Page 4 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

By him.

After all. She owed him.

It took fifteen more minutes before Tom Starr and his daughter walked up the front steps of the homestead and stopped in front of him, and if Judah had thought Bridie astonishingly beautiful before, it was nothing compared to the looks she possessed now. She had a mouth made for crushing, wide-set eyes the colour of cognac, and hair every colour of brown he could imagine—from sun-bleached streaks of honey-gold to burnished bronze shot through with the deepest mahogany. Natural colours, all of them; her hair had been the same wild woodland riot when she was a child.

She still possessed the body of a dancer, all fine bones and elegance, and she carried herself like one too. Her slip of a dress covered her from neck to knee and was a deep twilight blue. No sleeves, no jewellery. Her only accessory was a little black purse that she clutched in front of her body with both hands, her knuckles almost white.

She could barely even look at him.

‘Thank you for coming.’ His rusty manners had been getting such a workout tonight.

She glanced up, startled, and he found himself enmeshed. Falling into memories he didn’t want in his head, and as for allowing them to surface, no. Just no.

‘Wouldn’t—’ She had to stop to clear her throat. ‘Wouldn’t have missed it. Thank you for inviting us.’

Such pretty lies.

He wanted to reach for the tension knots in his neck. He wanted to reach out and see if her hair felt as silky as it looked.

He wanted to possess this woman who had never been his, who he barely knew but for the fantasies about her that he’d woven in his head. He wanted his father back, an explanation for all the photos she’d sent him month after month, and above all he wanted to know why she’d bought into his birthright. Did she honestly believe he wouldn’t be back to claim it?

But what he really wanted—needed—was time out away from her so he could claw back the composure he’d lost the moment she’d locked eyes with him. ‘Reid, why don’t you show Bridie where she can freshen up and then get her a drink and a plate of food?’ Babysit, he might as well have said, but Reid seemed up for the role and Bridie looked grateful.

He watched them go, remembering that at sixteen she’d walked the catwalks of Paris and graced the cover of Vogue magazine.

It still showed.

And then he dragged his gaze away from her retreating figure and prepared to greet her father. ‘Tomas.’

‘Welcome home,’ offered the older man. ‘I’m sorry your parents aren’t here to greet you.’

‘So am I.’ He’d never once imagined when he went away that they’d be dead before he returned. ‘Maybe you can tell me what happened to my father’s business acumen and why he died practically bankrupt.’ And why no one had told Judah, and why Tomas had been helping Reid out on the farm in every way he could.

‘You sure you want to talk about this here?’ Tom Starr didn’t look as if he wanted to discuss much at all. ‘We could set up a meeting.’

‘Been trying to set up a meeting with your daughter all week, Tom. No one’s answering and I’m all out of patience.’

The older man looked puzzled. ‘Why call Bridie? She doesn’t know anything about your father’s business dealings.’

But it hadn’t been Tom Starr’s name on those property deeds, it had been Bridie’s. ‘What happened to my father?’ At least he could get some information from the older man. ‘Before he died he let go of things he’d treasured all his life. Cattle bloodlines. Family jewels. Land.’

Judah watched as the older man seemed to age another decade before his eyes.

‘Grief.’ The older man swallowed hard. ‘Grief and anger at the way you were treated swallowed your father whole. After you were convicted, your father drank more. So did I and more often than not we drank together. I had plenty of shame to drown and he had a son who’d protected the defenceless and paid an unfair price for it. Your father kept telling me his fancy lawyers would find grounds for appeal, and I just kept on praying it’d happen, but it never did.’

Grounds for appeal. What a joke. As for parole, that concept hadn’t worked for him either.

Maybe it had something to do with his swagger.

‘A couple of years back I made the mistake of telling your father I was the one who pulled the trigger,’ Tom offered gruffly.

Judah stiffened. ‘We had a deal. We swore that would stay between you and me. No one else.’ They’d done it to protect Bridie. So a child would have her only parent at her side to help pick up the pieces of her life. ‘You swore.’

A man was only as good as his word.

‘I thought it would help if he knew you were a hero twice over.’

Some hero. More like a fool. ‘Did it?’

---