Date with a Single Dad: Millionaire Dad's SOS / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle / Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed

He couldn’t accept things could be that simple. That certain. There always had to be a catch. What was he missing?

Aw, hell.

‘What did you tell your friends about her?’

‘Nothing!’

‘One thing I’ve learned from Ruby is that girls like to talk to their friends. A lot. About everything.’

‘We do. A lot. But here’s the thing—I have the feeling the reason you accosted me this morning was tied up with wanting to keep your private life separate from your working life. And Ruby would naturally be a big part of that. Right?’

He didn’t say no.

‘If so, believe me, I’m not going to be the one to out her.

She’s your only secret kid, I assume. Lone heiress to all this?’

Zach still didn’t say no.

Meg said, ‘Well, I know better than anyone what she’d have in store for her if the world found out. I wouldn’t bring it on any young girl.’

Crazy as it sounded, he believed her. ‘Thank you.’

‘My absolute pleasure.’ She smiled. That lush mouth. Those stunning blue eyes. He had a sudden need to know what they’d look like bathed in moonlight as she spilled apart in sheer pleasure in his arms.

He hooked the oars back into their loops and aimed for the resort, and every stroke felt as if he were pulling them through wet cement. ‘You seem perfectly comfortable in the limelight. Are you implying that’s all an act?’

‘Oh, no, did that just sound all woe is me? Please tell me it didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m blessed in, oh, so many ways. And I am perfectly at peace with the contradictions that came with being notable. But I wasn’t born twenty-nine and world wise. You haven’t heard the story of my glittering debut?’

Zach shook his head.

‘Well, here it is. I must have been three at the most. My father was giving a press conference to announce that he’d bought the George Street building in which the Kelly Investment Group was housed and was renaming the thing Kelly Tower. Mum had taken us all along to see him in action. All trussed up for the big occasion, my hair in ringlets, wearing my favourite navy velvet dress and black patent shoes, I got away from her. I made it to the podium mid-announcement, clambered up, tugged on my father’s trousers and whistled through the gap in my front teeth that I needed to tinkle. Needless to say my father wasn’t all that impressed at being upstaged, but the press ate it up. I haven’t been able to tinkle since without the world knowing about it.’

Her smile was cheeky, but as he seemed able to do with this woman from the outset he felt the undercurrent stronger than the surface words. On the outside it was a cute story about a girl and her dad. For her it was a story of innocence lost.

He pulled the oars harder through the water. ‘Just because a spotlight follows you doesn’t mean you have to perform for it.’

She raised both eyebrows in challenge. ‘You really believe that? Do you really want to know the God’s honest truth? Or are you pushing my buttons in an effort to continue to punish me for the whole Ruby thing?’

He felt a smile coming, but this time didn’t bother trying to put a stop to it. ‘Both.’

‘Fine.’ She took a breath. ‘The only reasons I am telling you any of this is recompense for Ruby. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Fame is a funny old thing. It’s not like I’ve done anything to deserve being remembered. I haven’t invented something, or cured anything or broken any world records. But my name has brand recognition, which gives me not only a certain power, but responsibility as well. Say the name Kelly and what do you think?’

Wealth. Charm. Beauty. But also excessive influence. Secrets. Lies. Scandal. Everything he wanted Ruby nowhere near.

She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘I had to figure out early on how to deal with all that baggage. I have no interest in running the company like Brendan. Or owning the city like Cameron. And the rush Dylan feels every time a new client is lured into the KInG net is a mystery to me. I wouldn’t even begin to know what drives King Quinn himself. But what I can offer with a splash of perfume, a flash of designer skirt and a dash of feminine glamour is a much-needed counterpoint to the excess of testosterone my family exudes. A way to use some of that power for the greater good. And, boy, am I good at it. So good I could sell tickets. But unless you know a guy with a good line in wigs and fake noses it’s twenty-four hours, seven days a week, barely a holiday in sight.’

‘Why do it at all?’

She blinked, clearly thinking him obtuse. ‘For them. For each other.’

‘For your family?’ That kind of self-sacrifice was something he was only just beginning to understand.

