Guardian to the Heiress

Welcome to the intensely emotional world of USA TODAY bestselling author Margaret Way where rugged, brooding bachelors meet their match in the burning heart of Australia…

Praise for the author:

“Margaret Way delivers…vividly written,

dramatic stories.”

—RT Book Reviews

“With climactic scenes, dramatic imagery

and bold characters, Margaret Way makes the Outback come alive.” —RT Book Reviews

“I’ve never in my life been kissed like that.”

He kept his eyes on her lovely face. Her expression appeared overwrought. He wanted to kiss her again. He hadn’t found the extra strength to free her, but he knew he had to call a stop. “Would you want to change anything?” He brushed back a few springy tendrils from her temples.

Carol took time to find an answer. “You could break my heart, Damon. I’d forgive you.”

Her answer rocked him. For the second time he had to pitch a fierce battle for control. Eventually his sense of what was best for them won out. He lifted her to her feet. “I would never do that.”

“Not deliberately. No.” Carol placed her hands against his chest.

They had left their close and comfortable relationship way behind. That relationship had taken a giant leap into the unknown. Those ecstatic moments between them could not be taken back. Unforgettable as they were, it didn’t guarantee ownership over the other or increasing intimacy between them. There were hazards ahead for both of them to overcome.

USA TODAY bestselling author MARGARET WAY was born and raised in the River City of Brisbane, capital of Queensland, Australia. A conservatorium trained professional musician, in 1969 she decided to fulfill a childhood dream to write a book and have it published. She submitted a manuscript to the iconic publishing firm of Mills & boon ^>® in London. To her delight, the manuscript received immediate acceptance. The first book, King Country, published in 1970, was an outstanding success that heralded the start of a long and very successful career. The author hopes and believes the two goals she set herself since the beginning of her writing career have been achieved: first and foremost, to bring pleasure and relaxation to her global readership; second, to open up a window to the world on her own beautiful, unique country, captivating the hearts of her readers as they identify with rural and outback Australia and the Dreamtime culture of its Australian indigenous people. An award-winning author of more than one hundred and thirty books, published in one hundred and fourteen countries in thirty-four languages, Margaret Way is a three-time finalist for a Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my wonderful Management Team

IT WASN’T THE BEST of times for Selwyn Chancellor. Lying in his massive carved mahogany bed, he was moving in and out of consciousness, lost in a darkening sea of foreboding. Wave upon wave of memories tossed him about. Figures came and went. All the while his fragmented dreams were attended by excruciating pain that morphine was barely touching.

He was dying; he knew that. He welcomed death. It would come as a relief—that from a man who had lived his life refusing to face the fact one day he would die like everybody else. Only, he wasn’t everyone else, was he? He was Selwyn Chancellor, billionaire several times over, a man of power and wide-reaching influence, rich beyond even his own dreams. He had lived and would die a rich man, president of the Chancellor Group, a conglomeration of trading companies, real-estate companies, manufacturing enterprises, transport services and insurance, with investments in many countries around the globe.

The father he had worshipped, Sir Edwin Chancellor, knighted by the Queen for his services to industry, had always urged him to excellence. His father at the end of his days had prophesised his brilliant future: I know I can count on you, Selwyn, to build on my achievements. I leave the Chancellor Group in safe hands.

His father, a legendary hard-nosed pragmatist, had been proud of him. His father’s approval had meant everything in the world to him; but none of that counted now. At the end of his extraordinary life he had been forced to concede the moments of true happiness in his life had been few and far between. He’d known some would genuinely mourn him just as he’d known the minute their family doctor, Harry McDowell, declared him dead “the Vultures” would move in.

“The Vultures” was his private name for his family. Not very nice, but justified. There was his son Maurice, by his deeply reserved wife, Elaine. His son’s wife, Dallas, who had started out so attractive but had quickly gone to seed. At least Elaine had never done that, but Elaine had been unfitted by temperament to be the wife of an increasingly powerful man. To bring her lifestyle traumas to a head, had come the premature death of their beloved son Adam, their first born. Not all that long after, Elaine had ended her own life, though the coronial finding had labelled it an accident.