Date with a Single Dad: Millionaire Dad's SOS / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle / Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed

When Meg finally found her voice again she said, ‘This isn’t the way to the Wellness Building.’

‘No,’ Zach said, his deep voice rumbling through her very bones. ‘It’s not.’

She frowned. ‘Where am I exactly?’

‘The lake.’

‘There’s a lake?’ she asked. ‘Wow, I really don’t know how to read a map.’

‘I’ll give you a hint,’ he said. ‘It’s the big blue bit at the bottom with “Lake” written in the middle of it.’

Her cheeks, if possible, grew warmer still. Her voice was dripping with sarcasm when she said, ‘Thanks. You are as ever the gracious host.’

‘Was there something else you wanted from me?’

‘Look, you can relax. I really didn’t mean to invade your beer-drinking time. Stumbling upon you was pure accident.’

‘Obviously fifty acres isn’t quite as much room as it sounds.’

‘So it seems.’ She began to back away. ‘If you’d be so kind as to point the way—’

‘I was just about to head out for a row. Want to join me?’

Her feet stumbled to a halt. ‘Excuse me?’

While his eyes seemed to skim the view behind her in search of prying eyes, he waved an inviting arm towards the end of a jetty that was shrouded in tall reeds wilting in the heavy heat. ‘After many months of wrangling with a guy on the end of the phone, my old row boat has finally arrived from a storage lock-up in Sydney and I’m taking her for a spin. You game?’

Game for what? Concrete shoes? A speedboat containing Rylie, Tabitha and their ready packed bags? Or worse, an intimate boat ride with a man whom she couldn’t want; who didn’t much like her; who still managed to give her uncontrollable stomach flutters that only grew more intense with each and every meeting.

A whimper from her self-preservation instincts had her licking her lips in preparation to say thanks but no thanks, until her mind filled with the memory of a sprawling house in the forest, and a lonesome, brown-haired girl with his eyes.

The most decisive reason for her to walk away was the one reason she finally could not.

‘Sounds lovely,’ she said with the distant but polite smile she used on those who shamelessly accosted her in the fruit and veg section of her local supermarket asking for an autograph.

His eyes darkened all the more, as though he knew it too, but he still slipped the strap of the cooler over his shoulder, then turned and walked towards the lake.

Meg did all she could do and followed.

Once she rounded the thick reeds she saw a small, fat, wooden boat bobbing merrily on what turned out to be a massive lake. The boat’s mission-brown paint was faded, the red floor was scratched and fatigued, and the benches had seats worn into them from a lifetime of accommodating bottoms.

It was ancient and imperfect. So not the kind of sea-faring-type vessel any of the men in her family would be caught dead in. She loved it.

She crouched down and ran a hand over the stern to find it smooth and soft. ‘She’s really yours?’

She glanced up to find Zach watching the rhythmic movement of her hand. She curled her fingers into her palms and pushed herself back to standing.

He had to bend past her to unhook the rope from the jetty. She leant back to give him room, but not far enough not to catch his scent. She breathed it in. She couldn’t help herself. It was drinkable.

He wound the rope around his hand and elbow, muscles contracting with every easy swing. ‘Marilyn’s been a faithful companion since I was about eighteen.’

‘Marilyn? Are you serious?’

His cheek twitched into one of those almost smiles that gave a girl unfair hope there might be more to come. ‘She came with the name.’

‘Sure she did. You haven’t thought to trade her in for a fancy schmancy yacht with all the trimmings?’

‘I’ve got one of those too. A hundred footer moored off St Barts right now.’

‘The Norma Jean?’

And there it was. The holy grail. His mouth tilted into a slow smile complete with brackets that arced around his beautiful mouth and creases fanning out from the edges of his delicious dark eyes. Boy, were they worth the wait.

‘I called her Lauren.’

‘Bacall?’

‘It was my mother’s name.’

Of course it was. Meg looked down at her shoes instead of into those too discerning eyes. ‘And a tad extravagant to use for a paddle about the lake.’

‘Just a tad.’

She glanced up, and for a brief moment Meg swore she saw a glint warm his dark eyes before it was gone. He ought not to bandy those about unless he meant them. It was hard for a girl not to get ideas.

