Return of the outback bi.., p.1
Return of the Outback Billionaire, page 1
“Everyone, if I may have your attention.”
Judah’s voice rang out across the ballroom, stopping music and movement and turning all eyes toward them. His arm at her waist was a band of steel, keeping her in place, but why? What was he doing?
“First, I’d like to welcome you all here tonight. I appreciate the time and trouble so many of you have taken to get here.”
A waiter approached them with a tray full of drinks and he took one and passed it to her before collecting another for himself. “Second, I’d like to introduce one particular woman to you all. A woman whose name you will have no doubt heard in connection with mine even if you haven’t met her personally. A woman of rare compassion and resilience. Someone who has seen the darkest actions mankind has to offer and yet somehow manages to retain her sanity and goodness.”
He couldn’t possibly be talking about her.
“Someone who inspired me to look outward rather than in, at a time when all I could see were concrete walls and prison bars. Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses to Bridie Starr.” He smiled down at her, all shark. “My future wife.”
Say what?
Kelly Hunter has always had a weakness for fairy tales, fantasy worlds and losing herself in a good book. She has two children, avoids cooking and cleaning and, despite the best efforts of her family, is no sports fan. Kelly is, however, a keen gardener and has a fondness for roses. Kelly was born in Australia and has traveled extensively. Although she enjoys living and working in different parts of the world, she still calls Australia home.
Books by Kelly Hunter
Harlequin Presents
Claimed by a King
Shock Heir for the Crown Prince
Convenient Bride for the King
Untouched Queen by Royal Command
Pregnant in the King’s Palace
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Kelly Hunter
Return of the Outback Billionaire
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
—William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM PENNILESS AND PREGNANT IN PARADISE BY SHARON KENDRICK
PROLOGUE
THE RED RIVER GUM floorboards in the ballroom gleamed with the shine of fresh beeswax polish and the soft glow cast by dozens of antique wall sconces. Every set of doors along the generous expanse of wall to the west stood open to the veranda beyond, even if doing so would provide scant protection from the night moths drawn towards the light. The rest of the homestead at the heart of Jeddah Creek station had been dusted, buffed and made to look like the expensive Victorian-era folly it was. Whoever had thought to bring white wrought-iron features and open verandas into the middle of a red desert landscape bloated with dust, drought and a fiercely relentless sun had been quite mad. That or English and dreaming of the world they’d left behind.
Judah Blake often wondered how long it had taken his English ancestors to realise people dreamed so very differently here.
He’d been back a little over a week, and if he still found going through an open door or eating whatever he felt like whenever he felt like it a challenge, he liked to think he kept those challenges to himself. He’d been born and raised on Jeddah Creek station; he knew this harsh land and all its wonders. He’d conquer being back here soon enough.
His eighteen-year-old brother, Reid, had been the one to suggest some kind of party to celebrate Judah’s return. Judah had been the one to turn his brother’s modest suggestion into a society ball. He’d needed to know just how much damage his imprisonment had done to his family’s standing, and what better way than to send out invitations to a big charity ball and see who showed up?
He’d spared no expense—no one would ever complain of his hospitality. Whatever a guest wanted to drink, they would find it here. The food had been flown in alongside catering staff and musicians. A small army of cleaners, tradesmen and a couple of event co-ordinators had spent the week preparing the homestead to receive guests. Stock hands had spent days setting out a parking area for all the private planes and helicopters those guests would arrive in. Not all the guests would be wealthy. Some would arrive in little outback helicopters more suited to mustering cattle than providing luxury transport. Some would bring the family Cessna, the outback equivalent of a family car. Jeddah Creek station ran straight across the border between Queensland and the Northern Territory and was a nightmare to get to by road.
And yet, out of the several hundred invitations he’d sent out at short notice, only a handful had been declined.
He could blame some of that willingness to accommodate him on his family name. His father had been a member of the English aristocracy—a lowly baron who had married the daughter of a viscount and fled to Australia to escape the sanctimonious superiority of her relatives. But his parents were dead, one after the other, these past six months, and Judah was the Blake now, with all the fealty it entailed.
He could blame some of the attendance on the fact that he’d been blessed with a handsome face, wasn’t yet thirty, and wasn’t yet married. And he was rich—Old Money rich, even if his recently deceased father had burned through most of it. He also had thirty billion dollars’ worth of New Money, courtesy of two cryptocurrency investments he’d made at just the right time. He’d tried to keep that windfall quiet, but in the rarefied world of one-percenters there were always some who made it their business to know which way the money flowed.
And that, above all, was why so many people had chosen to show their faces here tonight. With thirty billion dollars sitting in his back pocket, it apparently really was going to be that easy for the same people who’d ignored him for more than seven years to step up now, forgive him his sins and welcome him back into the fold.
