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…

Johnny checked himself, took stock of the woman he had to deal with.

The defiance in her eyes could mean she was making a statement by taking her father’s chair—a statement of empowerment that she might feel a need for in this situation. And being seated there put the desk between them, a decisive distance that possibly suggested she was feeling vulnerable about having to deal with him.

They were the kindest thoughts Johnny could come up with.

‘Megan,’ he acknowledged softly, nodding for her to take the lead in this meeting.

‘It was good of you to come, Johnny…’

Which was a pleasant enough greeting until she added, ‘…being in the middle of shooting your first movie.’

Kind thoughts flew out the window. He eyeballed her in furious challenge, every muscle in his body taut with aggression at this belittling of his feelings for her father. Patrick had been the most important person in his life and

Megan could not be ignorant of how very much their

relationship had meant to him.

Not one word passed his lips, but the force of his anger obviously got through to her. A tide of heat burned up her neck and scorched her cheeks, lighting up the freckles that added a cuteness to her pert little nose. Except Johnny wasn’t thinking cute right now. He was thinking little. No way was she big enough to take over from her father, not in any sense.

She gestured to the chairs at the chess table, her gaze shifting from his. ‘Please take a seat.’ The words were husky, as though she was pushing them through a very tight throat.

Satisfied that he’d wrung some shame from her, Johnny stepped over to the chess table to move Mitch’s chair—not Patrick’s—into a face-to-face position with Megan. The fallen black king caught his eye. What was this? The king is dead…long live the queen?

Johnny pulled himself up again. Mitch might have laid the chess piece down—a symbol of Patrick resting in peace. Leaping to hasty and possibly false conclusions was not conducive to a fair meeting. He rolled the chair out from the table and closer to the desk, then sat down, telling himself

to watch and listen, refrain from stirring any more hostility in Megan’s mind. Though what he’d ever done to earn it was

a total mystery to him.

He stared at her, waiting for her to start. The scarlet heat had receded from her face, leaving her skin pale and the freckles more prominent. She wore no make-up, hadn’t

done for years, though he remembered her experimenting with it in her teens. She’d been a happier person then, enjoying his company. They’d had fun together, laughing easily, chatting easily. Then she’d gone away to some agricultural college and something had changed her.

She could have been quite strikingly beautiful if she’d put her mind to it…good bones, big expressive eyes that could twinkle like silver or brood like storm clouds, a full-lipped mouth when it wasn’t thinned with disapproval of him, and a glorious mane of red curls, currently pulled back into some tight clip at the back of her neck. A lovely long neck it was, too.

Apparently she didn’t care how she looked. Being a woman was not her thing. When had she last worn a dress? A checked shirt and jeans was her usual garb, as it was today. Maybe she wanted to look like a man in them but

she didn’t.

As much as she might try to minimise her femininity, her figure was too curvaceous for anyone to mistake her for a male. In fact, her antagonism towards him over the past few years had made him acutely aware of her as a woman, especially when she turned her back on him, her taut cheeky bottom wagging her disdain of what he stood for in her eyes, stirring feelings in him that were entirely inappropriate, given she was Patrick’s daughter.

Did she resent having been a daughter instead of a son?

Was that why she looked so sourly on him…because he had a similar physique to her father?

Johnny hadn’t meant to speak first, yet the question that rose in his mind seemed imperative, at the very core of the situation that had to be settled between them. The words tumbled out, seeking the answer that might make sense of Megan Maguire’s attitude towards him.

‘What happened to the girl who used to like me?’

 

 

I grewup.

Megan wasn’t about to give that answer, nor explain the milestones that had marked her passage to where she was now. She looked at Johnny Ellis, knowing he was thirty- eight, yet the years sat so easily on him, she could still see the sixteen-year-old boy who’d made up songs for her when she was just a little kid—songs that had generated dreams that were never going to come true for her.

The monumental crush she’d had on him in her teens had finally bitten the dust when he hadn’t come home for her twenty-first birthday. She’d planned for him to see her as a woman, but her coming of age had obviously meant nothing to him. He’d stayed in the U.S., busy with his career, and no doubt involved with the kind of woman who shared his limelight. She was just Patrick Maguire’s youngest daughter, someone he was nice to when it suited him to visit Gundamurra.

Facile charm. Meaningless.

It was her father who’d drawn him back to Gundamurra…her father who had given him almost half of it

in his will, trapping her into this ridiculous and frustrating

partnership with a man whose life was aimed at adding more stars to his celebrity status.

