Rescued by a Millionaire

It grew so fast that it threatened to overwhelm her. What was it? Need? Desire?

Whatever it was, her overwhelming compulsion was to lay her head against this man’s chest and claim it as her home. The home she’d never had was suddenly right here.

Right here in this man’s heart.

Only it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. This man had nothing to do with her. He was a stranger. He was an Australian dust farmer of whom she knew nothing, except that he lived in the most barren place on earth and he wanted nothing to do with any woman.

But he was holding her. And she was feeling…what? What was this sensation that was swelling beneath her breast, so much that she thought she must surely burst? Or cry. Or do something even more stupid, like falling against him and holding him hard against her and raising her face to his and….

No!

Marion Lennox is a country girl, born on a southeast Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a “very special doctor”, Marion also writes hugely popular Harlequin® Medical Romances™. In her other life she cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish, she travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost!)—oh, and she teaches statistics and computing to undergraduates at her local university. Marion has won major awards for her romance writing in both North America and Australia.

Author’s note:

The Indian Pacific Railway is a wonderful train ride from the east coast of Australia to the far west. It takes three days from coast to coast, and it leaves daily. For the purpose of this book I’ve played with the timetable and the train runs only twice a week.

RESCUED BY A MILLIONAIRE

Marion Lennox

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PROLOGUE

HIS overwhelming sensation was relief.

Wasn’t he supposed to feel fury? Desolation? Bitterness? That was what he’d felt in the past when people he loved had walked away. As Riley Jackson loaded the last of his lovely wife’s possessions into his best friend’s Lear jet he expected at least an echo of that pain.

It didn’t happen. The plane was now a sliver on the horizon and he felt no desolation at all.

Maybe he was cured of this love business. He obviously didn’t have what it took to hold a relationship together and he no longer cared.

‘What do you reckon, boy?’ he asked his dog, and Bustle nosed his hand in gentle query. Bustle wouldn’t miss Lisa either. Lisa had no time for dogs.

‘We’re on our own now, mate,’ Riley told him as he turned to walk back to the house. The old dog limped beside him. Unlike his wife, Bustle would be loyal to the end.

Losing Bustle would be real heartache, Riley thought. That would be the real end of loving.

Bustle nosed his fingers again, and Riley stooped to give his ancient collie a gentle hug.

‘I know. I don’t have you for much longer, boy, and I’ll miss you like crazy. But I’ll miss nobody else. No one is going to get close to me, ever again.’

CHAPTER ONE

MISTAKE. Major mistake. On a mistake scale of one to ten, this ranked at about a thousand.

For as far as Jenna could see there was red dust and railway track. A few low-growing saltbushes grew along the line. In the distance, the train was fading into shimmering heat.

There was nothing else.

Jenna stood motionless, trying to take in the enormity of what she’d done.

When the announcement had been made that the train would stop at Barinya Downs, Jenna had assumed it was some sort of town. She’d glanced out the window and half a dozen trucks had been pulled up at the platform. Staff from the train had been unloading goods, and wide-hatted, farming-type men and women had been tossing the unloaded goods into the backs of their trucks.

It had to be a settlement at least, she’d decided, which was infinitely preferable to two more days on the train watching Brian humiliate his little daughter.

But she hadn’t checked. She’d been so angry that she’d hurled their suitcases from the train and told Karli they were getting off. They’d stepped out onto the platform just as the train had started to move.

So where were they?

Barinya Downs.

The name meant nothing.

Worse. The trucks she’d seen a few minutes ago had now disappeared in a cloud of red dust.

There was nothing here at all.

She stared about her in horror, taking in her surroundings with sickening disbelief. What had she done? Where had she landed them? They were a day and a half’s train journey from Sydney and two days from Perth.

They were nowhere.

‘Where are we?’ Karli asked, in the scared little voice that was all she ever used within Brian’s hearing. It was the only tone Jenna had heard for the last two days.

‘We’re at Barinya Downs,’ she said, speaking loudly into the hot wind, as if naming the place with gusto would give it substance.

