The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request)

by Susan Stephens

She beamed down at him. ‘Piece of cake. I did win a state title, you know.’

  ‘I believe you. So. If you can crawl along it towards the wall, where the roof is at its lowest you could do a recce. Still got the bar?’

  She untied his shirt from her waist and felt the sleeve. ‘Yes. Yuck, it is full of splinters and nails, this beam, as well as cobwebs!’

  ‘Be very careful.’

  ‘Care is my middle name. Actually Leila is my middle name, after my grandmother—why am I babbling?’ she asked at large as she started to crawl along the beam.

  ‘Exhilaration? Stress? I don’t mind. I don’t have a middle name,’ he said as he watched her inch her way forward.

  ‘How come?’ Maggie stopped moving and stared down at him.

  He shrugged. ‘I was adopted as a baby, although that may not have a thing to do with it.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ she said incredulously. ‘But you were talking about your mother!’

  ‘She’s my adoptive mother. Why am I babbling?’ he asked humorously.

  ‘Well, I’ll be…’ Maggie shook her head and started to inch forward again. ‘Then you have done tremendously well for yourself! But it must have had some effect. Are you full of neuroses and so on?’

  ‘Oh, definitely,’ he said with a straight face, but a world of devilry in his eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure I should believe that—ouch!’

  ‘What?’ he queried.

  ‘A nail. I seem to have got my blouse hooked on it. Damn.’ She struggled upright to the tune of tearing material as the front of her blouse ripped from the neckline to the waist.

  ‘Take it off,’ he suggested, ‘and put my shirt on instead. The material might be tougher. Then use yours and a blanket to protect yourself.’

  ‘Roger wilco!’ She wrestled her blouse off, sitting easily enough on the beam with her feet hooked together beneath it. But just as she was about to put his shirt on they both froze at a loud noise outside the shed—a motor revving then being shut off followed by a car door slamming.

  ‘Maggie, come down,’ Jack said softly but urgently.

  ‘Of course. We’re about to be rescued!’

  ‘Perhaps. But if this shed has been hijacked and there’s something fishy going on, we may not be too welcome and I can’t look after you up there.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ she whispered and backed along the beam until she was above him. ‘Now!’

  She slithered down the blankets and into his arms, leaving his shirt and her blouse dangling on the beam. At the same time the door was thrown open from the outside, a powerful searchlight was shone in and a string of expletives in a harsh male voice was uttered.

  Maggie gasped and clutched Jack, completely dazzled by the light. He put his arms around her.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ the same harsh voice said. ‘What is this—some sort of kinky sex set-up?’ And to Maggie’s utter disbelief the searchlight moved away revealing, not one, but two men, and some flash bulbs went off.

  Jack growled in his throat, then he said into her ear, ‘One, two, let’s get down, Maggie.’

  ‘OK,’ she whispered back, and on his call of two they slithered down to the boot, then hit the floor together. He held her in his arms only until she was steady on her feet, then he strode forward to confront the two men.

  Things happened so quickly after that, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Both men backed away from him until one of them, the man with the camera, tripped and fell over a chair. He dropped the camera and Jack swooped onto it.

  ‘I am sorry about this,’ he said quite politely as he opened the back of it and exposed the film, ‘but you wouldn’t want to be responsible for some highly misleading pictures, now would you?’

  The man got up nervously and dusted himself off. ‘Not if you say so, mate,’ he agreed.

  ‘Good! Why don’t you both sit down and tell me who you are? Sophie,’ Jack added over his shoulder, ‘you might be better off waiting in your car.’

  It took a moment for Maggie to twig that he was talking to her, but as soon as she did she accepted the suggestion gratefully. It was still one of the hardest things she’d ever done—to achieve a dignified exit wearing only her socks, jeans and her bra. She did resist the temptation to run, however, until she was out of the shed, then she spurted to her car, climbed in with a sigh of sheer relief, and reached over into the back seat for the denim jacket she’d tossed there the day before.

