Trent McKinnon was asleep in the cot.
‘I’ll tell you. He adapted himself to a four-hourly schedule right from the start under extremely difficult circumstances. He burps beautifully and he mostly sleeps between feeds just as the book says he should. He has one wakeful period, after his two p.m. feed, where he’ll accept conversation and he quite appreciates being carried around for a bit. He now sleeps through the eight hours from ten p.m. to six a.m.’
‘Is there anything he doesn’t do by the book?’ Jack asked with a grin. ‘He sounds almost too good to be true.’
Maggie considered. ‘He hates having his hair washed. He gets extremely upset, but even that isn’t going against the book exactly. They do warn that some babies hate it.’
‘Screams blue murder?’
‘Yes. Otherwise—’ she shrugged ‘—there’s nothing he doesn’t do very correctly.’
‘What are you worried about, then?’
Maggie stared down at her sleeping son with her heart in her eyes. ‘I can’t help thinking he would be horrified if he knew how—irregular—his situation was.’
She looked up and their gazes clashed.
‘Born out of wedlock, you mean?’ he said, and for a fleeting moment his mouth hardened. ‘That was your choice, Maggie.’
She inclined her head. ‘That was before—all sorts of things happened,’ she said quietly and ran her fingers along the arm of her chair. ‘That was definitely before I came to appreciate the reality of having a baby and what a baby deserves.’
CHAPTER ONE
MAGGIE TRENT sold real estate.
None of her family or friends particularly appreciated her job, although her mother was supportive, until Mary Donaldson of Tasmania got engaged to Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and it was revealed that she had worked in a real estate office.
From then on, everyone looked at Maggie Trent with renewed interest, even a little spark of ‘the world could be your oyster too’!
In fact, the world could have been Maggie’s oyster anyway, had she wanted it. She came from a very wealthy background. At twenty-three she was a golden blonde, attractive, always stylish and well groomed.
Nevertheless, she also had a well-developed commercial instinct and a flair for her job in the form of matching the right people to the right properties plus a very real ‘eye’ for the potential in houses that many missed.
This came from the Bachelor of Arts degree she’d done at university along with courses in architecture and draughting, as well as her natural interest in people and her ability to get along with them. She’d been born with great taste.
If she had a creed it was that nothing was unsaleable.
She was enjoying her life and her career far too much, especially with the property boom going the way it was, to contemplate marriage, although there was at least one man in her life who wished she would—not a prince of any designation, however.
But Maggie had two goals. One was to prove that she was a highly successful businesswoman in her own right. She had visions of opening her own agency one day. The other was to allow no man to make her feel inferior because she was a woman. Both these ambitions had been nurtured by a difficult relationship with her father, a powerful, wealthy, often arrogant man who believed she was wasting her time working at all and equated real-estate agents with used-car salesmen.
It was undoubtedly—she didn’t try to hide it from herself—this mindset that saw her take such exception to Jack McKinnon, wealthy property developer, with such disastrous results—not that she’d ever intended to deprive him of his liberty!
She couldn’t deny that was how it had turned out, though. Nor had the fact that she’d been deprived of her liberty at the same time seemed to hold much weight with him at all. In fact, he’d ascribed some really weird motives to it all that still annoyed her to think of…
Anyway, it all started one sunny Sunday afternoon.
She and Tim Mitchell were sipping coffee and listening to an excellent jazz band amongst a lively crowd on a marina boardwalk. Her relationship with Tim was fairly casual. They did a lot of things together, but Maggie always drew the line at getting further involved. Truth be told this was placing undue strain on Tim, but he did a good job of hiding it.
‘Who’s that?’ Maggie asked idly. She was feeling relaxed and content. She’d sold a house that morning that was going to earn her a rather nice, fat commission.
Tim glanced over his shoulder at the new arrivals that had caught Maggie’s attention and drew an excited breath.
‘Jack McKinnon,’ he said. ‘You know—the property developer.’