Zach threw the rope into the boat, then held out a hand. Unless she wanted him to know her mouth turned dry at the thought of him touching her again, she had no choice but to take it.

A slide of natural warmth so out of sync with the constant cool in his eyes leapt from his hand to hers. She gripped on tight as she stepped into the wobbly vessel, but the second she had her backside planted on a bench she let go.

He stepped in after her and tossed her a cosy, red-checked, woollen blanket. It was too soft to be freshly washed, too fluffy to be new. It was the kind of thing a man might keep at the end of his bed, or the back of his couch. She imagined it covering his long bare legs as he lay back—

She cleared her throat. ‘What exactly am I meant to do with this?’

‘Slide it beneath your backside or you’ll get splinters,’ he ordered. ‘That or that dress of yours will be shredded.’

Of course. So what if it carried a faint lingering scent of him—he hadn’t given it to her as some sort of come-on. It was near forty degrees out! She lifted her backside and planted it back on the folded blanket.

‘This too,’ he demanded, throwing her a soft khaki fisherman’s hat, which was frayed to the point of falling apart.

She gripped the hat between tightly coiled fists. All that commanding was beginning to get on her nerves. Her voice was sugary sweet as she asked, ‘And where, pray tell, am I supposed to put this?’

His hands stilled. He glanced up. The smile hovered; the glint loomed.

And it hit her as if the lake had suddenly thrown up a tidal wave over the boat. Zach Jones might prefer her to be far, far away, but a certain part of him took a purely masculine pleasure in having her close by.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and blinked up at him. The smile faded and the glint disappeared without a trace.

‘Just stick the thing on your head, will you?’ he growled.

‘Aye aye, Captain,’ she muttered.

The hat smelled like the sea and fitted over her head like velvet. Atop her sateen cocktail dress it must have looked a treat.

He slapped an old cap atop his curls, shoved a foot against the jetty, pushing them off before easing down onto his own bench.

She tucked her knees tight together and pretended to pay attention to the ripples fanning out through the flat silver water, and not how close his knees were to hers, as he picked up the oars and pushed them effortlessly out into the lake.

Within seconds the wilting reeds shielded them from the rest of the world and they were alone.

The sun beat down upon Meg’s back, making her glad of the hat. The soft swish of the displaced water created a slow, even rhythm. And as Zach built up a sweat every breath in gave her a fresh taste of his clean cotton clothes and some indefinable heat that was purely him.

Like this, all easy silence, all effortless masculinity, it was hard not to imagine he might be exactly the kind of guy she could happily spend oodles of time with. A beautiful sailor who slept in late, didn’t believe in making plans, and just went with the flow.

It was hard to believe he owned and ran a huge multinational business that no doubt took long hours away from home. That took the kind of relentless ambition that meant everything else in life came a distant second. Family included.

Her brother Brendan was trying to do the single father thing. Running the Kelly Investment Group and raising two young daughters. And though she’d never tell him so to his face she knew in her heart the half of his life he was letting slip from his grasp was his girls.

Zach’s eyes slid from some point over her shoulder to find hers. His dark, deep, unfathomable eyes. Their gazes held a beat longer than polite. Two beats. She held on, trying to sense regret, bereavement, concern for his little girl. All she got for her trouble was the sense that she was getting more entangled by the second.

She breathed in slow and deep through her nose. Could she ask him about Ruby now? Should she? Would she be doing it to be helpful? Or did she know he’d react badly, so she could use Ruby to save herself from feeling the way she did when he looked at her like that?

In the end she lost her nerve and said, ‘So you’ve been on two runs today and now rowing. I feel tired just thinking about it.’

He went back to staring at the water. ‘I like to be on the move. Eyes forward, nothing but the wind and the sun to keep me company. It clears the head. If you don’t run or do yoga, what do you do?’

Mmm. She had proven that day that exercise made her hurt, and wobble and crave sugar.

‘To clear my head?’ she said. ‘Disco music.’

One dark eyebrow rose and his hot, dark gaze slid back to hers. ‘Disco?’

