Ally Blake - Date with a Single Dad - Millionaire Dad's SOS / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle / Millionaire Dad - Wife Needed

For Ruby. So she could be in a familiar place. So she knew her world was solid and secure. Ruby, who, despite his best intentions, had been compromised.

When Ruby’s nanny had called to say she’d had a visitor he’d almost popped a gasket, believing the woman had blatantly gone out of her way to punish him for not bowing and scraping and rolling out the red carpet. When he’d calmed down he’d realised the only way she could possibly have found Ruby in such a short amount of time was by stumbling out of the forest in one great cosmic accident.

Either way, rather than putting himself as far from Meg Kelly as he could, he now had no choice but to be on her like a rash until the day she left.

So as far as he was concerned Meg Kelly could sit out in the hot summer sun all day, her knees knocked in chagrin, her ridiculous dress getting splattered with water spray, his dilapidated green hat sloping low over her face, leaving only her down-turned mouth in sight.

Except of course it had only given him enough time studying that mouth of hers to know it was all natural. And so was she. Her skin was as pale as it ought to have been with a smattering of freckles across her nose make-up couldn’t, and needn’t, hide. Her curves were as God gave her with apparently a little bit of help from occasional disco. The woman was pure, wholesome femininity and irrepressible audacity and ingenuous sex appeal.

He was beginning to wonder if she’d been sent to test him. After dedicating his entire adulthood to purely selfish pursuits, was he really man enough, strong enough, self-sacrificing enough to resist her? To put aside his needs for the needs of one girl?

When Ruby had landed on his doorstep, her small hand held tight in the hand of a weary-looking social worker, she was alone in the world, orphaned and in shock. She’d been on the verge of replaying his cold, lonely, disjointed past through her future. There was no way he could let that happen to her and look himself in the mirror ever again.

But had he been the right person to save her?

He let out a long, hard breath and realised that beneath the brim of his hat Meg was watching him. Those sharp blue eyes constantly calculating.

He should have known better than to believe what he’d heard about her in the press. Assuming she’d be a lightweight adversary had been a huge tactical error. It served him right that it had come back to bite him where he’d feel it most.

The ante had been upped. It was time he showed his cards.

He used the oar on the starboard side to head the boat back to civilisation. ‘So, Ms Kelly.’

‘Yes, Zach.’

‘What possessed you to trespass inside my private residence this morning?’

‘Your yard,’ she shot back as though the words had been waiting to explode from inside her. ‘I never went any farther than the very, very edge of your yard. Once I knew it was yours I was out of there.’

‘I don’t give a flying fig if you were sitting on my rooftop. What the hell were you doing so far from the boundary of the resort that we now have to have this conversation?’

‘Please,’ she scoffed, her voice cool, her eyes electric. ‘It was an honest mistake. It’s not like there’s a ten-foot-high electric fence separating the two.’

‘There’s a rock wall and a whopping great big gate!’

‘A gate? Not today there wasn’t.’

Zach swore beneath his breath. That meant Ruby had been out again. What would it take to make the kid understand that it was for her own safety that she stay put and not gallivant about the resort? Hell, all he wanted was to keep her clear of those who would have her believe that because her childhood had not been perfect she was damaged from the start. He was fast running out of ideas.

The boat rocked beneath them as he pulled harder on the oars. Meg’s hands whipped out to the sides and held on tight.

‘For a woman who thinks lying on the couch listening to disco is a form of exercise, the hike to my place makes no sense.’

‘Fine,’ she said, throwing her arms in the air, rocking the boat so that he had to steady them with some fancy flicking of the oars. ‘I was casing the grounds in search of chocolate.’

‘Give me a break—’

She lifted her chin as though a haughty bearing could make the words seem less undignified. ‘I warned you. Caffeine is a staple in my diet. And I never expected to have to go cold turkey this week. So actually it was all your fault that I ended up there.’

His laughter again came from nowhere and again surprised the hell out of him. And a few local birds that screeched as they scattered from the treetops nearby.

Gorgeous, plainspoken and stimulating. Delilah herself couldn’t possibly have been more tempting.

Thankfully he’d long since proven himself invulnerable to the lure of apparently easy promise. He’d learnt early on not to trust the feeling as far as he could throw it. So long as the bright, breezy, easy warmth in this corner of the world hadn’t rotted away his indoctrinated dubiousness he’d be just fine.

‘ZACH,’ Meg said, and by the tone in her voice Zach wasn’t sure he’d be keen on what came next.

‘Okay,’ she continued, ‘I was hoping to get around to the fact more gracefully, but since I have no idea how long you intend to keep me hostage out there let’s get to the point. You have a seven-year-old daughter named Ruby who, it seems, nobody knows anything about. There. Now it’s out there. So what do we do from here?’

Zach slapped an oar into the water at such a rough angle it covered them both in wet spray. ‘Don’t get cute, Ms Kelly.’

She waved a hand across her face as though swatting away a fly. ‘Stop being so formal. I’ve practically been in your house, I’m on first-name basis with your daughter, and you’ve seen me in this hat. Call me Meg.’

Through gritted teeth he said, ‘If you saw yourself in that hat you wouldn’t be half so concerned.’

She blinked up at him. Hell. So much for proving himself invulnerable. Now she was sitting there gawping at him as if he’d outright told her how lovely she was.

‘Okay then, Meg ,’ he said, his voice coarse, ‘if formalities are now to be tossed aside, then I’ll be blunt.’

‘All this time you were being polite?’ Something in his expression must have made her catch her tongue. She mimed zipping her mouth shut. That mouth …

‘I want you to tell me in avid detail about every second you spent in my daughter’s company. And don’t miss a moment.’

She blinked at him. ‘Relax, Zach. We didn’t talk about sex, drugs or rock and roll if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Sex? Drugs ? He ran a hard hand over the back of his neck, which suddenly felt as if it were on fire.

‘She’s seven, for Pete’s sake. The High School Musical soundtracks are as extreme as her rock and roll tastes go.’

She hooked a thumbnail between her teeth and looked up at him from beneath her thick dark lashes. His gut sank so fast he pressed his feet into the bottom of the boat. What wasn’t she telling him?

By age seven he’d already stolen his first pack of cigarettes, he’d kissed his first girl, he’d been hit so hard by one so-called parent he’d gone to school with a hand print bruised into the back of his thigh.

He’d known Ruby barely seven months. There was a fair chance he didn’t know his kid at all. His voice was unsteady as he said, ‘Ruby’s situation is … sensitive, therefore it’s imperative that I’m kept informed.’

‘Just informed? Not present? Not available? Not her first port of call?’

The riddles finally became too much and his frustration got the better of him. ‘Meg, I’m her father. If I don’t know everything I’m going to imagine the worst and then go quietly out of my mind.’