Maggie stared at the man. She did know the name and the man, but only by reputation.
Jack McKinnon was a millionaire many times over and amongst other things he headed the company that was developing new housing estates in what Maggie thought of as ‘her patch’, the Gold Coast hinterland.
If she was honest, and she was, Maggie disapproved of the kind of housing estates Jack McKinnon developed. She saw it as tearing up of the rural land that had always been the Coast’s buffer zone. The area where you could own a few acres, run a few horses, breed llamas or whatever took your fancy; the green zone that was a retreat for many from the high- rise and suburbia of the rest of the Coast.
Now, thanks to Jack McKinnon and others, part of that green zone was disappearing and thousands of cheek-by-jowl ‘little boxes’ were taking its place.
Unfortunately, the reality of it was that the Coast’s population was burgeoning. Not only did it offer a good climate and great beaches, but its proximity to Brisbane, the state’s capital, also made it desirable and future urban development was inevitable.
Doesn’t mean to say I have to like the people involved in doing it and making a fortune out of it at the same time, she mused.
‘Do you know him?’ she asked Tim as Jack McKinnon and his party, two women and another man, selected a table not far away and sat down.
‘I went to school with him, but he’s a few years older. Bumped into him a couple of times since. He’s a Coast boy who really made good,’ Tim said with pride.
Maggie opened her mouth to demolish the likes of Jack McKinnon, then decided to hold her peace. Tim was sweet and good company. At twenty-nine he was a dentist with his own practice. With his engaging ways and a passion for all things orthodontic, and the prices dentists charged these days, she had no doubt he would ‘really make good’ as well, although perhaps not on the scale of Jack McKinnon.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Tim what the man was like, but she realized suddenly that she couldn’t fathom why she wanted to know, and she puzzled over that instead.
It came to her there was definitely an aura to him that she found a little surprising.
His dark fair hair streaked lighter by the sun fell in his eyes. He would be over six feet, she judged, slim but broad-shouldered and he looked lithe and light on his feet.
Unlike many of the ‘white shoe’ brigade, Gold Coast identities, particularly entrepreneurs, who had over the years earned the sobriquet because of their penchant for flashy dressing, Jack McKinnon was very casually dressed with not a gold chain in sight.
He wore jeans, brown deck shoes, a white T-shirt and a navy pullover slung over his shoulders.
There was also a pent-up dynamism about him that easily led you to imagine him flying a plane through the sound barrier, crewing a racing yacht, climbing Mount Everest, hunting wild animals and testing himself to the limit—rather than developing housing estates.
As these thoughts chased through her mind, perhaps the power of her concentration on him seeped through to him because he turned abruptly and their gazes clashed.
A little flare of colour entered Maggie’s cheeks and Jack McKinnon raised an ironic eyebrow. Even then she was unable to tear her gaze away. Somehow or other he had her trapped, she thought chaotically as more colour poured into her cheeks. Then he noticed Tim and instant recognition came to him.
She tried to resist, but Tim’s obvious delight made it difficult. Nor was there any real reason for her to feel uneasy amongst Jack McKinnon’s party, at first.
Her slim black linen dress and high-heeled black patent sandals were the essence of chic. Her thick dark gold hair fell to her shoulders when loose, but was tied back with a velvet ribbon today. Her golden skin was smooth and luminous.
She was, in other words, as presentable as the other two women. Nor were they unfriendly, although they were both the essence of sophistication. One, a flashing brunette, was introduced as Lia Montalba, the other, Nordic fair, as Bridget Pearson. The second man, Paul Wheaton, was a lawyer who acted for the McKinnon Corporation, but who was paired with whom was hard to say.
The conversation was light-hearted. They discussed the music. The McKinnon party had spent the night out on Jack’s boat cruising the Broadwater, and had some fishy tales to tell, mainly about the ones that got away.
