Rescued By A Millionaire

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Jackson?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Glad you bought the place,’ Bill said, a trifle roughly. And then, unexpectedly: ‘There’s about two hundred head of your cattle I sort of steered to my side of the boundary rather than let them die of thirst. I might steer them back now.’

  Riley grinned. Well, well. ‘That’s good of you.’

  ‘What are neighbours for?’ Once more Bill hesitated. ‘Just…when this business is all over can you radio the missus and tell her what the hell this is all about? Otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it.’

  Riley’s grin deepened. He knew Dot. The thought of a girl and a child stranded on the siding would be almost too much for her. She’d be wanting to get in the truck and drive back herself, and Bill would have his work cut out to keep her at home.

  Bill’s dislike for socialising had just cost him two hundred head of cattle.

  ‘I’ll contact Dot personally,’ Riley promised, and then couldn’t help himself. ‘And I won’t even ask how long you’ve been “saving” my cattle for me, you thieving old poddy dodger.’

  Then, as he heard Bill’s squawk of indignation he replaced the handset with a smile.

  His grin faded. He lay back on his swag again for a few short minutes. Taking in what had been said.

  He’d admitted Jenna and Karli were with him. He’d assumed responsibility for them. He was in no doubt now that if he hadn’t implied he was taking care of them, Dot would be here within hours, or, if not Dot, then the Territory police.

  But he’d implied that things were under control.

  And when it was over… He’d have to report to Dot.

  Tell her what the hell this is all about.

  ‘How can I tell her what the hell it’s all about when I’ll never know myself?’ Riley asked himself, and then he sighed and reached for the radio again to contact the police.

  To tell them things were under control.

  Sort of.

  Jenna and Karli worked for two days straight. They had a perfectly wonderful time.

  And Karli bloomed.

  Their times together in England had had their problems. Every chance she’d been able to, Jenna had fetched Karli home to her bedsitter near the hospital, but normally she’d only been able to manage twenty-four hours off duty. By the time they’d finished the long trip home, Karli had already been remembering she’d have to go back. She’d never completely relaxed.

  She’d never treated Jenna as someone who might be permanent.

  But now, in this incongruous setting, there was suddenly no end in sight. Sure, they were due to catch a train on Monday but that was with Jenna. Tomorrow Karli didn’t have to go back to school. Jenna didn’t have to go back to work. And now there was no Brian threatening, and no Nicole at the end of the journey, ready to gush or rant or ignore.

  With such freedom, house-cleaning seemed an adventure to be savoured. Every time Jenna demanded rest, Karli put her hands on her hips, fixed her with a slave-driver’s look and said: ‘But there’s still more dust.’

  There certainly was, but it didn’t deter them. They mapped out a plan and worked methodically through.

  They blocked the two bedrooms off, judging the whole house was beyond their capabilities. The rest of the house they sealed. Apart from the doors and windows in the lee of the wind, they covered every broken window, they stuffed every crack and they sealed it so not one speck of dust could enter.

  Then they cleaned.

  They removed dust by the bucketload, Jenna sweeping it from higher surfaces to lower ones, Karli coming behind her and sweeping it to the floor. Then they mounded it in huge piles and whooshed it out into the yard.

  All the furniture was dragged outside, Karli heaving as gamely as Jenna. With it gone, they filled bucket after bucket with the horrid bore water and they scrubbed.

  Jenna would have stopped if Karli hated it, but Karli loved it. It was like a huge game, making an appalling house liveable.

  They wore the clothes they’d worn from the train, judging them unspeakable already, and by the end of two more days they were truly disgusting. Jenna tied their hair up in rags so they looked like two aging charladies, and they giggled every time they caught sight of each other.

  They certainly didn’t look like Nicole Razor’s daughters. If Nicole could see them she’d have kittens, Jenna thought, and the idea was enough to make her feel a real pang of sorrow. Nicole had missed out on so much, she thought as she watched Karli chewing her bottom lip in concentration as she tried to scrub her bit of kitchen floor really clean.

