Dreaming Of... Australia: Mr Right at the Wrong Time / Imprisoned by a Vow / The Millionaire and the Maid
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About the Authors
NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.
ANNIE WEST has devoted her life to an intensive study of tall, dark, charismatic heroes who cause the best kind of trouble in the lives of their heroines. As a sideline she’s also researched dream-worthy locations for romance, from bustling, vibrant cities to desert encampments and fairytale castles. It’s hard work but she loves a challenge. Annie lives with her family at beautiful Lake Macquarie, on Australia’s east coast. She loves to hear from readers and you can contact her at www.annie-west.com or at PO Box 1041, Warners Bay, NSW 2282, Australia.
MICHELLE DOUGLAS has been writing for Mills & Boon since 2007 and believes she has the best job in the world. She lives in a leafy suburb of Newcastle on Australia’s east coast with her own romantic hero, a house full of dust and books, and an eclectic collection of 60s and 70s vinyl. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted via her website: www.michelle-douglas.com.
Dreaming of… Australia
Mr Right at the Wrong Time
Nikki Logan
Imprisoned by a Vow
Annie West
The Millionaire and the Maid
Michelle Douglas
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-08358-4
DREAMING OF… AUSTRALIA
Mr Right at the Wrong Time © 2012 Nikki Logan Imprisoned by a Vow © 2013 Annie West The Millionaire and the Maid © 2015 Michelle Douglas
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Mr Right at the Wrong Time
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Imprisoned by a Vow
Back Cover Text
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Millionaire and the Maid
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mr Right at the Wrong Time
Nikki Logan
THE droning whine might have been coming from the tyres spinning in defiance of the absence of a solid surface beneath their tread, or from the still cooling engine, or from the air hissing from the deflating airbags.
Or quite possibly from deep inside Aimee Leigh’s tight throat.
The brace of the steering wheel against her chest really didn’t allow for much more than a whimper, followed rapidly by a shallow, painful breath, but making noise seemed like a priority because somewhere down deep Aimee knew that if she was making noise then she was still breathing. And if she was still breathing then she had something to save.
A life.
No matter how pathetic.
Adrenaline surged through her body as she flicked her eyes desperately left and right. It was pitch-black outside, except for a lone shaft of moonlight which fractured into a hundred different facets in the shattered windscreen of her little Honda. Long lengths of her hair brushed forward across her cheeks, defying gravity. She shook them just slightly, they swung in the open air, and the press of the steering wheel into her chest finally made some sense.
It wasn’t pressing into her. She was pressing into it.
Down onto it.
Her world righted itself as she re-orientated and spidered her free hand along her middle to the pain in her abdomen—and discovered the seatbelt carving into her belly, straining against her weight, holding her in her seat.
Saving her life.
The moment she acknowledged it, its ruthless grip became unbearable. Her trembling fingers found the long cross length that was supposed to brace her from hip to shoulder—that had been until the force of the accident had pulled her free of it—and, forcing panic back, she squeezed her free arm up behind her and found the place where the seatbelt locked against its hidden reel. She curled her sticky fingers around it, got a good purchase, took as deep a breath as she could manage …
…and then she pulled.
Her whole body screamed as she forced her torso behind the fabric restraint and pressed herself back into the driver’s seat. The release of pressure on her abdomen allowed a rush of blood into the lower half of her body, and it was only then that she realised she’d not been able to feel anything down there before. At all.
The painful burn of sensation returning kept her focused, and as she hung suspended at the waist and chest by her strong seatbelt she audited her extremities, made sure everything responded. But when she tried to flex her right foot an excruciating pain ripped up her leg and burst out into the night.
A bird exploded from its treetop roost just outside her shattered window, and as she slipped back into unconsciousness the urgent flap of its wings morphed in Aimee’s addled mind into the hover of an angel.
A heavenly soul that had come to earth to act as midwife between her life … and her death.
CHAPTER ONE
‘HELLO?’
