The Australian Tycoon's Proposal

She shielded her eyes with her hand. She was getting a crick in the neck just looking up at him despite her own height. “Are you trying to be cruel or does it just come naturally?”

He appeared surprised. “I thought you were the one to opt out. Did I get that wrong? If I did, I’m very sorry.”

“You’re not sorry at all,” she fired up.

“Of course I am. I’m not sorry for Saunders not that you’d have made him the perfect wife.”

Bronte almost choked. “Really? How can you tell?”

“I know of the family. You wouldn’t want to move in with them.”

Bronte frowned at him fiercely. “Thanks for the tip but you’re already too late. Anyway, I can save you a trip. Gilly isn’t home.”

“I know that, she’s at the eye specialist. I’ve brought her supplies home. They’re in the car. You look hot. You really ought to get out of the sun. What are you doing walking anyway? And in those high heels!” He all but clicked his tongue.

“I like the exercise,” she snapped.

Suddenly his demeanour changed from friendly to grim. “Don’t tell me the taxi driver left you at the road? Who was it? Describe him.”

“So you can beat him to a pulp?” she only half joked.

“Why ever would you say that? I can get my message across without violence. Please. Get into the car. I’ll drive you up to the house. Let me take your things.”

She wanted to be in the position to ignore him but sad to say she wasn’t. She had the feeling he wouldn’t take any notice anyway. Already he had her heavy suitcase in hand, stowing it in the back of the vehicle like it was a paper bag.

“Come along,” he coaxed. “Much more of this and you’d be badly sunburnt.”

“I don’t burn,” she told him, when she was seated in the vehicle and he was driving back onto the track. “I have olive skin. I spent years up here.”

“I know.” He grinned. “Bronte on horseback. Bronte feeding a joey that had lost its mother. Bronte holding a rifle of all things. You must have been ten?” He gave her a half amused half disproving glance. “Bronte in the rain forest amid the ferns. Bronte at speech night where she collected all the prizes.”

“Why would you bother to look at old photographs of me?” The air-conditioning was heaven! She closed her eyes briefly and arched her neck.

“They were kinda cute actually.” He allowed his eyes to rest on her. She was even more beautiful, more sensuous in the flesh than she was on television. And those eyes! What colour were they? The lilac-blue of the sacred lotus? The morning glories that decked Oriole’s fences? A crush of jacaranda blossom? “Gilly adores you,” he said.

“I adore Gilly.” She answered with a touch of belligerence as if he’d expressed doubts about her affection. “I would never have survived without her.” Immediately she made it she regretted the confidence.

“That’s a sad thing to say.” His voice, however, conveyed only empathy and genuine concern.

She didn’t need it. “I’m sorry I said it.”

“What is it about me you don’t like?” he asked, sounding like he wanted to get to the bottom of her antagonism.

Arrogant beast to keep challenging her! “I’m sure I have no opinion of you at all,” she lied. She’d been accumulating data from the instant she set eyes on him.

“Good grief! What will Gilly say when you tell her you can’t stand the sight of me. Do I remind you of someone?”

She felt her cheeks grow hotter with resentment. “Forgive me if I’m being rude.” She made a huge effort to get hold of herself. “It’s the heat.”

Her lovely skin was dewed with sweat. He found it incredibly erotic. He could see the tips of her nipples budded against her tight tank top with its low oval neck. A tiny trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts. Her yellow stretch jeans printed with flowers showed the length of her legs. “I thought you loved it?” he asked lazily.

“Not when I’m carrying a suitcase.”

“So the taxi driver offended you?”

“Determined to work this out?” She shot a quick glance at him. Bronte had never cared for cleft chins, and she hardened her heart against him to be on the safe side.

“Oddly enough I am.” He met her gaze with a slightly puzzled expression. She was being rather awful. His clear green eyes moved over her face and shoulders. It was a glance that didn’t linger. It wasn’t overtly sexual yet she felt a rush of something powerfully like sexual excitement. It would be the greatest folly to allow him to see it. A guy like that would only exploit the situation.

“I reacted—perhaps overreacted—to one of his remarks. He called Gilly a crazy old bat. When I think about it, it was more indulgent than anything. You know, the local character!”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I don’t want you to go after him. What do you do around here, Mr. Randolph?”

