The Nanny and the Millionaire: Promoted: Nanny to Wife / The Italian Tycoon and the Nanny / The Millionaire's Nanny Arrangement

There was that Ma again. Despite Marissa’s efforts to get Riley to call her by her full first name, he stuck consistently to Ma. She knew what it was all about. Riley had been desperate to find a mother figure. She was it. The Ma stood for Mum. From the reaction in the bush towns they had already passed through she knew people immediately jumped to the conclusion she was indeed Riley’s mother; another teenage pregnancy, another single mother probably on the run. A few times she had introduced Riley as her little brother but it was plain no one believed her.

Riley, of course, did nothing to help. If people wanted to believe Marissa was his mother, he was thrilled with that. She was everything he wanted a mum to be, as he had so poignantly told her. So that made her around fifteen at the time of conception, and around sixteen when she supposedly had given birth to him? In the normal course of events sisters or half sisters rarely took on the single-handed rearing of their siblings.

Going down on her haunches, Marissa spread the map out on the parched ground covered in heaps of bronze leaves. She couldn’t put it on the bonnet of the ute. The metal was hot enough to fry eggs. ‘Ah, here we are,’ she said, trying to sound the seasoned Outback navigator when navigating was way down her list of skills. At least she had made sure they carried plenty of water and supplies. ‘By the look of it Wungalla is a cattle station. A big one!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s about 150 kilometres northwest of the town of Ransom.’

‘Why do you suppose they called it that?’ Riley asked, half turning his head to keep Dusty in sight. ‘Doesn’t ransom mean money you have to pay a bad person to let their captive go?’

‘Amazing! Is there any word you don’t know?’ Marissa smiled up at him, feeling a rush of love and pride. Initially devastated by the fact she had a sibling she had never known existed, Riley was a huge plus in her life. She had never received much affection from Aunt Allison or her cousin Lucy. Riley had been ready to shower her with love from Day One. Come to that, their bonding was instant. Such was the power of blood.

Riley gave a guffaw that turned into a muffled sob, then a covering cough. ‘Daddy used to teach me lots of things.’

Daddy! Michael Devlin, one time brilliant corporate lawyer, deceased alcoholic who had ended his days in an Outback mission shelter.

Riley’s daddy, her father! How she had adored him. Pretty much like Riley who nearly eighteen months after their father’s death, still cried for him at night, trying to stifle his heart-wrenching sobs with a pillow pulled over his face. She cried, too, but the tears fell silently down the walls of her heart. She thought she had cried herself out years ago, but she had soon learned tears were eternal.

Motherless Riley, was a ‘thinking’ boy, a highly intelligent little fellow who had physically clung to her like a drowning child would cling to a life line from the very moment he had set eyes on her walking down the corridor of a one room bush school in the North Queensland hinterland. Marissa was family. He had recognised her without a single identifying word being spoken. Both of them looked like their father; the black Irish, blue-black hair, vivid blue eyes, and, in his children’s case, skin like porcelain. Riley’s likely fate at that time would have been to be taken into care.

Twenty-one years of age and she had found herself surrendering to her sense of duty and the memory of the great love she had borne her father before tragedy had come into their lives, ripping them apart. Though she had known at the time what hardship could lie ahead she had consented to taking on the raising of a child, another woman’s child, who had abandoned Riley and her much older partner, their father, when Riley was barely four. All efforts to find Riley’s mother after Michael Devlin’s death had ended in failure. It was as though the young woman, said to have Polynesian blood in her, had vanished off the face of the earth, leaving Riley an orphan. An orphan that is until Marissa had come into his life, never knowing, or even suspecting her father, a strikingly handsome man, had formed a relationship with a young woman he had met on his wanderings and had had a child with her.

Tragedy had shattered Michael Devlin’s life, a life he had considered perfect and set him on his downward spiral; one from which he could never find the strength to pull out.

‘Suicide! That’s what it was!’ Uncle Bryan, her father’s brother had cried in great distress when finally they got the letter from the head of the bush mission, a Pastor McCauley, informing them of Michael’s death and the existence of Michael’s small son then in Pastor McCauley’s and Mrs McCauley’s care.

‘Gutless!’ Bryan’s wife, Allison, had added in her cruel judgemental way. Aunt Ally had no difficulty finding fault in others, but never in herself. ‘Michael had everything going for him, and he threw it all away! That child isn’t coming here, Bryan. I’m telling you that now. We took pity on Marissa and raised her. Don’t imagine for one minute I’m going to take on another one of Michael’s children. He should never have shacked up with that woman let alone made her pregnant. If they can’t find the mother, the boy will have to go into care.’