  It was fifteen minutes before Jack came out to her and he stopped on his way to retrieve his mobile phone and bag from his Range Rover and then to lock it.

  He got into the passenger seat, glinted her a daredevil little smile and said, ‘Home, James, I think.’

  ‘What about your—?’

  ‘Maggie, just go,’ he commanded. ‘I’ve done my level best to protect your fair name, let’s not hang around.’

  She switched the motor on and nosed the car forward. Two minutes later, she turned out of the concealed driveway onto the road and turned to him. ‘I’m dying of curiosity! Who were they? What did you tell them? Do they still think we were… we were…?’ She stopped and coloured painfully.

  He was fishing around in his bag and he dragged a T-shirt out and shrugged into it with difficulty. ‘Hang on,’ he said as he began to punch numbers into his phone. ‘What’s your address?’

  She told him.

  It was someone called Maisie he rang—a Maisie who didn’t object to being woken at four-thirty in the morning and given all sorts of instructions.

  To wit, someone was to retrieve his Range Rover at the farm address, using his spare keys; someone was to pick him up at Maggie’s address in about half an hour; a new flight to Melbourne was to be booked for him later in the day, no, he wouldn’t be stopping in Sydney this time—what had happened to him?

  ‘I was kidnapped by a girl, locked in a shed and— maybe I’ll tell you the rest of it one day, Maisie, just be a love and sort all that out for me, pronto.’

  He ended the call.

  Maggie looked over at him. ‘That’s not funny!’

  ‘No? I have to tell you it has been one of the funnier days of my life, Maggie Trent,’ he said with his eyes glinting. His hair was standing up from his struggles with his T-shirt, and he ran his fingers through it.

  She bit her lip and concentrated on her driving for a bit until he dropped his hand on her knee. ‘All right. I apologize. Who were they? A private investigator and a journalist.’

  Maggie’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘As you say,’ he agreed dryly, and told her the whole story.

  The owners of the property had had a farm machinery hire business, now defunct. All the equipment had been stored in the shed, which explained why it was built like Fort Knox. They also had a wayward son, apparently, who’d stolen the vintage car and the bike on a whim and as a bit of a lark, and decided there was no better place to keep them under wraps than his parents’ shed—he’d contrived to get copies of the keys made.

  But he was also a garrulous young man when under the influence of liquor and drugs and the journalist, who wrote a motoring column and was a vintage-car freak himself, had got wind of the heist. He was also aware that the owner of the car and bike had hired a private investigator to look for them when the police had failed to trace them, so they’d decided to pool their resources.

  ‘I see!’ Maggie said at this point in the story.

  ‘Yes,’ Jack agreed. ‘It all falls into place. How much more interesting to find Jack McKinnon and Margaret Leila Trent engaged in what could have looked like weird practices, though?’

  She flinched. ‘Do you think they believed our story? What did you tell them?’ She pulled up at a traffic light on the Oxenford overpass.

  ‘The truth, mostly. That the property was about to come onto the market and we were interested in it.’

  ‘Perfectly true!’

  ‘Yep.’ He shot her an amused look. ‘But I had to tamper with the truth a bit then. I tol
d them the wind banged the shed door shut on us, locking us in.’

  Maggie flinched again. ‘That’s a very small white lie,’ she said, although uncertainly. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Almost miniature,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Uh—the light has changed, Maggie.’

  She changed gear and moved forward a little jerkily. ‘I know you’re laughing at me,’ she accused at the same time.

  He did laugh outright then. ‘Perhaps you should bear this incident in mind the next time you’re moved to scream, shout and slam things,’ he suggested and sobered suddenly. ‘Because it wouldn’t have been funny to be splashed across some newspaper because of who we are, you are particularly, and because it did look very strange.’

  Maggie cruised to a stop at the next set of lights on the overpass. ‘I never get these damn lights,’ she said tautly, then sighed. ‘You’re right. I will.’