“Steven, please,” he pleaded, mockery in his voice. “Steve if you like. Gilly calls me Steven. I’m a developer of sorts.”

She almost hunkered down in her seat. “Not one of those!”

He gave a short laugh. “I don’t go around destroying the environment, Bronte. I’m a conservationist as well as a developer.”

Her expression was highly sceptical. “I thought they were mutually exclusive. I can’t imagine how you got to be friendly with Gilly who’s been a conservationist all her life. Unless she has something you want?”

“And what would that be?” He flashed a glance at her.

He wasn’t supposed to have that sexy a voice, she thought irritably. Wives might leave their husbands for a voice like that. “Oriole, maybe?” she suggested. “It might be run-down but these days with a thriving tourist industry and so close to the Reef it’s become a very valuable parcel of land. You might like to get it rezoned and put a back-packer’s place on it for all I know. I should put you straight. Gilly has left it to me.”

“I know!” He dragged the word out. “You must love her for it?”

She ignored the sarcasm. “Gilly told you that?” The fact Gilly liked this guy threw her off-balance. Okay he had charisma. Was that enough to make Gilly confide so much? He’d taken his akubra off, throwing it on the back seat where it appeared to be cuddling up to her straw hat. His hair was a dark mahogany colour with copper highlights put in by the sun. It was thick, straight, well behaved hair. A touch too full and long, but sexy.

“You’d be surprised how much Gilly and I talk.” He confirmed her worst fears.

“No kidding! Like I said, she’s never mentioned you.”

“Well, you have had a great deal on your mind. If it’s any consolation, you did the right thing. If I were a girl I wouldn’t marry Nat Saunders, either. Not in a million years!”

“It sounds more like you know him rather than know of him. Do you?” It wasn’t impossible.

“Kind of.” He grinned.

“More like you’re having me on,” Bronte snapped.

He didn’t deny it.

They were driving through Oriole’s open gates. “Someone’s fixed the hinge, that’s good,” she mumbled to herself. The last time she’d visited Gilly which had to be six or seven months ago, the sagging left side of the gate was propped back with a brick.

“I come in handy sometimes,” he said.

Bronte scarcely heard him. She was staring about her in amazement. “Good grief, a huge clean-up has gone on since I was last here!” The jungle that had threatened to engulf the entire plantation as well as devour the timber homestead had been slashed right back. A good section was actually mown! “Amazing!” She stared out at the grounds which even under jungle were so wildly beautiful they took the breath away.

The gravelled driveway, flanked by an avenue of magnificent poincianas formed a broad highway up to the plantation house. The branches of the great shade trees had grown so massive they interlocked in the middle, forming a long cool tunnel leading up to the house. In a month or so they would burst into glorious flower. An unforgettable sight!

Ancient fig trees on her left. Giants! Festooned with huge staghorns and elkhorns grown as epiphytes, climbing orchids with strongly scented cascading sprays of white and yellow; lacey ferns. One of the rain forest figs she had named Ludwig as a child—after the famous early explorer Ludwig Leichardt—had fourteen foot high buttresses. When she had first come here Gilly had cleaned them out so she could use Ludwig for a cubby house. The greatest miracle of all was she had never been bitten by a snake though she had seen plenty and took good care to tread carefully.

On her right were the magnolias and palms galore. Fan palms with fronds four feet across. There were always shrubs blooming; oleander, frangipani, hibiscus, gardenia, tibouchina, Rain of Gold, the colourful pentas grown en masse, as were the great clumping beds of strelitzias—Bird of Paradise, and the agapanthus. The unbelievably fragrant but poisonous daturas, called the Angel’s Trumpets, were in flower, the enormous white trumpets dangling freely from the branches.

Through the trees she could see the dark emerald waters of the lily pond. A lagoon really, a natural spring. Dozens of glistening cup-like sacred lotus and their pads decorated the glassy surface. A small sturdy bridge had been built across the pond many years ago. Now the latticed sides hung with a delphinium-blue vine, the long trails of flowers dipping down to the water.

