Cinderella And The Billionaire
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And Matt could feel Henry’s tension.
From the time he’d heard of his mother’s death, he’d been almost rigid. With shock? Fear? Who knew? He’d accepted the news without a word.
Social Services had been there early. Talking to Matt. If there’s no one, we’ll take care of him until we can contact his grandmother.
Matt hardly had the time or the skills to care for a child, but in the face of Henry’s stoic acceptance his voice had seemed to come from nowhere.
I’ll take care of him, he’d said.
Almost immediately he’d thought, What have I done?
To say Matt McLellan wasn’t a family man was to put it mildly. He’d been an only child with distant parents. He’d had a few longer-term lovers, but they’d been women who followed his rules. Career and independence came first.
Matt had been raised pretty much the same as Henry. Care had been paid for by money. But he hadn’t been deserted when he was seven. His almost-visceral reaction to Henry’s loss had shocked him.
So Henry had come home to Matt’s apartment. The place had great views overlooking the Hudson. It had the best that money could buy when it came to furnishings and art, but Matt pretty much used it as a place to crash. In terms of comfort for a seven-year-old there was nothing.
They’d gone back to Amanda’s apartment to fetch what Henry needed and found almost a carbon copy of Matt’s place. The apartment was spotless. Henry’s room had designer children’s prints on the walls but it still spoke sterile. His toys were arranged almost as if they were supposed to be part of the artwork.
Henry had taken a battered teddy and a scrapbook that Matt had had the privilege to see.
He’d wanted nothing else.
The scrapbook was in his backpack now. There was panic when it was out of reach, so the backpack had pretty much stayed on for the entire trip. And Teddy... When Matt had put on his oversized sou’wester, Henry had tucked Teddy deep in the pocket, almost as if he expected someone to snatch it away.
A kid. A scrapbook. A teddy.
There’d been nothing else. And Matt had had no idea how to comfort him.
‘Maybe we could feed the dog,’ Matt said and waited some more.
‘Boof likes boys more than grown-ups,’ Meg said from the wheel. ‘Though he likes me best. The same as your teddy, Henry. I bet your teddy likes you best.’
So she’d seen. His respect for her went up a notch.
Actually, his respect was mounting.
Even though it had annoyed him at the time, he’d accepted—even appreciated—her checking his authority to take Henry to the island. And her skill now... The way she turned the boat to the wind, her concentration on each swell... They combined to provide the most comfortable and safe passage possible.
She was small and thin. Her copper curls looked as if they’d been attacked by scissors rather than a decent hairdresser. She’d ditched her oilskin and was now wearing faded jeans and a windcheater with the words Here, Fishy on the back. Her feet were bare and she seemed totally oblivious to the wind.
Her tanned face, her crinkled eyes... This woman was about as far from the women he mixed with as it was possible to get.
And now she was focused on Henry. He saw Henry’s surprise as Meg mentioned Teddy. Henry’s hand slipped into his pocket as if he was reassuring himself that Ted was still there.
‘Ted likes me.’
‘Of course,’ Meg agreed. ‘Like Boof likes me. But Boof does love friends giving him his dinner.’
She went back to concentrating on the wheel. Boof sat beside her but looked back at Henry. As if he knew what was expected of him. As if he knew how to draw a scared child into his orbit.
Had there been kids in the past, scared kids on this woman’s fishing charters? He couldn’t fault the performance.
But there was no pressure. Maybe it was only Matt who was holding his breath.
Boof walked back over to Henry, gazed into his face, gave a gentle whine and raised a paw. Matt glanced up at Meg and saw the faintest of smiles.
Yep, this was a class act, specifically geared to draw a sucker in. And Henry was that sucker and Matt wasn’t complaining one bit.
‘Can I have the doggy bits?’ Henry quavered.
Meg said, ‘Sure,’ and tossed the bag. Matt caught it but she’d already turned back to the wheel.
No pressure...
He could have kissed her.
He needed to follow Meg’s lead. He dropped the bag on Henry’s knee. ‘You might get your fingers dirty,’ he said, as if he almost disapproved of what Henry might do.
‘I can wipe them,’ Henry said.
‘I guess.’