  ‘Good girl. Anyway, I had to tell some more white lies. They think your name is Sophie Smith—’

  ‘That was inspired,’ she said gratefully and shivered suddenly.

  He looked over at her and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I just thought of what my father would say if I got splashed across some newspaper in—those circumstances. He’d kill me! No, he wouldn’t,’ she corrected herself immediately, ‘but he’d be furious!’

  ‘He’d be more liable to want to kill me,’ Jack said prosaically. ‘However, although I suppose there always may be a question mark in their minds, those two have nothing to go on other than your car registration, and I don’t think I gave them time to get it, in the dark.’

  ‘It’s not registered in my name. It’s the firm’s car,’ she told him.

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘But—’ she turned to him ‘—what about you? Do they know who you are?’

  ‘They know and they’re not likely to forget it.’

  Maggie stared at him and shivered again. ‘You can be very scary at times, you know.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’ve got a green light again, Maggie.’

  She drove off. ‘Not that I’m complaining,’ she added. ‘I’m very grateful to you for handling it all so well. Even my father would be grateful.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet your bottom dollar on it.’

  She drove in silence across Hope Island for a while, then as she turned into her street she said, ‘What will we do now?’

  He stirred. ‘If I were you, Maggie, I’d go away for a while. Just in case they decide to snoop around a bit.’

  ‘I can’t just go away! I’m a working girl,’ she objected, and pulled into her driveway.

  Jack McKinnon looked through the window at her lovely villa and shrugged.

  ‘Don’t tell me we’re back to all that nonsense!’ she accused. ‘What a spoilt little rich girl I am.’

  His lips twisted as he transferred his gaze to her. ‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘Actually, I think you’re one of a kind, Maggie Trent. On the other hand…’ he paused and searched her eyes ‘… on the other hand you do bear some responsibility to your name and your family so it would be a good idea to take out some—’ he gestured ‘—extra insurance. I’m sure that’s what your father would advise and rightly so.’

  He turned to look over the back of his seat as a car pulled up across the driveway. ‘My lift has arrived.’

  ‘Maisie?’ she said.

  ‘Not Maisie.’

  ‘So… so that’s it?’ Her voice was slightly unsteady.

  He grinned. ‘A better outcome than it might have been, in more ways than one. You could still be balancing on a splintery beam trying to force open a tin roof.’

  ‘Will you buy it? That property?’

  ‘Don’t know. Listen, you take care, Miss Trent.’ He leaned forward and kissed her lightly, then he opened the door and slid out of the car, pulling his bag after him.

  Maggie was still sitting exactly as he’d left her, with her fingers on her lips, when the other car drove off, taking Jack McKinnon out of her life.

  Later in the day, a huge bouquet of flowers arrived for her with a simple message— ‘All’s well that ends well, Jack.’

  In the event, Maggie’s mother was of exactly the same opinion as Jack McKinnon when she heard all about her daughter’s ordeal. Not only did she insist that Maggie should go away for a while, taking a month’s unpaid leave, but she also accompanied her for the first week.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE ocean stretched forever beyond the arms of the bay. It was slate-blue and wrinkled. A layer of cloud rimmed the horizon, but the sun had risen above it and was pouring a path of tinsel light over the water. Long, lazy lines of swell were rolling in to crash onto the beach in a froth of sand patched white that looked like crazy paving until it slipped away.

  To the south, the green, rock-fringed dome of Point Cartwright with its white observation tower stood guard over the mouth of the Mooloolah River.

  To the north and much further away, the monolithic bulk of Mount Coolum stood out as well as Noosa Head, insubstantial in the distance. Closer to home Mudjimba Island lay in the bay like a beached whale complete with a tree or rock on its head to resemble a water spout. The whole area was known as the Sunshine Coast. It was an hour’s drive north of Brisbane and it competed with the Gold Coast as a holiday destination.

  Maggie withdrew her gaze from the distance and studied the beach. She was on the ninth floor of an apartment block in Mooloolaba, just across the road from it, a lovely beach, long and curved and protected from the dominant south-easterly trade winds. The road itself was lined with Norfolk pines, some as tall as the floor she was on.

