The Millionaire's Marriage Claim

His eyes narrowed. ‘I wondered when that would sink in,’ he murmured.

‘So you got some? How? Did you get up to the house?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s a machinery shed not that far away.’

She turned back to the stew. ‘So we’re…we can…go?’

‘No. There’s a creek up and running between us and the gate we wouldn’t get through even in a four-wheel drive at the moment.’

Jo served up breakfast. She handed him a knife and fork, then sat in the armchair with her plate balanced on her knees and chose her next words with care.

‘There are some things I don’t understand. Were you completely alone on the station when they kidnapped you?’

‘No, I wasn’t. The head stockman was—immobilized before they came after me.’

‘Not killed?’ Her eyes were dark with shock.

‘No. But captured and tied up and removed heaven alone knows where.’ He started to eat with evident hunger.

‘And there was no family, no one else?’ she asked with a frown.

‘Jo—’ he paused with his fork poised and glinted her an assessing look ‘—whoever they are, they’d done their homework. It’s a long weekend, it happens to be the district’s annual rodeo with all its attendant parties, B and S balls and the like. A lot of people are away from home, in other words. It so happens I was supposed to be away from home but I changed my mind at the last minute.’

‘Is that why your mother isn’t home?’ she asked perplexedly.

This time he waved his fork. ‘My mother took off for Brisbane two days ago. Some show she’d forgotten she had tickets for. I can only be grateful she wasn’t there and neither, particularly, was Rosie.’ Suddenly, his blue gaze seemed to drill right through her.

Jo blinked. ‘She mentioned a Rosie several times when we spoke on the phone—a child, I gathered, but I couldn’t work out whose.’

He stared at her for another long moment, then finished his breakfast and put his knife and fork together. ‘Mine.’

Jo digested this with several blinks. ‘Well, what about your wife?’ she ventured.

‘She died in childbirth.’ He pushed his plate away and there was something completely dark and shuttered in his expression. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’

‘Of course,’ Jo murmured and got up to attend to it. ‘Would…’ she hesitated ‘…would I be right in assuming your mother is a tad absent-minded?’

He looked heavenwards. ‘My mother, God bless her, has developed a memory like a sieve lately.’

‘Well—’ Jo put a mug of coffee in front of him ‘—that explains it!’

‘You mean it explains why she forgot you were due to descend on Kin Can?’

‘Yes!’ Jo put her hands on her hips.

‘Doesn’t explain why she never once mentioned anything about getting her portrait painted—drawn, whatever—to me.’

Jo subsided. ‘Perhaps she meant to surprise you?’

‘So how do you think she was going to explain you, in the flesh, away?’

‘I don’t know—she’s your mother!’

‘For my sins—yet again,’ he said dryly, and got up. ‘I don’t suppose you have any men’s clothing in your bag of tricks?’ he added moodily and hitched the blanket around him again.

Jo merely stared at him steadily.

‘Once again, if looks could kill I’d be six feet under. OK, Miss Lucas, assuming you are lily-white, above board and all the rest, do you have any suggestions?’

Jo resisted the urge to give vent to her feelings—she posed a question instead. ‘How many are there?’

‘Two. They wore balaclavas so I have no idea who they are.’

‘How did you escape?’

He sat down on the corner of the table. ‘Checking up on me, Jo?’

‘I do only have your word for it.’

He mulled over this for a moment, then grimaced. ‘They trussed me up like a chicken and locked me overnight in a windowless storeroom. What they didn’t know was that under the lino there was a trapdoor—the house is on stilts about two feet above the ground, handy in times of flood. I got away through it.’

‘How? If you were trussed up like a chicken?’

He rubbed his wrists and Jo noticed, for the first time, almost red-raw, chafing marks on the inside of each wrist. ‘I found a pair of old scissors and managed to saw through the rope with them. Not that easy since my hands were tied against my back.’

‘No,’ she agreed with a tinge of awe, which she immediately tried to mask by adding, ‘Why didn’t they take you away instead of storing you in the house for a whole night?’

He glanced at her. ‘Well, you see, Josie, I wasn’t their target.’

She stared at him blankly.

‘No,’ he said meditatively and rubbed his chin. ‘It was Rosie they’d planned to snatch, my six-year-old daughter—a much softer target.’

Jo’s mouth fell open.

‘As you say.’

‘But…are you sure?’

‘I’m quite sure. I heard all the discussion, all the recriminations going on throughout the night, all the new plans being made. They decided since they’d got me they’d take me in her place, but that’s why they called for some back-up.’

‘Thank heavens for your mother’s bad memory,’ Jo said a little shakenly.

‘All the same, not only do I have to get myself off Kin Can, I have to prevent my mother and Rosie waltzing back into their arms. They cut all the phone lines, you see.’

‘Won’t that make people—your mother—suspicious?’

‘Not necessarily. The system can have its problems out here and it is rodeo weekend.’