Margaret Way - Six Australian Heroes

This wasn’t what she’d set out to do with her life. For most of her childhood she’d been rich and her parents had been famous. Then it had all fallen apart, she’d lost her mother and been forced to make a living.

It had occurred to her that her time at an expensive finishing-school in Switzerland could be put to better use than its original purpose of “finishing” her to take her place in society.

The result was that now, at twenty-six, she had her own one-woman agency that specialised in passing her expertise in house management, style, cuisine—she was a passionate cook—on to others.

She rarely accepted assignments that were longer than a month. This one would be for that duration and she would be extremely well paid for it. She’d learnt not to sell herself cheap.

The assignment, the one she was flying to the Gold Coast for, was an interesting one.

Southall, the present family seat of the Richardsons, was a vast country mansion perched on the scenic rim of the Gold Coast. The Richardson family owned large tracts of Queensland grazing country as well as cattle stations in West Australia and the Northern Territory.

It was an old family and an extremely wealthy one. And as its grazing empire had expanded, Southall, rural but with the advantage of being close to the coast, had been chosen as the family headquarters.

That had been in Ross and Margaret Richardson’s time.

Then Margaret had died five years ago and Ross had remarried fairly swiftly, a woman young enough to be his daughter—Rhiannon knew this from the gossip columns. Ross had taken his second wife, Andrea Comero, a model, to the south of France to live. He’d handed over the reins to his elder son, Lee, who was unmarried. Ross had died less than a year ago.

Both his sons had been unmarried at the time of Ross’s second marriage but the younger son, Matthew, had since made the trip to the altar with a gorgeous television starlet, Mary Wiseman. After a six-month honeymoon touring the world he had brought his bride to Southall.

Again, Rhiannon had gleaned this from the gossip columns but, while Margaret and Ross Richardson had been household names and faces, while Matt Richardson’s marriage had achieved quite a bit of publicity, while Andrea Comero had been a well-known face, Rhiannon knew nothing at all about the elder son, Lee.

It was on Lee’s behalf, however, that Rhiannon’s services had been sought by his PA. With great diplomacy she’d been given to understand that Mary Richardson née Wiseman, in her early twenties, was not au fait with running a large household. She was, however, said to wish to return to Southall its reputation for providing great food, wonderfully comfortable beds and always interesting company that it had held in Margaret Richardson’s day.

Where Lee Richardson himself came into it all, Rhiannon had no idea. Still, it was none of her business if he wanted his younger brother’s wife to take over Southall. It was Rhiannon’s windfall, in fact.

Rhiannon collected her luggage from the airport carousel then presented herself at the information desk, as she’d been instructed to do.

She was just about to give her name to one of the clerks, when a deep, husky voice beside her asked another clerk whether a Rhiannon Fairfax had made herself known to them.

She shut her mouth and turned to the speaker, only to stop as if shot. It was none other than the man from the taxi, the man who’d obviously mistaken the way she’d been looking and smiling at him in the airport lounge before the flight.

Her abrupt movement caught his eye, and he turned to her. Their gazes clashed.

‘Well, well,’ he drawled, ‘if it isn’t the lady who was trying to come on to me in Sydney, although “lady” may not be perfectly apt.’ His gaze swept downwards.

Rhiannon opened her mouth a couple of times but nothing came out. Then she took hold and said icily, ‘I was not trying to “come on to you”, I would scorn,’ her eyes flashed, ‘to do that.’

‘Could have fooled me, ma’am.’ But he frowned suddenly.

‘The thing is,’ she persisted through her teeth, ‘I happen to be Rhiannon Fairfax.’

Those rather amazing dark blue eyes narrowed. ‘Now, that,’ he said softly, ‘should be really interesting, Ms Fairfax.’

‘On the contrary—’

He overrode her smoothly. ‘Because I happen to be Lee Richardson, your—’ he let the word hang in the air ‘—employer.’

‘Oh.’ It was a singularly ineffective response, Rhiannon was uncomfortably aware, but it was all she was capable of at the time.

‘Mmm …’ he agreed with a lightening look of wicked amusement. ‘Perhaps you should bear in mind that life can be littered with coincidences before you eyes—’

‘Don’t go on,’ she interrupted, ‘unless you’d like me to turn around and go straight back to Sydney?’

‘I’m afraid you can’t, ma’am,’ said one of the wildly interested clerks who’d been following the exchange word for word. ‘The last flight left half an hour ago.’

‘I can spend the night in a motel, then—’

‘You can’t,’ Lee Richardson said, ‘because—’

‘Will you both stop telling me what I can’t do?’ She eyed him and the clerk with exasperation.

‘What I meant was,’ Lee Richardson amended gravely, ‘that I’m your lift up to Southall—when the flight was delayed and it was realised we were both on it, I was deputised to drive you up.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Rhiannon raised an eyebrow at him.

‘Nothing. But we desperately need you up there, Ms Fairfax. My sister-in-law is throwing a party the night after tomorrow that could, by all accounts, be a disaster.’

Rhiannon blinked. ‘How so?’

‘She gave the caterers the wrong day. They’re booked up for the right day, a Sunday, anyway. So, it would appear, is every other decent caterer on the coast. Of course, it may be beyond you to organise drinks and a buffet supper for thirty people at such short notice.’ He looked at her expressionlessly.

‘Providing I had access to shops, I could do it in my sleep,’ Rhiannon said gently.

Lee Richardson summed her up from head to toe. She was medium height, five feet five-to-six probably, and her figure was deliciously curvy beneath the grey suit and black blouse. Her straight, smooth fair hair was expertly cut to chin length and parted on one side. The longer side arched attractively against her face. She had rather unusual light brown eyes emphasised by long, carefully darkened lashes.

The rest of her make-up was light and flawless, so was her skin, her lips were luscious and gleamed a frosted coral-pink.

Was it his imagination, though, or had he met her before? Something in her voice and those sparkling brown eyes seemed to strike a chord but he couldn’t place it.

More to the point, could she ever look entirely businesslike? he reflected. Would that glossy, rather gorgeous air, those curves, always get in the way of taking her seriously?

She wasn’t what he’d expected. She definitely wasn’t the dragon-like person he’d visualised, who could impose their personality on a household that bore all the hallmarks of descending into a dysfunctional mess.

Although, Lee conceded, she had been quite cool under fire, so to speak; she might even be more interesting than his first impressions of her had indicated. But that brought up another query. She had been staring and smiling at him in a way that experience had shown him women did when they were analysing his potential in bed and out of it.

On the other hand, her wounded vanity might work to his advantage and things were in crisis.

Following this line of thought, he said drily at last, ‘I wonder.’