‘Blaring from my iPod directly into my ears. Ten seconds into any Donna Summer or Leo Sayer song and the rest of the world fades away.’

They said music soothed the savage breast, and so it had done for her, many a time in her teens when she might have otherwise given in to mounting frustration with her life and done something she’d later regret. Ultimately disco could only soothe so much hurt.

‘Even if you’re lying on the couch your feet can’t help but bop. Your head clears of everything but the music. It’s kind of like exercise only more relaxed.’

When he merely blinked at her she gave him her ‘greeting line’ smile, with a full showing of teeth, twinkling eyes and dimples. ‘You’re going to give it a go the moment you go home, I can tell.’

And while most people, even members of her own family, could no longer tell when she was ‘on’ and when she was just being herself, the slow rise of the corner of his mouth told her she hadn’t fooled him for a nanosecond.

How did he do that? How was he able to see straight through her? Again she felt exposed, as if she’d walked into a ballroom with her dress tucked into the back of her undies.

He stopped rowing and the boat’s sleek glide slowed so that she rocked forward on her seat.

‘I’m game. I’ll give disco a go,’ he said. ‘But only if you take the oars right now.’

She imagined splinters. She imagined aches in even more as yet undiscovered muscles. She imagined her hands brushing against his as she took him up on his offer.

‘I’ll pass.’

Zach laughed. The column of his throat moved sexily beneath the sound. It faded all too soon in the wide-open space, and his eyes once again grew so dark they drew her in while they pushed her away.

She wondered if he could see the same impulse in hers.

She wondered what might happen if they both pulled at the exact same time.

His large hands curled back around the worn old wooden sticks and he slid the oars back into the water, pushing off with such grace and power Meg was sent to the back of her seat. Smart move. Pushing was much more sensible.

A cooling wind fluttered past her warm face. Streaks of gold dappled the rippling silver water where the sun burst through fluffy white clouds. The edges of the lake were completely obscured by the thick, green rainforest spilling into water.

Time stretched and contracted. She realised she had no idea how long she’d been gone. Or why he’d taken her out there onto the lake alone in the first place.

‘I don’t mean to say this isn’t entirely pleasant, and so generous for the owner to give me such a personal tour of the blue bit on the bottom of the map,’ she said, ‘but how long were you planning for this outing to be?’

‘We can turn back now if you’re getting too hot.’

Only then did she even consider that, while he looked like a sun god, she must have looked an utter treat—in his floppy hat, her hair plastered to her face after her hike to the end of the resort and back, her Irish skin pink as a rose.

She wasn’t used to feeling so discomposed; her voice was rather sharper than she intended when she said, ‘I’m only thinking of you.’

He raised a solitary eyebrow. ‘You’re thinking of me?’

More than you know. ‘Many a poor fellow has ended up reportedly engaged to me after spending far less time in my company, and I have been made quite aware how highly you regard your privacy.’

‘I do at that. Which is why I have not left any stones unturned in an effort to protect it. You needn’t worry on my behalf.’

‘I need not?’

His cheek twitched. ‘The forest has eyes. Trackers flushing out the perimeter in search of poachers.’

‘Poachers? There’s nothing for miles bar a few birds, some lizards and a bunch of resort guests in matching tracksuits.’

And then she got it. Her jaw dropped. ‘Are you saying you have people posted about the place to ward off anyone turning up here to take a photo of me?’

‘We both know it’s not you I am trying to protect.’

His gaze was steady. Not a hint of humour. Not a hint of a smile. While Meg’s cheeks grew so flushed even her teeth began to feel hot.

Ruby.

Of course. This, all this, the thoughtful blanket, the helpful hat, the beautiful scenery, the long brooding looks, were all about his daughter.

He wasn’t thinking of her at all.

Zach couldn’t remember a time in recent history when he’d been so furious. And mostly with himself. For since the moment he’d turned and found Meg Kelly standing on the jetty in her completely inappropriate pink party dress he’d thought of nothing but her.

He hadn’t been exaggerating when saying he rowed to clear his head. The sport had saved him from being just another scrappy, angry kid with a chip on his shoulder and had turned him into a man who knew how to focus, create goals and push himself to the absolute limits to achieve them.

