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“The situation is this, Sally,” Jack said, leaning forward. “You can be mistress of the house you have always called home, overseeing its running and the running of the property, with the same staff if they want to stay. A generous salary for you to maintain the status quo…”
Her thoughts shifted to the life he was offering… it was so tempting. But could he be trusted to deliver on his word if she took his deal? What if he only meant to create as much disharmony in her family as he could, and she was being suckered into playing a role in his vengeful game?
“What do you get out of this, Jack?”
He leaned back in his chair, regarding her with a whimsical look that seemed to be mocking himself for whatever was driving him. The expression in his eyes slowly changed, gathering a hypnotic intensity. She felt the force of the man being channelled straight into her, reaching for her heart, her mind, her soul, determined on bending her to his will. Then:
“I get you, Sally.”
Dear Reader
This year Mills & Boon is celebrating its 100th birthday, and it amazes me that for a quarter of that time—the past 25 years—I have been one of the authors in their long publishing history. This book is my 97th for the Modern™ Romance line. I’m thinking I should have organised myself better to make it my 100th.
I’ve had a wonderful time writing romance. For me it’s like having the power of a fairy godmother. No matter how bad or difficult the initial situation is for my hero and/or heroine in my stories, I can make everything turn out beautifully right in the end. That’s the magic of romantic fiction and I love it. Always makes me feel good. When I write the last line of a story, I’m smiling with a joyful satisfaction because my wand has worked again. I hope you smile, too, assured that my hero and heroine, whose lives you’ve entered into as you read the story, are truly right for each other and will be very happy in their marriage.
I really piled it on for Jack in this story, giving him such a dark history. His ruthless course of revenge is absolutely breathtaking, yet that need for justice in all of us can’t help sympathising with him. He’s one of my most dangerous heroes, one of my most intriguing. Can he—will he—turn his life around as he slowly comes to understand how much he wants to keep the sunshine of Sally’s love? When it comes to the crunch—wow! I’ve got to say Jack acts brilliantly. Tears and smiles. Hope you revel in it as much as I did!
Last but not least, I’d like to thank the staff at Mills & Boon for having such a great understanding of what the romance dream is all about. It’s great to be able to share it with people who know. As I share it with you, dear readers.
Always with love
Emma Darcy
BY
EMMA DARCY
MILLS & BOON
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PROLOGUE
“I’M JACK MAGUIRE, Leonard Maguire’s son,” he told the man on the other side of the security gate, feeling the bitter irony of having his identity questioned.
“Didn’t know he had one,” the man muttered, a frown beetling over suspicious eyes. “You’ve got an American accent.”
Hardly surprising since Jack had been tucked away, living in Texas for most of his growing-up years. But he’d been born in Australia, a seven-year-old boy when he’d been taken from this country. Now, at twenty-four, he was a man—a man of means, he thought with intense satisfaction—and ready to make his mark on his father’s home ground.
“Just call the house and check me out,” he instructed.
While the security guard did just that, using a mobile ’phone he’d detached from his belt, Jack’s gaze travelled up the long avenue of maples which led to the huge sprawling house at the top of the hill overlooking the valley. It was spring and the new leaves on the trees were a brilliant lime green in the bright afternoon sunshine. The whole valley was green—prime property—nothing but the best for his father’s second family.
The house was white. The fences were white. Everything kept in a pristine state. Which, of course, cost a lot of money. A lot. Which was only to be expected of a man who owned a vast transport company, including a domestic airline. All Jack had ever got from him were birthday cards, Christmas cards—probably sent by whoever his current secretary was—and a few days at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas when his father was there on business, once when Jack was twelve and again when he was eighteen.
He remembered being asked that last time, “What do you intend to do with your life, boy?”
As though it had nothing to do with Leonard Maguire.
Still, Jack had asked hopefully, “Are you offering an opportunity?”
Any such idea was totally obliterated by the harsh reply. “No. Make your own way, as I did. If you have the guts to do it you’ll become a man I can respect.”
The challenge had eaten into Jack’s soul. His father was a self-made billionaire, starting from nothing, building a transport empire. Yet looking at the evidence of his wealth now—wealth spent freely on his second wife and two adopted daughters—Jack could feel no respect for him. What kind of man did nothing for his flesh-and-blood son and gave every privilege money could provide to a couple of girls his second wife had wanted and acquired? Would they be told to make their own way when they were eighteen?
The security man clicked his ’phone shut and gave Jack a look of curious sympathy. “Can’t let you in, mate. I’ve been told to run you off. Lady Ellen says you’re not welcome here.”
Lady Ellen. The title soured Jack’s stomach. She’d been an on-the-make young office clerk, sleeping with her much older boss, committing adultery, and now because his father had been knighted for services to his country and she was his wife, she could call herself Lady.