The darkness was the same whether her eyes were open or closed so she didn’t bother trying.
The disembodied voice that floated down to her made Aimee wonder if maybe she was dead, and she and her car and the tree she’d hit when she flew off the A 10 had all been transported together in a tangled, inseparable mess into a void.
Some kind of spiritual waiting room.
Her heart battered against the seatbelt that still pinned her to the seat like an astronaut strapped into a shuttle.
Starved of light, her imagination lurched into overdrive. She replayed the slide and crash in her mind, each time making it worse and more violent. One minute she’d been travelling happily along through the towering eucalypts that defied gravity, growing forty-five degrees up out of the Tasmanian mountain all the way to the horizon …
… the next she’d been sliding and briefly airborne, before slamming into the trunk of this tree.
‘Hello?’
Her head twitched slightly. Maybe her heavenly number was being called? She prised open her crusted, swollen lids and stared into the darkness that still reigned.
It didn’t seem necessary to reply. Surely in the spirit world it would be enough just to think your response?
Yes. I’m here …
She reluctantly released her death-grip on her seatbelt and risked extending trembling fingers out into the dense nothing around her. They grazed against something solid almost immediately, and she traced them across the crusty, papery surface of bark, rolling tiny unbreakable cubes beneath her fingertips like reading Braille.
A tree branch. Riddled with pieces of her shattered windscreen.
She fumbled her touch to the roof of the car, found the interior light and—with only a momentary thought for what might be revealed—depressed the plastic panel and squinted at the sudden dim light.
Her dash had slipped forward about a foot, and buckled where parts of the engine had pushed into it. The roof above her had crushed downwards. But, most terrifying of all, an enormous tree limb had pierced the armour of her little car, through the windscreen and the passenger seat beyond it, and was taking much of the vehicle’s weight. Aimee stared at the carnage and tasted the slide of salt down the back of her throat.
If that branch had come through just two feet closer …
The panic she’d been holding at bay so well these past hours surged forth. She plunged the car back into darkness, thicker and more cloying than before, and let the tears come. Crying felt good—it helped—and she let herself indulge because no one was around to see it. She’d never in her life cried in front of someone else, no matter the incentive, but what she did in the privacy of her own car wreck was her business.
‘Can you hear me?’
The words just wouldn’t quite soak into her overwhelmed, muddled mind, but the voice sounded angelic enough—deep and rich and … concerned. Shouldn’t it be serene? Wasn’t its job to reassure her? To set her mind and fears at rest and guide her to … wherever she was going? Glowing and transcendent and full of love.
‘Make any kind of noise if you can hear me.’
A solitary beam of light criss-crossed back and forth from high above her, mother-ship-style, across the places her vehicle wasn’t. It moved too fast for her fractured mind to make sense of what it revealed around her.
‘Search and Rescue,’ the voice said, sounding strained and uncomfortable and somehow closer. ‘If you can hear me, make any kind of noise.’
For an angel, he was awfully demanding.
Aimee tried to speak, but her words came out as a creepy kind of gurgle. He didn’t respond to her partial frog croak. She fumbled the hand that wasn’t pinned behind her and found her car’s horn, hoping to heaven she’d preserved enough battery.
She pressed.
And held.
The noise exploding through what had been so many hours of silence made her jump even though she knew it was coming, and her leg responded with sharp blades of protest. The long peal echoed through the darkness, sounding high and empty.
‘I hear you,’ the voice called back, sounding relieved and professional. ‘I’ll be with you soon. I’m just securing your car.’
A small lurch and a large clang were separated only by the barest of heartbeats, but then she felt and heard some of the weight of the car shift as whatever he’d used to secure it tightened into position. The move changed the dynamic of all the twisted fixtures in her front seat, and shifted some of the pressure of whatever had been pressing against her injured leg. It protested with violent sensation and she slammed her hand down on the horn again. Hard.
‘Ho!’ The voice yelled, then again urgently. Somewhere high above she thought she heard the word echo, but not in the same voice.