Henry nodded. Cautiously, he opened the bag.
‘Sit,’ he said to Boof, and Boof, who’d stood with alacrity the moment the bag opened, sat.
‘Ask,’ Henry said and the plan went swimmingly. A doggy bit went down the hatch. Boof’s tail waved and then he raised a paw again. His plea was obvious. Repeat.
It was such a minor act, but for Matt, who’d cared for an apathetic bundle of misery for two weeks without knowing how to break through, it felt like gold. He glanced up at Meg, expecting her to be still focusing on the sea, but she wasn’t. Her smile was almost as wide as his.
Did she know how important this was? She’d seen the legal documents. He’d told her the gist of the tragedy.
Her smile met his. He mouthed a silent thank you with his smile, and her smile said, You’re welcome.
And that smile...
Back at the boatshed she’d said she was twenty-eight. He’d hardy believed her, but now, seeing the depth of understanding behind her smile...
It held maturity, compassion and understanding. And it made him feel...
That was hardly appropriate.
She turned back to the wheel and his gaze dropped to her feet. The soles were stained and the skin was cracked.
She’d said she’d been fishing since she was sixteen. She was so far out of his range of experience she might as well have come from another planet. There was no reason—and no way—he could even consider getting to know her better. That flash of...whatever it was...was weird.
He went back to watching Henry feed Boof, one doggy bit at a time. The little boy was relaxing with every wag of the dog’s tail. Finally the bits were gone. He expected Meg to call Boof back, or that the dog would resume his stance at the bow. Instead, the dog leaped onto the seat beside Henry and laid his big, boofy head on Henry’s lap.
Matt glanced up at Meg and, surprised, saw the end of a doggy command—the gesture of clicked fingers.
Part of the service?
She grinned at him and winked. Winked?
Henry was feeling Boof’s soft ears. He wiggled his fingers, and the dog rolled his head, almost in ecstasy.
Henry giggled.
Not such a big thing?
Huge.
His hold on him tightened. This kid was the child of a business connection. Nothing more, but that giggle almost did him in.
He glanced back at Meg and found her watching him. Him. Not Henry. His face. Seeing his reaction.
For some reason that made him feel...exposed?
That was nuts. He was here to deliver a child to his grandmother and move on. There was no need for emotion.
He didn’t do emotion. He hardly knew how. That Meg had somehow made Henry smile, that she’d figured how to make him feel secure... How did she know how to do it?
Matt McLellan was a man in charge of his world. He knew how to keep it ordered, but for some reason this woman was making him feel as if there was a world out there he knew nothing about.
And when Henry snuggled even closer, when Henry’s hands stilled on the big dog’s head, when Henry’s eyes fluttered closed... When he fell asleep against Matt with all the trust in the world, the feeling intensified.
Once again he glanced at Meg and found her watching. And the way she looked at him...
It was as if she saw all the way through and out the other side.
* * *
She shouldn’t be here. She should be home, slashing her grass, doing something about Grandpa’s veggie patch. If he could see the mess it was in, he’d turn in his grave. That veggie patch had been his pride and joy.
She’d let it run down. She’d had no choice. The last months of her grandfather’s life he’d been almost totally dependent. She didn’t begrudge it one bit but she’d come out the other side deep in debt. She now had to take every fishing charter she could get.
The veggie patch was almost mocking her.
She should sell the whole place and move on. It’d cover her debts. She could go north, get a job in a charter company that wasn’t as dodgy as Charlie’s, make herself a new life.
Except the house was all she had left of Grandpa. All she had left of her parents.
Stop it. There was nothing she could do to solve her problems now, so there was no use thinking about them. She was heading out to Garnett Island. The money would help. That was all that mattered.
Except, as the hours wore on, as Bertha shovelled her way inexorably through the waves, she found herself inexplicably drawn to the man and child seated in the stern.
They’d exchanged niceties when they’d first boarded: the weather, her spiel about the history of this coast, the dolphins, the birds they might see. The guy... Matt...had asked a few desultory questions. Other than that, they’d hardly talked. The child had seemed bereft and the guy seemed as if he didn’t want to be here.
