Rescued by a Millionaire

It grew so fast that it threatened to overwhelm her. What was it? Need? Desire?

Whatever it was, her overwhelming compulsion was to lay her head against this man’s chest and claim it as her home. The home she’d never had was suddenly right here.

Right here in this man’s heart.

Only it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. This man had nothing to do with her. He was a stranger. He was an Australian dust farmer of whom she knew nothing, except that he lived in the most barren place on earth and he wanted nothing to do with any woman.

But he was holding her. And she was feeling…what? What was this sensation that was swelling beneath her breast, so much that she thought she must surely burst? Or cry. Or do something even more stupid, like falling against him and holding him hard against her and raising her face to his and….

No!

Marion Lennox is a country girl, born on a southeast Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a “very special doctor”, Marion also writes hugely popular Harlequin^>® Medical Romances^>™. In her other life she cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish, she travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost!)—oh, and she teaches statistics and computing to undergraduates at her local university. Marion has won major awards for her romance writing in both North America and Australia.

The Indian Pacific Railway is a wonderful train ride from the east coast of Australia to the far west. It takes three days from coast to coast, and it leaves daily. For the purpose of this book I’ve played with the timetable and the train runs only twice a week.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HIS overwhelming sensation was relief.

Wasn’t he supposed to feel fury? Desolation? Bitterness? That was what he’d felt in the past when people he loved had walked away. As Riley Jackson loaded the last of his lovely wife’s possessions into his best friend’s Lear jet he expected at least an echo of that pain.

It didn’t happen. The plane was now a sliver on the horizon and he felt no desolation at all.

Maybe he was cured of this love business. He obviously didn’t have what it took to hold a relationship together and he no longer cared.

‘What do you reckon, boy?’ he asked his dog, and Bustle nosed his hand in gentle query. Bustle wouldn’t miss Lisa either. Lisa had no time for dogs.

‘We’re on our own now, mate,’ Riley told him as he turned to walk back to the house. The old dog limped beside him. Unlike his wife, Bustle would be loyal to the end.

Losing Bustle would be real heartache, Riley thought. That would be the real end of loving.

Bustle nosed his fingers again, and Riley stooped to give his ancient collie a gentle hug.

‘I know. I don’t have you for much longer, boy, and I’ll miss you like crazy. But I’ll miss nobody else. No one is going to get close to me, ever again.’

MISTAKE. Major mistake. On a mistake scale of one to ten, this ranked at about a thousand.

For as far as Jenna could see there was red dust and railway track. A few low-growing saltbushes grew along the line. In the distance, the train was fading into shimmering heat.

There was nothing else.

Jenna stood motionless, trying to take in the enormity of what she’d done.

When the announcement had been made that the train would stop at Barinya Downs, Jenna had assumed it was some sort of town. She’d glanced out the window and half a dozen trucks had been pulled up at the platform. Staff from the train had been unloading goods, and wide-hatted, farming-type men and women had been tossing the unloaded goods into the backs of their trucks.

It had to be a settlement at least, she’d decided, which was infinitely preferable to two more days on the train watching Brian humiliate his little daughter.

But she hadn’t checked. She’d been so angry that she’d hurled their suitcases from the train and told Karli they were getting off. They’d stepped out onto the platform just as the train had started to move.

So where were they?

Barinya Downs.

The name meant nothing.

Worse. The trucks she’d seen a few minutes ago had now disappeared in a cloud of red dust.

There was nothing here at all.

She stared about her in horror, taking in her surroundings with sickening disbelief. What had she done? Where had she landed them? They were a day and a half’s train journey from Sydney and two days from Perth.

They were nowhere.

‘Where are we?’ Karli asked, in the scared little voice that was all she ever used within Brian’s hearing. It was the only tone Jenna had heard for the last two days.

‘We’re at Barinya Downs,’ she said, speaking loudly into the hot wind, as if naming the place with gusto would give it substance.

It didn’t. Barinya Downs seemed to consist of a concrete platform and a tin roof. That was it. There wasn’t a tree. There wasn’t a telephone. Nothing.