“Ask to speak to my father,” he demanded.
“No can do. Sir Leonard is not home yet.”
“When does he arrive home?”
“Helicopter usually flies in about seven.” The man glanced at his watch. “Another three hours from now. No sense in waiting around. Can’t let you past the gate unless I get the word.”
Jack had got the message. His father’s home was forbidden territory to him as far as Lady Ellen was concerned. Probably always had been. Bitch, guarding her own interests tooth and nail. Though his father hadn’t bucked them. How much power did she wield over her much-older husband? Whose choice was it to keep the son in exile?
There was so much Jack wanted to know.
Was determined to know.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“I’m stationed in the cottage,” the guard warned, nodding to the small ranch house overlooking the entrance to the property.
He was making it clear that no one slipped past him. The guy was probably in his early fifties but his big, burly frame was still all muscle—a formidable opponent in a fight. Not that Jack was looking for one, not with this man, who was just doing his job. He returned to the rental car he’d hired at the airport, thinking the view from the ranch house did not take in the whole perimeter of this estate.
Half an hour later he’d parked the car on the verge of a side road, raided his luggage for jeans, a dark-blue T-shirt, and Nikes, changed out of his visiting clothes and hiked cross-country to the white fence that marked the territory he wanted to scout.
He leaned on the top railing for a while, taking in the view of horses grazing in lush pastures, what was undoubtedly state-of-the-art stables, and a rider—a girl with a mass of red-gold curls streaming out from the tight constriction of her riding hat—putting her horse through a series of pony club jumps.
Was she the elder of the two adopted daughters?
Or a stable hand, employed to train the horse to jumping?
The slender figure looked shapely enough to be a young woman, though that factor certainly didn’t rule out a girl of fourteen. She rode well, handling the horse with confident authority, but then he had, too, at fourteen, having learnt the hard way on his stepfather’s ranch.
He scaled the fence and strolled towards the exercise enclosure, wanting his curiosity satisfied. It was a matter of supreme indifference to him that he was trespassing. To his mind he had more natural right to be here than anyone else on this property.
Sally didn’t see the man’s approach. Blaze hadn’t been completely set right for the triple jump and she wanted to take him through it again. The big gelding had been too eager. She had to rein him in a bit, make the timing perfect. Her concentration on the task was total. Only when Blaze had sailed beautifully over the third hurdle did the sound of clapping alert her to the presence of a spectator.
Flushed and exhilarated by her success, she turned to smile at the person who had admired her skill enough to applaud it, expecting to see Tim Fogarty, the stable hand who always helped her groom Blaze for showjumping. It startled her to see a stranger, especially a stranger who was alone. That didn’t happen here. A visitor was always accompanied by someone.
He was very handsome, outstandingly so compared to the young men of her acquaintance—thick black hair, a face that instantly drew fascinated interest, and his tall and strong physique was definitely ten out of ten. His forearms, resting on the top railing of the enclosure, were tanned and muscular, suggesting he lived an outdoors life. Maybe he was a new employee.
Sally nudged Blaze into walking over to where the man stood, aware that the flutter in her stomach was caused more by a sense of excitement than curiosity. His eyes were examining her in a very detailed fashion—vivid blue eyes—making her extremely conscious of how she looked and raising a silly hope that he found her attractive.
It was silly because it was obvious he was too old for her. In his twenties, she judged. At fourteen she had the height and the figure of a young woman but not the years to match this man. There was something in his eyes—a knowingness that came from a lot of hard learnt experience.
“Who are you?” she asked, feeling a compulsion to learn everything she could about him.
His mouth quirked into a dryly amused little smile, making her wonder how it would feel to have such beautifully sculptured lips kissing hers. Would they be gentle and sensitive to her response or hard and ravishing? He was the kind of man who could have stepped out of one of the romance books she’d read, making her wish for things that weren’t yet part of her life.
“Who are you?” he countered, surprising her with his American accent. Nice voice, though, deep and manly.
“I’m Sally Maguire,” she answered with a touch of pride, wanting to impress him with her status as daughter to a man who was virtually an Australian legend.
“Ah…” he said, but it wasn’t an admiring Ah, more a mocking one that told her he wasn’t impressed at all.
Had she seemed snobby about who she was?
“Fine horse,” he remarked. “You handle him well. Have you been riding long?”
She nodded, suddenly feeling ill at ease with him. “Dad gave me a pony when I was five.”
“No doubt he bought this one for you, too.”
The mocking tone was more pronounced this time.
“Who are you?” she repeated more sharply. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Just looking around.”
“This is private property. If you have no business here, you’re trespassing.”
“Oh, I have business to be done. Very personal business.” His eyes stabbed into hers like blue lasers, scouring her soul. “I’m waiting for my father to come home.”