And then she’d convinced Henry to feed Boof and something had happened. She’d seen them both change. She’d seen the kid light up. She’d seen him pat Boof and then snuggle into the side of the man beside him.
And she’d seen Matt look as if he was about to cry.
What was it between the pair of them? What was a Manhattan financier doing carting a kid down into the Southern Ocean to dump him on Garnett Island?
Except the guy now looked as if he’d cracked wide open. He cared. Something had shifted inside him, and when he’d smiled at her...
Um...not. Let’s not go there. This was a seriously good-looking guy being nice to an orphan, and if that wasn’t a cliché for hearts and violins nothing was.
But that smile...
Was nothing to do with her. She was doing a job, nothing else.
They were getting close to Garnett now. She could see its bulk in the distance. There were a couple of uninhabited rocky outcrops in between, the result of some long-ago volcanic disturbance. She needed to watch her charts, watch the depth sounder. Not think about the pair behind her.
And then, suddenly, she had something else to think about. Bertha coughed.
Or that was what it sounded like, and after a lifetime spent at sea Meg was nuanced to every changing engine sound. She checked the dials.
Heat?
What the...? She’d checked everything obvious. How could the engine be heating? And almost as she thought it, she caught her first faint whiff.
Smoke.
CHAPTER TWO
SMOKE?
Oh, dear God.
Meg had a sudden flashback to a couple of days back. She’d been bringing in a fishing charter and she’d seen Graham, Charlie’s son, coming out of the inlet. He’d been in this boat.
Rowan Bay was a marine reserve, a fish breeding ground. It was tidal, shallow, full of drifting sand and water grasses. It was a good place to add to your catch for the day—if you weren’t caught by the fisheries officers.
And if you didn’t care about your boat.
She was suddenly hearing her grandpa’s voice.
You go in there in anything bigger than a dinghy, you’re an idiot. Operating in murky waters can cause blockages in the cooling-water intake. That can lead to engine overheating.
Graham was an idiot.
But now wasn’t the time for blaming. Almost instinctively, she shut the motor down, grabbed the fire extinguisher and headed below.
The whiff of smoke became a wall.
Meg O’Hara was not known to panic. There’d been dramas at sea before. She’d swum to shore when a motor died. She’d dived overboard to clear a fouled propeller. She’d even coped with a punter having a heart attack as he’d caught a truly excellent bluefin tuna.
But fire at sea, this far out...
Fire extinguishers had limited volume. It was useless to simply point it at smoke and pull the trigger. But how to get to the seat of the fire?
She hauled her windcheater over her face and tried to open the hatch over the engine...
Flames.
‘Get out.’ The voice was harsh, deep, and then repeated, a roar of command. She hesitated, shoving the extinguisher forward, trying desperately to see...
‘Now!’ And a hand hooked the collar of her windcheater and hauled her upward.
She dropped the extinguisher and went. He was right. The speed of this fire...
There was a bag at the entrance to the galley. Heavy. Lifesaving. She grabbed it and lugged it upward.
‘Let it go,’ the voice roared, and the hand on her collar was insistent.
Pigs might fly, she thought, clinging like a limpet as the hand hauled her higher. And then she was out on the deck, clinging to her precious bag.
‘The tender...’ A condition of charters in these waters was that a lifeboat was with them at all times and she’d checked the inflatable dinghy before she left. Thank God. The deck was now a cloud of smoke. If the fuel went...
She had to get the tender into the water and get them all into it. Now!
She grabbed the lifeboat’s stern pulley. Matt was beside her, seeing what she was doing, matching her at the bow. Lowering it with her.
It hit the water. Almost before it did, she grabbed Henry and thrust him into Matt’s arms.
‘In. Now.’ She grabbed one of the lines from the tender and thrust it into his hand. ‘Don’t let go. If you fall in, shove the tender away from the boat and pull yourselves in.’
‘You take him,’ Matt snapped.
‘Don’t be a fool.’ The engine could go up at any minute. ‘Take care of the kid. Go.’
She copped a flash of concern but the decision was made. Henry had to be his first priority. He lifted the stunned Henry onto the side of the boat, steadied for a moment and slipped downward.