Aunt Ally didn’t understand grief. She didn’t know much about the human condition. She had never fully understood how much her father had loved her mother. How much his life’s happiness was invested in her. Then again Ally had always been jealous of the beautiful Maureen, Marissa’s mother.

Yet it was Uncle Bryan and Aunt Ally who had raised her after her father had taken to the road. Before doing so Michael Devlin had set up a substantial trust fund to take care of all her expenses and see her through University, but Aunt Ally always omitted to mention that fact as though ‘the raising’ had involved a huge financial burden on them. It hadn’t. Her father had seen to that part of his duty before he took off.

Michael Devlin had been a man full of guilt and despair. He had lost his adored young wife in a car crash with him at the wheel. That made him in his own mind a murderer. Miraculously he had emerged with fairly minor injuries. Maureen had not been so lucky. Marissa would have been with them only as fate would have it she had been invited to a sleepover to celebrate a class mate’s twelfth birthday.

Marissa, the survivor, had had to battle her terrible grief virtually on her own. The family had been devastated by the tragedy, but no one had possessed the gift of being able to offer wisdom and comfort to a child so violently and unexpectedly rendered a near orphan. Grief and guilt had consumed her father to the extent less than a year after the tragedy he had abandoned his glittering career and his child to go on his travels in a vain bid to save himself and his sanity.

The way I am, my darling, I’m no use to anyone. You’ll be better off without me. At least for a while. But always know I love you.

The while, they had all hoped and prayed would be no more than a few months had stretched into long years. Uncle Bryan, a senior public servant, was a good man who had conscientiously tried to do his best for her in difficult circumstances. The trouble was, his wife’s maternal streak was fully stretched rearing their only child, their daughter, Lucy. Bryan had loved and admired his younger far more brilliant brother, Michael, and truth be known he had always been more than half in love with Maureen, albeit in respectful silence. Lucy was two years older than Marissa. Marissa would not be alone.

Well, that had been her father’s reasoning. Ten years later, not yet fifty, her father was dead from alcohol abuse. There had never been any real chance of his pulling himself together. Once he had enjoyed the perfect life with everything a man could possibly wish for. A beautiful, loving wife, a precious child, a high profile career, the grand home that went with it, the luxury cars. He had come back from time to time, suffering written all over him, telling Bryan and Ally they were ‘doing a fine job.’ Then he took off again, still hating himself for what he had done. Michael Devlin had been so unforgiving of himself he might just as well have committed murder.

‘So how long is it going to take to get to Ransom?’ Riley was asking, bringing Marissa out of her sad reverie. He bent to pat the exuberant Dusty who had briefly returned, huffing pleasurably, tongue lolling, brown eyes looking smilingly up at his owner, before haring off again into the wild blue yonder, making the most of his run.

‘We’re on the last lap of the journey.’ Marissa rose on her long legs, ruffling Riley’s thick, silky curls. He really was the most beautiful boy. How ever had his mother left him? Wouldn’t that have torn her heart out? Abandoning a small child already asthmatic with a desperately unhappy, unstable, alcoholic husband was negligence on the grand scale. ‘We’ll treat ourselves to a tiptop meal,’ she promised her gallant little brother.

‘Do you think they’ll have a burger bar?’ Riley asked hopefully. A burger was cordon bleu stuff.

Marissa refolded the map. ‘I’m certain Ransom can rise to a hamburger with chips. Hey—’ she broke off, staring into the heat hazed distance ‘—is Dusty herding those kangaroos?’ she asked anxiously.

‘That’s what cattle dogs do!’ Riley, the little bushie, laughed aloud. ‘They even herd people.‘

‘But the kangaroos mightn’t like it!’ Marissa was torn between amusement and concern. ‘Dusty’s a forceful little devil. Whistle him back, Riley, before one of those roos gets good and mad and gives him a kick.’

‘It’s okay. Dusty knows all about cattle, and emus and roos,’ Riley said with some pride, but he did what he was told and whistled up his dog who came flying back towards them.

By this stage of the long journey the bush town of Ransom seemed strangely familiar. They had passed through similar towns, towns that looked like they had been there forever and would remain unchanged until Doomsday. There was hardly a soul about. The broad main street drowsed in the all powerful sun … 4WDs, all with bull-bars, some of them spectacular, and covered in red dust lined the kerbs. There was a gas station, a huge open garage where a mechanic was working that obviously did repairs, a few shops, a one-man police station, a café, a community hall and the ubiquitous pub where two old-timers sat on a bench out the front. Opposite the pub was a small park, an oasis in the burnt ochre landscape.