The banks of flowering lantana hadn’t been touched. The pink lantana attracted the butterflies, gorgeous specimens, lacewings, birdwings, cruisers, spotted triangles, the glorious iridescent blue Ulysses. They flew around the great sprawling masses of tiny clustered flowers, wings beating in a brilliant kaleidoscope of colour. In the back garden grew every tropical fruit known to man. Mangoes, paw-paws, bananas, loquats, guavas, passionfruit, custard apples, and all the citrus fruits, too, lemons, limes, mandarins, grapefruit, cumquats. There was even a grove of macadamias, the now native Queensland nut transported from Hawaii by an enterprising businessman.

“I love this place,” she breathed. “It’s always been my sanctuary.”

He glanced at her, taking in her dreamy expression. “We all need a sanctuary at certain times. Otherwise we have to get out there into the world.”

Her mood was broken. “Are you implying Gilly didn’t?”

“I was thinking more of you.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Don’t sound so cross,” he answered. “It just struck me in passing you might be harbouring thoughts of turning into a recluse.”

“I prefer to think of it as finding a life of Zen-like purity and simplicity.”

Bronte turned her head away pointedly.

“You’re a bit young for that yet,” he said. “Solitude is great from time to time, but there are hardships associated with living in isolation.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

The driveway opened out into a wide circle that enclosed a very charming three-tiered fountain, the largest bowl supported by four swans. The fountain had been out of action for years, now it was actually playing. “Have we you to thank for the massive clean-up?” She didn’t sound at all grateful and was rather ashamed of the fact. But she intended to stick to her guns.

“I feel better if I can do a good deed now and then,” he said. “I told you, Gilly is my friend. She’s remarkably sprightly but she’s seventy-six years old.”

Was that a dig? “No need to remind me. Did she pay you?”

His green gaze was lancing. “I told you, it was a good deed.”

“You mean it was a big project.” It must have taken weeks, even months.

“So? I could handle it. Are we going to get out? You first. I’ll follow.”

Ordering her around already. In the act of opening the door Bronte turned back sharply. “Are you coming in?”

“Fear not,” he mocked. “It’s only for a short time, I have Gilly’s provisions in the back. Cold stuff in the esky that needs to go into the fridge. I thought I told you?”

“I have a short attention span, I’m afraid,” she announced haughtily, standing out on the drive where her toes suffered another assault from the gravel. She stared up at the house. A green and white timber mansion. Of course it had been built for a large prominent family who had loved entertaining. These days its upkeep was a monstrous burden to Gilly though she’d rather die than admit it. The house was perched a few feet off the ground on capped stumps, a deterrent to the white ants. In her childhood one could scarcely tell where the jungle finished and the homestead started. Today the old colonial was revealed in all its enchantment.

Low set, with verandahs on three sides, twin bow windows flanked the front door. Their position was matched by the hips on the corrugated iron roof. The verandahs were enclosed by particularly fine white wrought-iron lace visible at long last because the rampant creepers that had obscured it for many years had been stripped off. The house had been recently repainted its original glossy white. The iron roof had been restored to a harmonious green matching the shutters on the French doors.

“Your work, too, no doubt?” She turned her head over her shoulder to where Action Man was unloading the 4WD.

“Like it?”

“I love it!” she muttered. “Either you’re a philanthropist on the grand scale or you have an ulterior motive.”

“Believe as you will, Bronte.” He shrugged as if he didn’t care a jot.

Picturesque as the homestead undoubtedly was, what made it so unique was the spectacular setting. In the background, on McAllister land was the unobstructed view of an emerald shrouded volcanic plug. It rose in a cone-shaped peak with a single curiously shaped hump. Gilly had always called it Rex as in Dinosaurus Rex. Rex stood sentinel over the house. The peak wasn’t high, only around four hundred feet but it looked magical against the peacock-blue sky.

“If you’re finished admiring your inheritance you might like to take a box or two,” he called. “Some of them aren’t heavy.”

“Let me get these sandals off first,” she responded tartly. “They looked great when I first set out. Now they’re killing me.”

He carried the bulk of the provisions in and he wasn’t even puffing. Sometimes it must be good to be a man. There were quite a lot of cardboard boxes. Obviously Gilly had stocked up for her visit. She never did remember Bronte didn’t eat nearly as much as she used to as a child when she’d been unfillable. Not that she’d ever put on an extra ounce. Of course as a child she’d been in touch with her legs. The modern child rode in cars and sat cross-legged in front of the television. She and Gilly had tramped the forest. Every morning, except in the rain, she had walked the track to catch the school bus. Every afternoon the bus driver left her at the same spot.

