For your family?’That kind of self-sacrifice was something he was only just beginning to understand.

‘Jobs change. Friends come and go. Family is where you begin and where you end. My brothers may appear to be the kings of the jungle, but deep down they have the hearts of big kittens. They need me as much as I need them. And no matter what part we play all of us are working towards the same goal.’

‘The succecss of your father’s business.’

‘No. For our family to be happy. The business success is a side effect. I certainly don’t dance to my father’s tune, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Is that what I said?’

She frowned deeply. ‘It’s what you intimated, isn’t it? To be fair, I did once. Then a time came when I became a right little tearaway. The things I got up to would make your eyes water. Then I grew up. Took charge of my life. And decided making love and not war was the only way forward.’

‘Who knew the life of a society princess was lived on the front line?’

Her frown faded away, but her eyes remained locked on his, a tad wider than normal, as though
she couldn’t quite believe she was telling him all of this. ‘You can mock me all you like, but in offering a corner of myself to those who are interested, I am able to use my money, my influence and my time helping some of the less trendy, less telethon-appropriate organisations I believe need all the help they can get, which is extremely satisfying.’

‘I wasn’t mocking you. I—’

What?
Envy you your infamously close family?
Like hell he was going to tell her that.

Not knowing how to ask, he instead said, ‘Moving on.’

‘Excellent idea.’ She let out a deep breath and leant forward, just a touch, but enough that when her mouth curved into an all-new smile, a luscious, flirtatious, brain-numbing smile, he felt it like nothing else. If her life really was lived on a battleground, that mouth was as good a weapon as they came.

‘Am I off the hook?’ she asked.

He slowed his strokes, not quite ready to return to land. To real life. To the other side of the battle from her.

‘Just one last thing. Tell me how you got the chip in your tooth.’

She crossed her eyes as her tongue slid to the gap. His hands gripped the oars for dear life.

‘It’s so tiny. How did you even notice it?’

‘I happen to be an extremely perceptive man.’

Her eyes slid to his, warm, tempting, wondering
just how perceptive he might be. Unfortunately he was perceptive enough.

As she slid her tongue back into her mouth her teeth scraped slowly over her lips and her nostrils flared as she let out a slow, shaky breath. He knew he wasn’t the only one feeling the impossible zing between them. He also knew she was wishing with all her might that he hadn’t noticed a thing.

She tilted her chin up a fraction before shaking her hair off her shoulders in a move meant to distract him from the fact that for the first time since he’d met her she was no longer looking him in the eye. ‘How else would a party girl chip a tooth but on a glass of champagne? On the upside, it was truly excellent champagne.’

He laughed softly as he was meant to do. Her eyes flickered to his and her smile was grateful.

After a few long, loaded moments, Meg asked, ‘I just…I’d like to know one thing too. Did Ruby tell you I was there?’

He shook his head. ‘Her nanny.’

She nodded, then looked down at her paint-chipped fingernails with an all-new smile on her face. A secret smile. An honest smile. One reserved for Ruby.

And from nowhere Zach felt something the likes of which he’d never felt in his entire life—the most profound kind of pride that a woman such as her thought so highly of his little girl.

Meg’s tongue kept straying to the itty-bitty chip in her tooth.

What had she been thinking, fessing up to all that guff in some great unstoppable stream of consciousness? Nobody wanted to see the workings behind the wizard. It ruined the fantasy. It seemed all she needed was a man who looked her in the eye and asked about the real her, and it was fantasy be damned.

Thank goodness she’d been rational enough to pull back when she had. There were some parts of her life not for public consumption.

If she wanted to continue volunteering at the ‘less trendy, less telethon-appropriate’ Valley Women’s Shelter she had to keep it underground too. Every woman needed her mystery, and every public figure needed their sanctuary, even if it meant she had to truss herself up in a blonde wig, red liptick, brown contacts, and tight second-hand acid-wash jeans circa 1985.

If she was to remain Brisbane’s favourite daughter she had to pretend the part of her life in which she’d attempted to leave the spotlight had never happened. She felt lucky much of her memory of that time was a blur of flashing lights—from the nightclub, the police car, the hospital.

As to the way she had finally taken control of her life? If she planned on going through life with a spring in her step and a smile on her face she knew
it was best not to revisit the choices she’d made back then ever again.

It was done. It was for the best. Move on.

So Zach Jones—stubborn, pushy, scarily insightful Zach Jones; the guy who saw through her so easily that every time they met she had to chase him deeper into the darkest recesses of herself in order to drive him back out—could just take a step back.