The founding fathers had done something remarkable. They had planted a dozen or more jacarandas that had thrived in the hot, dry conditions. It was late October and they were out in all their billowing, mauve-blue glory, some forty feet high and about the same in spread. Spring-pools of spent blossom decorated the ground at their feet, turning a small bush park into a dream of beauty.

‘Aren’t the trees lovely, Ma?’ Riley said, leaning against her, always hungry for the reassurance of her touch. ‘I never thought they’d grow way out here in the desert.’

‘They grow in the high dry deserts of their native Brazil,’ she told him, giving his thin shoulders a hug. ‘The dryer the year the better the show. You wouldn’t have seen jacarandas way up in the tropics where you came from, more likely the poincianas, the cascaras and tulip trees. Brisbane parks and gardens are full of them all. The jacarandas would be in bloom now, but we’re not missing them, are we? Someone has planted them all here. They really should be pronounced hakharanda—it’s much softer isn’t it?—like they do in Rio. Do you know where Brazil is? Brasilia is the capital, but Rio de Janeiro is the largest city and I’m told very beautiful.’ Every day she managed to get in some general knowledge, as well as taking time out for regular schoolwork.

Riley was still studying the jacarandas with enchanted eyes. ‘Brazil is in South America,’ he answered, as though in a classroom.. ‘It’s really big and the people speak Portuguese.’ His tone changed into wistful. ‘Daddy was the best teacher I’ve ever had outside you, Ma. He started to teach me all sorts of things when I was really little, History and Geography, spelling and writing, as well as my sums. He made everything so interesting, but sometimes he got really sick and I had to stay with Pastor McCauley and his wife at the mission. They were so nice to me.’

‘They’re good, kind people,’ Marissa said, very grateful to the McCauleys.

Riley nodded. ‘Mrs McCauley told me I was just about the smartest kid the mission school had ever seen. I knew tons of things other kids didn’t know. Daddy always spoke to me like a big kid not a little kid. He spoke differently from other people, didn’t he? More correctly. He had the sort of voice you listen to, like yours, Ma. Do you miss being a teacher in your great big school?’ Riley had been very impressed with Saint Catherine’s, the fine buildings and the spacious grounds.

For a moment Marissa was desperate to shed tears. Instead she answered calmly, ‘I have you. I’m going to continue where Daddy left off. In a few years time I want to send you to Daddy’s old school. You’ll find his name on the honour board. He was a brilliant student at school and at University where he won a medal. You know I’m hoping to get work as a governess on one of the stations?’

‘You’ll get it,’ Riley said as though it were a certainty. ‘You’re a really good teacher and kids love you.’

‘A lot of the stations would already have a governess,’ Marissa warned him.

‘Some might be leaving. You never know. Station children are educated at home until they’re old enough to be sent off to boarding school, aren’t they?’

‘That’s right. Usually that’s around ten. The Channel Country is the home of the cattle kings. It’s actually a vast depressed tract of land called a riverine desert on the fringe of the desert proper. The actual rainfall might be low but the great network of channels bring down the monsoonal rains from the North where you were born.’

‘I know all about rain and the Wet Season.’ Riley grimaced. ‘Daddy and I got marooned once when the flood waters rose. Ugh, the mud! We had to wait for days in the truck before we could cross the bridge. Do you suppose Wungalla needs a governess?’ he asked hopefully. He sounded the word out in the soft musical lilt of the station aborigines he would have come to know as a small child. Woo-oon-gah-lah.

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised!’ She wasn’t about to worry him. ‘Now what about we try the café across the street. It looks clean and cheerful. Beats me why they called it the River Café. There isn’t a river in sight.’

‘Must be a joke. What about Dusty?’ Riley immediately thought of his pet.

‘We’ll do what we usually do. Tie him up outside. Don’t worry, I’ll get him a hamburger.’

‘With lots of tomato sauce. He loves tomato sauce.’ Riley grinned. ‘He’ll even drink it!’

‘That your dog outside?’ the woman inside the café queried when she had been watching them tie Dusty up.

‘His name’s Dusty!’ Riley answered, his beautiful little face lit by a friendly smile.

‘Best dog in the world the Australian Cattle Dog,’ the woman pronounced, wiping her hands on the spotlessly clean apron she wore over a floral dress. ‘You didn’t forget to give ‘im some water?’

‘Oh, no.’ Riley shook his head. ‘Ma and I look after Dusty. We love him. We’re going to get him a hamburger with tomato sauce. Do you make hamburgers?’

‘Make everything, luv,’ the woman said, giving him a wink. She was as short and stout as a barrel with a pleasant face, sharp blue eyes full of a dry humour, deep sun seams fanning out from them ‘Is that what you and your mum are after? Hamburgers?’

‘With chips?’ Riley asked hopefully.