The Outback Bridal Rescue Read Online Free PDF Page B

could mean she was making a statement by taking her father’s chair—a statement of empowerment that she might feel a need for in this situation. And being seated there put the desk between them, a decisive distance that possibly suggested she was feeling vulnerable about having to deal with him.
    They were the kindest thoughts Johnny could come up with.
    ‘Megan,’ he acknowledged softly, nodding for her to take the lead in this meeting.
    ‘It was good of you to come, Johnny…’
    Which was a pleasant enough greeting until she added,
    ‘…being in the middle of shooting your first movie.’
    Kind thoughts flew out the window. He eyebal ed her in furious chal enge, every muscle in his body taut with aggression at this belittling of his feelings for her father.
    Patrick had been the most important person in his life and Megan could not be ignorant of how very much their relationship had meant to him.
    Not one word passed his lips, but the force of his anger obviously got through to her. A tide of heat burned up her neck and scorched her cheeks, lighting up the freckles that added a cuteness to her pert little nose. Except Johnny wasn’t thinking cute right now. He was thinking little. No way was she big enough to take over from her father, not in any sense.
    She gestured to the chairs at the chess table, her gaze shifting from his. ‘Please take a seat.’ The words were husky, as though she was pushing them through a very tight throat.
    Satisfied that he’d wrung some shame from her, Johnny stepped over to the chess table to move Mitch’s chair—not Patrick’s—into a face-to-face position with Megan. The fal en black king caught his eye. What was this? The king is dead…long live the queen?
    Johnny pul ed himself up again. Mitch might have laid the chess piece down—a symbol of Patrick resting in peace.
    Leaping to hasty and possibly false conclusions was not conducive to a fair meeting. He rol ed the chair out from the table and closer to the desk, then sat down, tel ing himself to watch and listen, refrain from stirring any more hostility in Megan’s mind. Though what he’d ever done to earn it was a total mystery to him.
    He stared at her, waiting for her to start. The scarlet heat had receded from her face, leaving her skin pale and the freckles more prominent. She wore no make-up, hadn’t done for years, though he remembered her experimenting with it in her teens. She’d been a happier person then, enjoying his company. They’d had fun together, laughing easily, chatting easily. Then she’d gone away to some agricultural col ege and something had changed her.
    She could have been quite strikingly beautiful if she’d put her mind to it…good bones, big expressive eyes that could twinkle like silver or brood like storm clouds, a ful -lipped mouth when it wasn’t thinned with disapproval of him, and a glorious mane of red curls, currently pul ed back into some tight clip at the back of her neck. A lovely long neck it was, too.
    Apparently she didn’t care how she looked. Being a woman was not her thing. When had she last worn a dress?
    A checked shirt and jeans was her usual garb, as it was today. Maybe she wanted to look like a man in them but she didn’t.
    As much as she might try to minimise her femininity, her figure was too curvaceous for anyone to mistake her for a male. In fact, her antagonism towards him over the past few years had made him acutely aware of her as a woman, especial y when she turned her back on him, her taut cheeky bottom wagging her disdain of what he stood for in her eyes, stirring feelings in him that were entirely inappropriate, given she was Patrick’s daughter.
    Did she resent having been a daughter instead of a son?
    Was that why she looked so sourly on him…because he had a similar physique to her father?

    Johnny hadn’t meant to speak first, yet the question that rose in his mind seemed imperative, at the very core of the situation that had to be settled