None of the employees had a son like him. She was sure of it. “Who’s your father?”
“The same as yours.”
Shock rendered her speechless for a moment. Was it true? A bastard son who’d never been publicly acknowledged? He didn’t look like her father, though he did have blue eyes, a much sharper blue though.
“I know nothing about you,” she blurted out, seized by the fear that whoever he was, he’d come to make trouble.
“Not surprising,” he drawled derisively. “I’m sure Lady Ellen prefers to pretend I don’t exist.”
He hated her mother. She could see it, hear it, feel it.
“She probably doesn’t know about you, either,” Sally threw at him defensively, fretting over his attitude.
He shook his head. “What a protected little cocoon you live in, Sally Maguire!” There was a wicked challenge in his eyes as he added, “Why don’t you ask Lady Ellen about the marriage she busted up and the boy she wanted no part of?”
“What marriage?”
“Leonard Maguire’s marriage to my mother,” he tossed at her, obviously confident that he was dealing with irrefutable fact.
Sally could only stare at him, her mind struggling to take this stunning information on board. If what he said was true, he wasn’t a bastard son. He was her father’s natural-born heir, not adopted like her and her younger sister. Her very safe world suddenly felt very shaken.
“Have you been up to the house?” she asked in a burst of panic, feeling that everything she’d thought she’d known was about to change.
“Not yet.”
“Does my mother know you’re here?”
“She knows I’ve come. Lady Ellen was not inclined to put out the welcome mat for me. In fact, she had me turned away at the gate. What do you think of that, Sally Maguire?” He cocked his head to one side, mockingly assessing her reaction to this information. “Here you are on prime horseflesh, revelling in having your love of riding indulged and completely catered for—” he gestured towards the stables, obvious evidence for his viewpoint “—and I am turned away from setting foot on my father’s land.”
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
A sense of guilty shame sent a gush of heat flooding into her cheeks. Yet she had only this man’s word that what he was telling her was true. She had no idea of what had happened with these relationships in the past, before she was born and adopted into this family. Maybe her mother had good reason to block his entry to this property. Hadn’t she just felt her own world being threatened by him?
“What do you want?” The words spilled out of the fear that was curdling her stomach. He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t want something.
“I had my father for seven years. You’ve had him for fourteen. Wouldn’t you say there should be a better balance to be struck?”
“Like what? You’re grown up now. There’s no way of getting back years that are gone,” she argued anxiously. He knew her age. It felt all wrong that he had information about her and she had none about him.
“True,” he agreed. His eyes went flint hard. “But there’s the future to be reckoned with.”
He was going to make trouble. “What about your mother?” Sally threw at him, trying to mitigate the situation he’d spelled out. “She must have taken you with her. Where is she now?”
“Dead,” he stated bluntly, his voice flat, showing no emotion at all.
Somehow that was more frightening than anything else. “I’m sorry,” she said defensively. “Sorry you feel—” Her mind sought frantically for the right word “—displaced.”
Which was what she would have felt if she hadn’t been adopted. Having no parents, no sense of belonging to a family…it would be awful, an empty life. She’d been so lucky, while he…
“I wasn’t displaced,” he corrected her savagely. “I was replaced by you and the other adopted daughter.”
“I didn’t know. Jane doesn’t know, either,” she pleaded.
It wasn’t her fault. Yet he was making her feel horribly guilty.
“I’ll go and talk to my mother,” she offered, feeling too churned up to stay talking to him, and needing to know why he had been turned away.
“That should be an interesting conversation,” he mocked. “Pity I can’t be a fly on the wall.”
The taunt spurred her into nudging Blaze into a canter. She rode quickly to the exit from the enclosure, intensely conscious of those laser-blue eyes boring into her. Forced to pause while opening the gate, she couldn’t stop herself from looking back at him. He hadn’t moved. His gaze was fixed on her. It felt hard, relentless, accusing.
“You haven’t told me your name,” she called out, wishing he could be more…brotherly.
“It’s Maguire,” he reminded her with derisive emphasis. “Jack Maguire. Commonly known as Blackjack in some circles. It’s a name that darkens other people’s dreams.”
It was a name that would haunt Sally for a long time to come. Ten years would pass before she would meet him again—ten years before he would once more set foot on this land, bringing with him the bitter harvest of the wrongs that were being enacted today.
Jack watched her go. She didn’t stable her horse. She galloped straight up the hill as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. The sun was starting to set, burning the clouds in the sky, spreading a haze of red around the big white house. He hoped Sally Maguire would spread some heartburn around with her questions about him.
Time to return to his car, leave this property before Lady Ellen sent a posse to run him off. He probably shouldn’t have said so much to the girl, venting his anger at how he’d been treated, but the urge to set a cat amongst the pigeons had been irresistible.
