The Outback Bridal Rescue

The situation demanded she be reasonable.

He paused at the office door, took a deep, calming breath, gave a courtesy knock to warn of his imminent entry, allowed Megan a few seconds to get her mind into appropriate gear, then moved in with every intention of being at his diplomatic best.

But he wasn’t prepared for the scene Megan had set and his sense of rightness was instantly jolted. She was sitting in Patrick’s chair, taking Patrick’s place before he was even buried. It was too soon. It was…

Johnny checked himself, took stock of the woman he had to deal with.

The defiance in her eyes could mean she was making a statement by taking her father’s chair—a statement of empowerment that she might feel a need for in this situation. And being seated there put the desk between them, a decisive distance that possibly suggested she was feeling vulnerable about having to deal with him.

They were the kindest thoughts Johnny could come up with.

‘Megan,’ he acknowledged softly, nodding for her to take the lead in this meeting.

‘It was good of you to come, Johnny…’

Which was a pleasant enough greeting until she added, ‘…being in the middle of shooting your first movie.’

Kind thoughts flew out the window. He eyeballed her in furious challenge, every muscle in his body taut with aggression at this belittling of his feelings for her father. Patrick had been the most important person in his life and Megan could not be ignorant of how very much their relationship had meant to him.

Not one word passed his lips, but the force of his anger obviously got through to her. A tide of heat burned up her neck and scorched her cheeks, lighting up the freckles that added a cuteness to her pert little nose. Except Johnny wasn’t thinking cute right now. He was thinking little. No way was she big enough to take over from her father, not in any sense.

She gestured to the chairs at the chess table, her gaze shifting from his. ‘Please take a seat.’ The words were husky, as though she was pushing them through a very tight throat.

Satisfied that he’d wrung some shame from her, Johnny stepped over to the chess table to move Mitch’s chair—not Patrick’s—into a face-to-face position with Megan. The fallen black king caught his eye. What was this? The king is dead…long live the queen?

Johnny pulled himself up again. Mitch might have laid the chess piece down—a symbol of Patrick resting in peace. Leaping to hasty and possibly false conclusions was not conducive to a fair meeting. He rolled the chair out from the table and closer to the desk, then sat down, telling himself to watch and listen, refrain from stirring any more hostility in Megan’s mind. Though what he’d ever done to earn it was a total mystery to him.

He stared at her, waiting for her to start. The scarlet heat had receded from her face, leaving her skin pale and the freckles more prominent. She wore no make-up, hadn’t done for years, though he remembered her experimenting with it in her teens. She’d been a happier person then, enjoying his company. They’d had fun together, laughing easily, chatting easily. Then she’d gone away to some agricultural college and something had changed her.

She could have been quite strikingly beautiful if she’d put her mind to it…good bones, big expressive eyes that could twinkle like silver or brood like storm clouds, a full-lipped mouth when it wasn’t thinned with disapproval of him, and a glorious mane of red curls, currently pulled back into some tight clip at the back of her neck. A lovely long neck it was, too.

Apparently she didn’t care how she looked. Being a woman was not her thing. When had she last worn a dress? A checked shirt and jeans was her usual garb, as it was today. Maybe she wanted to look like a man in them but she didn’t.

As much as she might try to minimise her femininity, her figure was too curvaceous for anyone to mistake her for a male. In fact, her antagonism towards him over the past few years had made him acutely aware of her as a woman, especially when she turned her back on him, her taut cheeky bottom wagging her disdain of what he stood for in her eyes, stirring feelings in him that were entirely inappropriate, given she was Patrick’s daughter.

Did she resent having been a daughter instead of a son?

Was that why she looked so sourly on him…because he had a similar physique to her father?

Johnny hadn’t meant to speak first, yet the question that rose in his mind seemed imperative, at the very core of the situation that had to be settled between them. The words tumbled out, seeking the answer that might make sense of Megan Maguire’s attitude towards him.

‘What happened to the girl who used to like me?’

I grew up.

Megan wasn’t about to give that answer, nor explain the milestones that had marked her passage to where she was now. She looked at Johnny Ellis, knowing he was thirty-eight, yet the years sat so easily on him, she could still see the sixteen-year-old boy who’d made up songs for her when she was just a little kid—songs that had generated dreams that were never going to come true for her.