  Living in five-star hotels might be fabulous for a while, but it wasn’t really living. It didn’t want to make you hug someone because you felt so good at what you were achieving-together.

  And they were achieving. They worked all through Friday and slept the sleep of the truly exhausted on Friday night. They worked all day Saturday, and, to their shared amazement, as Saturday drew to a close they were starting to see the house as it might once have looked.

  Someone had loved it. A long time ago someone had taken pride in this house.

  The kitchen, under its grime, was painted a pretty pastel green. Hanging over the windows was a nondescript cloth, but when they washed it the cloth turned into attractive floral curtains that exactly matched the walls. The benches were washed clean and they’d scrubbed out the stove. Karli’s floor gleamed.

  It was as if the house were a treasure, hidden for years under ugly camouflage. The heat was almost forgotten as they grew more and more excited with their project. By the end of Saturday they were pounding the furniture and starting to drag it inside again, and the house was starting to look…welcoming?

  ‘Enough,’ Jenna decreed at six on Saturday night. She’d climbed up onto the roof and banged nails into loose tin to stop it clanging in the wind, and that had been her personal limit. Her hands were scratched, she was exhausted and even the slave-driving Karli was looking a bit wobbly. ‘Enough, Karli, love. It’s time to hit the pump. We’ve done more work than two people should have to do in one lifetime.’

  ‘It’s really pretty,’ Karli said as Jenna sat down on the back step beside her. Karli had been supervising her roof-mending, and now she tucked her hand into Jenna’s in a gesture that was entirely proprietary. ‘I’m glad you’re finished on the roof.’

  ‘I stopped it banging.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Karli said with satisfaction. ‘And I polished the doorknob.’

  ‘We’ve done great.’

  ‘Do you think Mr Jackson will come home tonight?’

  ‘He might,’ Jenna said, trying to sound as if she didn’t care.

  She did care. Which was…a problem?

  Riley arrived just after sunset. He walked into the kitchen-and stopped dead.

  Things had changed so much he had to blink to convince himself he wasn’t seeing things.

  For the last two days he’d been driving along the vast boundaries of his property, across mile after mile of drought-stricken country. He’d checked and repaired bores, he’d checked dams, he’d cleared troughs and he’d taken endless inventory. The dust, the silence and the monotony had seeped almost into his soul, leaving him blank and empty. And all the time, in the back of his mind had been the thought of this derelict house in such desperate need of repair, and his uninvited guests who were somehow his responsibility having to make do with living conditions that were dreadful. There’d been nothing he could do about it, but he’d felt appalling about them being here.

  He’d returned home tonight with little anticipation other than a growing guilt that he was here just to refuel, shower and sleep before the endless work started again. That he’d find them despairing in the dust.

  But what he’d walked into…

  The place was transformed beyond belief. The lamp was lit on the kitchen table, sending out a soft, golden glow. A smell of baking-baking!-was wafting through the kitchen. The kitchen itself was gleaming. It looked
clean and loved and even…pretty!

  How had they done this?

  Where were they?

  There was a muted giggle from the back of the house. He heard a child’s voice, happy and chirpy, and then Jenna’s voice raised in response.

  They were singing a sea shanty he vaguely recognised.

  ‘Pull, ye land lubbers, pull.’

  Fascinated, he made his way through to the wash-house door. They were both in there. He could hear their splashing and their laughter and their crazy song.

  It was like coming home.

  The thought was such a jolt that he felt almost as if he’d been hit in the gut. The sensation of homeliness. A child’s laughter. Jenna…

  She was in the shower. They were pumping together and using sea shanties to get the rhythm of the pump. They were singing and giggling and pumping and splashing-and Riley had to stand against the wall as a wave of aching need jolted through his gut so hard he thought he’d fall.

  Hell!

  ‘Enough.’ It was Jenna’s voice, still laughing, with a hint of spluttering. ‘Out of here, you little water baby. I don’t know how much bore water there is-’

  ‘There’s plenty,’ he called. ‘Bore water’s not a problem. Splash all you want.’

