The Outback Bridal Rescue

Ric slanted him a wry look. ‘You might not have co-operated with that plan. You have a habit of doing things your own way. This course ensured I’d be with you.’

Johnny frowned. ‘You thought I needed my hand held?’

‘No. It’s all a matter of timing. There’s more, Johnny. Mitch didn’t want to load it on you all at once over the phone. He gave that job to me with the advice to let you get over the shock of Patrick’s death first.’

The nerves in his stomach started knotting up again. ‘So hit me with the more. I’m sitting down and locked in. What else do I have to absorb?’

Ric looked at him, decided he was ready for it, and let him have it. ‘Patrick’s will. Mitch held it. He’s opened it.’

‘Well, that can’t be bad.’ Instant relief. ‘Patrick was always fair.’

‘Prepare yourself for another shock, Johnny. There’s a huge mortgage on Gundamurra and you’re about to inherit half of it.’

‘What?’ Incredulity blanked out several million brain cells.

‘Not quite half. You get forty-nine percent of Gundamurra and Megan gets fifty-one, leaving her in the driver’s seat where she’s always expected to be. But she won’t have expected to share her inheritance with you, Johnny. The normal thing would be a three-way split with her sisters.’

Co-owner of Gundamurra with Megan?

‘Mitch thought you should be prepared…get your head around it before we arrive at Gundamurra,’ Ric went on.

Johnny’s head was spinning.

What did it mean?

Why would Patrick cut out his two older daughters?

Why make him co-owner rather than Ric or Mitch?

A sense of horror billowed through him. He reached out and gripped his friend’s arm. ‘I didn’t ask for this, Ric. I swear I knew nothing about it.’

‘I didn’t think you did, Johnny,’ Ric assured him. ‘I have no doubt Patrick planned it himself.’

‘But why me? It’s not right, not…’ His mind fumbled for words. ‘Did he…did he explain to Mitch when he drafted the will?’

Ric shook his head. ‘Mitch wasn’t in on drafting it. Patrick did it himself and sent it to him sealed for safe-keeping two months ago.’

‘Two months…’ Johnny shook his head in bewilderment. ‘He must have made up his mind after Christmas.’

‘Maybe he knew he didn’t have long to live.’

‘Dammit! Why wouldn’t he tell us? We were all at Gundamurra for Christmas.’

‘If Patrick thought it was the last one for him, he wouldn’t have wanted to spoil it.’

‘But…’ Johnny lifted his hands in helpless frustration.

‘Want to know what Mitch thinks?’

He waved a go-ahead, completely beyond imagining what had motivated such an extraordinary step.

‘Patrick elected you to save Gundamurra. It’s highly unlikely that Megan can do it by herself. The way things are going with the drought, she won’t be able to service the mortgage. And it was you who always thought of it as home. Not me. Not Mitch. You.’

Johnny frowned. ‘Mitch had a home with his mother and sister, but I thought you…’ He searched Ric’s eyes.

A very direct gaze accompanied his reply. ‘You needed it more than I did, Johnny. And you can’t deny it touches something in your soul. It comes out in your songs.’

Need…yes. There was so much hype and superficial crap in the career he had chosen, so much touring to make his success stick, it was the thought of Gundamurra that kept him sane, grounded, and going back there always put his world in perspective again—what was real, what wasn’t.

‘It won’t be the same without Patrick.’ Grief squeezed his heart. ‘He was the soul of Gundamurra.’

‘You’re forgetting Megan.’

Megan.

His mind shied away from thinking of her right now. Already he could see those stormy grey eyes hating him for being given half of her place, wishing he’d never set foot on Gundamurra, let alone have any claim on it.

‘Patrick forgot his other daughters, Jessie and Emily,’ he said, tearing his mind off the one daughter who’d become such a nagging thorn in his side.

‘They’ve both made their lives away from Gundamurra and Patrick financed their ambitions,’ Ric reminded him. ‘I think they’ll feel they’ve had their share. Jessie has her medical degree and the women’s clinic she wanted at Alice Springs. Emily has her helicopter business at Cairns. The money to set them up was taken out of Gundamurra, probably contributing to the current debt. They can’t be unaware of that.’

