Date with a Single Dad: Millionaire Dad's SOS / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle / Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed

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.

CHAPTER FOUR

MEG 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 condensation-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.