The man himself—why did Maggie think of him thus? she wondered—had a deep, pleasant voice, a lurking grin and a wicked sense of humour.
All the same, Maggie did feel uneasy and it was all to do with Jack McKinnon, she divined. Not that he paid her much attention, so was she still stinging inwardly from that ironically raised eyebrow and her curious inability to tear her gaze from his?
Well, if he thought her scrutiny was the prelude to her making a pass at him, if that was why he was now virtually ignoring her, he was mistaken and she was perfectly content to be ignored.
Or was she?
It occurred to her that what he was doing was a deliberate insult and before much longer everyone was going to realize it, to her humiliation. Her blood began to boil. Who did he think he was?
Then he trained his grey gaze on her and said musingly, ‘Maggie Trent. David Trent’s daughter, by any chance?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she replied briefly.
‘The David Trent?’ Lia asked, her big dark eyes wide. ‘Ultra-wealthy, from a long line of distinguished judges and politicians, grazier, racehorse owner, champion yachtsman?’
Maggie shrugged.
‘Maggie doesn’t like to trade on her father,’ Tim murmured.
What an understatement, Maggie marvelled, considering how stormy their father/daughter relationship had sometimes been.
‘Lucky you, Maggie,’ Paul commented.
‘Yes,’ Jack McKinnon agreed. ‘Do you actually do anything useful, Maggie? Not that one could blame you if you didn’t.’
Even Tim, obviously a fan of Jack McKinnon, did a double take.
As for Maggie, she stared at Jack out of sparkling green eyes—green eyes sparkling with rage, that was.
‘I knew there was one good reason not to like you,’ she said huskily. ‘I detest the little boxes you build and the way you destroy the landscape to do so. Now I have another reason. Wealthy, powerful men who are completely in love with themselves mean absolutely nothing to me, Mr McKinnon.’
She got up and walked away.
She had a rostered day off on Monday, and she spent the morning with her mother.
In contrast to her sometimes stormy relationship with her father, Maggie adored her mother.
In her middle forties, Belle Trent looked years younger. Her straight dark hair was streaked with grey, but it was so glossy and beautifully cut many younger women envied it. With her fine dark eyes and slim figure she was essentially elegant. She was also a busy person; she did a great deal of charity work.
Yet there were times when Maggie sensed a current of sadness in her mother, but it was an enigmatic kind of sadness Maggie couldn’t really fathom. She knew it had to do with her father, that at times their marriage was strained, but for no real reason Maggie could put her finger on.
Belle never complained and there was never any suggestion that it might break up, although, with a certain cynicism, Maggie sometimes wondered whether neither her mother nor her father could face the Herculean task of sorting out a divorce settlement.
But that Monday morning as she had coffee with her mother at a chic Sanctuary Cove pavement café, Maggie had something else on her mind.
‘Do you know anything about the McKinnon Corporation and Jack McKinnon, Mum?’
Belle stirred sugar into her latte. ‘Uh—I believe he’s a bit of a whizkid. He started with nothing, I heard. Somehow or other he persuaded a bank to finance his first development and he hasn’t looked back since. He now not only develops the estate but he has a construction company that builds many of the houses. Of course housing estates are not the only string to his bow.’
‘No?’
Belle shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Once he made his first few millions he diversified into boat- building. McKinnon Catamarans have taken off. If you looked through this marina—’ she waved a hand towards the forest of masts and all sorts of boats moored in the Sanctuary Cove marina just across the road from the shopping and restaurant precinct ‘—you’d probably find quite a few.’
‘So, if he started with nothing, he must be—clever,’ Maggie hazarded.
‘I believe he’s one of those.’ Belle wrinkled her nose. ‘You know, the kind of gifted person with a lot of foresight and a lot of drive who is always going to make good. I don’t believe he’s at all ostentatious about it, though.’
‘Hmm…’
Belle raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you know him?’
‘I met him. Yesterday, as it happens. He was rather rude to me.’