Amazing how many of them had already been in contact on account of investment possibilities that might be of interest to him. Good causes, all. Could only help him restore his tarnished reputation, they’d implied, and he’d smiled fierce and flat and told them he looked forward to catching up with them soon.
They had no idea what kind of man he’d become. He had no idea what kind of man he would be now that he was out and blessed with more wealth than he knew what to do with and so many open doors.
All he knew was that he wanted everything back the way it was. His parents alive. His soul not yet stained by what it took to get along in a cage, but it was too late for that. Nor was he ever likely to will his parents back to life.
Retrieving the parts of Jeddah Creek station his father had sold off, though...that was something he could set right. His birthright and his solace. His land, not Bridie Starr’s.
‘Don’t do anything rash once you get out,’ the visiting psych expert had said in the days before his release.
As if Judah hadn’t spent the past seven years and then some learning to control his every thought and feeling.
‘Avoid split-second decisions.’
Guess the doc had never had an inmate with a shiv heading towards him, fast and furtive.
‘Give yourself time to adjust.’
This sounded like halfway good advice.
‘Your reading of people will be off. Give others the benefit of the doubt.’
Like hell he would.
Bridie Starr had taken temporary possession of land that belonged to him and the fix was very simple—nothing rash about it.
He wanted it back.
CHAPTER ONE
‘DO YOU KNOW what you’re going to wear?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Bridie Starr stared despondently at the lemon meringue pie Gert had whipped up seemingly out of nowhere and wondered, not for the first time, where the other woman had learned to cook. Not around here, that was for sure. Here being the channel country of central Australia, and far, far away from any kind of crowd. Bridie had been born and raised here on Devil’s Kiss station. Gert hailed from Barcoo, a few hundred kilometres to the south. Neither place tended to grow master chefs.
Gert arrived at Bridie’s homestead for three days every fortnight and made the place bright with beeswax, laughter, shared cooking and conversation, before heading next door to Jeddah Creek station to do the same for the Blakes. A two-day stint with the Conrads to the north, and then Gert would return to her home and set up to make the trip all over again.
Gert was the glue that kept people around here connected.
‘I’m not sure I even want to go to the Blakes’ ball,’ Bridie confessed.
‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’
And why should she be? Bridie’s shut-in tendencies weren’t exactly a secret.
‘But you have to go,’ the older woman continued briskly. ‘People will be looking to you to see what you’ll do now that Judah’s back. It’d be cruel to act as if you’re scared of him.’
‘I’m not scared o
Gert’s thin lips stretched into a smile. ‘Used to be a time when fancy balls were all the rage at Jeddah Creek station, you’re just too young to remember them. They put on at least one a season and all the fancy types would be there. The things we got up to...’ The older woman sounded positively wistful. ‘Your mother loved them. She and your father used to dance all night long, and they were good at it.’
Bridie’s mother had left the world not long after Bridie had set foot in it. Gert was the only person who ever talked freely about her.
Her father never spoke of his wife at all.
Okay, so her mother had loved dancing and balls. Maybe Bridie could learn to love them too. She’d already RSVP’d that she and her father would be there. No way could they stay away after everything Judah had done for her. And she had to be presentable, which wouldn’t be hard, what with a closet full of rarely worn designer clothes at her fingertips, all of them tailored just for her. Granted, they were half a dozen years out of date, but haute couture never really dated. All the age of a piece did was show other people for how long someone had been obscenely wealthy.
Bridie didn’t consider her wealth obscene, but once upon a time she’d modelled such clothes and sometimes she’d been allowed to keep them. She’d been a rising star with the face of an angel and a body on the cusp of womanhood. She’d had absolutely no clue about the predators roaming the glittering, crazy world of high-fashion modelling.
Her awakening had been a hard one.
‘What did people used to wear to these balls? Full formal?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Breast medals and sashes and things? Gloves for the women?’
‘No to the medals and sashes, yes to the family rings and jewels, sometimes gloves,’ answered Gert. ‘Landed gentry and all that. Sometimes it’s subtle, but it does show.’
Bridie blew out a frustrated breath as she tried to mentally turn Judah next door into Lord Judah Blake, peer of the realm, bona fide English aristocracy. ‘Right, then. Gown time. She pushed a hand through the thick waves of summer-wheat-coloured hair, liberally sprinkled with darker shades of brown, and vowed yet again to get a proper haircut before the ball.
‘He phoned this morning wanting to speak to you.’
‘Judah?’ She’d been dodging his calls all week.
‘So ring him back.’
