Stranded with the Secret Billionaire Read online

  ‘Margie and Greta don’t mind?’

  ‘They use it themselves. As an official shearers’ cook, you’re entitled as well.’

  ‘Thank you. I think.’

  He chuckled and they walked back to the house together. The night seemed to close in on them.

  The moon was rising in the east. An owl was starting its plaintive call in the gums above their heads.

  She was so close...

  ‘There’s a plate of food in the warming oven,’ she said prosaically and he gave himself a mental shake and tried to be prosaic back.

  ‘There’s no need. I could have cooked myself...’

  ‘An egg?’ She gave him a cheeky grin. ‘After my lesson last night you might do better, but if you’re hungry check what’s in the oven first.’

  ‘You’re going to bed now?’

  ‘If it’s okay with you, I might sit on the veranda and soak up the night until I settle. It’s been a crazy day and here’s pretty nice,’ she said diffidently.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ He hesitated and then decided: Why not? ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘It’s your house.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  She stopped and looked up at him. Her gaze was suddenly serious. There was a long pause.

  ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t mind if you join me. I don’t mind at all.’

  * * *

  She should go to bed. She shouldn’t be sitting on the edge of the veranda listening to the owls—waiting for Matt.

  Why did it seem dangerous?

  It wasn’t dangerous. He was her employer. Today had been a baptism of fire into the world of cooking for shearers and she needed downtime. He’d asked to join her—it was his veranda so how could she have said no?

  She could change her mind even now and disappear.

  So why wasn’t she?

  ‘Because I’m an idiot with men. The only guys I’ve ever dated have turned out to be focused on my family’s money.’ She said it out loud and Samson, curled up by her side, whined and looked up at her.

  ‘But I do a great line in choosing dogs,’ she told him, and tucked him onto her knee and fondled his ears. ‘That’s my forte. Dogs and cooking.’

  He still looked worried—and, strangely, so was she. Because Matt Fraser was coming to join her on the veranda?

  ‘He’s my employer,’ she told Samson. ‘Nothing else. He could be a seventy-year-old grandpa with grandchildren at heel for all the difference it makes. I’m over men. Matt’s my boss, and that’s all.’

  So why were warning signals flashing neon in her brain?

  * * *

  Leftovers? He stared at the plate incredulously. These were some leftovers!

  The midday meal had been crazy. For the shearers it was a break, a time where they stopped and had a decent rest. They’d come in and seen Penny’s food and basically fallen on it like ravenous wolves. Then they’d settled on the veranda to enjoy it.

  Meanwhile, Matt had grabbed a couple of rolls and headed back to the shed. The shearers’ break was his only chance to clear the place and get it ready for the next hard session.

  Shearing was exhausting. He’d been supervising it since he was a teenager and he’d never become used to it. Even when Pete was here, the best shearers’ cook in the district, Matt usually ended up kilos lighter by the end of the shear. He’d come in after dark and eat what he could find, which generally wasn’t much. Shearers didn’t leave much.

  But Penny must have noticed, for in the warming drawer was a plate with all the best food from midday.

  It hadn’t been sitting in the oven all afternoon either. She must have guessed he’d come in at dark, or maybe she’d asked one of the men.

  He poured himself a beer, grabbed his plate and headed out to the veranda. He settled himself on one of the big cane settees. Penny was in front of him, on the edge of the veranda, her legs swinging over the garden bed below.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said simply.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence though. Matt was concentrating on the truly excellent food and Penny seemed content just to sit and listen to the owl and swing her legs. She was idly petting her dog but Samson seemed deeply asleep.

  Samson had spent the day investigating chooks, making friends with the farm dogs and checking out the myriad smells of the place. This afternoon he’d even attempted a bit of herding but some things were never going to work. Matt had plucked him from the mob, hosed him down and locked him in the kitchen with Penny.

  There’d be worse places to be locked, Matt thought idly, and then thought whoa, Penny was his shearers’ cook. It was appropriate to think of her only as that.