Thank God she had them both in lifejackets. Getting into an inflatable from a wallowing boat was fraught at the best of times. But he had Henry in, tucking him into the bow. Then he was standing, holding on to the boat. ‘You!’
It was the kind of order her grandfather would have made. A no-nonsense order, the kind you didn’t mess with, but she still had stuff to do.
‘Boof!’ she yelled and the big dog was in her arms. She thrust him downward and somehow Matt caught him.
‘Get down here,’ he yelled.
She could no longer see him. The smoke was all around her.
One last thing...
She grabbed her bag and slid over the side. Strong hands caught her, steadied, but she allowed herself a mere half a second for that steadying. Then she was at the tiller of the tender. The little engine purred into life. Thank You, God.
Without being asked, Matt was shoving with all his might, pushing the tender as far from the boat as he could.
Into gear... Full power... Away.
And maybe twenty seconds later the fuel tank caught and Bertha erupted into a ball of flames.
She kept the tender at full throttle. The danger wasn’t passed yet. Burning fuel could spread across water.
A minute. Two. The distance between them and the flames was growing. She could breathe again.
Just.
She did a quick head count. Not that it was necessary but she needed it for her sanity.
Matt. Henry. Boof. Bag.
They should survive.
* * *
‘Wow, that was exciting. We’re safe now, though, Henry. We’re okay.’
He couldn’t think what else to say. Matt sat in the bow of the little boat and held Henry. Tight. He was giving comfort, he told himself, but the feel of the child against him, the solidness of the little body, the safeness of him... It was a two-way street.
The charter boat was now a smouldering wreck. The flames were dying. It was already starting to look skeletal.
They’d been so lucky. From the time he’d seen Meg’s head jerk around, heard her cut the engine, from the time he’d caught the first whiff of smoke himself... A minute? It must have been more but it didn’t feel like it.
He felt stunned to numbness.
They were safe.
Meg was at the tiller. She was coughing, but she was in control. She’d been hit by a wall of smoke as she’d gone below and she’d fought him for that stupid bag. When she’d got herself together, he was going to have words with her about that bag. Like passengers on an airliner trying to save their carry-ons after a crash landing, she could have killed them all. His and Henry’s baggage was now ashes, and he wasn’t grieving about it one bit. For her to fight to get her bag...
Mind, there was nothing unprofessional about the rest of the way she’d performed. She’d moved seamlessly. All he’d done was follow what she was doing. She’d made them safe.
Safe was a good word. A great word.
He held Henry and let it sink in.
And then he thought, Where are we?
Maybe they weren’t so safe.
Meg had pointed out Garnett Island to him a few moments ago. It was still in the distance, surely too far to head for in these seas, in this little boat. The tender was sitting low already. The swells didn’t cause a problem but the wind was causing a chop on the top of the water. Meg was steering into the wind, minimising water resistance, but if one of those waves veered sideways...
He looked ahead and saw where she was steering.
A rocky outcrop rose, almost like a sentinel, straight up from the ocean floor. Maybe half a kilometre from them? Maybe less. It looked rough and inhospitable, but part of the rock face seemed to have slipped, forming what seemed a little bay. A few hardy plants must have fought their way to survival, because there was a tinge of green.
‘That’s where we’ll land,’ Meg said, watching his look, and then she had to stop and cough again. And again.
She buckled, fighting for breath. She’d copped so much smoke.
‘We’re swapping places,’ he said.
‘I’m not moving anywhere.’ Every word was a gasp.
Time to be brutal.
‘No choice. Your breathing’s compromised. Think about what happens if you collapse at the tiller.’
‘You can’t...’
‘I can handle a boat.’
And he saw her shoulders sag, just a little. Relief? She was only just holding herself together, he thought, and with that thought came another. She’d gone down below, to try to fight a burning engine.
‘The flames... Is your throat burned?’
‘Only...only smoke. Not...burned.’
‘Good, but you’re still moving. When I say go, move.’
She didn’t reply, fighting another paroxysm of coughing.
‘Meg needs help,’ he told Henry. He was torn. Henry needed to be held, but the tiller had to be priority.
