It wasn’t only that, though. To be tarred with the same brush as her father was extremely annoying. She might, according to her grandmother, have inherited some of her father’s genes, but not, she devoutly hoped, his arrogance. She might have a fairly well- developed commercial instinct when it came to the property market, but a lot of people thought of her father as a ruthless businessman—she certainly wasn’t ruthless.
As usual, her garden soothed her. She’d had no idea she possessed green fingers until she’d inherited her villa. In six months she’d transformed the small garden into a colourful showpiece. She grew roses and camellias, impatiens, petunias and daisies, yellow, pink and white. Her lawn was like green velvet and her herb garden provided basil, mint, coriander, rosemary, sage, parsley, thyme and oregano.
So she watered and pottered and pruned dead heads until both Tim Mitchell and Jack McKinnon faded from her mind, quite unaware that Jack ‘the man’ would raise his undeniably attractive head in the most unexpected way when she went back to work the following morning.
Maggie was the only agent not engaged with clients when an elderly couple walked into the office on Tuesday morning, so she took them under her wing and set about making her usual assessment of what kind of a property they wanted to buy. This could often be a tricky business, but with Sophie and Ernest Smith it proved to be more—it proved to be a marital war zone.
It transpired that they had sold their previous property, a house and eight acres, to a developer. Sophie had not been in favour of doing this at all and claimed she wasn’t going to be happy anywhere else, anyway.
Ernest, with a lack of patience that indicated this battle had been fought many a time before, detailed to Maggie why he’d thought it was such a good idea at the time.
They were getting on and eight acres were quite a handful. Once developers got their eye on an area what option did you have but to sell out unless you relished the thought of being hemmed in by hundreds of houses? The price they’d been offered would assure a comfortable retirement…
‘Yes,’ Sophie Smith said grimly, ‘but if you’d hung on as I suggested, we would have got a lot more for it!’
Ernest bristled. ‘We weren’t to know that, woman, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!’
Maggie spent a few moments calming them down, then asked for more details. The Smiths were the first to be approached in their road by the developer, and the ones to sell out cheapest. Others in the road who had held out over a period of time had received better offers.
It was obvious to Maggie that, not only had Sophie really loved her property and not wanted to sell anyway, but that the higher prices some of her neighbours had attained were going to be a thorn in her flesh and a cause for discontent between her and her husband for the rest of their lives.
‘Who was the developer?’ she asked.
Ernest heaved a sigh. ‘The McKinnon Corporation.’
As Maggie surveyed the two unhappy people before her once again her blood boiled directly on account of Jack McKinnon.
All the same, she might never have done anything about it had fate not intervened.
A few days later, she was doing a property assessment.
The owners had relocated to Melbourne over a year ago. They’d contacted her by phone with instructions to value the property with a view to putting it on the market and they’d posted her the keys.
The house, she discovered, showed every sign of not having been lived in for quite a time—it was distinctly unloved and it was a crying shame because it had obviously once been a beautiful home with loads of character. But the acreage was green and rolling, there were lovely trees on it and a delightful, secretive creek ran through it. A creek, she felt sure, you would find platypus playing in.
There was also a large brick shed. She left it to last to inspect and finally tore herself away from the creek to do so. The shed had two means of access: a set of double doors you could drive a vehicle through, but they were heavily barred and padlocked, and a stout wooden single door with a deadlock. She unlocked it and walked into the cavernous gloom of the building.
One corner of it had been converted into a rudimentary dwelling, she found, complete with kitchenette, bathroom and toilet. The kitchenette had a small two-burner stove. There were an old kettle and a couple of pots as well as some mismatched china and cutlery. The kitchen cupboard held some tinned food and dry goods, but there was little furniture, only a sagging settee and a Formica-topped table with four chairs. But there were, as she clicked a light switch then ran a tap, both electricity and water connected.
She made some notes and looked around again, but it was bare except for a large mound covered with tarpaulins in one corner. She was just about to investigate when the scamper of mice in the rafters caused her to grimace and decide against it.
That was when she heard a vehicle pull up outside. To her amazement, as she watched through the doorway, who should step out of the late-model Range Rover but Jack McKinnon?
She stared through the door wide-eyed, but there was no mistaking him as he stretched and looked around. He wore buff chinos and a dark green long- sleeved shirt with patch pockets, casually dressed again in other words, but still—how to put it?—a very compelling presence? Yes.
All the same— Oh, no! No, you don’t! were her next sentiments. No way are you going to turn this little piece of heaven into a housing estate, Jack McKinnon.
She emerged from the shadows of the shed with an ominous expression on her face.
‘Well, well,’ he drawled as they came face to face, ‘if it isn’t little Miss Trent, green crusader and man- hater.’
He looked her up and down and decided, somewhat to his surprise, that if she were anyone but David Trent’s daughter he would find her rather peachy despite her grim expression.
Peachy? he thought with an ironic twist of his lips. Where did that come from? You wouldn’t exactly call—he dredged his mind for an example—Lia Montalba peachy. Svelte, stunning, sexy, sophisticated—yes, definitely that, but peachy? No. So why apply it to this girl? Did it indicate a succulent, fresh and rather innocent quality he detected in Maggie Trent alongside the expensive grooming and the stunning green eyes?
