JOHNNY was totally stunned by Megan's appearance the next morning. Not only was she wearing a curve-hugging black suit with a flirty little frill at the bottom of her skirt—drawing attention to the feminine shapeliness of her calves, fine ankles, and feet shod in sexy black high heels—but her hair was…positively mesmerising.
All throughout breakfast he could not stop looking at it. Usually she wore it in pigtails or scaped into a knot, tightly confined, with a hat crammed over it more often than not. He could not remember ever seeing it like this—lustrous red-gold waves springing softly from her head, cascading into curls that bounced alluringly around her shoulders. It looked so vivid against the paleness of her skin, and formed an amazingly rich, sensual contrast to her sombre attire.
Her face seemed different, too. Maybe it was the startling beauty of her hair framing it, or the subtle touches of make-up—brows pencilled a shade darker, a smoky shadow applied to her eyelids, enhancing the shape and size of her eyes, lending a more feminine mystique to their sharp directness, and the red-brown lipstick certainly added an enticing lushness to her mouth. He had imagined she could look quite striking if she tried. He simply wasn't prepared for…stunning!
She wore a double strand of pearls around her throat.
They looked like the pearls he'd chosen for her twenty-first birthday. A grown-up necklace he'd thought at the time, something really good to commemorate her coming of age, Patrick's youngest daughter. He'd bought them in Broome, Picard pearls, the best in the world. He'd meant to present them himself at Megan's birthday party, but Liesel—leaving her had been impossible just then.
Seven years since Megan had turned twenty-one. He'd sent the pearls and forgotten about them.
There had been Liesel's death…and all the promise of her talent lost.
Now Patrick's death.
He should be thinking of the man, not his daughter.
Johnny tried to keep his mind focussed on paying his last respects to Patrick Maguire. Yet even at the funeral service his attention was split. Megan sat beside him and every time she bent her head he was distracted by the rippling flow of her hair, the scent of it reminding him of fresh lemons, slightly tart but light and refreshing, completely unlike the erotic muskiness of other women's perfume.
And she stood beside him as Patrick was buried in the designated plot beside his beloved wife. With the extra elevation of high heels, the top of her head came up to his chin. Not as little as he had thought her. She held herself with very straight and tall dignity. Patrick would have been proud of her.
Afterwards, when they returned to the homestead, Johnny could not stop his gaze from following her every move—greeting the guests who'd flown in to attend the wake, graciously listening to what they wanted to say, serving them with drinks or food. Many people he didn't know had come, but she knew them all and their connections to her father. It brought home to Johnny that this was her life and he had only ever been a visitor to Gundamurra, not an integral part of it.
The people who lived on the station knew him, welcomed his company, chatted to him. Somehow it wasn't enough. He wanted to be at Megan's side, sharing the responsibilities of outback hospitality, familiar with everything that was familiar to her. The sense of being an outsider—the pop-star—grated on him, especially when Megan's attention was courted by young men attached to other pastoral properties.
Men who were smitten by the way she looked today. Men who won kind smiles from her.
Men who might be eager to offer themselves as partners, given some sign of encouragement.
Johnny's charm started to wear thin.
A previously unknown possessive streak hit him, driving him to insert himself into the private little tête-à-têtes these men sought with Megan, making his presence at her side felt and forcibly acknowledged. Though that didn't work too well. He found himself viewed as a curiosity, not a threat to their interests.
He managed to hold himself back from crassly declaring that he now owned forty-nine percent of Gundamurra, which he'd saved from the brink of bankruptcy, so Patrick's daughter was not quite the attractive prospect they might imagine her to be. Futile move anyway, he argued to himself. How she looked today was drawcard enough.
Perhaps he was less than subtle in cutting out one guy who was definitely coming on to her. Megan threw him a look of exasperation and grittily declared, 'I do not need a big brother standing over me, Johnny.'
He'd never felt less like a big brother.
'Seems like you're not sour on all men after all,' he shot back at her.
Her eyes widened.
Johnny realised he sounded jealous. He was jealous. He wished he'd given in to the temptation to kiss her last night, kiss her so hard she wouldn't be thinking of giving any other guy the time of day. He wanted to grab her arm and haul her away from everyone else right now, have her to himself, convince her that he was the man for her.
But was he?
And what damage might he do to the working partnership they had to have, if he made the move and it was wrong for her?
'I'm just trying to be as good a hostess as my mother,' she said, her chin lifting in defiance of his criticism.
'Right! Well, I'll leave you to it.'
He backed off, sternly reminding himself of the company they were in—people here for Patrick. However, he spent the rest of the wake simmering with frustration, though he took considerable satisfaction in the number of glances Megan threw his way. She'd well and truly disturbed him. Let her be disturbed, too!
He was glad when all the guests were gone and he could busy himself helping with the cleaning up, chatting with Evelyn in the kitchen, feeling at home again. There was no formal dinner tonight. The family picked at leftovers, flaking out in the sitting room once the homestead was back to normal. The consensus of opinion was that the wake had been all it should have been for a man of Patrick Maguire's standing—a man who would be sadly missed by many.
Emotional and physical fatigue gradually took its toll, people trailing off to bed until there was only Johnny and Megan left in the room. He was sprawled in an armchair. She was on a sofa, one elbow propped on its armroll, legs up, her stockinged feet bare of the shoes she had kicked off. It was a pose that seductively outlined the very female curve of waist, hip and thigh, and Johnny found it difficult not to let his gaze linger on it.
He expected her to leave. She usually did avoid being alone with him. Any moment now those legs would swing off the sofa, take her away to the privacy of her room, and it was probably better that they did, save him from making a fool of himself. He watched her feet, waiting for them to move. She wriggled her toes. His gaze dropped to the shoes lying beside the sofa, noting the long, narrow shape of them.