He needed a clear head now more than ever. The St Barts government was still playing hardball with the building inspections on his latest site. It was balanced on a knife’s edge with his only achievable contributions controlled by the whims of local telephone operators. Because he was trying to run a multimillion-dollar international business from a laptop and a three-room bungalow in the middle of nowhere.

For Ruby. So she could be in a familiar place. So she knew her world was solid and secure. Ruby, who, despite his best intentions, had been compromised.

When Ruby’s nanny had called to say she’d had a visitor he’d almost popped a gasket, believing the woman had blatantly gone out of her way to punish him for not bowing and scraping and rolling out the red carpet. When he’d calmed down he’d realised the only way she could possibly have found Ruby in such a short amount of time was by stumbling out of the forest in one great cosmic accident.

Either way, rather than putting himself as far from Meg Kelly as he could, he now had no choice but to be on her like a rash until the day she left.

So as far as he was concerned Meg Kelly could sit out in the hot summer sun all day, her knees knocked in chagrin, her ridiculous dress getting splattered with water spray, his dilapidated green hat sloping low over her face, leaving only her down-turned mouth in sight.

Except of course it had only given him enough time studying that mouth of hers to know it was all natural. And so was she. Her skin was as pale as it ought to have been with a smattering of freckles across her nose make-up couldn’t, and needn’t, hide. Her curves were as God gave her with apparently a little bit of help from occasional disco. The woman was pure, wholesome femininity and irrepressible audacity and ingenuous sex appeal.

He was beginning to wonder if she’d been sent to test him. After dedicating his entire adulthood to purely selfish pursuits, was he really man enough, strong enough, self-sacrificing enough to resist her? To put aside his needs for the needs of one girl?

When Ruby had landed on his doorstep, her small hand held tight in the hand of a weary-looking social worker, she was alone in the world, orphaned and in shock. She’d been on the verge of replaying his cold, lonely, disjointed past through her future. There was no way he could let that happen to her and look himself in the mirror ever again.

But had he been the right person to save her?

He let out a long, hard breath and realised that beneath the brim of his hat Meg was watching him. Those sharp blue eyes constantly calculating.

He should have known better than to believe what he’d heard about her in the press. Assuming she’d be a lightweight adversary had been a huge tactical error. It served him right that it had come back to bite him where he’d feel it most.

The ante had been upped. It was time he showed his cards.

He used the oar on the starboard side to head the boat back to civilisation. ‘So, Ms Kelly.’

‘Yes, Zach.’

‘What possessed you to trespass inside my private residence this morning?’

‘Your yard,’ she shot back as though the words had been waiting to explode from inside her. ‘I never went any farther than the very, very edge of your yard. Once I knew it was yours I was out of there.’

‘I don’t give a flying fig if you were sitting on my rooftop. What the hell were you doing so far from the boundary of the resort that we now have to have this conversation?’

‘Please,’ she scoffed, her voice cool, her eyes electric. ‘It was an honest mistake. It’s not like there’s a ten-foot-high electric fence separating the two.’

‘There’s a rock wall and a whopping great big gate!’

‘A gate? Not today there wasn’t.’

Zach swore beneath his breath. That meant Ruby had been out again. What would it take to make the kid understand that it was for her own safety that she stay put and not gallivant about the resort? Hell, all he wanted was to keep her clear of those who would have her believe that because her childhood had not been perfect she was damaged from the start. He was fast running out of ideas.

The boat rocked beneath them as he pulled harder on the oars. Meg’s hands whipped out to the sides and held on tight.

‘For a woman who thinks lying on the couch listening to disco is a form of exercise, the hike to my place makes no sense.’

‘Fine,’ she said, throwing her arms in the air, rocking the boat so that he had to steady them with some fancy flicking of the oars. ‘I was casing the grounds in search of chocolate.’

‘Give me a break—’

She lifted her chin as though a haughty bearing could make the words seem less undignified. ‘I warned you. Caffeine is a staple in my diet. And I never expected to have to go cold turkey this week. So actually it was all your fault that I ended up there.’