He shook his head, mainly to dislodge an image of her without her clothes—she was David Trent’s daughter, after all—and reminded himself that she could certainly stand up for herself.
But that produced another inclination in him. As well as speculating on her figure, he discovered a desire to indulge in more verbal fencing with her.
Hell, Jack, he thought, isn’t that a little immature? Not to mention a dead-end street with this particular girl?
In the meantime, Maggie discovered she was clutching her mobile phone as tightly as if she wished to crush it, so she put it, together with her notes, carefully on the roof of her car and planted her hands on her hips as she delivered her reply.
‘At this moment, yes to all of those names, Mr McKinnon,’ she said through her teeth. ‘But since I’m here at the express instructions of the owner in my capacity as a real-estate agent, you can’t be here legitimately so would you mind moving on?’
He smiled fleetingly, thought, Immature? Maybe, but what do they say? Men will be men! And he took his time about summing her up from head to toe again.
With a rural inspection to do, Maggie wore jeans, short boots and a pink blouse. Her hair was fish- plaited and she wore the minimum of make-up, only lip gloss, in fact. It was also her last assignment of the day so she’d gone home to change into something suitable for tramping round a paddock.
None of that hid the fact that she was long-legged, high-breasted and had a particularly lithe way of walking that was an invitation to imagine that supple, golden body in your arms, in your bed…
Nor, he noted, did his scrutiny of her breasts, hips and legs, her smooth, silky skin, indeed his systematic stripping of her, go unnoticed.
Once again, bright colour flooded her cheeks, but at the s
ame time her eyes started to sparkle with rage.
He observed the wrathful turmoil he was exciting in her with another smile, this time dry.
‘So that’s what you do for a—shall we say hobby? But it so happens you’re wrong, Miss Trent,’ he said. ‘I was also contacted by the owners. They want to know if this property has development potential.’
Maggie closed her eyes in sheer frustration. ‘They didn’t say a word about that to me!’
He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to check back with them.’
She reached for her phone, but put it down on the roof of her car again as her emotions ran away with her. ‘You can’t—you wouldn’t! It’s so lovely. It would be a crying shame.’
‘To destroy it and cover it with little boxes?’ he suggested, and strolled into the shed.
Maggie followed him. ‘Yes!’
‘Listen.’ he turned on his heel towards her and she nearly ran into him. ‘A lot of you do-gooders amaze me.’
She backed away a step.
It was impossible not to be slightly intimidated by Jack McKinnon. He was tall, for one thing, and he moved with superb co-ordination. His grey gaze was boring right into her and the lines and angles of his face were set arrogantly beneath that dark fair hair. The arrogance was compounded by a beaky nose and a well-cut but hard mouth and—at such close quarters there was even more to contend with.
He was so essentially masculine it was impossible to be in his company without a sense of man versus woman coming into the equation.
That translated, she realized, to a competitive form of self-awareness that took her by surprise. An ‘I can be just as judgmental of you, Jack McKinnon, because I can be just as alluring, sexy and damned attractive as—as Lia and Bridget are!’
She blinked as it shot through her mind. Could she? She doubted it. She had never mentally stripped a man the way he had stripped her and she was quite sure she couldn’t render him as hot and bothered— and stirred up, she acknowledged honestly—as his lazy, sensual summing-up of her had. Not to mention—how dared he do that to her? Who did he think he was?
There was also, if all that weren’t bad enough— and she wondered why she hadn’t taken this into account before because even her mother had mentioned it!—the distinct impression that he was diabolically clever, as he proceeded to demonstrate.
‘If you have real concerns about the environment and the impact of urban sprawl, take them to the city council. If you object to rural zonings being overturned do something positive about it,’ he said contemptuously.
‘Something?’ she echoed unwisely.
‘Yes. Campaign against it. Stand for council yourself Use your ballot power to vote for a ‘greener’ council. It can be done. But don’t rail against me in a virtually uneducated fashion, because I’m not breaking any laws at all.’
‘What about moral and philosophical laws?’ she challenged. ‘What about enriching yourself at the expense of the environment and people like the Smiths?’
‘I have no idea who the Smiths are but…’ he paused and once again that grey gaze roamed over her, although this time clinically and coldly ‘… it’s often the wealthy, the old money entrenched in their ivory towers and open green spaces, who lack concern and understanding for the less fortunate majority of the population.’
Maggie gasped. ‘That’s not true, of me anyway!’
‘No?’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘You should try being one of that majority, Miss Trent. You should experiment with existing as a couple and raising a family on a single income because the kids are too small to leave, or child-care is too expensive—and see what it means to you to have your own roof over your head.’
‘I—’
But he continued scathingly, ‘You may think they’re little boxes, but they’re affordable and they’re part of the great Australian dream, owning your own home. Come to that, it’s a vast continent but inhospitable, so suburbia and the fact that we cling to the coast is another fact of life.’