The monumental crush she’d had on him in her teens had finally bitten the dust when he hadn’t come home for her twenty-first birthday. She’d planned for him to see her as a woman, but her coming of age had obviously meant nothing to him. He’d stayed in the U.S., busy with his career, and no doubt involved with the kind of woman who shared his limelight. She was just Patrick Maguire’s youngest daughter, someone he was nice to when it suited him to visit Gundamurra.

Facile charm.

Meaningless.

It was her father who’d drawn him back to Gundamurra…her father who had given him almost half of it in his will, trapping her into this ridiculous and frustrating partnership with a man whose life was aimed at adding more stars to his celebrity status.

‘Do you need everyone to like you, Johnny?’ she lightly taunted, hoping he’d hightail it back to Hollywood where everybody probably fawned on him.

He shrugged, his eyes holding hers in challenge. ‘Usually I know why not. Where you’re concerned, I’m at a total loss, Megan. What have I done to you to warrant your dislike? Best spit it out now before we get into business together.’

‘What reason could I have for disliking you, Johnny?’ she countered. ‘You’ve always been charming to me.’ Which was absolutely true. ‘As for doing business together,’ she quickly ran on, ‘I don’t imagine you’ll want to take an active part in running Gundamurra. You do have a movie to finish and probably many more in your pipeline.’

‘No. Just the one. Which I’m committed to by contract,’ he stated drily. ‘Undoubtedly, people will wait to see how well I perform on screen before other offers come in.’

‘Oh, I’m sure with your star quality—’

‘Let’s not speculate on a hypothetical future, Megan,’ he cut in. ‘We’re here to discuss the far more immediate future of Gundamurra, are we not?’ He cocked a challenging eyebrow at her. ‘Can we be honest about that?’

She felt herself burning again. She’d thought a bit of flattery—pandering to the ego that stars of his magnitude had to have—would set the scene she wanted to play through with him. But his eyes were seeing straight through that ploy, mocking her attempt to manipulate what she saw as his push to be loved by more and more fans through the movies he could make.

‘You need not be concerned about the running of Gundamurra, Johnny. I’ll be doing that,’ she stated with grim determination.

‘I don’t doubt you’re capable of it, Megan, given enough resources to ride through the drought. That’s where I come in.’

The lack of resources…there was no denying that, though there’d been no mismanagement. Her father had taken out the first big loan from the bank to finance Emily’s helicopter business, before the drought started biting deep. Then to keep the sheep alive, keep paying wages, more loans…and wool prices had dropped. The mortgage now was so big, Megan didn’t know how she could service it with no relief from the drought in sight. Even if it rained tomorrow, she’d need recovery time.

A rescue package had to be accepted from Johnny Ellis if she was to keep Gundamurra. Except it wasn’t entirely hers to keep. It was his, too. And she still didn’t know how he wanted to work their partnership. He’d just denied her any sense of security about him going away and staying away.

‘We need an injection of funds,’ she admitted flatly.

He nodded. ‘I’ll wipe out the mortgage today, get the bank off your back.’

Just like that! Megan instantly bridled at how easy it was for him while she had sweated over every dollar being spent. ‘No, you won’t!’ The denial exploded from a deep well of pride.

He frowned. ‘I have the funds, Megan.’

‘I don’t want to owe you fifty-one percent of the mortgage.’ She glared defiantly at him. ‘If you pay off forty-nine percent of it, I can get another loan from the bank which could see me through…’

‘Why put yourself through that worry when you don’t have to?’ he argued, waving an impatient dismissal of her counterproposal.

‘Because I won’t take your charity,’ she shot back at him.

‘Charity?’

He rose from his chair, glaring down at her from his formidable height, a big man, as big as her father had been, emanating a power that wanted to blast her point of view to smithereens. He raised a clenched fist, shaking it as he spoke with more passion than she’d ever heard from Johnny Charm.

‘I owe my life to this place. I don’t want to see it go under. I didn’t like seeing it struggle to survive. I offered your father…’

He closed his mouth into a tightly compressed line, shutting down on the vehement flow of emotion.