She nodded, knowing full well that returning his call would take more guts than she had. At least at the ball they’d be surrounded by people and the conversation wouldn’t get too personal too fast. Ease into things slowly was her motto.
‘You’re not going to call him back, are you?’ stated Gert flatly.
‘No. But I will be at the ball, dressed to impress, and I will speak with him then and welcome him home and shower him with gratitude and whatever else I need to do. Trust me, Gert, I have a plan.’
‘Good girl,’ soothed the older woman. ‘Have some pie.’
Something was up. Gert never let anyone at the lemon meringue pie before it was cool, but she cut Bridie a slice and watched with barely contained disapproval as the warm filling oozed all over the plate.
‘Now.’ The older woman’s steely gaze could have skewered a razorback at a hundred paces. ‘Let’s get this sorted, sweet petal.’
Sweet petal... Oh, this was bad. Worse than when Bridie had used the giant Limoges vase that used to sit at the end of the hallway as a frisbee target...and nailed it.
‘What are you going to wear?’
* * *
Judah watched from his vantage point at one end of the ground-floor veranda as his guests spilled out of the crowded ballroom and into the night to speak in glowing terms of the landscape they’d flown over to get here and the beauty of the old two-storey Victorian house in the middle of nowhere.
‘Jeddah Creek station, what a magnificent place.’
‘Judah, you’re looking so well.’
And for the truly brave, ‘I miss your parents and I’m sorry for your loss.’
His brother was somewhere inside, ten years younger and almost a stranger. Reid had been running Jeddah Creek in the four-month gap between their father passing and Judah getting home, and he’d done a good job.
The boy—man—had a strong network of school friends, all freshly graduated and most of them taking a break year before stepping into whatever their families had planned for them. Plenty of Reid’s friends were here tonight and he hoped to hell they could hold their liquor because he wasn’t exactly policing them. Maybe he should have a word with the exorbitantly priced bar staff the event co-ordinators had insisted on hiring. Let them know that monitoring the alcohol intake of his guests, young and old, was their job, not his.
And then Reid stepped into place at his side, his blue eyes bright and searching.
‘She’s not here yet. She promised she’d come,’ said Reid by way of greeting.
‘Who?’
‘Bridie.’
There was only one Bridie in Judah’s universe and he’d been trying to set up a meeting with her for days. So far, she hadn’t even had the courtesy to return his calls. ‘Maybe she had a pressing engagement elsewhere.’
‘Not Bridie. She’s practically a shut-in. Wouldn’t leave Devil’s Kiss station for years after the incident, and even now she has to work her way up to going out.’
‘Then perhaps she’s working her way up to it.’ The thought of Bridie not making the most of her freedom didn’t sit well with him. Stubborn tendrils of anger flickered to life inside him. He’d sacrificed his freedom in service to her. The least she could have done was make the most of her opportunities.
‘I know she was worried about how everyone might gossip about her and you,’ continued Reid. ‘She wasn’t looking forward to that part.’
Boo-hoo.
‘She’s a photographer now,’ Reid said next.
He knew.
‘Landscapes mostly, of around here. I took her up in the mustering helicopter a month or so back. We ended up taking the door off and rigging up a harness so she could lean out and take aerial shots. I haven’t seen them yet, but she said they turned out real good.’
They had.
Resentment curled, a low buzz in the pit of his stomach, and all because his teenage brother was what? Friends with Bridie Starr? Her confidant?
Why hadn’t she returned any of his calls?
Bridie was in between him and his brother in age. Twenty-three now, no clueless girl. Would he even recognise her? Of all the photos sent to him these past seven plus years, not one had been of her.
‘See that your friends don’t drink too much tonight. The last thing we need is an incident.’
‘I know. They know. There won’t be one.’
How could his teenage brother be so very sure?
Reid seemed to read his mind, and smiled, fierce and swift and just that little bit familiar. ‘Your reputation precedes you, man. They’ll behave.’
‘Does it cause you trouble? My reputation?’
Reid shrugged. ‘Not out here.’
‘What about when you were at school?’
Another shrug. ‘Saved me the trouble of being friends with fair-weather people. That’s what Dad used to say.’ He squinted towards the east. ‘This could be them. Dunno why I expected them to come in the long way around when it’s so much quicker to cut across country.’
Judah waited as the thin spiral of dust on the horizon turned into a plume, and a dusty once-white ute came into view. Hard to know what he was feeling, with his emotions locked down so tight, but now was not the time to lose the iron control he’d spent so many years developing.
So what if curiosity was killing him?
So what if the thought of her being a hermit made him seethe?
He could still use that information against her if she didn’t bend to his will and sell him back his land. And why wouldn’t she sell? She’d done nothing with the land she now owned. It was just sitting there waiting to be reclaimed.