True enough, Johnny silently acknowledged, yet the family home was the family home. Leaving them out and putting him in might very well stir a sense of injustice. He couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about this inheritance on many counts. On the other hand, Patrick had wanted him there and it was impossible to discount a decision which would not have been taken lightly.

‘It’s up to you and Megan to pull Gundamurra through this bad patch and revive it, Johnny,’ Ric gravely assured him. ‘Patrick got it right.’ He sighed and softly added, ‘He always got it right.’

It was some relief that Ric thought so.

Mitch, too, apparently.

But no way was Megan was going to accept it gracefully.

Jessie and Emily might not, either, though Ric was right about their interests lying elsewhere and Patrick had put large investments behind their chosen careers. Besides which, both of them were married to men who shared those interests, Jessie’s husband being a doctor for the Royal Doctor Flying Service, and Emily’s husband a fellow helicopter pilot.

Only Megan was unmarried.

Not surprising with her bristling form of feminism, Johnny thought, wishing she’d stayed in the sweetly amenable little sister mould that he’d always found so engaging. That much younger Megan had never minded him stepping in and helping.

The flight steward came and took their glasses. The plane was about to take off. Johnny leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes and tried to relax. Fourteen hours to Sydney. Then the flight to Gundamurra in the far north west of New South Wales…the outback.

He felt the pull of it in his mind…the vast, seemingly empty land, wide-open space, searingly blue sky. It had a rhythm all its own—one that always felt good. The only jarring note was Megan standing in the middle of it, waiting for him, furiously frustrated because she had to share Gundamurra with him.

Had Patrick got it right?

The financial part, yes. Johnny could pour millions into Gundamurra without a pang of personal loss. Mortgage gone with a simple transfer of money. Plus all the investment Megan needed to maintain the sheep station, eventually making it into a thriving concern again. But she certainly wouldn’t welcome him into the life there. Over the past few years, her eyes had been branding him as an unwanted intruder, wanting him out.

But I’m in, Johnny thought on a surge of grim determination to keep what Patrick had granted him, regardless of Megan’s reaction to it. He was co-owner. That gave him the right to be at Gundamurra whenever he wanted to and Megan would just have to stomach having him as her helpmate. Maybe, given time, he could whittle away whatever prejudice she had against him.

The leaden weight of grief eased as a strong sense of purpose grew. The outback was primitive—man against nature—a constant challenge that had to be won, just to survive, let alone prosper.

Above all else, Johnny was a survivor.

He wanted this challenge. Maybe he needed it. So come what might, he was going to hold his ground on Gundamurra. Patrick had entrusted it to him.

CHAPTER TWO

MEGAN finished doing her morning rounds, ensuring her work orders were being followed, checking for any problems, chatting to the families who still lived on the station, subtly assuring them that the status quo was not about to change. They were to carry on as usual.

She should have felt relieved that the sombre mood hanging over everyone for the past few days had lifted this morning, but the reason for it was a major irritant. Johnny had arrived. Never mind that Ric Donato and Mitch Tyler were also here. It was Johnny who put smiles on everyone’s faces. Just the thought of him was enough to do it.

Charm…

It was as natural to him as breathing.

And it always reminded her what a hopelessly naive little fool she’d been to see it as something else when applied to her. There was no differentiation. He ladled it out to one and all—his trademark in the pop world where he was a big star, a master of light entertainment. It meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Having finally recognised that, she’d tried to bury the hurt of it and move on. It would have helped if he’d gone completely out of her life—out of sight, out of mind—but he kept coming back, making her feel bad about herself because it was stupid, stupid, stupid to still feel attracted to him. His interests lay elsewhere, wrapped up with his glittering successes overseas. Their lives did not mix. Never would.

Why hadn’t her father seen that?

Why?

Had he only thought of the money needed—choosing the one person who could probably shed a few million dollars without even noticing it was gone?

Money as meaningless as charm.

Megan grimly determined to accept only what she absolutely had to in order to keep Gundamurra running. There was no avoiding confronting Johnny Ellis over what was to be done. He was here now, having come yesterday with Ric, flying his own plane in as he always did.