‘Jobs change. Friends come and go. Family is where you begin and where you end. My brothers may appear to be the kings of the jungle, but deep down they have the hearts of big kittens. They need me as much as I need them. And no matter what part we play all of us are working towards the same goal.’

‘The succecss of your father’s business.’

‘No. For our family to be happy. The business success is a side effect. I certainly don’t dance to my father’s tune, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Is that what I said?’

She frowned deeply. ‘It’s what you intimated, isn’t it? To be fair, I did once. Then a time came when I became a right little tearaway. The things I got up to would make your eyes water. Then I grew up. Took charge of my life. And decided making love and not war was the only way forward.’

‘Who knew the life of a society princess was lived on the front line?’

Her frown faded away, but her eyes remained locked on his, a tad wider than normal, as though she couldn’t quite believe she was telling him all of this. ‘You can mock me all you like, but in offering a corner of myself to those who are interested, I am able to use my money, my influence and my time helping some of the less trendy, less telethon-appropriate organisations I believe need all the help they can get, which is extremely satisfying.’

‘I wasn’t mocking you. I—’

What? Envy you your infamously close family? Like hell he was going to tell her that.

Not knowing how to ask, he instead said, ‘Moving on.’

‘Excellent idea.’ She let out a deep breath and leant forward, just a touch, but enough that when her mouth curved into an all-new smile, a luscious, flirtatious, brain-numbing smile, he felt it like nothing else. If her life really was lived on a battleground, that mouth was as good a weapon as they came.

‘Am I off the hook?’ she asked.

He slowed his strokes, not quite ready to return to land. To real life. To the other side of the battle from her. ‘Just one last thing. Tell me how you got the chip in your tooth.’

She crossed her eyes as her tongue slid to the gap. His hands gripped the oars for dear life.

‘It’s so tiny. How did you even notice it?’

‘I happen to be an extremely perceptive man.’

Her eyes slid to his, warm, tempting, wondering just how perceptive he might be. Unfortunately he was perceptive enough.

As she slid her tongue back into her mouth her teeth scraped slowly over her lips and her nostrils flared as she let out a slow, shaky breath. He knew he wasn’t the only one feeling the impossible zing between them. He also knew she was wishing with all her might that he hadn’t noticed a thing.

She tilted her chin up a fraction before shaking her hair off her shoulders in a move meant to distract him from the fact that for the first time since he’d met her she was no longer looking him in the eye. ‘How else would a party girl chip a tooth but on a glass of champagne? On the upside, it was truly excellent champagne.’

He laughed softly as he was meant to do. Her eyes flickered to his and her smile was grateful.

After a few long, loaded moments, Meg asked, ‘I just … I’d like to know one thing too. Did Ruby tell you I was there?’

He shook his head. ‘Her nanny.’

She nodded, then looked down at her paint-chipped fingernails with an all-new smile on her face. A secret smile. An honest smile. One reserved for Ruby.

And from nowhere Zach felt something the likes of which he’d never felt in his entire life—the most profound kind of pride that a woman such as her thought so highly of his little girl.

Meg’s tongue kept straying to the itty-bitty chip in her tooth.

What had she been thinking, fessing up to all that guff in some great unstoppable stream of consciousness? Nobody wanted to see the workings behind the wizard. It ruined the fantasy. It seemed all she needed was a man who looked her in the eye and asked about the real her, and it was fantasy be damned.

Thank goodness she’d been rational enough to pull back when she had. There were some parts of her life not for public consumption.

If she wanted to continue volunteering at the ‘less trendy, less telethon-appropriate’ Valley Women’s Shelter she had to keep it underground too. Every woman needed her mystery, and every public figure needed their sanctuary, even if it meant she had to truss herself up in a blonde wig, red liptick, brown contacts, and tight second-hand acid-wash jeans circa 1985.

If she was to remain Brisbane’s favourite daughter she had to pretend the part of her life in which she’d attempted to leave the spotlight had never happened. She felt lucky much of her memory of that time was a blur of flashing lights—from the nightclub, the police car, the hospital.