  ‘So where did you learn to cook?’ he asked as he finally, regretfully finished his last spoonful of pie.

  ‘Not at my mother’s knee,’ she said and he thought about stopping there, not probing further. But there was something about the night, about this woman...

  ‘I’d have guessed that,’ he told her. ‘The article I read... It doesn’t suggest happy families.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘So...cooking?’

  She sighed. ‘My family’s not exactly functional,’ she told him. ‘You read about Felicity? She’s my half-sister. Her mother’s an ex-supermodel, floating in and out of Felicity’s life at whim. My mother was Dad’s reaction to a messy divorce—and, I suspect, to his need for capital. Mum was an heiress, but she’s a doormat and the marriage has been...troubled. To be honest, I don’t think Dad even likes Mum any more but she won’t leave him. And my sister... Even though Mum’s been nothing but kind to Felicity, Felicity barely tolerates Mum, and she hates me. My life’s been overlaid with my mother’s mantras—avoid Felicity’s venom and keep my father happy at all costs. So my childhood wasn’t exactly happy. The kitchen staff were my friends.’

  ‘So cooking became your career?’

  ‘It wasn’t my first choice,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted to be a palaeontologist. How cool would that have been?’

  ‘A...what?’

  ‘Studier of dinosaurs. But of course my father didn’t see a future in it.’

  ‘I wonder why not?’

  ‘Don’t you laugh,’ she said sharply. ‘That’s what he did. I was the dumpy one, the one who hated my mother’s hairdresser spending an hour giving me ringlets, the one who’d rather be climbing trees than sitting in the drawing room being admired by my parents’ friends. And then, of course, I was expelled from school...’

  ‘Expelled?’ He’d been feeling sleepy, lulled by the night, the great food, the fatigue—and this woman’s presence. Now his eyes widened. ‘Why?’

  ‘Quite easy in the end,’ she told him. ‘I don’t understand why I didn’t think of it earlier. I didn’t mind being expelled in the least. It was boarding school—of course—the most elite girls’ school my father could find. But I wasn’t very...elite.’

  She kicked her legs up and wiggled her bare toes in front of her and he could see how she might not be described as elite.

  She wasn’t elite. She was fascinating.

  ‘I hated it,’ she told him bluntly. ‘I was there to be turned into a young lady. We had a whole afternoon every week of deportment, for heaven’s sake. We learned to climb in and out of a car so no one can catch a sight of knickers.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It sounds funny,’ she told him. ‘It wasn’t. I learned to wrangle a purse, a cocktail and an oyster at the same time, but it’s a skill that’s overrated.’

  ‘I guess it could be.’ She had him entranced. ‘So...’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Expulsion? Explain.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said and grinned. ‘That was our annual ball. V
ery posh. We invited the local Very Elite Boys’ School. Deportment classes gave way to dancing lessons and everyone had Very Expensive new frocks. And hairstyles. It was the culmination of the school year.’

  ‘So...’

  ‘So you might have noticed I’m little,’ she told him. ‘And...well endowed?’

  ‘I hadn’t,’ he told her and she choked.

  ‘Liar. I’m a size D cup and it’s the bane of my life. But my mother bought me a frock and she was so delighted by it I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hated it. It was crimson and it was low-cut, with an underwire that pushed everything up.’

  He had the vision now. He blinked. ‘Wow.’

  ‘My mother’s willowy,’ she said, with just a trace of sympathy for a woman who’d never understood her daughter’s figure. ‘It would have looked elegant on Mum, but on me? It just made me look like a tart, and it got attention.’ She paused for breath. ‘Rodney Gareth was a horrid little toad, but sadly he was also the son of Malcolm Gareth QC, who’s a horrid big toad. Rodney asked me to dance. He held me so tight my boobs were crushed hard against him. He swaggered all over the dance floor with me and I could feel his...excitement. I could hear the other girls laughing. And then...’