‘Do you need everyone to like you, Johnny?’ she lightly taunted, hoping he’d hightail it back to Hollywood where everybody probably fawned on him.

He shrugged, his eyes holding hers in challenge. ‘Usually I know why not. Where you’re concerned, I’m at a total loss, Megan. What have I done to you to warrant your dislike? Best spit it out now before we get into business together.’

‘What reason could I have for disliking you, Johnny?’ she countered. ‘You’ve always been charming to me.’ Which was absolutely true. ‘As for doing business together,’ she quickly ran on, ‘I don’t imagine you’ll want to take an active part in running Gundamurra. You do have a movie to finish and probably many more in your pipeline.’

‘No. Just the one. Which I’m committed to by contract,’ he stated drily. ‘Undoubtedly, people will wait to see how well I perform on screen before other offers come in.’

‘Oh, I’m sure with your star quality—’

‘Let’s not speculate on a hypothetical future, Megan,’ he cut in. ‘We’re here to discuss the far more immediate future of Gundamurra, are we not?’ He cocked a challenging eyebrow at her. ‘Can we be honest about that?’

She felt herself burning again. She’d thought a bit of flattery—pandering to the ego that stars of his magnitude had to have—would set the scene she wanted to play through with him. But his eyes were seeing straight through

that ploy, mocking her attempt to manipulate what she saw

as his push to be loved by more and more fans through the movies he could make.

‘You need not be concerned about the running of Gundamurra, Johnny. I’ll be doing that,’ she stated with grim determination.

‘I don’t doubt you’re capable of it, Megan, given enough resources to ride through the drought. That’s where I come in.’

The lack of resources…there was no denying that, though there’d been no mismanagement. Her father had taken out the first big loan from the bank to finance Emily’s helicopter business, before the drought started biting deep. Then to keep the sheep alive, keep paying wages, more loans…and wool prices had dropped. The mortgage now was so big, Megan didn’t know how she could service it with no relief from the drought in sight. Even if it rained tomorrow, she’d need recovery time.

A rescue package had to be accepted from Johnny Ellis if she was to keep Gundamurra. Except it wasn’t entirely hers to keep. It was his, too. And she still didn’t know how he wanted to work their partnership. He’d just denied her any sense of security about him going away and staying away.

‘We need an injection of funds,’ she admitted flatly.

He nodded. ‘I’ll wipe out the mortgage today, get the bank off your back.’

Just like that! Megan instantly bridled at how easy it was for him while she had sweated over every dollar being

spent. ‘No, you won’t!’ The denial exploded from a deep

well of pride.

He frowned. ‘I have the funds, Megan.’

‘I don’t want to owe you fifty-one percent of the mortgage.’ She glared defiantly at him. ‘If you pay off forty- nine percent of it, I can get another loan from the bank which could see me through…’

‘Why put yourself through that worry when you don’t have to?’ he argued, waving an impatient dismissal of her counterproposal.

‘Because I won’t take your charity,’ she shot back at him. ‘Charity?’

He rose from his chair, glaring down at her from his formidable height, a big man, as big as her father had been, emanating a power that wanted to blast her point of view to smithereens. He raised a clenched fist, shaking it as he spoke with more passion than she’d ever heard from Johnny Charm.

‘I owe my life to this place. I don’t want to see it go

under. I didn’t like seeing it struggle to survive. I offered your father…’

He closed his mouth into a tightly compressed line, shutting down on the vehement flow of emotion.

What had he offered her father, Megan thought wildly. What? Had it influenced the terms of the will?

Johnny stepped forward, pressed his hands on the desk, leaning forward, his eyes firing bullets at her. ‘I now have

the right to do what I’m going to do. Patrick gave me the right.’

‘He didn’t give you the right to interfere with my share,’ she fired back, refusing to be intimidated into being indebted to him.

‘You can pay me back when you can, Megan. If you must. But the bank is not going to have any claim on Gundamurra.’

‘Even if I let you do that, I’ll have to borrow again to keep going,’ she pointed out, mocking his ignorance of what had to be done.

‘No. I’ll set up an account for you to draw from,’ came the swift reply. He was all primed to fix everything with his money.

Her jaw set stubbornly. ‘I won’t accept that.’ ‘You don’t know how long this drought will last.’ ‘I’ll manage it my way.’

 

 

Frustration boiled through Johnny. Megan would put Gundamurra at risk again and there was no need for it. He wanted to pick her up and shake some sense into her, but there was steel in the grey eyes so fiercely defying him— Patrick’s eyes—and he knew he had to find another way of convincing her to use the money he could provide.