  There weren’t many people on the beach although it was crisscrossed with footprints—the lull between the serious early-morning walkers and the beach frolickers.

  It was an interesting spot, Mooloolaba. Its river was home to a trawling fleet and wonderful fresh seafood abounded. There were often huge container ships and tankers anchored off Point Cartwright awaiting clearance and pilots for their journey into Moreton Bay and Brisbane, services that originated in Mooloolaba together with an active Coastguard.

  It was also a haven for many recreational mariners on their voyages north or south. Mooloolaba was the last stop before the Wide Bay bar, a treacherous waterway between the mainland and Fraser Island, or the first stop after it. Many a mariner had heaved a sigh of relief to be safely inside the Mooloolah River after a scary bar crossing and a sea-tossed trip south after it. If you were sailing north, it was like a last frontier.

  Is that what I’m facing? Maggie wondered suddenly. A last frontier…

  She sat down at the small table and contemplated her breakfast of fresh fruit and muesli, coffee and croissants. She’d been in the luxury apartment for ten days. It belonged to a friend of her mother’s and had no connection with the Trent name. Her mother had spent the last week with her before having to go to Sydney for a charity engagement she was unable to break.

  Her father, thankfully, was overseas on business and she and her mother had agreed that he needn’t ever know about the episode in the shed.

  She’d enjoyed the days with her mother—they’d window-shopped, sunbathed, swum, walked, been to the movies and read—but she was now bored and ready to go back to work although she had two and half weeks of leave left, well…

  She ate some muesli, then pushed the bowl away unfinished and poured her coffee. To be honest, she didn’t know what she was ready for, but more of the same wasn’t it and at the heart of the matter lay one man—Jack McKinnon.

  She’d heard nothing more from him although she’d arranged to have her mail checked and all her phone calls rerouted to her mobile.

  I wonder what he would think, she mused several times, if he knew how much I’ve changed my stance on him? If he knew I can’t stop thinking about him, if he knew… come on, Maggie, be honest!… I seem to have fallen a little in love with him?

  It was the strangest feeling, she reflected. While she’d been doing her ‘trapeze a
ct’ she’d been a little nervous, but mostly fired with enthusiasm. She hadn’t been aware of him as a man, only as a partner she could more than rely on. Now, the close contact with him invaded her dreams and made her go hot and cold in her waking hours when she thought about it.

  Not only that, she might have felt annoyed by him at times—here she always paused and looked a bit guilty—but his company had energized her. It must have or why else would she be feeling as flat as a tack? Why else would she have this feeling she was at a last frontier in her life with nowhere she wanted to go?

  Nor had her mother failed to notice her abstraction.

  ‘Darling…’ Belle regarded her seriously once ‘… did Jack McKinnon get you in just a little bit? Is that why you’re so quiet sometimes?’

  Maggie chose her words with care. ‘If you have to get locked in a shed with a guy, he was all right.’

  She got up abruptly, her coffee untasted. No good sitting around moping, she decided. Action was called for. She’d go for an invigorating swim.

  The water was glorious. She swam out, caught a wave and surfed in expertly and she laughed at the sheer bliss of it as she lay on the sand with the water ebbing over her. That was when it came to her. If the mountain wouldn’t come to her, she would go to it.

  She packed her bags that morning and drove home.

  Two days later, two very low-key days in case anyone was snooping about looking for her, she’d exhausted every avenue she could think of to get in touch with Jack McKinnon to no avail.

  Either she was on a hit list of people to be kept away from him or he had the most zealous staff who kept everyone away from him. She couldn’t even reach Maisie—no one seemed to have heard of a Maisie.

  She’d even sat outside the headquarters of the McKinnon Corporation’s head offices in her own car, not her firm’s car, hiding behind dark glasses and a floppy linen hat, but she’d sighted neither the man himself nor his Range Rover.