It didn’t. Barinya Downs seemed to consist of a concrete platform and a tin roof. That was it. There wasn’t a tree. There wasn’t a telephone. Nothing.

And Karli was standing by her side, waiting for her to tell her what to do.

Good grief, Jenna, you’ve really done it now, she whispered to herself. You king-sized twit. Dad always said you were stupid and he’s been proved right.

But what her father thought no longer mattered. Charles Svenson was in America.

Maybe her father was even acting in collusion with Brian.

The thought was unbelievable, but it was certainly possible. She and Karli shared a mother, but their different fathers—Brian and Charles—had to be the most unscrupulous men she knew.

So Charles was no help, and Brian was on the train that was drawing further away by the minute.

Jenna closed her eyes, remembering Brian’s face as she’d prepared to alight.

‘Get off, then,’ he snarled. ‘See if I care. I’ve won.’ His expression as she and her little half-sister stepped off the train was pure triumph.

Had he realised what this place was? Jenna’s breath caught in horror as the thought struck home. Had Brian realised what she was doing? Had he known that Barinya Downs was nothing?

Surely even Brian wouldn’t wish his daughter to be so desperately stranded.

Surely nothing. She sat down on her suitcase and tried to fight panic. She’d been so stupid. Five-year-old Karli was looking at her in concern, and she tugged the little girl down onto her knee and hugged her hard.

Calm down, she told herself. Make yourself think.

‘Will someone come and get us?’ Karli asked, her tone totally trusting, and Jenna struggled to find an answer.

‘Maybe,’ she told her. ‘I need to figure things out.’

Karli obediently subsided into silence—a feat she was all too good at. Karli had spent her whole five and three-quarter years being seen and not heard. Jenna was determined her silence had to end, but for now she was grateful for Karli’s silence. She had to think what to do.

Which was hard.

As well as being panic-stricken, Jenna was almost unbearably hot. They’d emerged from an air-conditioned train into an outside world so scorching it could almost bake bread. It was the middle of the day in the Australian Outback.

Forget the heat. Think, she told herself.

When would the next train come through?

She forced herself to remember the timetable she’d studied back in England. Brian’s suggestion that they take the long train journey across the centre of Australia had been a surprise, and she’d looked the train’s route and timetable up on the internet.

Think, she told herself desperately once more. I must be wrong.

She wasn’t. She was sure she wasn’t. The train ran across the continent only twice a week. As well as unloading goods, the stop at Barinya Downs had been to allow the train running in the opposite direction to pass them. It had rumbled through ten minutes ago.

There’d be no more trains for three days, she thought. This was Thursday. There was no train until next Monday.

Feeling sicker by the minute, Jenna hauled her cell phone from her bag and stared at the screen.

No host.

She was out of range of any of the communication carriers. Of course. What did she expect?

But she’d seen those guys in the trucks. They have to live somewhere, she told herself. She put Karli gently aside and walked to the edge of the platform. That was another mistake. The force of the midday sun hit her like a blast from a furnace. She recoiled into the shade, and Karli snuggled back against her, finding security in the curves of her body.

Great security she was.

‘We’ll be fine, Karli,’ she whispered. She narrowed her eyes against the glare, gazing around in a three-sixty-degree sweep. Surely somewhere there had to be something.

There were rough tracks leading in half a dozen directions from the siding. Nothing else.

No. Something.

There was definitely something, she thought as she came to the end of her sweep. Buildings? She wasn’t sure. It was too far to see.

She stared down at her half-sister in indecision. What to do?

There was little choice. They could stay on this platform with nothing to eat, and—worse—nothing to drink, and wait for the next train. That was the stuff of nightmares. Or they could walk to whatever it was on the horizon.

She thought back to literature she’d read when they were preparing for this trip. ‘In the case of breakdown in the Outback stay with your car,’ was the advice. ‘Tell people where you’re going. Your friends will send out a search party and they’ll find a car. They may well not find someone wandering in the desert.’