Yes, she was ideally suited to a Spartan existence.

“So, why don’t you freshen up while I put these away?” he suggested.

What a cheek! She swept her long wavy hair off her nape. “Go to the devil!”

He raised a mocking brow. “Do you mind! You’re a prickly little thing, aren’t you? Not a bit like our Gilly.”

“I’m not little at all,” she flashed. “And she’s not your Gilly. I just look little beside you. What are you, six-six?”

“Not even in high heeled boots. It’s a good thing you’re not in search of another husband, Bronte.”

More insults. “You don’t think I could get one?” She was amazed to see a man in Gilly’s kitchen. A man so at home there.

“Easily, for the pleasure of looking at you. But…”

She bristled at what he left unsaid. “Well, you don’t have to worry. Or are you married?”

“Married, no. But I’ve been Best Man.” His eyes swept over her. The high-bred face, so touchingly haughty, the delicate height, the silky masses of her long hair, curling up in the heat, the wonderful colouring. “I’m a committed bachelor at the moment. I have to notch up a few achievements before I’m ready to ask a woman to marry me.”

“Really?” She raised her brows. “I’m surprised you haven’t lots of achievements under your belt already?” The odd part, she actually was.

“I’m sorry the answer’s no. I have a law degree. Not much else.”

“Then why aren’t you practising?”

“I can make a lot more money as an entrepreneur,” he said bluntly.

She found herself pulling a face. “I hate men whose main aim in life is to make money. Seeing you’re so entrepreneurial you might like to make me a cup of tea. Much as I love Gilly I can’t drink her home grown, home roasted coffee. It tastes like the mud at the bottom of the lily pond. By the way, you shouldn’t take the eggs out of the carton. In the carton is the best way to store them not in the egg rack. What happened to Gilly’s chooks?”

He gave a surprisingly graceful shrug of his wide shoulders. “The things one learns!” He started to put the eggs back in the cardboard carton. “The chooks didn’t have much of a show with the snakes. Especially with the chook house fallen down. That’s one of the reasons I and my trusty workers got stuck into cleaning up the grounds.”

“You’re a saint!” said Bronte, giving him a little salute before disappearing down the hallway. “Saint Stephen. I can’t remember what happened to him.”

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT did you think of Steven?” Gilly asked, looking with the greatest interest into Bronte’s face.

“What was I supposed to think of him?” Bronte parried, deadpan.

“Tell me, you little tease!” Gilly seized her hand. They were sitting in the kitchen over a cup of coffee. Gilly had only been home ten minutes, most of the conversation taken up with Gilly’s visit to the eye specialist. The problem could not be cured but thank goodness it was manageable. “Not as nice as mine!” Gilly sniffed critically at the rich fragrant brew beneath her slightly hooked nose.

Bronte had to laugh. “Which says a lot for your cast-iron stomach. Actually they’re very good Italian beans. I put them through the grinder.”

“I expect Steven was thinking of you,” Gilly said, quite fondly for a woman usually incapable of finding a good word for a man. “I must have told him you didn’t like your coffee as full bodied as my home grown roast. He’s nothing if not thoughtful.”

Bronte set down her near empty cup, with a feeling of astonishment. She stared into Gilly’s much loved face. It was seamed, the skin tanned to the texture of soft leather, stretched tight over the prominent cheek bones. Gilly’s eyebrows were still pitch-black making a piquant contrast to the abundant snow-white hair she had always worn in a thick loose bun. It was a very much out of the ordinary face, Bronte decided. “In love with him, are you?” she jibed.

Gilly responded with an unexpected sigh. “I’m ever so slowly realizing I could have wasted my life, Bronte, girl. Just because I burnt my fingers once, I shouldn’t have let it put me off men for good.”

“Gosh I thought you loved being a recluse,” Bronte looked at her great-aunt with as much surprise as if she had just expressed regret at not reaching the summit of Everest. “Why, you’re famous around here.”

“And I deserve to be. Every bit!” Gilly harrumphed. “Didn’t I clear up Hetty Bannister’s terrible leg ulcers when her doctor couldn’t? I’ve cured dozens of cases of psoriasis, eczema, rosacea, you name it, over the years. I’ve got a home remedy for everything.” Gilly leaned down to whack a mosquito that had the temerity to land on her ankle. “I hope you’re not interested in becoming a recluse yourself?”