  There was a shocked silence from inside the wash house as they obviously heard and figured they had company. And then came Karli’s voice. Joyous.

  ‘Mr Jackson’s home. Jenna, Mr Jackson’s home. Mr Jackson, we’re having a pump shower. Do you want a pump shower? We’re really good at pumping.’

  ‘Um… Mr Jackson needs to wait for us to finish,’ Jenna said in a voice that was none too steady.

  ‘You still don’t need help with the pump?’ He smiled, but his smile was crooked. Something inside him was being touched that hadn’t been touched for a very long time and he wasn’t sure that he appreciated the sensation.

  ‘Karli has pumping down to a fine art,’ Jenna told him.

  ‘There’s rules about child labour.’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell Karli.’ She was laughing again, he decided, and he liked it. He liked it a lot. The guilt that had been with him for the last two days slipped away and he found himself grinning like a fool. ‘We’ll be out in a minute,’ she called. ‘Don’t dirty our tidy house.’

  ‘As if I would.’ He was gazing the length of the veranda and they’d been busy here, too. ‘What on earth have you two been doing?’

  ‘We’ve been dusting,’ Karli called out, proudly. The water had stopped and her voice was slightly muffled as if she was being towelled. ‘Me and Jenna don’t like dust.’

  ‘You come to Barinya Downs when you don’t like dust? A bit of dust does no one any harm.’

  ‘You bring one speck into this house, Riley Jackson, and we’ll hang you out like we hung out the rugs,’ Jenna said darkly. ‘How are your cows?’

  ‘Better for having some water,’ he told her and the feeling of domesticity deepened. What was the line wives used to their husbands? How was your day, dear?

  Something was missing. The wind was rising, whistling round the house with the same eerie moan as it had since he’d arrived. But…

  ‘The roof’s not banging,’ he said on a note of discovery.

  ‘Jenna fixed the flapping tin,’ Karli told him. It was a strange conversation, on either side of the wash-house door, crazily intimate. ‘I held the ladder while she banged the nails.’

  Jenna fixed the roof? ‘What with?’ he demanded, stunned.

  ‘With nails,’ Jenna said as if he were stupid-which was exactly how he was feeling. ‘We found them in one of the sheds with a bunch of old tools. I banged forty-seven nails and one thumb. One thumb twice.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Ouch is right.’

  ‘Jenna said a bad word,’ Karli told him-and she giggled.

  He still wasn’t sure he was hearing right. He wasn’t sure that he was dreaming. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said and the door to the wash house swung open, to reveal two girls dressed in towels. They looked amazing. Karli was hugely respectable, wrapped in a towel that reached to the floor, but Jenna’s towel covered her from her breasts to her hips and only just at that. They’d plaited their hair and pinned it up so it was a coif on each of their heads. They looked a real pair, flushed and clean and mischievous, he thought. They looked really, really pleased with themselves.

  So they ought if they’d achieved this.

  ‘What don’t you believe?’ Jenna demanded and Riley took an instinctive step backwards.

  ‘Um…the roof?’

  ‘Believe it, mister,’ she said darkly.

  ‘But you’re Charles Svenson’s daughter.’

  ‘Yeah, he should have been here to help, but he doesn’t make a habit of doing that,’ she told him. ‘And I would have called a roofer, but I couldn’t find a phone book. So I just had to do it myself. By the way, I wouldn’t trust your ladder too much. A rung broke as I came down.’ She held up a leg and motioned to a long, jagged scratch. ‘It messed up my designer clothes no end. That’ll cost you an extra can of beans.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said again, stupidly, and Jenna sighed.

  ‘Okay. I lied. Climb up on your rickety ladder and see for yourself that the roof is mended, but, I admit, I called in a team of roof repairers from Adelaide.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Karli said, puzzled, and Jenna grinned.