That was fine as far as advice went, she thought bitterly. But the only person who knew they were stuck here was Brian.

The vision of Brian’s face floated before her. She’d never seen such malice.

He’d do nothing. They’d walked into his con brilliantly. She knew he’d do nothing and the thought made her feel ill.

How could she ever have trusted him?

Let it go, she told herself. Don’t even think about it. We’re going to have to look after ourselves.

So what was new?

We need to wait, she told herself. She glanced at her watch. One o’clock. The heat was at its peak. ‘We’ll change into something sensible,’ she told Karli. ‘Then in a few hours we can head over and see whether that’s a house. If it’s not we can always come back. We can always…’

Always what?

Good question.

‘What will we do while we wait?’ Karli asked.

That was another good question. They had to do something. The alternative was thinking and who wanted to think?

‘We could make dust-castles,’ she suggested, and Karli looked doubtful.

‘You don’t make dust-castles. You make sandcastles.’

‘Yes, but that’s according to the rules,’ Jenna told her and she finally managed a smile. ‘We’re in unchartered territory now, sweetheart, and rules need to be stood on their head. Dust-castles it is.’

Riley walked in the back door and dumped the last of the supplies on the kitchen floor. Then he stood back and stared down in distaste. He’d hoped to be out of here by now, and even though the supplies Maggie had sent were necessary he didn’t have to like them.

Baked beans. More baked beans.

Beer.

Another week, he told himself, and then he’d be back in civilisation. Back to Munyering, with his lovely house, Maggie’s great food and a swimming pool. All the things that made life in this heat bearable.

Why hadn’t he sent one of his men to do this job?

Because they wouldn’t come, he told himself, and he even managed a wry grin. There was bound to be something in the union rules about existing on baked beans and dust.

But he was wasting time, talking to himself in this dump of a kitchen, and time was something he didn’t have. So… Priorities.

He unloaded the beer into the fridge, packing it in until the door barely shut.

‘That’s my housekeeping,’ he told himself and then he gave another rueful grin. Damn, wasn’t talking to himself the first sign of madness? Maybe he should get another dog.

Maybe he shouldn’t.

It was just after one o’clock. He had seven hours of daylight left. That was at least one more bore that could be mended.

What do they say about mad dogs and Englishmen? he demanded of himself, but he already knew the answer. Working in the midday sun might well lead to madness, but the bores were blocked and the survival of his cattle depended on him getting them unblocked. If he rested, maybe another thirty head of stock would be dead before nightfall.

‘Okay, mate,’ he told himself, looking at the beer with real longing. ‘That’ll wait. It has to. Get yourself back to work.’

As sunsets went this one was amazing. The sun was a ball of fire low on the horizon, and the blaze of light across the desert would, in normal circumstances, have taken Jenna’s breath away.

Not now. Karli was starting to stumble. The buildings had looked a mile or so away when she’d judged distance from the railway siding, but it’d ended up being closer to three or four miles. They’d abandoned their luggage back at the siding and were wearing only light pants, shirts and casual shoes, but even then it had been a long, hot walk. The sand was burning and their shoes were far too thin.

And now… The closer they grew to the buildings, the more Jenna’s heart sank.

The homestead looked abandoned. It consisted of ancient, unpainted weatherboards, and its rusty iron roof looked none too weatherproof. There were no fences or marked garden—just more red dust. All around the house were tumbledown sheds. The house itself looked intact, but only just. Broken windows and missing weatherboards told Jenna that no one had been at home here for a long time.

But it was no longer the house that interested Jenna. No matter how ramshackle it was, it could be a shelter until the next train came through. What she’d focussed on for the last half-mile was the water tank behind the house. It looked as if it might tumble down at any minute, but it still looked workable.

‘Please,’ she was whispering as she led Karli past the first of the shacks. ‘Please…’

And then she stopped dead.

Behind the house, at the end of a crude airstrip, was an aeroplane. Small. Expensive. New.

