The Outback Bridal Rescue (3 page)

He gulped down some more whisky. It helped burn away the wel ing of tears behind his eyes. ‘Ready to go,’ he asserted just as brusquely, rising to his feet. ‘Let me make a few cal s first, clear the way.’

Helicopter to Phoenix, flight to Los Angeles…many hours passed before Ric and Johnny could final y board the Qantas jet to Sydney and settle in their seats for the longest leg of their journey over the Pacific Ocean. The flight steward offered them champagne. They both declined, choosing orange juice instead. It was not a time for champagne.

A question had been niggling at Johnny. ‘Why didn’t Mitch cal me direct? It would have saved you coming to get me, Ric.’

‘We thought it was better this way…the two of us travel ing together.’

‘Wel , I’m glad to have your company but we could have linked up here for this flight.’

Ric slanted him a wry look. ‘You might not have co-operated with that plan. You have a habit of doing things your own way. This course ensured I’d be with you.’

Johnny frowned. ‘You thought I needed my hand held?’

‘No. It’s al a matter of timing. There’s more, Johnny.

Mitch didn’t want to load it on you al at once over the phone. He gave that job to me with the advice to let you get over the shock of Patrick’s death first.’

The nerves in his stomach started knotting up again. ‘So hit me with
the more.
I’m sitting down and locked in. What else do I have to absorb?’

Ric looked at him, decided he was ready for it, and let him have it. ‘Patrick’s wil . Mitch held it. He’s opened it.’

‘Wel , that can’t be bad.’ Instant relief. ‘Patrick was always fair.’

‘Prepare yourself for another shock, Johnny. There’s a huge mortgage on Gundamurra and you’re about to inherit half of it.’

‘What?’ Incredulity blanked out several mil ion brain cel s.

‘Not quite half. You get forty-nine percent of Gundamurra and Megan gets fifty-one, leaving her in the driver’s seat where she’s always expected to be. But she won’t have expected to share her inheritance with you, Johnny. The normal thing would be a three-way split with her sisters.’

Co-owner of Gundamurra with Megan?

‘Mitch thought you should be prepared…get your head around it before we arrive at Gundamurra,’ Ric went on.

Johnny’s head was spinning.

What did it mean?

Why would Patrick cut out his two older daughters?

Why make him co-owner rather than Ric or Mitch?

A sense of horror bil owed through him. He reached out and gripped his friend’s arm. ‘I didn’t ask for this, Ric. I swear I knew nothing about it.’

‘I didn’t think you did, Johnny,’ Ric assured him. ‘I have no doubt Patrick planned it himself.’

‘But why me? It’s not right, not…’ His mind fumbled for words. ‘Did he…did he explain to Mitch when he drafted the wil ?’

Ric shook his head. ‘Mitch wasn’t in on drafting it.

Patrick did it himself and sent it to him sealed for safe-keeping two months ago.’

‘Two months…’ Johnny shook his head in bewilderment.

‘He must have made up his mind after Christmas.’

‘Maybe he knew he didn’t have long to live.’

‘Dammit! Why wouldn’t he tel us? We were al at Gundamurra for Christmas.’

‘If Patrick thought it was the last one for him, he wouldn’t have wanted to spoil it.’

‘But…’ Johnny lifted his hands in helpless frustration.

‘Want to know what Mitch thinks?’

He waved a go-ahead, completely beyond imagining what had motivated such an extraordinary step.

‘Patrick elected you to save Gundamurra. It’s highly unlikely that Megan can do it by herself. The way things are going with the drought, she won’t be able to service the mortgage. And it was you who always thought of it as home. Not me. Not Mitch. You.’

Johnny frowned. ‘Mitch had a home with his mother and sister, but I thought you…’ He searched Ric’s eyes.

A very direct gaze accompanied his reply. ‘You needed it more than I did, Johnny. And you can’t deny it touches something in your soul. It comes out in your songs.’

Need…yes. There was so much hype and superficial crap in the career he had chosen, so much touring to make his success stick, it was the thought of Gundamurra that kept him sane, grounded, and going back there always put his world in perspective again—what was real, what wasn’t.

