Australia's Maverick Millionaire

Australia's Maverick Millionaire
Margaret Way

The heiress and the hell-raiser!Clio Templeton has loved Josh Hart since she was nine years old and he saved her cousin from drowning. She’s never forgotten how his cheek felt beneath her lips as she rewarded him with a kiss. Years later Josh’s cheek still burns with the memory.He has returned to the town that wrote him off as a bad seed – and the one woman who saw the bravery beneath his bravado. But the small town has a long memory and he can’t risk the darkness of his past extinguishing the shining light of its sweetheart…

Welcome to the intensely emotional world of

Margaret Way

where rugged, brooding bachelors meet their match in the burning heart of Australia …

Praise for the author

“Margaret Way delivers …

vividly written, dramatic stories.”

—RT Book Reviews

“With climactic scenes, dramatic imagery

and bold characters, Margaret Way makes the Outback come alive …”

—RT Book Reviews

“Your early life was hard, Josh. I could never know how hard. But these days as a highly successful businessman you’ve gained a reputation for honesty and integrity. You always were smarter than the rest of us,” she added drolly.

“You learn a lot of skills in juvenile detention,” he told her very bluntly.

“How to beat someone up?”

His blue eyes were like missiles programmed to make a direct hit. “Now, why aren’t I shocked? You’ve been reading up on my files, Clio.”

“No, no!” Rapidly she shook her head. Not that she hadn’t wanted to.

“So who was it? Your dad? Your father would love me to disappear overnight. Why is that, do you suppose?” he asked, knowing full well the answer.

“He thinks there’s a worrying connection between the two of us. A bond that was forged years ago.”

“Wasn’t it?” he asked, without missing a beat. “I was your hero for a day.”

She waited for a moment, not even certain what to say. From that day on Josh Hart had found a place in her heart and mind. “What I thought of you hasn’t changed, Josh. You cover up what you feel. I cover up what I feel. It’s safer that way.”

“For whom, exactly?” he asked flatly. “Your family? The entire community? I’m still the bad boy in town. That won’t change.”

About the Author

MARGARET WAY, a definite Leo, was born and raised in the subtropical River City of Brisbane, capital of the Sunshine State of Queensland. A Conservatorium-trained pianist, teacher, accompanist and vocal coach, she found her musical career came to an unexpected end when she took up writing—initially as a fun thing to do. She currently lives in a harbourside apartment at beautiful Raby Bay, a thirty-minute drive from the state capital, where she loves dining alfresco on her plant-filled balcony, overlooking a translucent green marina filled with all manner of pleasure craft: from motor cruisers costing millions of dollars, and big, graceful yachts with carved masts standing tall against the cloudless blue sky, to little bay runabouts. No one and nothing is in a mad rush, and she finds the laid-back village atmosphere very conducive to her writing. With well over one hundred books to her credit, she still believes her best is yet to come.

Australia’s

Maverick

Millionaire

Margaret Way

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

PROLOGUE

Now

CLIO was having the dream that had haunted her for years. One half of her was held prisoner by it; the other half was struggling to break free. Eventually she awoke in a sweat, her legs bound by the tangle of bedclothes. She kicked the top sheet away, rolled onto her back, trying to ease her breathing. Her heart was beating so hard and fast it was making her ears pound. Fourteen years since her little cousin Ella, strapped into her stroller, had plunged headlong into Paradise Lagoon but it might have been yesterday her memories were so vivid. Everyone had back alleys in their subconscious: hers had stored away the near tragedy, so it could rerun it at frequent intervals. Sometimes she thought her memories would never recede into shadow—the breathless terror of that day, the sheer disbelief that such a thing could happen, most of all the paralysing panic. Aunt Lisa, now mother of three bright and beautiful teenagers, including Ella, of course, still had her dark moments of recrimination and guilt. She often said she would never forgive herself for her momentary lapse when she’d forgotten to apply the brake to baby Ella’s stroller.

It would have been a life-shattering disaster if it hadn’t been for Josh Hart, the bad boy of the town, who paradoxically had looked like a golden-haired archangel. Josh Hart had a tragic history that had caused many compassionate souls to turn a blind eye to his many misdemeanours, which had been pretty well a daily occurrence. His mother from all accounts had died of a drug overdose when he was five. His father’s identity was unknown.

Joshua had been taken into care, eventually becoming a foster-child who had been shunted from one home to another, arriving in the town less than a year before the Ella incident to live with a distant relative of his mother’s, a kindly widow of sixty who’d had little chance of controlling him and had eventually given up. Josh had run wild for much of the time; shoplifting anything that took his eye, flouting authority at every turn, taking joy rides in fancy cars—there wasn’t a thing he didn’t seem to know about motors or locks—yet amazingly had never damaged let alone crashed said cars. Once he’d taken a high-powered speedboat from the marina in Moon Bay, returning it after a thirty-minute spin. In between times he’d managed a couple of days a week at school, smarter than all the rest of the kids put together. Only if there were defining moments in life when one showed what one was really made of, Josh Hart at age thirteen had shown it that day. Displaying remarkable bravery, he had saved Ella’s life without a single thought for his own safety.