No doubt Mitch had told him about the will. Though even without that pressing business, he wouldn’t have stayed away, not from her father’s funeral. She could only hope that having started a new career in movies, he might be content to be an absent shareholder in Gundamurra. After all, her father was gone. No more mentoring readily available from Patrick Maguire.

As she walked back to the homestead, tears blurred her eyes. She didn’t want to feel betrayed by what her father had done, yet the grief of losing him was so much harder to bear because he’d left her in this intolerable position of having to accept Johnny Ellis as co-owner of Gundamurra.

Her shock at the terms of the will had been followed by a wild surge of rebellion, a violent need to fight it. She’d argued fiercely with her sisters, but Jessie’s and Emily’s flat refusal to go against their father’s decision left her without any support from them in a legal action to have it overturned.

In sheer desperation she’d broached the issue with Mitch Tyler, putting to him that Johnny might well have unfairly influenced her father. After all, she’d argued bitterly, he wasn’t known as Johnny Charm for nothing.

Those laser-blue eyes of Mitch’s had cut her down for even suggesting it, and his subsequent words had shamed her. ‘Is that worthy of your father, Megan?’

He’d waited for her answer.

When she’d maintained a stubborn silence, squirming inside at the pertinent criticism of her viewpoint, Mitch had flatly stated, ‘If you want to dishonour his will, I’m not your man. I’m here on Patrick’s behalf, to help facilitate what he wanted. It’s the very least I owe him for all he did for me.’

His high-minded integrity had goaded her into trying to bring it down a peg or two, force out some human weakness in him, make him empathise with what she was feeling. ‘Why Johnny? My father took you in, too. And Ric. The three of you stayed in his life. Don’t you feel slighted that he passed you over for…for a pop-star?’

It wouldn’t have been so…difficult…having to share the property with either of his other boys. And there was no denying she needed help in these current circumstances. Ric would have dealt delicately with the problems, caring about her feelings. Mitch would have handled her needs from the city with efficiency and absolute integrity. But Johnny Ellis…whose whole life was about playing to an audience who loved him?

Mitch’s straight black brows had beetled down. ‘You don’t understand your father’s choice?’

‘Do you?’ she’d challenged.

‘Yes. So does Ric. I think you need to talk to Johnny before taking any hostile step, Megan. You might not ever appreciate where he’s come from, but…’

‘I know what he is now,’ she’d snapped.

‘You’ve just pasted a label on the man which I know to be very superficial, Megan. Johnny has not yet reached the fulfilment of the person he is. I think…’ He’d paused, his gravity giving way to a gleam of whimsical irony. ‘Did Patrick teach you to play chess?’

‘Yes. We played sometimes.’

‘He always favoured a knight attack.’

‘What has that got to do with anything?’

‘It was a strategy, Megan. Your father thought out his strategies very carefully. Don’t devalue the thought he put into his will when you talk to Johnny. Remember that Gundamurra was Patrick’s life, as well as yours, and he knew how to share it.’

The sting of those words still hurt. She wasn’t mean-hearted. She hadn’t felt jealous of her father’s pride in his three bad boys who’d made good. Nor of his affection for them.

She just didn’t want Johnny Ellis constantly trampling through her life. She wished he’d married one of the gorgeous women he mixed with in his star-studded world so he wasn’t free to drop in on her world whenever he liked.

At least, after the funeral, he’d have to go back to his cowboy movie. Hopefully he’d ride off into the sunset—anywhere else but here! She didn’t begrudge him the fulfilment he was still looking for, as long as he stayed away and left her free to hold the reins at Gundamurra.

Maybe he could be persuaded to do just that.

With this purpose burning in her mind, Megan headed for the homestead kitchen. If Johnny was not still sleeping after his long trip from the U.S., he’d be there, being fed by Evelyn who’d be fussing over him with sickening adoration.

The housekeeper had been with the Maguire family all her life, born on the sheep station, and trained by Megan’s mother to run the household with meticulous efficiency, just as she herself always had before cancer had taken her life. Everyone loved and respected Evelyn, but her attitude towards Johnny Ellis—as though the sun shone out of him—grated terribly on Megan.