As to the way she had finally taken control of her life? If she planned on going through life with a spring in her step and a smile on her face she knew it was best not to revisit the choices she’d made back then ever again.

It was done. It was for the best. Move on.

So Zach Jones—stubborn, pushy, scarily insightful Zach Jones; the guy who saw through her so easily that every time they met she had to chase him deeper into the darkest recesses of herself in order to drive him back out—could just take a step back.

Besides, her big mission had been to sort him out, not the other way around. He was the one with the rebellious daughter. He was the one who’d lost someone close. He was the one who needed help.

As she’d seen real social workers do, she started slowly, easing her way to the point so as not to scare him away.

‘So Ruby was home sick from school,’ she said. ‘Does that happen a lot?’

Zach’s cheek clenched and the look in his eyes made her wonder if he might not be deciding whether Operation Dispose of Meg might have to be put into action after all.

‘I ran away from home once when I was a little older than her,’ she pressed. Though she kept back the part where she got to the corner of the street, sat there for a good hour before she went home, only to find nobody had even noticed she was gone.

‘She told you she had a sore throat?’ he asked, taking baby steps her way.

‘She sure did.’

She bit her lip. Argh! Had she broken a confidence? No, she’d told Ruby she wouldn’t tell her dad she was home from school, and that had been taken out of her hands by the nanny. Phew. She’d make sure the kid knew it the next time …

Only then did it hit Meg there wouldn’t be a next time. She believed Zach wasn’t kidding when he said he’d hired security to case the perimeter of the resort, so he’d probably already commissioned twenty-foot-high fences around the house as well.

If she were in Zach’s shoes she’d keep his kid as far away from her as she possibly could.

Still, the thought of never seeing Ruby again made her heart give an all too familiar little twinge. But this wasn’t about her. Then again, maybe, just maybe, as a nice little side effect, if she helped Zach get Ruby on track then she could stop those darned heart twinges for good.

He watched her with those clever dark eyes that made her feel as if she were melting from the inside out and he rowed.

She merely sat there and waited.

It paid off.

He took a deep breath, narrowed his eyes, then with all the enthusiasm of a man with a knife pressed to his ribs to make him talk, he said, ‘She rang Felicia this morning, claiming a sore throat. Felicia called a cab to bring her home. When I heard my first thought was that it was a ruse. Then I wasn’t sure. Do you think …?’

He shook his head and pressed the oars deeper into the water.

It more than paid off. Had Zach Jones just asked her for advice? She was shocked it had come so easily. But boy, was she ready to—

Who the heck was Felicia? Another woman in Zach’s life? Meg wrapped her fingers around the bench to stop from tipping right off. ‘Felicia is …?’

‘The nanny.’

She all but laughed with relief. When Zach’s eyes narrowed, she babbled, ‘I had a nanny once. I told her I was adopted. She told a friend, who spilled the news to the press. Wow, I’d completely forgotten about that. Mum was so upset. And my father …’ She shook her head to clear that image before the rest of the memory filtered through. ‘Let’s just say no more nannies came through the place.’

Zach’s eyes widened a fraction. He really had no clue that young girls were as much about sugar and spice as they were about snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. It only made her more determined to make him see.

‘Don’t get me wrong. Other kids adored theirs,’ she continued on. ‘Tabitha still sends hers cards on Mother’s Day. Does Ruby get on with Felicia?’

He waited a beat then nodded. ‘She taught at Ruby’s school for over twenty years. She’s seen it all. I poached her earlier this year when Ruby came to live with me.’

‘Well, that’s great, then,’ she said, her finger fiddling with her bottom lip as she frantically thought through what tack to take next. ‘A girl needs firm boundaries as much as she needs her space.’

And then it hit her. Ruby hadn’t always lived with him.

Where had she been? With her mother? Had they divorced? Had they never married? Had they been in love but couldn’t live together? Was he still in love with her now? Was that where his innate darkness sprang from? There was no denying her heart hurt just thinking about it. It hurt for Zach. For Ruby. It was much easier letting it hurt for them than in any way for herself.

Now Meg needed to know the whole story so badly she could taste it. She held her breath.