And she was so damned beautiful, he’d wanted to claw her off her complacent perch, make her aware of a darker side to her world of privilege. He’d revelled in the troubled worry reflected in her fascinating sagegreen eyes, in the scarlet flush that had stained her flawless, pale skin.
She’d been given too much and he’d been given too little.
That was the core of it.
He’d come on a scouting mission to feel out the lay of the land. Once he knew precisely what he was dealing with, he’d work out how to achieve what he wanted.
One certainty burned in his mind.
Whatever it took, somehow, some day, the scales would be balanced.
CHAPTER ONE
Ten Years On…
SALLY stared at the coffin which held her father. It was still difficult to believe he was dead, that a sudden fatal heart attack could steal his life away. No warning. Never a day’s illness that she knew of. He’d always radiated such a powerful life force, the shock of its being ended so abruptly was still numbing any sense of grief. Which was just as well since her mother had instructed her and Jane to maintain absolute dignity during this funeral service.
They were on public show.
They had to do their father proud.
Sir Leonard Maguire was being honoured today.
There’d been television crews outside the cathedral, shooting their arrival, not to mention all the powerful people who’d come to pay their last respects: politicians, captains of industry, the horseracing fraternity. She could hear them taking their places behind her, shuffling into the pews, greeting each other in muffled tones.
On the other side of the aisle were the major figures in her father’s work force—his other family—who had shared his dreams of a transport empire and been closely involved in carrying out his grand plans. He’d spent much more time with them than with us, Sally thought. They were probably devastated by his death, not only grieving for their leader but wondering what would come next. Who would fill the huge shoes of the man who was no longer with them?
She had no grasp of her father’s business. Neither did Jane who was studying to become a nurse. Her mother had dedicated her life to being the perfect wife, certainly the CEO of their home, but not interested in anything beyond maintaining the social status that was all important to her. They’d been cocooned in the protection of great wealth, but none of them knew what would happen now. They were floating in a vacuum.
Maybe her father had provided the answers in his will. Tomorrow they had to go to the solicitor’s office to hear it read. Her mother was upset—furious—that Victor Newell, who’d been her father’s legal advisor for many years, had refused to come to them in the privacy and comfort of their own home. It meant another trip to the city, another brave front to be put on in public.
Regardless of being subjected to her mother’s intense displeasure over the telephone, the solicitor had not budged from his edict, stating he was following Sir Leonard’s instructions. No argument prevailed against that. Not even her mother could break her father’s iron grip on the people he had employed.
But he’d lost his grip on life. No, he’d had it taken from him. Probably the only thing that had ever been taken from him. Except…
The memory of Jack Maguire flashed into her mind. Despite what her parents had told her, she didn’t really believe his mother had taken him from the man who now lay in this coffin. Her father had chosen to let him go. She couldn’t imagine anything else, especially since he’d chosen not to have him back. It was the only reasonable answer to why Jack Maguire had not become part of their lives.
Too late now for the scales to be balanced, she thought sadly.
He’d made such a strong impact on her at their one and only meeting, she’d often wondered how he’d dealt with his father’s rejection. It would surely have bitten deep. Though that personal blow had not stopped him from becoming a successful business entrepreneur in his own right. Maybe it had spurred him on to make a name for himself.
She’d read about him in the newspapers from time to time, fixing deals that were highly profitable. Photographs of him never showed him smiling, not even when he was pictured with beautiful women at A-list parties. His eyes were always cold. She’d imagined it was because his heart was cold, no family to warm it.
No chance left of its ever being warmed by acceptance or approval from his father. The media had given enormous coverage to Sir Leonard Maguire’s life and death in the past few days so he would certainly know about it. Jack had been mentioned as the estranged son. Such a cold phrase. It had made her feel bad again about being a much-indulged adopted daughter.
The organ music droned to a halt. Sally glanced at her watch. It was time for the funeral service to begin. The Bishop of Sydney would emerge from the vestry any moment now, ready to conduct the ceremony. The congregation hushed. The footsteps of a latecomer walking down the aisle were clearly audible, not hurrying, measured at a dignified pace. Whoever it was seemed to have an unsettling presence, giving rise to a rush of whispering. The footsteps kept coming, right up to the front pew.
Was it the bishop, making some kind of ceremonial arrival? Out of the corner of her eye, Sally saw her mother’s head turn slightly—licence enough to take a sideways glance without being reprimanded since her mother was doing the same thing.
It was a man in a black suit, royal-blue shirt. He’d paused in the middle of the aisle, right beside them, and from the hiss of her mother’s sharply indrawn breath, he was someone who did not meet with her approval. Sally instinctively leaned forward to see his face, wanting to identify the problem.