Lindsay Armstrong - The Millionaire's Marriage Claim

“You actually threw yourself in front of the gun. How can I ever repay you for that?” Jo exclaimed, her face pale and her grey eyes dark with disbelief and emotion.

Gavin pulled his jumper over his head and Jo winced at the sight of the wound in his upper arm. But she immediately pulled off her top, which she ripped into strips with her teeth and fingernails, and then applied as a pad and pressure bandages to his wound.

Gavin Hastings flinched, but there was a suggestion of humor in his eyes as they rested on her, her upper body clad only in a bra, as she worked on the dressings.

“What can you do to repay me, Jo? I think it would be a damn good idea if you married me.” He swayed suddenly, and blacked out.

LINDSAY ARMSTRONG was born in South Africa but now lives in Australia with her New Zealand-born husband and their five children. They have lived in nearly every state of Australia and have tried their hand at some unusual—for them—occupations, such as farming and horse-training…all grist to the mill for a writer! Lindsay started writing romance novels when her youngest child began school and she was left feeling at a loose end. She is still doing it and loving it.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JOANNE LUCAS steered her grey Range Rover over the appalling road and shook her head.

Sure, she hadn’t expected the drive to a sheep station somewhere south of Charleville in outback Queensland to be a picnic. But the road had been quite good until she’d turned off onto the station track, and it was far worse than anything she’d anticipated. It was also quite a bit further than she’d expected to drive, and the chill dusk of a winter’s evening was drawing in.

She scanned the horizon for some sign of habitation but there was none. This was serious sheep country, the Murweh shire—she knew from the research she’d done it carried approximately eight hundred thousand head of them! There were also cattle stations in the area so you expected it to be wide open and isolated.

On the other hand, her destination, Kin Can station, had quite a reputation. So did its owners, the Hastings family, for wealth and excellence in the wool they bred.

How come they couldn’t afford to put in a decent road to the homestead, then? And how on earth did the wool trucks cope with it?

Come to think of it, if she hadn’t had her wits about her, she would have missed the small, nearly illegible Kin Can sign on a gate—another surprise because she’d been led to believe the station was well signposted.

Do they actively discourage visitors? she asked herself, then slammed on the brakes as she topped a rise to see a man standing in the middle of the track aiming a gun at her.

Do they ever! It flashed through her mind, followed immediately by—So what to do now?

Any decision was taken out of her hands as the man loped forward and wrenched her door open before she could lock it. Not only that, he slung the gun over his shoulder and manhandled her out onto the road.

‘Now look here,’ she began, ‘this is insane and—’

‘What’s your name?’ he barked at her as he backed her up against the bonnet.

‘Jo…Joanne, b-but people call me Jo,’ she stammered.

‘Just as I thought, although I was expecting a Joe—of the masculine variety—but perhaps they thought you could seduce me and keep doing it until they tracked me down.’

He paused and a flash of ironic amusement lit his intensely blue eyes as he looked her up and down then murmured, ‘On the other hand, you don’t look that feminine, Jo, so I’ll go with my first scenario.’

Jo, who had gasped several times as he’d spoken, lost her temper and stamped heavily on his toe with the heel of her booted foot.

He didn’t even flinch. ‘Steel toecaps, darlin’,’ he drawled. ‘So it gets your goat up to be called unfeminine?’

Jo breathed heavily but a small portion of her mind conceded that, yes, it had—which was just about as insane as the whole mad situation. Nor could she resist a glance downwards, although she did resist the urge to tell this crazy person that most women would look unfeminine in creased cargo pants, a bulky anorak and a knitted beanie that concealed her hair.

She did quell the sneaky little voice in her head that reminded her some men found her height and straight shoulders unfeminine anyway…

‘Look here, whoever you are,’ she began, ‘I’m expected up at the homestead so—’

‘I’ll bet you are, Jo,’ he rasped, ‘but we’re going a different way. Let’s just see what you’re packing first.’ He started to pat her down like a policeman.

‘Packing?’ It came out in a strangled way edged with outrage as she tried to evade his hands. ‘Will you stop touching me? I’m not packing anything.’

‘Take ’em off, then,’ he ordered as his hands reached her waist.

Jo gaped at him. ‘Take what off?’

‘Your strides, lady.’

‘I most certainly will not—are you out of your mind?’

‘OK! Turn round and lean over the bonnet so I can search for hip holsters, thigh holsters or wherever women carry their concealed weapons.’

Jo stared at him in the fading daylight and wondered if she was the one going mad or—was this a nightmare? But the substance of her nightmare was anything but dream-like.

He was tall, taller than she was, with good shoulders. In a navy jumper and torn, dirty jeans, he looked to be extremely fit in a lean, rangy way. His thick black hair was short and ruffled and his jaw was covered with black stubble. Then there were those furious blue eyes that gave every indication of a man not to be trifled with.

But why? How? What? she wondered wildly. Some modern day bushranger on the loose? Surely not!

It’s not unheard of, she corrected herself immediately, but why would he have been expecting any kind of a ‘Joe’?

‘Make up your mind,’ her tormentor ordered. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

With trembling fingers, Jo unzipped her anorak and started to lower her cargo pants. Then she got angry again and pulled the anorak off and flung it over the bonnet. She ripped her boots off and stepped out of her pants. ‘You may look but don’t you dare lay a finger on me again,’ she ground out, her grey eyes flashing magnificently.

The man grimaced and raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, well!’ His gaze dwelt on her figure beneath a fitted, fine-knit blue jumper and pale blue cotton briefs, and drifted down her long legs.

‘Just goes to show you shouldn’t make snap judgements,’ he said with humour, looking back into her eyes, ‘since it would be fair to say that in other circumstances you’d be welcome to seduce me, love.’ The humour left his eyes. ‘Turn around.’