It was bad enough that she never tired of listening to his songs, playing them over and over again. No doubt she’d be cooking up all his favourite foods, regardless of the current strict budget. Megan tried not to feel too critical of this indulgence as she opened the kitchen door…and came to an embarrassed halt, finding the highly dependable housekeeper weeping on Johnny Ellis’s big, broad shoulder, his cheek rubbing the top of her head, one brawny arm holding her while the other was engaged in delivering soothing pats on her back.

It was instantly clear that the grief Evelyn had held in the past few days had suddenly overflowed and Johnny was comforting her. Megan stood rooted to the spot, realising that she and her sisters, wrapped in their own loss, had taken Evelyn’s services to them for granted, not really considering that she, too, might feel devastated by their father’s sudden death. It was Johnny who was giving her what she needed, sympathetic understanding and a shoulder to cry on.

What I need, too.

A painful loneliness stabbed through Megan’s heart. Jessie and Emily had their husbands. Ric and Mitch had their wives. With her father gone, she had no-one to hold her, soothe her pain. And the sight of Johnny Ellis embracing Evelyn made it worse.

It wasn’t fair that he looked like a strong, steady rock to lean on. His life was all about image, Megan fiercely told herself. Her gaze fixed scornfully on his riding boots—still playing the cowboy role—then noted how the denim of his jeans was tightly stretched around his powerful thighs, showing off how solidly built he was.

No doubt his female fans swooned over his macho sexiness, imagining his private parts were the ultimate in virility. Megan wondered just how many women didn’t have to imagine, having known him intimately. Did he have a different one every night? Two or three a day?

It would have to be so easy for him, a mere crook of the finger. His star status would assure him of groupies everywhere. Though strictly on a male appeal level, he had the lot anyway; impressive physique, a very masculine face accentuated by a squarish jawline, a strong, almost triangular nose with its flaring nostrils, wickedly twinkling greenish eyes which were quite strikingly complemented by tanned skin and toffee-coloured hair, and, of course, the wide mouthful of white teeth that flashed winning smiles everywhere, not to mention the million-dollar voice.

Which suddenly crooned, ‘I think this is the time for me to make you a cup of tea, Evelyn.’

The weeping had stopped.

With a choked little laugh, Evelyn lifted her head. ‘No…no…’ she said chidingly, reaching up to pat his cheek as he gently released her from his embrace. ‘Thank you for letting me unburden my sorrows, but don’t be taking away my pleasures now. You sit yourself down and let me get busy.’

Megan hadn’t gathered wits enough to effect a swift retreat before the two of them moved apart and Johnny’s swinging gaze caught her in the open doorway. Her stomach lurched as their eyes locked and she felt the sympathy he’d given to Evelyn being transmitted to her. She didn’t want it from him. Didn’t need anything from him. And be damned if she’d cry on his shoulder!

‘Megan…come on in,’ he invited, his hand beckoning her forward, taking charge, assuming control!

Not of me! Never! Megan silently and savagely vowed.

‘Evelyn was just telling me about your father…how he’d been clutching your mother’s photograph from the bedside table in his hand when you found him,’ he went on softly, sadly. ‘I guess—’

‘Yes.’ She cut him off, feeling tears welling up again. ‘I hope he’s with my mother now. He missed her very much.’ Fighting her way out of a storm of emotion, she waspishly added, ‘I wonder if you’ll ever know that kind of love, Johnny?’

His face tightened as though she had slapped him.

Evelyn gave a shocked gasp.

Acutely aware that the personal remark had slipped out of her previous thoughts and was totally inexcusable, Megan almost bit her tongue in chagrin. She had to deal with this man. That was best done by keeping as much impersonal distance from him as possible.

‘I think finding that kind of love is rather rare in today’s world,’ Johnny answered in a measured tone.

‘Especially yours,’ flew out of her mouth before she could stop it.

‘Miss Megan…’

Evelyn’s reproof faded into a heavy sigh.

Megan gritted her teeth, refusing to take back what she believed. She glared defiance at the man who’d probably slept with thousands of women without giving any one of them any serious commitment. Her words had clearly struck a nerve and she took fierce satisfaction in the way his eyes glittered at her. No sympathy now.

‘Rare in your world, too, Megan,’ he countered, using his voice like a silky whip. ‘Unless you’ve met the man of your dreams since Christmas.’