Boof was on the floor of the boat, crouched low, almost as if he knew stability was an issue. He took Henry’s hand and guided it down to the dog’s collar. ‘I want you to hold on to Boof,’ he told him. ‘He’ll be worried. Hold him tight. Don’t let him move, will you?’
And to his relief he got a silent nod in response. Excellent. Not only would Henry’s hold anchor him to the big dog, it’d keep him low, as well.
Right. Meg. The tiller.
He watched the sea, waiting for his chance. The next swell swept by. No chop.
Now.
* * *
One minute she was holding the tiller, trying to stop the coughs racking her body, trying to keep control. The next...
Matt seemed to come from nowhere. Keeping his body low, he was suddenly at her end of the boat, though with enough sense to keep his weight back as far as he could. Crouching low, he tugged her hard against him, pulling her forward. For one long moment he held her still, checking balance, checking the waves.
Another swell passed—and then she was swung around and propelled onto the central seat.
And then Matt had the tiller and she was no longer in control.
His hold had been swift, firm to the point of brutal, a hard, strong grasp that had left her with nowhere to go. In any other circumstance it would have been terrifying, but right now she’d needed it. It was the assurance that responsibility wasn’t all hers. That she wasn’t alone.
It was a feeling that made her almost light-headed.
Though maybe that was the smoke.
She was still struggling to breathe. Matt might be in control, he might have reassured her that the boat was being cared for, but she needed air.
Smoke inhalation...
She’d done first-aid training. Grandpa had insisted and he’d also insisted on her updating over and over.
‘The bag...’ she managed and then subsided again. Oh, her chest hurt.
Matt was handling the tiller, watching the sea, but in between she could see him coming to grips with controls. He was also watching Henry, but he flashed her a glance that told her he was almost as worried as she was about her lungs.
He looked down at the bag. She’d seen his reaction as she’d tossed it down to him—what, you’re worried about luggage? Now, though... He wasn’t a fool. He had the bag opened in seconds, and, still with one eye on the oncoming sea, he started checking the contents.
The first-aid kit lay on top.
What she needed apart from a canister of oxygen—which she didn’t have—was a bronchodilator. Albuterol. It was in the first-aid kit to cope with possible asthma attacks.
‘Alb...alb...’ she gasped but he got it. He had the small canister clear, and she clutched it as if she were drowning.
‘You know how to use it?’
She did. She’d used it once on an overweight fisherman with a scary wheeze. She held it and inhaled, held it and inhaled.
Matt was steadied the little boat and turned her slightly away from the outcrop they were heading for, making a sensible adjustment to their path so it was more of a zigzag. It would stop the sideways swell.
He knew boats, then.
Maybe panic had as much to do with the coughing as smoke did, she thought. As she felt her breathing ease...as she watched Matt turn the tiller to avoid a cresting chop...as she twisted in the boat and saw Henry, crouched over Boof, holding his collar and even speaking reassuringly to him...her world seemed to settle.
For now they were safe. Moving on.
They needed help.
Radio...
‘There’s a radio in the bag, too,’ she managed. The coughing wasn’t over but at least she could talk. ‘And a GPS tracker. In the side pocket.’ She subsided and coughed a bit more while she watched Matt delve into the bag again.
And come up with nothing.
‘There’s nothing in the side pocket.’
‘There must be.’
No charter boat went to sea without an emergency radio and tracker beacon. It was illegal to leave port without them. Every boat in Charlie’s Marine Services therefore held a bag such as the one Meg had rescued. The presence of the bag was one of the things she checked, every time she boarded. She hadn’t checked the contents today, though. There’d been no need. The contents were standard, always in there.
But Bertha wasn’t usually used for charters.
No!
‘What?’ Matt went back to looking at the sea but she could tell by the rigidity of his shoulders that he’d sensed something was wrong. Seriously wrong.
‘My idiot boss.’ She buckled and coughed a bit more, and maybe that was caused by panic, as well. She was trying to make herself think.
Radios and GPS trackers had batteries that ran out. Charlie ran a regular schedule of checking, because it was sensible, but also, if any marine inspector found a charter boat without a working GPS beacon, or a radio with a flat battery, he’d be down on them like a ton of bricks.