  ‘No, we didn’t, but we’re giving Mr Jackson some pride back. He doesn’t like the thought of mere women fixing his roof. You’ll understand male pride-and male ego-when you’re a bit older. In the meantime…’ She faced Riley square on, a diminutive redhead with a towel. ‘I know this sounds unreasonable, Mr Jackson, but we need to kick you out of your bedroom so we can get dressed.’

  ‘Um…right,’ he said and retreated.

  What else was a man to do?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RILEY needed a beer, but he didn’t fetch one. Instead he prowled the house.

  Every chink had been closed to the all-pervading dust. The broken windows had been boarded up, but the remaining windows had been cleaned so the light from the rising moon was filtering through.

  The lanterns had been cleaned. He lit one in the sitting room and gazed around at the transformed space. The big club sofa and matching chairs were clean and big and inviting.

  He didn’t sit. He wasn’t stupid. He was covered in dust and when a cry came from the veranda-‘Shower’s free’-he made it into the wash house fast.

  He was starting to feel as if he didn’t belong. The feeling that this was home was weird and domestic and…threatening?

  He washed and hauled on a pair of jeans, then started to go out to the kitchen-and then he hesitated.

  He stopped and put on a shirt. The least he could do was to pretend he knew what civilisation was.

  And when he walked into the kitchen he was pleased he had. The girls looked lovely. They were in dresses. Karli’s was a cute, jonquil-yellow dress with a white sash and Jenna was wearing…

  A cute sundress?

  Nope, he thought, and suddenly his throat felt dry. It wasn’t cute. It was a simple frock, pale green, with a scooped neck and short sleeves slit to the shoulders so her arms were almost bare. The dress clung to her waist and flared out around her hips, ending up just above her knees. It was the sort of dress you might find anywhere-you might see anywhere. But she was sort of…

  Sort of what?

  Her hair was still coiled in a plait on her head-she must have figured this was the only way to wear it when she couldn’t wash it. She wore no make-up. Her legs were bare and she wore simple sandals.

  She was as far a cry from the women he’d grown up with as he could imagine-and she took his breath away.

  ‘Do you think we look pretty?’ Karli demanded. Her voice was anxious, and Jenna looked up from the pot she was stirring, saw him in the doorway and she smiled.

  His breath got taken away all over again.

 
; ‘Of course he thinks we look pretty,’ she said. ‘We’re in our party clothes, Mr Jackson.’

  Thank God he’d worn a shirt.

  ‘Um…a party?’

  ‘It’s Karli’s five and three-quarter’th birthday.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. We found some candles, which made us think about birthdays. So we figured it out while we were dusting. Karli was in school on her fifth birthday and we couldn’t be together and Karli was feeling sad about that so we thought-well, her birthday is the tenth of June and now it’s the tenth of March, so today is her five and three-quarter’th birthday.’

  Her eyes were sending a silent message. He didn’t need it. He read the message in Karli’s entire stance.

  This was important.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said and smiled. ‘I’ve come home just in time for a birthday. How about that?’

  ‘Jenna gave me a present,’ Karli told him. She opened her hand and there was a tiny soap in her palm, the sort you might find in a cheap hotel. She beamed. ‘It’s a baby soap. It smells like flowers. I wanted to use it in the shower but Jenna said not to waste it on your yucky water.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But that’s rude.’ She looked at him again, suddenly anxious. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. And Jenna says only special people give presents on five and three-quarter’th birthdays so you don’t have to give me anything. And Jenna’s made a cake.’

  ‘A cake. Amazing.’ He sat down with caution as Jenna dolloped out casserole. It smelt fantastic. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s called Jenna’s Surprise,’ she told him. ‘While we were cleaning your cupboards we found more cans. Some of them date back for years, but there are expiry dates and some of them hadn’t expired yet. So we mixed old cans and new cans and got this. It’s mixed-can casserole and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’

  ‘I bet it is.’

  ‘And there was flour and cocoa and something called dehydrated eggs and sugar and we’ve made sort of a chocolate cake,’ Karli told him.

  ‘It’s more a chocolate crunch,’ Jenna said darkly with a warning glance at him. ‘But it’s something to put our candles on.’