Even then he had thrilled and frightened Clio.

Nothing had changed.

He still thrilled and frightened her. Only these days he was an admired and respected entrepreneur with a law degree, first-class honours, hanging on his office wall, courtesy of her own grandfather who had made it all possible.

Then

The day had begun brilliantly. It had been the start of the long Christmas vacation and the tropical North had been on the verge of the Wet. Troppo time, as it was known, but the arrival of the monsoon had also coincided with a prodigal paradise. Nature had shown itself at its most glorious and extravagant best. The vast tropical landscape had budded, swelled then burst into flamboyant flower accompanied by scents so sweet and aromatic they had filled the immediate world. The great crimson arches of the poincianas had lent welcome shade while colouring the air. The tulip trees had broken out their lovely orange cups, and the cassias had spilled yellow blossom in a wide circle beneath them. It was like being caught in a spell.

It was Aunt Lisa who decided they would go on a picnic. “What do you think, Paradise Lagoon?”

Where else?

Aunt Lisa had chosen the town’s most beautiful cool haven, a lush, park-like reserve dominated by a deep emerald lake with its gorgeous mantle of a thousand tropical waterlilies, all blue and all planted by her family, recognized experts on waterlilies and all manner of tropical plants. There was the Whitaker with its gigantic lavender blue blossoms and bright yellow stamens; the Trickett, a Campanula blue and her dead grandmother’s favourite; the star-shaped Astraea that held its lovely head so high above the water the flowers could be seen from quite a distance. Even the low stone wall topped by tall wrought-iron railings was a living glory with bridal white bougainvillea in foaming extravagance vying with the lagoon’s glorious lilies.

They set off happily in Aunt Lisa’s car, feeling not a shadow of concern, when one of the town’s characters, named Snowy, and quite a drinker, claimed to have spotted a “saltie” at the far end of the lagoon a few weeks back.

“Watch out for that fella now,” Snowy had warned in the pub, brandishing his schooner aloft. “Plenty big enough. Round six metres, I reckon.”

That had raised a few laughs. Most people thought what Snowy had seen was a thick forward floating log, although his claim was checked out as a matter of course. This was crocodile country after all. Anywhere north of the Tropic of Capricorn was.

People lived with their crocodiles. The trick was never to venture into a crocodile’s territory. Australia’s salt-water crocodile was one of the largest reptiles in the world. Crocs would take anything that strayed too near the water—humans, cattle, even big buffaloes, horses, dogs; anything in the water, turtles being a delicacy. Only a crocodile had never been sighted in Paradise Lagoon for more than a decade. Back then a young Japanese tourist who’d had far too much to drink had decided on a midnight swim despite the warning signs in several languages, including Japanese, and his equally intoxicated mate shouting at him not to be a fool. The mate had got it right. A crocodile had been lying in wait for just such a heaven-sent opportunity. It had snaffled up the hapless young man, subjecting him to the death roll before stashing him away at the bottom of the lagoon until such time as it was ready to feast.

That tragic event had horrified the town. The crocodile, although a protected species, had been shot dead and the lagoon trawled in case it had had a mate. No mate had been found. The town breathed a huge collective sigh of relief. Everyone knew the Wet was breeding time. The female crocodile, much smaller than the male, laid her eggs, some 40 to 60, along the banks of rivers, billabongs and lagoons. No human or animal had been taken in the intervening years and no nests spotted anywhere amid the density of the aquatic reeds and grasses. Still, there was perpetual vigilance. Crocs had been known to come with surprising speed across land in search of more congenial lagoons.

The town loved its parkland but no one swam in the lagoon. That was strictly forbidden. No local was that much of a fool anyway. Most people had swimming pools. Paradise Lagoon was a favourite picnicking spot. There was a special playground for the little ones and excellent barbeque areas with dining rotundas adjacent for family occasions. Bicycle paths. Walking paths. Children under the age of twelve who entered the parkland had to be under the supervision of an adult, though the danger of going near the water was drummed into children as toddlers. Even little kids heeded the message. Crocodiles were not friendly. Crocodiles ate people.

Not a problem for them. They were with Aunt Lisa. So there was Lisa, baby Ella, herself and her best friend, Tulip, both of them nine years old, in the same class at school. Up until that day she had enjoyed an idyllic childhood, the privileged and adored only child of Lyle and Allegra Templeton. The Templetons were the richest family in the entire North. Her grandfather, Leo Templeton, had as a young man inherited a pastoral fortune worth millions. Leo’s father and his father before him had built up the Templeton fortune with sheep and cattle; Leo Templeton had taken it to new heights as a result of his own Midas touch and clever diversification. The family now controlled multiple enterprises, all of them highly successful. Her parents were the town’s most popular young couple. She, as her grandfather always claimed, was the jewel in the Templeton crown.

“Not a girl alive who can touch you!”