‘It won’t be the same without Patrick.’ Grief squeezed his heart. ‘
He
was the soul of Gundamurra.’

‘You’re forgetting Megan.’

Megan.

His mind shied away from thinking of her right now.

Already he could see those stormy grey eyes hating him for being given half of
her place,
wishing he’d never set foot on Gundamurra, let alone have any claim on it.

‘Patrick forgot his other daughters, Jessie and Emily,’ he said, tearing his mind off the one daughter who’d become such a nagging thorn in his side.

‘They’ve both made their lives away from Gundamurra and Patrick financed their ambitions,’ Ric reminded him. ‘I think they’l feel they’ve had their share. Jessie has her medical degree and the women’s clinic she wanted at Alice Springs. Emily has her helicopter business at Cairns. The money to set them up was taken out of Gundamurra, probably contributing to the current debt. They can’t be unaware of that.’

True enough, Johnny silently acknowledged, yet the family home was the family home. Leaving them out and putting him in might very wel stir a sense of injustice. He couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about this inheritance on many counts. On the other hand,
Patrick had wanted
him there
and it was impossible to discount a decision which would not have been taken lightly.

‘It’s up to you and Megan to pul Gundamurra through this bad patch and revive it, Johnny,’ Ric gravely assured him.

‘Patrick got it right.’ He sighed and softly added, ‘He always got it right.’

It was some relief that Ric thought so.

Mitch, too, apparently.

But no way was Megan was going to accept it graceful y.

Jessie and Emily might not, either, though Ric was right about their interests lying elsewhere and Patrick had put large investments behind their chosen careers. Besides which, both of them were married to men who shared those interests, Jessie’s husband being a doctor for the Royal Doctor Flying Service, and Emily’s husband a fel ow helicopter pilot.

Only Megan was unmarried.

Not surprising with her bristling form of feminism, Johnny thought, wishing she’d stayed in the sweetly amenable little sister mould that he’d always found so engaging.
That
much younger Megan had never minded him stepping in and helping.

The flight steward came and took their glasses. The plane was about to take off. Johnny leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes and tried to relax. Fourteen hours to Sydney. Then the flight to Gundamurra in the far north west of New South Wales…the outback.

He felt the pul of it in his mind…the vast, seemingly empty land, wide-open space, searingly blue sky. It had a rhythm al its own—one that always felt good. The only jarring note was Megan standing in the middle of it, waiting for him, furiously frustrated because she had to share Gundamurra with
him.

Had Patrick got it right?

The financial part, yes. Johnny could pour mil ions into Gundamurra without a pang of personal loss. Mortgage gone with a simple transfer of money. Plus al the investment Megan needed to maintain the sheep station, eventual y making it into a thriving concern again. But she certainly wouldn’t welcome him into the life there. Over the past few years, her eyes had been branding him as an unwanted intruder, wanting him out.

But I’m in,
Johnny thought on a surge of grim determination to keep what Patrick had granted him, regardless of Megan’s reaction to it. He was co-owner.

That gave him the right to be at Gundamurra whenever he wanted to and Megan would just have to stomach having him as her helpmate. Maybe, given time, he could whittle away whatever prejudice she had against him.

The leaden weight of grief eased as a strong sense of purpose grew. The outback was primitive—man against nature—a constant chal enge that had to be won, just to survive, let alone prosper.

Above al else, Johnny was a survivor.

He wanted this chal enge. Maybe he needed it. So come what might, he was going to hold his ground on Gundamurra. Patrick had entrusted it to him.

MEGAN
finished doing her morning rounds, ensuring her work orders were being fol owed, checking for any problems, chatting to the families who stil lived on the station, subtly assuring them that the status quo was not about to change. They were to carry on as usual.

She should have felt relieved that the sombre mood hanging over everyone for the past few days had lifted this morning, but the reason for it was a major irritant.
Johnny
had arrived.
Never mind that Ric Donato and Mitch Tyler were also here. It was Johnny who put smiles on everyone’s faces. Just the thought of him was enough to do it.

Charm…

It was as natural to him as breathing.