The tensioning stopped and the vehicle creaked and settled, more glass splintering from her windscreen and tinkling away into the night.
‘Are you okay?’ the voice yelled.
She swallowed back the pain and also wet her throat. ‘Yes,’ she cried feebly, and then stronger, ‘Yes. But my leg is trapped under the dash.’ She hoped he’d do the maths and make the connection that their securing of the car was making her pain worse. She didn’t have the energy or breath to explain.
‘Got it.’ She heard a thud on her roof but then nothing, no movement. Then some rustling outside the rear passenger side window. ‘Any other injuries?’ he called, closer. She heard the sounds of a mallet knocking something into place.
‘Uh … I can’t tell,’ she whimpered.
‘What’s your name?’ This time from somewhere over the top of her windscreen.
So they could advise her next of kin? Give her parents one more thing to fight over? she thought dismally. God, wouldn’t they both make a meal of this? ‘Aimee Leigh.’
He repeated that detail in short, efficient radio-speak to whoever he’d just called up to moments before. ‘Are you allergic to morphine, Aimee?’ he asked, definitely sounding close this time.
‘I don’t know.’ And she didn’t much care. The screaming of her leg had started to make every other part of her ache in sympathy.
‘Okay …’
She heard more rustling from beyond the tree limb her Honda was skewered on and she craned her head towards the empty front passenger seat. Suddenly the darkness glowed into an ethereal white-blue light and a glow-stick seemed to levitate through the window, around the enormous branch, and then come to rest on the crippled dash of her car. She blinked her eyes in protest at the assault of blazing light. But as they adjusted the full horror of her situation came back to her. She looked at where her leg disappeared into the crumpled mess that had been her steering console, down at her right arm, which was wedged behind her between the seat and her driver-side door, then back again at the half-a-tree which stretched its grabbing fist past her into the back of her little hatchback.
But just as she tasted the rising tang of panic the man spoke again, from beyond the tree. ‘How are you doing, Aimee? Talk to me.’
‘I’m—’ A mess. Terrified. Not ready to die. ‘—Okay. Where are you?’
‘Right here.’
And suddenly a gloved hand reached through the leaves of the tree branch that had made a kebab out of her car and stretched towards her. It was heavy-duty, fluoro-orange, caked in old dirt and had seen some serious action. But it was beautiful and welcome, and as the fingers stretched towards her from the darkness Aimee reached out and wrapped all of hers around two of his. He curled them back into his palm and held on.
‘Hi, Aimee,’ the disembodied voice puffed lightly. ‘I’m Sam, and I’ll be your rescuer today.’
Right then—for the first time in hours—Aimee believed that she was actually going to make it.
Search-and-Rescue-Sam couldn’t get close enough to do a visual inspection from outside the car, so he had her run through a verbal description of all her major body parts so he could try and assess her condition remotely. He seemed less concerned with her agonising leg than with the tightness in her chest, where her seatbelt bit, and with her forgotten arm—completely numb, immobile, and impossible for her to twist around to see.
‘I don’t like unknowns, Aimee Leigh,’ he murmured as he ducked away to check the tension on the ropes holding the car in place. He kept up with the assessing questions and she kept her answers short and sharp—pretty much all her straining lungs would allow. The whole time he circled the vehicle, equipment clanking, and bit by bit she felt the car firming up in its position.
‘I want to get a look at that arm if I can,’ he said when he reappeared at the window beyond the tree limb.
‘If I can’t see it from here how are you going to see it from there?’ she gasped.
‘I’m not. I’m going to try and get in there with you.’
How? The two of them were separated by three feet of solid tree. And her door wasn’t budging.
‘Can you pop the hatch?’
She knew what he was asking—could she reach the door release?—but the request struck her as ludicrous, as if he wanted to load some groceries into the back of her brutalised car. She started to laugh, but it degenerated into a pained wheeze.
‘Aimee? Hanging in there?’
