The Australian's Society Bride

The Australian's Society Bride
Margaret Way

Dynasty and Diamonds… Parties at the luxurious Blanchard estate draw the cream of society. Dressed to impress, glamorous women swathed in diamonds and designer outfits make a beeline for Boyd Blanchard, heir to the family business – and the most eligible bachelor in Australia.Leona has known Boyd since she was a child, and he still has the power to turn her emotions inside out. But he is so out of her league that she carefully hides behind a wall of cool indifference.Until the kiss that sets society’s tongues wagging and gives Boyd the means he’s been waiting for to make the stubborn, sensual redhead his – for now and for ever…

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.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“With climactic scenes, dramatic imagery and bold characters, Margaret Way makes the Outback come alive…” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

‘Tell me what’s the matter.’ Urgently he searched her face.

Boyd reached down to take hold of her hand, and as he did so it went nerveless, and the earrings rolled out of her grasp.

‘What the hell is going on here? Why didn’t your brother have the guts to come to me and confess he’d taken the diamonds?’ he demanded.

‘Robbie had nothing to do with it.’

‘Oh, stop it!’ Boyd said, as though he’d totally run out of patience. How formidable he looked. How handsome! He had taken off his jacket but he was still in his evening clothes, the collar of his white shirt undone, his black dress tie hanging loose.

‘Someone’s coming!’ Leona gave a terrified gasp. She looked towards the entrance hall.

Boyd didn’t reply. He grabbed her, hauling her back against the green and gold curtains. ‘Kiss me,’ he ordered bluntly. ‘Kiss me and make it good!

Margaret Way, a definite Leo, was born and raised in the subtropical River City of Brisbane, capital of the Sunshine State of Queensland. A Conservatoriumtrained 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 al fresco 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, so she finds the laid-back village atmosphere very conducive to her writing. With well over 100 books to her credit, she still believes her best is yet to come.

Recent books by the same author:

BRIDE AT BRIAR’S RIDGE *

WEDDING AT WANGAREE VALLEY *

CATTLE RANCHER, SECRET SON PROMOTED: NANNY TO WIFE **

CATTLE RANCHER, CONVENIENT WIFE **

* Barons of the Outback duet

** Outback Marriages duet

THE AUSTRALIAN’S SOCIETY BRIDE

BY

MARGARET WAY

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

CHAPTER ONE

“LEO, YOU KNOW they don’t want me, but they feel obliged to ask me,” Robbie, her stepbrother said. As usual, he was making himself comfortable, lolling back on her brand-new sofa, dark head on a cushion, his long legs slung languidly over the other end.

This was a familiar theme between them, causing Leona, always the peacemaker, to answer automatically, “You know that’s not true.” Sadly, it was true. “You’re good company, Robbie. You’re an asset to any house party. Besides, you’re on Boyd’s polo team, which counts for a lot, and you’re a darn good tennis player—my best doubles partner. We can and do beat the rest of them.” The rest of them being the close-knit Blanchard clan, many of whom would be attending the weekend house party.

“Except Boyd,” Robbie chipped in. “Now, Boyd is a man to marvel over—a business dynamo, IQ off the charts, superb athlete, a serious heartthrob with the women. What more could a man hope for? They could have cast him as the new James Bond.”

“Forget Boyd,” said Leona. “I rather like the new guy.” As always, she was masking the deep feelings she had for Boyd—feelings she thought she would never get past—as she chucked a cushion at Robbie. “Though I will concede they don’t come any more perfect than Boyd.” This was said very dryly.

Robbie laughed, deftly fielding the silk cushion and depositing it on the floor. “Sure you don’t actually love him?” He lifted his head to flash her a bright challenging look. Robbie was teeming with intuition and he frequently caught her out.

“Now, that would be a turn-up, wouldn’t it?” she answered, hoping her white skin wasn’t showing tell-tale bright flags of colour. “He is my second cousin.”

“Well, not strictly speaking. You’d have to give or take a few ‘steps’,” Robbie reminded her. “There’ve been so many deaths, divorces and remarriages in the Blanchard family.”

That was certainly true. Triumph and tragedy aplenty. She and Boyd, for instance, had both lost their mothers. She when she was eight. His beautiful mother, Alexa, had become Leona’s honorary aunt after that until she’d died when Boyd was in his mid-twenties. Boyd’s father, Rupert, Chairman of Blanchards, had remarried two years later, not to a nice sensible woman somewhere near his own age, as the family had dared to hope, but to a flamboyant divorcee, the daughter of one of Rupert’s old cronies who sat on the Board of Blanchards. She was just a handful of years older than Rupert’s only son and heir, Boyd.