It wasn’t the sort of plane anyone in their right mind would abandon.

‘There must be someone here,’ Jenna told Karli, and she crouched in the dust and gave her little half-sister a hug. ‘Oh, well done. You’ve walked really bravely, and now we’re safe. Someone’s here.’

‘I need a drink,’ Karli said cautiously and Jenna collected herself. A drink.

She turned and stared at the house, willing someone to appear. No one did.

‘Let’s knock,’ she told Karli.

Who’d live in a dump like this?

She led her sister over to the house and she felt about as old as Karli was—and maybe even more scared.

She knocked.

No one answered.

They waited. Karli stood trustingly by Jenna’s side and Jenna’s sense of responsibility grew by the minute.

Come on. Answer.

Nothing. The only sound was the wind, blasting around the corners of the house.

‘Knock again,’ Karli whispered, and Jenna tried again, louder.

The door sagged inward.

A couple of loose sheets of roofing iron crashed down and down again in the wind.

Nothing.

‘I’m really thirsty,’ Karli told her, and Jenna’s grip on her hand tightened. This wasn’t London. Surely anyone who lived here would understand their need to break in. And…they didn’t need to break. The door was falling in anyway.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she whispered.

‘Why are we whispering?’ Karli asked.

‘Because it’s creepy. Hold my hand tight.’

‘You think there might be ghosts?’

‘If there are, I hope they can fly aeroplanes.’

Karli giggled. It was a great sound. There hadn’t been enough giggling in Karli’s short life, Jenna thought. There’d been none at all on the train with her father, and for the first time Jenna decided that maybe it hadn’t been such a disaster to get off.

If there was water. If the pilot of the aeroplane wasn’t an axe murderer.

Axe murderer? She was going nuts here. She didn’t have time to indulge in axe-murderer fantasies.

No one was going to answer the door.

She adjusted her grip on Karli’s hand to very, very tight. For Karli, Jenna told herself hastily. To reassure Karli. Not to reassure herself.

They tiptoed inside.

Through the back door the place looked much like the outside—as if it had been deserted for years. There was thick dust coating every surface. But…there were footprints in the dust. The prints looked as if they were made by a man’s boots, and they seemed relatively fresh.

Holding Karli’s hand as if it were infinitely important that she didn’t let go, Jenna led her across the bare wooden floorboards of the entrance porch. Their shoes left much smaller footprints beside the big ones.

The next door led to the kitchen.

Here there were definitely signs of life. There were boxes of canned food, a kerosene fridge, a lamp and a pile of newspapers strewn over a big wooden table. While Karli gazed around her with interest Jenna picked up the top newspaper. It was dated two days ago.

Someone was definitely using the house.

And—even better—there was a sink. Above the sink was a tap. Hardly daring to breathe, Jenna released Karli’s hand and twisted the tap. Out ran a stream of pure, clear water. She lowered her head and drank and nothing had ever tasted so good.

‘We’re fine, Karli,’ she said, a trifle unsteadily, and she lifted the little girl so that she, too, could drink. ‘We’re safe. There’s food and there’s drink. We can stay here for as long as we need.’

‘The hell you can.’

She twisted, still holding Karli to the tap. There was a man in the doorway.

For a moment there was absolute silence. Karli was still drinking and Jenna was shocked past speaking.

The man was large. He was well over six feet tall, and he filled the doorway with his broad shoulders and his strongly muscled frame. His build indicated a life of hard, physical work.

So did the rest of him. The man’s hair was sun-bleached, from dark brown at the roots to almost gold at the tips, and his skin was a deep lined bronze. The harsh contours of his strongly boned face were softened by deep, grey eyes that creased at the corners, maybe in accustomed defence against the sun’s glare. The man’s clothes—his hands, his face—were ingrained by layer upon layer of dust.

He had to be a farmer. The man’s whole appearance labelled him as such. He wore moleskin trousers and a khaki shirt, and in his hand he held a wide Akubra hat. This was an outfit Jenna recognised as almost a uniform among Australian men who worked the land.