Her mother blinked. ‘Why?’
‘I have no idea.’ Maggie frowned. ‘How come you know so much about him?’
‘Your aunt Elena has decided to put him on her list of eligible bachelors,’ Belle said ruefully.
They stared at each other, then started to laugh. Elena Chadwick was actually Belle’s cousin. She’d never married yet she wrote a column in a weekly magazine dispensing advice on all sorts of marital problems. When anyone took issue with her lack of experience on the subject, she protested that it was her unbiased views that were invaluable. She was a great promoter of innovative methods for ‘holding onto your man’.
She also kept and updated quarterly, to the delight of her readers, a ten most eligible bachelors’ list; the other noteworthy thing about Elena Chadwick was her talent for unearthing all sorts of unusual facts about people.
‘If I didn’t dislike him so much,’ Maggie said, still gurgling with laughter, ‘I’d feel sorry for him with Elena in hot pursuit! On the other hand, I have no doubt that he can look after himself.’
‘What’s he like?’
Maggie considered. ‘I don’t know, but he could be the kind of man women ride off with into the sunset without giving it a great deal of thought. Some women.’
‘Hmm…’ Belle said, echoing her daughter’s earlier Hmm of doubt and reservation, but accompanied by a searching little look that Maggie missed.
* * *
When she got home later, Maggie closed her front door and took her usual few deep breaths of sheer appreciation of her home.
It was a two-storeyed villa overlooking a lovely golf course on Hope Island. It had a small garden, a conservatory dining room overlooking a fountain and she’d inherited it from her paternal grandmother. She’d also inherited some of the lovely pieces that furnished and decorated it.
She’d been very fond of her father’s mother. Everyone told her she took after Leila Trent, not only in looks but personality although, curiously, this was the one area where they’d failed to agree. Leila had always insisted that if Margaret Leila Trent took after anyone, it was her father, David Trent.
‘But we never do anything but fight!’ Maggie protested, more than once. ‘Well, not always, but you know what I mean.’
‘That’s because, underneath, you’re so much alike,’ Leila insisted. ‘Oh, you’ve got your mother’s more gentle genes to balance it, darling, but essentially you’re a Trent and, whatever e
lse you might like to say about your father, that means you have a lot of drive and a lot of nerve. Your grandfather was much the same.’
Once, Maggie voiced the opinion that she should have been a boy—to gain her father’s approval anyway.
Leila looked at her piercingly. ‘Don’t go down that road, Maggie. Your mother has and—’ She stopped, then added slowly, ‘You just be yourself.’
Leila would never elaborate on what she’d been about to say and six months ago she’d died peacefully in her sleep.
Maggie tossed her bag onto the settee and slipped off her shoes.
She’d managed to avoid Tim, although she’d spoken to him on the phone and accepted his apologies for what had happened. What she hadn’t been able to accept was his complete bafflement over the incident.
‘Jack’s just—normally—not like that,’ he said several times.
Oh, yes? she thought cynically, but she told Tim it wasn’t his fault and said simply that she’d be in touch shortly.
‘I hope that’s not a ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ message, Maggie?’
Maggie said no, of course not, but now, as she padded out to water her garden in her bare feet, she frowned, because the fact was that since Sunday afternoon’s incident she’d been curiously at odds with herself. She just couldn’t put her finger on why this was so. Why her smooth, successful life she’d been enjoying so much was suddenly not so appealing to her any more.
It couldn’t have anything to do with Jack McKinnon’s insulting manner and words, surely?
After all, he’d completely misread her. He’d taken her for an idle little rich girl, a daddy’s pet, so how on earth could that start her thinking along some strange lines?
Strange lines such as a sudden dissatisfaction to do with her relationship with Tim?
Not that you could call it much of a relationship, but there was the fact that Tim dearly wanted to make it into something more while she didn’t, and she was suddenly feeling guilty about it.
The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 18