The family had been reduced to a state of shock at the speed of the new alliance. Robbie privately referred to the newcomer as the Bride of Frankenstein. And he wasn’t the only one in the family to gloat. Most expected the marriage would end in a ferocious court battle and a huge settlement. All had the great good sense to keep their opinions to themselves, except Geraldine, Rupert’s older unmarried sister who didn’t hesitate to speak her mind, as befitted her position. Despite that, Rupert had married his Jinty—short for Virginia—regardless. Rupert Blanchard was a law unto himself. And so, as it had transpired, was Jinty.

“Anyway, we’re not talking about Boyd, we’re talking about you,” Leona picked up the conversation. “Why you keep writing yourself off, I don’t know.”

“Ah, but you do know, Leo.” Robbie sighed. “Low self-esteem.” The unhappy, rebellious six-year-old he had been when Leona had first laid eyes on him fourteen years before glittered out of his dark eyes. “The problem is, I don’t know who I am. Carlo didn’t want any part of me. Didn’t even bother to toss a coin for me. ‘Heads me, tails your mother’. Your dad, my stepfather, is a good man, a gentleman of the old school, but he still doesn’t know what to make of me. Just hopes things don’t get any worse. Mother dearest has never loved me. No need to ask why. I don’t make her proud and I don’t look a scrap like her. I keep reminding her of Carlo and their failed marriage. To top it off, I’m not a Blanchard, am I, all these years later?” Robbie’s intense young face took on a bitter cast. “I’m the misfit in your midst, the emotionally neglected adopted son.”

In a way he was absolutely spot on, but Leona didn’t hold back on the groans. “Please, Robbie, not again!” She allowed her still coltish frame to collapse into an armchair opposite him, feeling weighed down by her constant anxiety for him and his well-being. “Do you really have to sprawl all over my new sofa?” she asked, not really minding. As usual Robbie was immaculate, very sharply groomed and dressed. Nothing scruffy about Robbie, not that it would have been tolerated. Robbie, for all his moans, well knew on which side his bread was buttered.

“How can I not?” he responded, not moving an inch. “It’s so darn comfortable. You have superb taste, Leo. You’re a super girl altogether. Best of all, you’re as tender-hearted as you’re beautiful. Lord knows how I would have made it in this family without you—my big sister, my most trusted confidante and supporter. You’re the only one who doesn’t think I’ll turn out a rogue like Carlo.”

“No, no!” she automatically denied.

“Yes, yes!” said Robbie. “They’re all just waiting for me to prove it. Probably the best thing I could do, so far as the family is concerned, is fall under a bus.”

And he didn’t have it all that wrong, Leona thought dismally. For that reason, she couldn’t let the opportunity go past. “You might consider your gambling is a worry, Robbie. You have to get a grip on that.” She couldn’t bring herself to throw in drugs again. Not so soon after their last confrontation. Robbie ran with a fast, moneyed, mostly mindless young crowd, hell-bent on pleasure, or what they considered pleasure, which didn’t include work. She knew for a fact he dabbled with pot, like so many of his peers. She was fairly certain it hadn’t gone any further than that. Not yet anyway. Like her, Robbie carried the burden of the Blanchard name, which meant pressure as well as prestige, power, mega-wealth. But, unlike her, Robbie wasn’t the most stable of people.

The only person he seemed to be able to commit to was her, his “big sister.” They hadn’t used the “step” for years and years. Robbie just referred to her as his sister, as she called him her brother. It didn’t seem to matter that there was no bond in blood. Her father had legally adopted Robbie directly after he’d married Robbie’s mother, Delia. Newcomers who didn’t know Leona and Robbie’s background always commented with perplexed frowns, “But you’re not a bit alike.” Maybe the fact that Robbie—christened Roberto Giancarlo D’Angelo—strongly resembled his Italian father while she was a porcelain-skinned redhead had something to do with it.

“Pure art nouveau,” Boyd had long since labelled her looks, consigning her to the romantic, overly sentimental Pre-Raphaelite lot—the willowy springtime woodland nymph with her loosely pinned mane of red-gold hair, flowing floral diaphanous dress, away with the fairies. Not his usual cup of tea—slick, elegant, the perfect brunette, all long legs and womanly curves, whereas she had as many curves as her ironing-board.

Don’t think of Boyd.

It was excellent advice. She’d do well to follow it. Even being around him was dangerous enough.

Robbie’s voice brought her out of her discomfiting thoughts. “I promise you I will, Leo. Have there been more whisperings about me in the family? ‘What else is Robbie doing’?” he mimicked a female family voice.

There had been plenty of those, she thought. Shocked horror from the older generation. Delia, his mother, reduced to fat crocodile tears over her son’s misconduct. “Remember there’s Boyd to consider. Nothing gets past him, Robbie. He has eyes and ears everywhere.”