Элли Блейк – Date with a Single Dad: Millionaire Dad's SOS / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle / Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed (страница 2)
Sure, when Rylie and Tabitha had turned up on her doorstep two days before, told her they’d cleared her schedule, shoved her into her car and demanded she drive them to a wellness resort high in the hills of the Gold Coast Hinterland, she’d had a moment or two of panic.
Events had been planned. People had been counting on her—dress designers she was meant to be wearing, charities whose events she was attending, local businesses she was turning out to endorse, the several staff she kept in gainful employ, the women and children at the Valley Women’s Shelter. There was such inertia to her life it was almost impossible to bring it to any kind of halt.
But even after Tabitha had explained that the ‘wellness’ in wellness resort was more about detoxing one’s life by way of eating granola and valiantly trying to put one’s left ankle behind one’s head while meditating thrice daily, and not so much code for cocktails, chocolate fountains and daily massages at the hands of handsome Swedes she’d soon begun to warm to the idea.
As the city lights had dropped away from her rear-view mirror and the scent of sea air had filled her nostrils the idea of getting away, of having one blissful, dreamy, stress-free, family-free, paparazzi-free, drama-free week had almost made her giddy.
Not that drama, paparazzi and family issues bothered her. They’d been par for the Kelly course from the day dot.
Though, when she thought about it, the past few months had been particularly dramatic even for her family—engagements, elopements, near-death experiences. The kinds of things that made the paparazzi that touch more overzealous, and a touch harder to avoid when she tried to sneak away for much-needed private time.
Meg shook off the real-life stuff creeping up on her and glanced back at the main building. Still no sign of the girls. Her girls. Her support crew. The ones who’d obviously sensed she was floundering just a very little even if she hadn’t uttered a word. Girls who were right now both probably still fast slept in their snug, warm beds.
‘Cads.’
She headed off; this time with slower, shorter steps in the hopes the girls would catch up. Soon. Please!
A resort staff member passed, smiling. ‘Good morning.’
‘Isn’t it just?’ she returned.
His smile faltered and he all but tripped over himself as his neck craned to watch her while he walked away.
Meg’s smile turned wry. So the cap and sunglasses and still-so-white-they-practically-glowed sneakers she’d bought from the resort’s well-stocked shop the night before might not fool everybody as she’d half hoped they just might.
It had been a long shot anyway.
Meg stood happily at the back of the morning jogging group—primarily a group of middle-aged strangers in an impressive array of jogging outfits—collected on the track that ran along the edge of the overhang of thick, lush, dank, dark rainforest.
In an apparent effort at warming up, Tabitha lifted her knees enthusiastically high while jogging on the spot. Rylie, the Pilates queen, stretched so far sideways she was practically at a right angle. Meg, on the other hand, tried not to look as dinky as she felt without her ubiquitous high heels.
‘Now that man is worth the price of admission all on his own,’ Tabitha said between her teeth.
‘Shh,’ Meg said, only listening with half an ear as she tried to make out what the preppy, bouncy ‘wellness facilitator’ at the front of the large group was saying. ‘Please tell me she didn’t just say we’re jogging four kilometres this morning!’
‘She said five.’
Meg slid her sunglasses atop her cap and gaped at Tabitha. ‘Five?’
‘Five. Now pay attention. Hot guy at six o’clock. He’s been staring at you for the past five minutes.’
‘Not news, hon,’ Rylie said, touching the ground with her palms and casually glancing between her legs before letting out a long, slow ‘I take that back. This one is big news.’
Meg rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not falling for that again.’
‘Your loss,’ Rylie said.
A husky note in her best friend’s voice caught Meg’s attention. ‘Fine. Where?’
‘Over your right shoulder,’ Tabitha said. ‘Faded T-shirt, knee-length cargo shorts, sneakers that have pounded some miles, cap he ought to have thrown away a lo-o-ong time ago …’
Rylie laughed, then gave Meg’s leg a tug so her knee collapsed, turning her whether she wanted to or not.
Meg didn’t even get the chance to ask Rylie what was so funny. She didn’t need to. There was no way any woman under the age of a hundred and twenty was going to miss the man leaning against the trunk of one of the massive ghost gums lining the resort’s elegant driveway.
He was tall. Impressively so. Broad as any man she’d ever met. His chin was unshaven, the dark curls beneath his cap overlong. With the colour of a man who’d spent half a lifetime in the sun and the muscles of a man who hadn’t done so standing still, he looked as if he’d stepped out of a Nautica ad.
She tucked a curl behind her ear and casually bent down to tug at her ankle socks, not needing to look at the guy to remember exactly what she’d seen. Her hands shook ever so slightly.
He was the very dictionary definition of rugged sex appeal. For a girl from the right side of the tracks, a girl who was a magnet for stiff, sharp, striving suits, a girl whose planner had become so full of late she had to diarise time to wash her hair much less anything more intimately enjoyable, he was a revelation.
She glanced up as she stood. He hadn’t moved an inch.
The skin beneath her skimpy clothes suddenly felt hot, and the fact that it was thirty-odd degrees and muggy had nothing to do with it. She was a Kelly, for Pete’s sake. It took something
Though she couldn’t see his eyes beneath the brim of his soft, worn cap, she could feel them on her. Her right shoulder tingled. The sensation moved up her neck. It finally settled in her lips. The urge to run her fingers across them was so strong she had to curl them into her palms.
Then he finally moved. He pressed away from the tree and shifted his cap into a more comfortable position on his head before crossing his arms across his chest. His strong, tanned, brawny arms. His broad chest.
She breathed in deep, releasing it on a long, slow, deliciously revitalising sigh.
What if
Could she? Should she? Considering every step and every misstep she experienced outside the walls of her family home somehow ended up being known by the whole country, it took something
She took another deep breath, faced him square on and gave him an honest, inviting, unambiguous smile.
Needless to say, after all that build-up, it was more than a bit of a shock when she didn’t get one in return.
Her cheeks heated from the inside out, her fingernails bit into her palms, and her lungs suddenly felt very, very small.
Meg fair leapt out of her skin when Tabitha leant on her shoulder and sighed. ‘Imagine,’ she said, ‘if we hadn’t kidnapped you to this place this moment never would have happened.’
‘I’m trying my very best to imagine it right now,’ Meg said on a mortified croak.
Pathetically late though the attempt at saving face was, Meg let her gaze glance off Mr Tall Dark and Silent Rugged Man, then up into the sky as if she were pondering the time and using the sun as her guide.
‘I might well be seeing things,’ Rylie said, finally upright and now staring brazenly at the silent stranger, ‘but isn’t that Zach Jones?’
Meg grabbed Rylie by the hand and spun her around to face front. All the while her wits began to return and synapses connected in the back of her brain. ‘Why do I know that name?’
Rylie said, ‘He was a rower years back. Olympic level. Keeping it up too, by the looks of him. Now he’s a businessman. Big time. Owns this place, in fact, as well as a dozen-odd of its like all ‘round the world. Self-starter. Self-made. Renegade. Refuses to list his company on the exchange. Not all that much known about him otherwise. He somehow manages to live under the radar.’
‘Single?’ Tabitha asked.
‘Perpetually,’ Rylie said with a grin.
‘Perfect.’ Tabitha grinned. ‘Your dad’ll hate him.’
Meg turned on her. ‘So?’
Rylie said, ‘She has a point. You don’t have to limit your dating schedule to charming, skint, ambitionless, undemanding men to get back at Daddy.’
Meg’s right eyebrow tweaked to a point. ‘I actually