And it always reminded her what a hopelessly naive little fool she’d been to see it as something else when applied to her. There was no differentiation. He ladled it out to one and al —his trademark in the pop world where he was a big star, a master of light entertainment. It meant nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Having final y recognised that, she’d tried to bury the hurt of it and move on. It would have helped if he’d gone completely out of her life—out of sight, out of mind—but he kept coming back, making her feel bad about herself because it was stupid, stupid, stupid to stil feel attracted to him. His interests lay elsewhere, wrapped up with his glittering successes overseas. Their lives did not mix.

Never would.

Why hadn’t her father seen that?

Why?

Had he only thought of the money needed—choosing the one person who could probably shed a few mil ion dol ars without even noticing it was gone?

Money as meaningless as charm.

Megan grimly determined to accept only what she absolutely had to in order to keep Gundamurra running.

There was no avoiding confronting Johnny El is over what was to be done. He was here now, having come yesterday with Ric, flying his own plane in as he always did.

No doubt Mitch had told him about the wil . Though even without that pressing business, he wouldn’t have stayed away, not from her father’s funeral. She could only hope that having started a new career in movies, he might be content to be an absent shareholder in Gundamurra. After al , her father was gone. No more
mentoring
readily available from Patrick Maguire.

As she walked back to the homestead, tears blurred her eyes. She didn’t want to feel betrayed by what her father had done, yet the grief of losing him was so much harder to bear because he’d left her in this intolerable position of having to accept Johnny El is as co-owner of Gundamurra.

Her shock at the terms of the wil had been fol owed by a wild surge of rebel ion, a violent need to fight it. She’d argued fiercely with her sisters, but Jessie’s and Emily’s flat refusal to go against their father’s decision left her without any support from them in a legal action to have it overturned.

In sheer desperation she’d broached the issue with Mitch Tyler, putting to him that Johnny might wel have unfairly influenced her father. After al , she’d argued bitterly, he wasn’t known as Johnny
Charm
for nothing.

Those laser-blue eyes of Mitch’s had cut her down for even suggesting it, and his subsequent words had shamed her. ‘Is that worthy of your father, Megan?’

He’d waited for her answer.

When she’d maintained a stubborn silence, squirming inside at the pertinent criticism of her viewpoint, Mitch had flatly stated, ‘If you want to dishonour his wil , I’m not your man. I’m here on Patrick’s behalf, to help facilitate what
he
wanted. It’s the very least I owe him for al he did for me.’

His high-minded integrity had goaded her into trying to bring it down a peg or two, force out some human weakness in him, make him empathise with what she was feeling. ‘Why Johnny? My father took you in, too. And Ric.

The three of you stayed in his life. Don’t you feel slighted that he passed you over for…for a pop-star?’

It wouldn’t have been so…difficult…having to share the property with either of his other
boys.
And there was no denying she needed help in these current circumstances.

Ric would have dealt delicately with the problems, caring about her feelings. Mitch would have handled her needs from the city with efficiency and absolute integrity. But Johnny El is…whose whole life was about playing to an audience who loved him?

Mitch’s straight black brows had beetled down. ‘You don’t understand your father’s choice?’

‘Do you?’ she’d chal enged.

‘Yes. So does Ric. I think you need to talk to Johnny before taking any hostile step, Megan. You might not ever appreciate where he’s come from, but…’

‘I know what he is now,’ she’d snapped.

‘You’ve just pasted a label on the man which I know to be very superficial, Megan. Johnny has not yet reached the fulfilment of the person he is. I think…’ He’d paused, his gravity giving way to a gleam of whimsical irony. ‘Did Patrick teach you to play chess?’

‘Yes. We played sometimes.’

‘He always favoured a knight attack.’

‘What has that got to do with anything?’

‘It was a strategy, Megan. Your father thought out his strategies very careful y. Don’t devalue the thought he put into his wil when you talk to Johnny. Remember that Gundamurra was Patrick’s life, as wel as yours, and he knew how to share it.’

The sting of those words stil hurt. She wasn’t mean-hearted. She hadn’t felt jealous of her father’s pride in his three bad boys who’d made good. Nor of his affection for them.

She just didn’t want Johnny El is constantly trampling through her life. She wished he’d married one of the gorgeous women he mixed with in his star-studded world so he wasn’t free to drop in on her world whenever he liked.