Was he a farmer here? It didn’t make sense.

She had to speak. She had to say something.

‘H…hi.’ Not so good. Her voice came out as a squeak, and the man’s eyes widened.

‘Hi, yourself.’ Unlike Jenna’s, the man’s voice was deep, resonant and sure, laced with a broad Australian accent. His eyes were calmly watchful, as if at any minute he expected the apparition in his kitchen to vanish.

Jenna was still holding Karli to the tap. Now Karli finished drinking and pulled away. She lowered her to the ground; Karli stared distrustfully up at the stranger and then shrank against Jenna’s leg.

‘I… Is this your house?’ Jenna managed, holding tight to Karli.

‘It’s my house.’ The man was staring down at Karli as if he was certain he was seeing things. Karli didn’t look at him. She shrank behind Jenna’s legs and stayed there.

Silence. For the life of her, Jenna couldn’t think of what else to say.

Eventually, apparently recovering from the shock of finding strangers in his kitchen, the big man tossed his Akubra onto the table and walked across to the fridge. He opened the door and snagged a beer. Raising his eyebrows quizzically—for heaven’s sake, was the guy laughing?—he lifted the can towards Jenna. ‘I don’t know who on earth you are or how you got here,’ he said, ‘but can I offer you a beer?’

‘N…no. Thank you.’

‘There’s not much else,’ the man told her, pulling the ring from the top of the can and taking a long, long swallow. He didn’t lower the can until he’d almost emptied it. ‘Apart from water,’ he added then. ‘Which you seem to have found all by yourselves.’

Karli ventured a peek at him then from behind Jenna’s legs. Amazingly he gave the little girl a wink—which had her ducking back behind her sister.

‘We did find your water.’ Jenna took a deep breath, searching for composure. She didn’t find it. ‘I’m sorry. I guess…the thing is that we seem to be in a bit of trouble.’

‘You know, I guessed that,’ the man agreed gravely. ‘Either that or you’re a pair of very enthusiastic encyclopaedia salesmen.’ The man smiled at her across his beer, and when he smiled it was all Jenna could do not to gasp. The smile lit his whole face, making him seem years younger. She’d guessed his age at somewhere around forty, but when he smiled she knew he was closer to thirty. And, as well as younger, his smile made him seem incredibly…incredibly…

Male. Gorgeous. Sexy. The adjectives suddenly crowded into her head, and instinctively her hands fell to hold Karli tighter.

She gave herself a sharp mental swipe. She was being ridiculous. She didn’t react to men like this. She didn’t.

So why was this man so…mesmeric?

‘We’re not salesmen,’ she managed, striving for lightness. ‘The doors are a bit far apart out here to do door-to-door selling.’

She had her reward. The laughter deepened behind his eyes at her pathetic attempt at humour.

‘That’s a pity,’ he told her, his smile staying right where it was. He motioned to the pile of newspapers. ‘This is about all I have in the way of reading matter. An encyclopaedia would have its uses.’ Then his smile faded as he searched her eyes. The expression on his face softened, as though he sensed her fear. His gaze dropped again to Karli, peeping out from behind Jenna’s legs, and his expression softened still further.

‘So if you’re not salesmen, maybe you could tell me who you are?’

‘I don’t think…’ Jenna paused, the enormity of trying to explain their situation to this man almost overwhelming her in its degree of difficulty. ‘You won’t believe…’

‘Try me.’

‘But I don’t even know who you are,’ she burst out, and his gorgeous smile came flooding back.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You don’t. You know, I figured since you’re in my kitchen and you came in uninvited, that maybe it was up to you to introduce yourselves first. But maybe I’ve been remiss.’ He hauled his hat from the table and shoved it back on his head, then raised it a few inches in a gesture of salutation. ‘I’m Riley Jackson.’ His dark eyes twinkled down at Karli, who was still clinging as hard as she could cling to Jenna’s leg. ‘Have a seat, ladies. Make yourselves at home.’