He straightened up, turned away, walked over to the window, stared out at the one patch of green left on Gundamurra—the homestead quadrangle. Not all the millions of dollars he had available could turn the rest of the vast sheep station green. Only rain could do that. Lots of rain.

However, an unencumbered supply of funds could pay

for feed to be trucked in. It could pay wages. It could make life absolutely secure for everyone here, bring back those who’d had to leave. They could comfortably wait out the drought, be ready for the good times to come again.

‘Would you prefer me to buy you out, Megan?’ he tossed at her with little hope.

‘No,’ came the firm and predictable reply. Her eyes said she’d have to be forcibly dragged off Gundamurra, no letting it go of her own free will.

He shrugged. ‘I thought, since you dislike having to deal with me so much…’

‘You overstepped the line, Johnny,’ she informed him rigidly. ‘By all means wipe out your share of the mortgage. That’s your right.’

‘Fine!’ he snapped. ‘Do you want to draw a line through Gundamurra, divide it up so I can pour whatever funds I like into salvaging my forty-nine percent of it?’

Treat her kindly…

Maybe there was truth in the old adage that one had to be cruel to be kind.

Her jaw clenched. ‘My father wouldn’t have wanted that,’ she grated out.

‘Have you stopped to think of what your father did want…instead of what you want?’

‘He didn’t accept your money while he was alive.’

He pounced on that statement, inflamed by her antagonism towards him. ‘Because you argued against it?’

‘No. I didn’t know about any offer. You just mentioned it

yourself, Johnny.’

Her eyes were clearly weighing its effect on Patrick’s will. He blasted her calculation by informing her, ‘Ric and Mitch offered help, too. All three of us, Megan.’

Confusion looked back at him. ‘Then why choose you?’

It was eating at her. ‘Would Ric or Mitch have been more acceptable to you?’ he tested, wanting to know if his friends were equally unwelcome in her life.

‘That’s not the question,’ she snapped evasively. ‘I think it’s pertinent. Why not me?’ he challenged.

Intriguing to watch the flush come again, sweeping into her cheeks with blazing heat. She dropped her gaze and fiercely claimed, ‘I can manage on my own. With the mortgage reduced, I can…’

‘What if you can’t? Why risk it?’ He paused, sure now in

his own mind that he was the problem. ‘Is your dislike of me so great that you can’t bear to let me help?’

‘I don’t dislike you! It’s just not right!’ she burst out, banging her own hands on the desk as she leaned forward to deliver this declaration with vehemence.

‘Then what would make it right for you, Megan?’

The storm of feeling in her eyes gave way to a dull bleakness. Johnny read the answer in her mind—Nothing. Was she looking down a black pit, too, with her father dead?

‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ she muttered, shaking her head over the wretched admission and sagging back in the chair, shoulders slumped in defeat.

She looked so miserable, for the second time this

morning, Johnny felt the urge to pick her up, but not to shake her, to wrap her in a comforting embrace and promise her he would make everything better. He remembered doing that when she was a little kid.

She’d been running to tell him something and fallen over, scraping her knees—such a sweet little girl, clinging to him, trusting him to make the hurt go away.

He’d loved that little girl. Patrick’s youngest daughter.

Maybe that was what Patrick’s will was about…taking care of Megan. But how was he to do it?

His gaze dropped to the chess table.

What was the phrase used where no-one could win? Stalemate.

He had to start again, adopt a strategy that would get past Megan’s pride. If she really didn’t dislike him, there had to be other factors involved in her attitude towards him, perhaps a love affair gone wrong when she’d been at that agricultural college, seeding some drive to prove herself completely independent, basing her whole future on taking over from her father. If she was stuck in that groove, how could he ease her out of it?

Not by anything she perceived as charity.

Slowly, accompanied by a weird sense of many factors pushing it, an idea came to him.

It was totally wild. Absurdly quixotic. Yet the more he thought about it the more it appealed to him. On many levels. Especially the prospect of wearing down Megan’s

resistance to it, winning her over.

Though that mission could well prove impossible.

Still, something was needed to break this hopeless impasse and the shock of his offer might open Megan up more, give him an understanding of how she viewed him. He certainly had nothing to lose by putting it on the table. In heaping more scorn on him, she would have to give reasons for it, reasons he could work on.

He pasted an ironic little smile on his mouth and aimed it at her. ‘You know, Megan, you’d have the right to all I could provide…if you married me.’