Focus. He was working so hard to help her. ‘I’m just …’ She stretched her left arm across her body, to see if she could reach the release handle below her seat. She couldn’t and, worse, she puffed like a ninety-year-old woman just from that. ‘I’ll have to take my seatbelt off …’
‘No!’
The sudden urgency in his otherwise moderated voice shocked her into stillness, and she realised for the first time how hard he was working to keep her calm. He might be faking it one hundred percent, but it was working. Why the sudden urgency over her seatbelt? It had already done its job. It wasn’t as if she could crash twice.
‘I’ll come through the back window. Shield yourself from the falling glass if you can.’
It took him a moment to work his way around to the back of the car. She followed his progress with her senses and pressed her good foot to the brake pedal until she could see his legs in her rearview mirror, splayed wide and braced on the failing tail-lights of her hatch, as though gravity meant nothing to him.
Somewhere at the back of her muddled mind she knew there was something significant about the fact that he’d abseiled down to her. But then she was thoroughly distracted by the realisation that he was going to come in there with her—put himself at risk—to help her. Anxiety burbled up in her constricted chest.
‘Ready, Aimee? Cover your head.’
She curled her lone arm around her head and twisted towards the door. Behind her she heard a sharp crack, and then the high-pitched shattering of the back window. Tiny squares of safety glass showered down on her and pooled in the wrecked dash. She straightened and watched in the rearview mirror as Sam folded down her back seats and lowered himself to where she was trapped.
A moment later he appeared between the two front seats of the car, bending uncomfortably around the sub-branches of the tree limb.
‘Hey,’ he said, warm and rich near her ear.
An insane and embarrassing sob bubbled up inside her at having rescue so close at hand—at having him so close at hand—and she struggled to swallow it back. ‘I’m sorry …’ she choked.
‘Don’t be. You’re in an extraordinary situation. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t scared.’
He didn’t get it. How could he? She didn’t feel scared. She felt stupidly safe. Just because he was here. And that undid her more than all the fear of the hours before he’d come. How long had it been since she felt so instantly safe with a man?
‘Do you understand what’s happened to you, Aimee?’
‘I had an accident,’ she squeezed out. ‘I ran off the road.’
‘Yeah, you did. Your car’s gone down an embankment.
The back is pressed into the hillside and the front has come to rest against a tree.’
‘You make that sound so peaceful,’ she whispered. The complete opposite of the violence that had befallen her and her car. She twisted around to see his face, but the angle was too tricky and it hurt too much to twist any further.
‘Try not to move until I’ve stabilised your neck,’ he murmured gently. He reached past her and adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see her in it. And vice-versa. ‘I want you to look at my eyes, Aimee. Focus.’
She lifted hers to the mirror and met his concerned, compassionate gaze, eyes crinkled at the edges from working outdoors, and the bluest blue she’d ever seen. At least she thought they were blue. They could have been any colour, given the emergency lighting was casting a sickly pallor over everything. He slid his finger up between them.
‘Now, focus on my finger.’ He moved it left and right, forward and back. She tracked the gloved finger actively in the mirror, but slipped once and went back to his eyes—just for a moment, for a better look. The most amazing eyes. Just staring at them made her calmer. And more drowsy.
‘Okay.’ He seemed satisfied.
‘Did I pass?’
She lifted her head just slightly, so that the mirror caught the twist of his lips as he smiled. ‘Flying colours. You’re in pretty good shape for a girl wedged in a tree.’
She felt him brace his knees on the back of the front seats and heard him rifling through the kit he’d hauled in with him. ‘I need to check you out physically, Aimee. Is that going to be okay?’
The man who’d climbed in here to rescue her? ‘You can do … whatever you want.’
In her peripheral vision, in the dim glow of the cabin, she watched him strip off his gloves and twist a foam neck brace out of his bag.
‘Just a precaution,’ he said, before she could start worrying.
She let her head sag into the brace as he fitted it. Quite a comfortable precaution—if anything in this agonising situation could be called comfortable.