His laughter again came from nowhere and again surprised the hell out of him. And a few local birds that screeched as they scattered from the treetops nearby.

Gorgeous, plainspoken and stimulating. Delilah herself couldn’t possibly have been more tempting.

Thankfully he’d long since proven himself invulnerable to the lure of apparently easy promise. He’d learnt early on not to trust the feeling as far as he could throw it. So long as the bright, breezy, easy warmth in this corner of the world hadn’t rotted away his indoctrinated dubiousness he’d be just fine.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘ZACH,’ Meg said, and by the tone in her voice Zach wasn’t sure he’d be keen on what came next.

‘Okay,’ she continued, ‘I was hoping to get around to the fact more gracefully, but since I have no idea how long you intend to keep me hostage out there let’s get to the point. You have a seven-year-old daughter named Ruby who, it seems, nobody knows anything about. There. Now it’s out there. So what do we do from here?’

Zach slapped an oar into the water at such a rough angle it covered them both in wet spray. ‘Don’t get cute, Ms Kelly.’

She waved a hand across her face as though swatting away a fly. ‘Stop being so formal. I’ve practically been in your house, I’m on first-name basis with your daughter, and you’ve seen me in this hat. Call me Meg.’

Through gritted teeth he said, ‘If you saw yourself in that hat you wouldn’t be half so concerned.’

She blinked up at him. Hell. So much for proving himself invulnerable. Now she was sitting there gawping at him as if he’d outright told her how lovely she was.

‘Okay then, Meg,’ he said, his voice coarse, ‘if formalities are now to be tossed aside, then I’ll be blunt.’

‘All this time you were being polite?’ Something in his expression must have made her catch her tongue. She mimed zipping her mouth shut. That mouth …

‘I want you to tell me in avid detail about every second you spent in my daughter’s company. And don’t miss a moment.’

She blinked at him. ‘Relax, Zach. We didn’t talk about sex, drugs or rock and roll if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Sex? Drugs? He ran a hard hand over the back of his neck, which suddenly felt as if it were on fire.

‘She’s seven, for Pete’s sake. The High School Musical soundtracks are as extreme as her rock and roll tastes go.’

She hooked a thumbnail between her teeth and looked up at him from beneath her thick dark lashes. His gut sank so fast he pressed his feet into the bottom of the boat. What wasn’t she telling him?

By age seven he’d already stolen his first pack of cigarettes, he’d kissed his first girl, he’d been hit so hard by one so-called parent he’d gone to school with a hand print bruised into the back of his thigh.

He’d known Ruby barely seven months. There was a fair chance he didn’t know his kid at all. His voice was unsteady as he said, ‘Ruby’s situation is … sensitive, therefore it’s imperative that I’m kept informed.’

‘Just informed? Not present? Not available? Not her first port of call?’

The riddles finally became too much and his frustration got the better of him. ‘Meg, I’m her father. If I don’t know everything I’m going to imagine the worst and then go quietly out of my mind.’

A smile spread across her face—a radiant thing that made the sun beaming down upon the lake pale into insignificance. ‘Well, now, that’s just about the best news I’ve heard all day.’

He shook his head, hoping for clarity. None came. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘The fact that you want to know is a good thing. A wonderful thing.’

She even reached out and patted his hand, as if he’d accidentally given her the password to a treasure he didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t the kind of touch he wanted from her.

‘Then hurry up and tell me.’

‘I’m not going to break her confidence that way. Come on.’

Zach glanced at the clouds above Meg’s head. Who in heaven had he screwed over to be made to live through this day?

‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘every girl needs her mysteries, especially from her father. It’s character building. So long as she knows you care enough to want to get to the bottom of them, to the bottom of her, then you have nothing to worry about.’

Nothing to worry about.

She couldn’t possibly have known that of all the four-word combinations that could placate his exasperation with her, that was it.

Still, time and again in his life, just when he’d begun to get comfortable, that was when fate pulled the rug out from under him. Foster families he’d felt as if he’d connected with had let him go. His knee had given way a week before the World Championships and he’d been forced into early retirement from competitive rowing. The momentum and success of his resorts had him finally living his life in such an easy groove, then along came Ruby.