He paused and eyed her. ‘How much does your privileged background stop you from understanding some basic facts of life?’ he asked her then. ‘How many acres does your father own all green, untouched and lovely?’
That was when Maggie completely lost her temper. One innuendo, one insult too many, she raged inwardly, and looked around for some way to relieve the pressure of it all—she grabbed the door and banged it closed.
‘I hope,’ he said as the echoes of it slammed around the shed, ‘this isn’t what I think it is.’
‘And I hope it demonstrates to you the force of my emotions about the likes of you,’ she returned icily.
He looked around with a gathering frown and mentally castigated himself for playing verbal war games with this girl. ‘Are your emotions savage enough to want to kidnap me?’
‘Savage enough to make me want to scream and shout, throw things and slam things—’ Maggie stopped abruptly. ‘Kidnap you? What on earth are you talking about? The last thing—’
‘One wonders if your antipathy is towards my housing estates or the kind of man you think I am?’ His grey glance brushed over her insolently. ‘So you have a key in your pocket?’
Maggie looked bewildered. ‘What do you mean? A key? No. Why?’
He walked past her to the closed shed door and turned the handle. Nothing happened. ‘This door is now deadlocked. From memory, you had a key in this lock but on the outside, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Maggie stopped and her lips parted as understanding of what she’d done started to seep through. ‘Yes.’ She cleared her throat. ‘But there must be other ways out.’
‘Show me,’ he commanded. ‘As far as I can see the only two windows have burglar bars fitted and both doors are locked now.’
‘Oh, my…’ Maggie breathed. ‘I don’t believe this! What about your keys? You must have had some.’
‘No. I wasn’t really interested in the house or the shed.’
‘Well, well—phones,’ she gabbled, and was hit by the memory of her mobile sitting on the roof of her car. She closed her eyes. ‘Please tell me you’ve got your mobile phone on you?’ she begged.
‘I don’t. I left it on its mounting in my car. This is all very affecting, Ms Trent,’ he said with utter contempt, ‘but whatever you don’t like to call it, and for whatever reason you decided to deprive me of my liberty—’ his gaze was cold enough to slice right through her ‘—you’re going to pay for this.’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Maggie took some deep breaths. ‘It was an accident. Yes, OK, maybe I got a bit carried away, but I have every right to, on the Smiths’ behalf if nothing else! There is no reason in the world, however,’ she said emphatically, ‘that would make me want to kidnap you!’
‘The ubiquitous Smiths again,’ he murmured, then said trenchantly, ‘Lady, you were bestowing enough attention on me last Sunday to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.’
Maggie sucked in her cheeks in the effort she made not to blush. ‘That was the power of my disapproval,’ she offered stiffly.
‘Oh, yeah?’ He said it softly, but the two words contained a world of disbelief.
‘Yes!’ she insisted at the same time as a most treacherous little thought slipped into her mind— So why hadn’t she been the same since?
But that spurred her on to say hotly. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Mr McKinnon. Either I’m a man- hater or I’m not!’
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps I should qualify that—a hater of wealthy, powerful men completely in love with themselves.’
‘Bingo! Now you’ve got it right.’
‘I wonder,’ he mused. ‘There could be two sides to that coin, but anyway—’ he looked briefly amused ‘—I don’t agree that I’m in love with myself so you mightn’t have to hate me totally, or the opposite,’ he added softly.
Maggie stared at him. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’
He rubbed his chin and narrowed his eyes.
‘Loo
k…’ She hesitated as she tried to gather her thoughts, then she threw up her hands. ‘If I’d lured you here then locked you in, that would be a different matter, but it’s a supreme coincidence the two of us being here today!’
‘You could be a quick thinker for all I know,’ he countered. ‘And there are women who take the most amazing liberties and—opportunities.’
She studied the harsh lines of his face. She thought of the pent-up dynamism she’d sensed in him. She had to acknowledge that he would be extremely attractive to most women and when you added his wealth to his looks and his aura, you had also to acknowledge there could be some women, gold-diggers, fortune-hunters, who would take what opportunities they could.
‘You forget,’ she said quietly, ‘I probably have as much money in my own right as you do.’
He said, with a flash of irritation, as if he was suddenly heartily sick of her, ‘I don’t really give a damn for your motivation. I’d much rather you worked out how to get us out of here. I have a plane to catch in a couple of hours.’
Maggie looked around helplessly, then upwards. ‘Maybe—maybe we can go through the roof?’
He swore comprehensively and pointed out just how high the roof was and that there was no ceiling. There was also no sign of so much as a set of steps, let alone a decent ladder, or…
Maggie finally stemmed the tide. She planted her hands on her hips again. ‘You’re a man, aren’t you? Surely you can think of something?’
He folded his arms and looked sardonic. ‘Even wealthy, powerful men have their uses? Isn’t that a double standard?’
Maggie opened and closed her mouth a couple of times.
‘Cat got your tongue, Miss Trent?’ he drawled. ‘Never mind, here’s what I suggest. Since you got us into this—you get us out.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘THAT’S… that’s ridiculous,’ Maggie stammered.
‘Why?’
‘I thought you had a plane to catch.’
The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 19