  She fell silent for a moment and he thought she was going to stop. ‘And then?’ It’d kill him if he didn’t get any further, he thought, but she relented.

  ‘We all had these dinky little dance programmes, with pencils attached,’ she said. ‘And, before I could stop him, he pulled mine from my wrist and held it up, pretending to check for my next free dance. And then he deliberately dropped the pencil down my cleavage.’

  ‘Uh oh,’ he said.

  ‘Uh oh is right,’ she said bitterly. ‘I was standing in the middle of the dance floor and suddenly he shoved his whole hand down there. And people started laughing...’

  ‘Oh, Penny.’

  ‘So I kneed him right where it hurt most,’ she said. ‘I used every bit of power I had. I still remember his scream. It was one of the more satisfying moments of my life but of course it didn’t last. I felt sick and cheap and stained. I walked out of the ball, back to my dorm, ripped my stupid dress off and called a cab to take me home. And don’t you dare laugh.’

  ‘I never would.’ He hesitated. ‘Penny... Did your parents laugh?’

  ‘They were appalled. Mum was horrified. She could see how upset I was. But Dad? The first thing he did was ring Rodney’s parents to find out if he was okay. His father told Dad they weren’t sure if I’d interfered with the Gareth family escutcheon. He said they were taking him to hospital to check—I hadn’t, by the way—and they intended to sue. Then the headmistress rang and said I wasn’t welcome back at the school. Dad was furious and Mum’s never had the nerve to stand up to him.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘So I was packed off to Switzerland to a finishing school. That pretty much knocked any idea of being a palaeontologist on the head but, on the other hand, they ran cooking classes because that was supposed to be seemly, and if I wanted to do five cooking classes a week that was okay by them. So we had Monsieur Fromichade who I promptly fell in love with, even though I was sixteen and he was sixty. We still exchange recipes.’

  ‘So happy ever after?’

  She grimaced. ‘It worked for a while. I took every cooking course I could and that was okay. Dad approved of what he told his friends were my three star Michelin intentions. Finally I took a job as an apprentice in a London café. It was simple food, nothing epicure about it. But I loved it.’

  She paused, seemingly reluctant to expose any more of her family’s dirty linen, but then she shrugged and continued. ‘But then things fell apart at home.’ She sighed. ‘My sister had been overseas for years. There were rumours circulating about her behaviour on the Riviera and somehow Dad made it all Mum’s fault. He’s always favoured Felicity and he blamed Mum for her leaving home. Then Grandma died and Mum...got sick. Depression. She started phoning every day, weeping, begging me to come home. Finally I caved. I came home and Mum was in such a state I was frightened. I even agreed to what my Dad wanted, for me to be a company PR assistant. I thought I’d do it for a while, just until Mum recovered.’

  She shrugged again. ‘And it worked for a while. With me around to stand up for her, Dad stopped being such a bully. That took the pressure off Mum and things looked better. For Mum, though, not for me. And then Brett decided to court me.’

  ‘Brett?’ He shouldn’t ask but how could he help it?

  ‘It seems every guy I’ve ever dated has turned out to be fascinated by my parents’ money,’ she said bluntly. ‘So I should have known. But maybe I was vulnerable, too. Brett’s yet another toad, but I was too dumb and, to be honest, I was too unhappy and caught up in family drama to see it. I hadn’t realized until I got home how close to the edge Mum was, and I was scared. I was trying every way I knew to make her feel good. Brett’s a financial guru, smart, savvy and he knows how to pander to Dad. He’s also good-looking and oh, so charming. In those awful months Brett helped. He honestly did. You have no idea how charming he was. He made me feel...special, and when he asked me to marry him I was dumb enough to say yes.’

  ‘So celebrations all round?’

  ‘You think?’ she said bitterly. ‘You know, the moment I said yes I had my doubts but I’m my mother’s daughter. Dad was happy. Mum was well. For a while it was happy families all round. But then Felicity returned and Brett realized Felicity was Dad’s absolute favourite and he could be part of our family and not have to sacrifice himself with the dumpy one.’