‘Too busy,’ she loftily retorted.

‘Which reminds me…’

‘We need to talk,’ she leapt in before he could take charge of their business meeting. ‘When you’ve finished your breakfast, perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming to the office.’

‘Whatever suits you,’ he returned obligingly.

‘That will be most appropriate. You’ll find me there.’

She quickly closed the door and strode outside, marching off a mountain of turbulent energy as she headed for the front entrance of the homestead and the steps leading up to the verandah which skirted the huge house—a verandah that welcomed people out of the sun that could too often be pitiless in the Australian Outback.

She hadn’t welcomed Johnny Ellis.

Couldn’t welcome him.

Having reached the top of the steps she turned, her gaze skating around all the outbuildings that made Gundamurra look like a small township from the air; the big maintenance and shearing sheds, the prize rams’ enclosure attached to the lab, the cottages for the long-term staff, the bunkhouse for jackaroos, the cook’s quarters, the supplies store, the schoolhouse.

She was twenty-eight years old and this was her life—the life she’d chosen—the life she loved.

She didn’t need a man.

Certainly not a man who peddled charm.

What she needed was this whole area to be an oasis of green again. Even the foliage on the pepper trees looked brown, coated with dust. All the land to the horizon was brown, and above it the sky was a blaze of blue, no clouds, no chance of rain.

If only the Big Wet had come this year, breaking the drought, her father might not have decided to write that will, making Johnny Ellis a permanent fixture in her life. The pressing question now was…how was she going to pry him out of it? Or at least, minimise his presence to next to nothing.

He didn’t belong here.

With this thought firmly entrenched in her mind, Megan went inside, passing through the great hall that bisected this section of the homestead, moving onto the verandah that skirted the inner quadrangle, heading straight for her father’s office.

Once there, she found herself drawn to the chess table by the window, remembering what Mitch had said, that her father thought through his strategies very carefully. The black and white pieces were set up ready to play, which had to mean his last game with Mitch—played by e-mail—had been completed.

Game over, she thought, and on a deep wave of sadness, laid the black king down. She stared at the white knight, fretting further over why her father had thought Johnny Ellis was the right man to ride in to the rescue, then gave up on trying to figure it out and moved on to sit in the large leather chair behind the desk.

It was a big chair made for a big man. Physically she didn’t fit it, never would, but at least her father had granted her the right to sit here in his place, and no way in the world was she going to let Johnny Ellis occupy it while they talked.

He was ten years her senior but that didn’t give him any authority over her or what was to be decided in this room. It was she who owned fifty-one percent of Gundamurra…she who had the whip hand…and all the millions he’d made as a pop-star could not change that!

CHAPTER THREE

DEAL kindly with her…

Ric’s admonition was playing through Johnny’s mind as he approached Patrick’s office, but Megan’s attitude towards him made it damned difficult to keep it fixed there. Icy politeness from her last night and the least possible amount of contact. This morning, rejecting his sympathy point-blank, actually turning it into one of her snide hits on him, not even caring that Evelyn heard it, too.

All the same, he shouldn’t have let himself be goaded into hitting back. Especially about the lack of any special love in her life. That was a low blow, especially when she’d just lost her father. Johnny grimaced over the insensitive lapse in his control. He had to do better in this meeting, not let Megan get under his skin. He was older than she was, had more people skills. It was up to him to…deal kindly with her.

At least he didn’t have to worry about Jessie’s and Emily’s feelings. The two older sisters had welcomed him warmly last night, making it clear that their only concern was Megan’s future on Gundamurra. The situation on the sheep station was grim. Like Patrick, they were counting on him to ensure there was a future here for her.

And he’d do it.

Even against Megan’s prickly opposition he’d do it.

Though he hoped she’d be reasonable.

The situation demanded she be reasonable.

He paused at the office door, took a deep, calming breath, gave a courtesy knock to warn of his imminent entry, allowed Megan a few seconds to get her mind into appropriate gear, then moved in with every intention of being at his diplomatic best.

But he wasn’t prepared for the scene Megan had set and his sense of rightness was instantly jolted. She was sitting in Patrick’s chair, taking Patrick’s place before he was even buried. It was too soon. It was…