Bronte grimaced. “I might have to, seeing I dumped the love of my life a week from the altar.”

“You’re not regretting it, are you, lovie?” Gilly’s black eyes sharpened over Bronte’s face. She was wearing new lenses in her old spectacle frames. Now she re-adjusted them on her nose.

“I’m regretting I was nuts enough to get mixed up with him in the first place,” Bronte confessed.

Gilly looked at her great-niece with loving sympathy. “That was your mother pushing you every step of the way. It was a wonder you didn’t have a breakdown. You always end up trying to please her.”

“She is my mother,” Bronte put her elbows on the table, resting her face in her hands. “You’re my fairy godmother. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Gilly. You’re my haven.”

“You bet your life I am!” Gilly frowned ferociously. “It’s not as though you were going to marry Prince Charming anyway. You can’t be too upset about it?”

“Gilly, I’ve had hell,” Bronte said simply. “I vow here and now I can’t go through it again. I’ve had to listen to Miranda’s rages—” Miranda had long since banned the word Mum “—then Carl’s, sometimes both together. It was like the start of World War III. A woman is a fool to marry for love, Miranda told me. A woman should marry for security.”

“And wasn’t she just the girl to arrange it. Though they do use the two words together,” Gilly attempted to be fair. “Marriage. Security. I think you were very brave getting out in time. The suicide rate is high enough!”

“You were telling me the truth about your eyes?” Bronte changed the subject to one of more pressing interest to her. She was sick to death of her own traumas.

“’Course I was,” Gilly said, sitting so upright her back was straight as a crowbar. “Routine pressure check for glaucoma. No sign of it. Glaucoma is hereditary anyway and there’s no family history as far as I know. I get a few flashing lights in my right eye, but nothing to worry about. Like I told you it’s manageable. I’ll see him every six months. All in all I’m a fit old girl with a strong constitution. The sort of person who lives to be one hundred, not that I want to last that long, the only way to go is down. Why don’t we take a stroll before sunset. Steven has worked wonders. I’m darn happy with that young man.”

“So I see!” Bronte despised herself for feeling jealous. “Surely he couldn’t have done it all for nothing? It would have been a very big job. He told me he had workers?”

“They’re from the croc farm,” Gilly announced casually over her shoulder, leading the way out onto the verandah.

“Croc farm? Croc farm!” Bronte shuddered. “What are you saying, Gilly? He doesn’t have a croc farm, does he?”

“It was a real smart business move if you ask me,” Gilly said, stomping down the short flight of steps. “The tourists love the crocs and the reptiles, especially the Japanese. Our world famous crocodile man is moving his whole operation closer to Brisbane. Chika Moran has been doing very nicely for years with Wildwood but he lost a partner as you know.”

“To a crocodile, I believe.”

“I guess he prodded that old croc one time too many,” Gilly said. “Anyway Steven’s not in on that side of it.”

“Thank goodness!” Bronte put a hand over her breast. Used to the sight of crocodiles for years of her life they still frightened the living daylights out of her.

“Steven will handle the business side,” Gilly said, waving a scented gardenia beneath her nose. “He knows all about environmental issues, and he’s good with people.”

“What is he, insane?” Bronte asked sarcastically.

“What do you mean, love?” Gilly halted so abruptly, Bronte all but slammed into her. “Steven isn’t about to arm wrestle the crocs, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told you he won’t be involved with that side of the business at all. He and Chika are considering expanding into a kind of zoo. There’s big money in it.”

“Like a few lions and tigers, a giraffe or two?” Bronte suggested in the same sarcastic vein. “Elephants are obligatory. Everyone loves elephants. A rhino would be nice. I believe in Africa rhinos happily consort with crocodiles. There’s a thought! Did you know white rhino is a misnomer. It was originally wide referring to the size of their mouths which are bigger than the black rhino, though who got to measure their lips I can’t imagine. A bit of trivia for you.”

“That’s interesting.” Gilly smiled on her much as she had when Bronte, the great reader, had come up with a piece of unusual information as a child. “Anyway Chika has the land to make the idea of a zoo feasible. His family pioneered the district.”

Bronte slapped a palm to her forehead. “He’s a fast mover, all right!”