  ‘Humiliation piled on humiliation,’ he said softly and she cast him a glance that was almost scared.

  ‘Yeah. I was paying too big a price to keep people happy and I’ve realized it. I’m over it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not.’

  And she managed a smile. ‘Maybe not quite, but I will be after a year’s cooking at Malley’s.’

  ‘You can’t go there.’

  ‘When the water goes down, of course I can.’

  ‘You’ll hate it. The last time Malley set a mouse trap... Well, I’ve never seen one. What I have seen are dead mice.’

  ‘Ugh!’

  ‘Everywhere. He baits them and doesn’t bother to clean.

  ‘I can clean,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘I bet you can but you shouldn’t have to. Don’t Mummy and Daddy supply you with enough money to be fancy-free?’

  ‘That’s offensive.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘Dad holds the purse strings but a legacy from Grandma left me basically independent. Not rich, but okay. Eventually I might set up a catering company in Adelaide or in Brisbane, but for now I need time to get my head together. I need to be as far from Sydney as possible.’

  ‘Which is why you headed into the outback in that car?’

  Now she grinned. ‘Isn’t it fun? Dad probably wants it back, though. He gave it to me when Brett and I got engaged. With a huge pink ribbon on it. I was momentarily the golden girl.’

  ‘Shall we take it back to the creek and launch it? Let it float ceremoniously a few hundred miles to the ocean?’

  She stared. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We could take pictures of it floating out of sight and send them to your father. Very symbolic.’

  She choked. ‘Dad’d have a stroke. To say he’s careful is an understatement.’

  ‘But not careful of his daughter,’ Matt said, his voice softening.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Get sympathetic. I’m fine as long as no one minds.’

  ‘So no one minds?’

  ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘No one at all. That last awful dinner, when Brett and Felicity walked in hand in hand, Mr and Mrs S
mug...I was too gobsmacked to yell and Mum didn’t have the strength to stand up for me. But I guess that was my line in the sand. I can’t help Mum and I won’t keep trying to please my father. And in a way it’s liberating. I’ve walked away. I’m free.’

  Then she paused. The night stilled and he thought of what he should say next.

  But she got there before him.

  ‘So what about you?’ she asked.

  He’d finished his beer. He was tired beyond belief. He should pick up his dishes and head via the kitchen to bed.

  ‘What do you mean, what about me?’

  ‘Who minds?’ she asked. ‘That’s what you asked me. Who cares, Matt Fraser? You live here by yourself. No girlfriend? Boyfriend? Whatever?’

  ‘I have a...’ he said slowly, and then he paused. He didn’t want to talk about Lily.

  But this woman had just opened herself to him. She might say she was free, she was over being hurt, but he knew vulnerable when he saw it.

  She’d trusted him with her story. How mean would it be not to give the same to her?

  He tried again. ‘I have a daughter,’ he told her. ‘Lily’s thirteen years old and lives in the States with my ex-wife.’

  She’d been gazing out over the farmland but now she swivelled to stare at him. He hadn’t turned the porch lights on, but the moonlight and the light filtering from inside the windows was enough for her to see.

  Not that he wanted her to see. He wanted his face to be impassive.

  Which was pretty much how he wanted to be when he thought of Lily.

  ‘Thirteen! You must have been a baby when she was born,’ she stammered and he thought: Yep, that just about summed it up.

  ‘I was twenty-four.’

  ‘Wow.’ She was still staring. ‘So your wife took Lily back to the States. Isn’t that hard to do? I mean...did you consent?’

  ‘Darrilyn met an investment banker, coming to investigate...a project I was working on. He was rich, he lived in New York, she was fascinated and he offered her a more exciting life than the one she had with me. She was also four months pregnant. When you leave Australia with your child, the child needs the permission of both parents. When you’re pregnant no one asks.’