‘That’s enough,’ Zach said, and Meg’s finger stilled. ‘I have no idea how we started talking about this in the first place.’

Enough? They’d barely begun! She didn’t have half the information she wanted—no, required—in order to help.

‘You brought it up,’ Meg shot back.

‘I—What?’ His oars paused mid-air.

‘If you’d been sensible enough to ignore the fact that I happened upon your backyard, then we might never have had to have this conversation.’

‘Why do I get the feeling you’re used to getting your own way?’ he growled.

‘Ha! I have no idea because it certainly ain’t true. I have three bossy older brothers and a father who thinks everything I do is a complete waste of time.’

Meg’s eyes slammed shut and she bit her lip, but it was far too late. She’d said what she’d said. Somehow he’d done it again—given her all the rope she needed to hang herself.

She opened one eye to find him sitting ever so still, the oars resting lazily in their slips, dripping lake water over the bottom of the old wooden boat.

He was quiet for so long Meg could hear the sound of wings beating in the forest, the soft lapping of water against the side of the boat, and her own slow, deep breaths. Then he put the oars back where they were meant to be and pushed off.

He said, ‘Ruby attends a local weekly boarding school.’

Meg could have kissed him. Right then and there. She had no clue why he’d let her off the hook when she’d been pressing herself into his personal life with barely concealed vigour. All she knew was that if he looked her in the eye rather than at some point over her shoulder she would probably have gone right ahead and kissed him.

‘Where Felicia used to teach,’ she encouraged, her voice soft, her words clearly thought out before she uttered a single word.

The muscle beneath his left eye twitched. Then as he pulled the oars through the water he said, ‘It’s barely a ten-minute drive from here. The same one she was attending before her mother passed away a few months ago.’

And there it was.

Meg’s hands clasped one another so tight her fingers hurt. Ruby’s mum had been gone only a few months. Oh, that poor little creature. No wonder he wanted to keep Ruby wrapped up in cotton wool. The fact she was able to go back to school at all was amazing. As for Zach …

She opened her mouth to ask how he was doing, when he cleared his throat and pushed the oars deeper into the water, sending them spearing back towards shore.

He said, ‘This isn’t the first time since she moved in with me that she’s had a sore throat, a finger that twitches so hard she can’t write, a foot so itchy she can’t walk. So far all she’s needed is a day at home and she’s been right for another few weeks. So all in all I think we’re doing okay.’

Doing okay? He cared. He considered. It was important to him to be a good father. In her humble opinion Zach was doing everything in his considerable power to do right by his little girl. And just like that all sorts of bone-deep, neglected, wishful, hopeful feelings beat to life inside her.

‘Zach, I had no idea,’ she said as she tried to collect herself. ‘Truly. I’m so sorry about your wife—’

He cut her off unceremoniously. ‘Ruby’s mother and I knew one another for a short time several years ago when I was visiting with a view to building this place. I didn’t even know Ruby existed until after Isabel died.’

‘So you weren’t—’

So you’re not still in love with her, was what she was trying not to ask.

‘We weren’t,’ he said, insistent enough Meg had the feeling he’d heard all too clearly nonetheless. ‘I was in Turkey when my lawyer contacted me with the news. After much legal wrangling I met a social worker here, at the house. And I met Ruby. She had one small suitcase and carried a teddy bear wearing a purple fairy dress under one skinny arm. I never expected her to be so small—’

Zach came to an abrupt halt, frowned deeply and glared down into his lap.

The backs of Meg’s eyes burned. It took her a few moments to recognise it was the sharp sting of oncoming tears.

She never cried. Ever. Never sweated, never blushed, never cried. The moments she’d let herself succumb to her emotions were the times she’d been most deeply hurt—by careless whispers of envious types, by stories of horrendous depravity at the Valley Women’s Shelter, even by herself. But this guy tugged shamelessly at hidden parts of her that didn’t know the rules.

She blinked until the sensation went away.

‘We’re both trying to get used to our new living situation. To each other,’ he went on, his voice raw, his eyes staring at some point on the bottom of the boat as it drifted steadily on. ‘The last thing we need at this point is for her existence to come to the attention of the press. You obviously do know what they can be like. She needs to find her feet without constantly looking over her shoulder. She’ll trip. She’ll fall. She’ll be hurt even more.’

He lifted his dark eyes to hers. There was a newfound lightness within them that came with getting everything off his chest. But the second he remembered he’d been divulging his story to her, it was gone.

‘Meg,’ he said, his voice rough, beseeching.

She breathed deep to calm her thundering heart and said, ‘I know I haven’t done much to make you believe this, but you really can trust me. I’m exceptionally good at keeping secrets. You have no idea how good, which only proves my point. I’ll not breathe a word.’

‘I truly hope so.’

She smiled. He managed to do a shadow of the same. And in that moment of silent communion something rare and magical was forged between them.

It felt a lot like trust.

CHAPTER SIX

THE boat bumped against solid ground.

Meg flinched, her flat shoes slipping on the wet wood, but she caught herself in time. She’d been so engrossed in Zach, in his story, in the man, she hadn’t even noticed the head-high reeds encroaching.

Zach tied them off. He threw the cooler onto the wooden deck, then leaned over and held out a hand.

She took it, the loaded silence of the lingering moment of amity still making her feel all floaty and surreal.

Once on the jetty she took off his hat, ran a quick hand through her messy curls and handed it to him along with his blanket. He wrapped his hands around both, but didn’t tug. Meg looked up into his dark eyes.

Her heart felt heavy in her chest. Her body felt heavy on her legs. The only thing about her that felt light was her head. Which was probably why she said, ‘Now that I know everything there is to know about you, are you finally going to give in and stop stalking me?’

His dark brows rose. His voice, on the other hand, deepened. ‘Is that what I’ve been doing?’

She said, ‘Either that or fifty acres really isn’t quite as much room as it sounds.’

From nowhere his head rocked back and he laughed. The sexy sound reverberated deep in her stomach, leaving it feeling hollow. As it faded to a smile in his eyes it left a new kind of warmth in its place she wasn’t sure what to do with.

‘I like you better this way,’ she admitted.

‘What way?’

‘Not bossing me around. You should try that more.’

He gave the blanket and hat a tug. She shuffled forward a step before letting go and he threw them lazily onto the cooler.

He looked back at her. The earlier glints in his dark eyes had been mere imitations of the glints glinting at her now. The kind of glints she now wished she’d not wished for. They were dazzling, they were blistering, they were completely incapacitating.

His voice rumbled, low and deep. ‘By that logic if I continue that way you’ll only like me more.’

‘You can’t argue with logic,’ she said, trying to sound pithy; instead she sounded as if she was flirting. Which, of course, she was.

How could she not? He was glinting and smiling, and somehow, whether by her brilliant psychological tactics or by his choice alone, she’d been allowed to see a little of the man behind the mask.

What she saw there she liked.

And by the look in his eyes what he saw in front of him right at this moment he liked right back.

Meg licked her lips. His hot gaze trailed slowly down the curves of her face until it landed square upon her mouth. His eyes turned dark as night and he breathed out. Hard.

Despite knowing that what was about to happen was reckless and pointless and born of nothing more concrete than the ephemeral connection of confidences shared, Meg just stood there, her entire body vibrating in anticipation.

Zach slid his arm gently around her back, with such little pressure she had time and room to curl away.

She knew she should. She thought to the very last she would. She was always the one to back away first before anything truly serious came to bear. But her toes curled into her shoes and she held her ground.

Zach’s brow creased for the briefest of seconds as though he was surprising even himself before a small smile eased onto his mouth. Hers lifted in its image.

Then he pulled her in close. The warmth of his sun-drenched body pressed through her dress until every inch of skin, exposed and concealed, felt as if it had begun to glow.

Her hand fluttered up to rest against his chest to find it hard, fit, unyielding, everything she’d thought him to be. Only now she knew that beneath the tough exterior beat the heart of a man whose primary goal was the protection of a little girl.

He leaned down and moved his lips over hers. He tasted like chocolate muffins. She was toast.