Page 61 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

So Ernie married them.

EPILOGUE

JUDAH WATCHED FROM his vantage point at one end of the ground-floor veranda as his guests spilled out of the crowded ballroom and into the night. Jeddah Creek station glowed with the care that only endless money and strong vision could bring. Planes were parked wing to wing in the outer home paddock and tents had sprung up beside the planes that didn’t have sleeping quarters built in. Last year’s welcome home ball had only whetted people’s appetite for another taste of Judah Blake, philanthropist, and the vast land protection initiatives he spearheaded.

A warm and playful breeze whipped at the wraps and the hair of the ladies present and the stars in the sky that he never took for granted drew gasps from the city folk not used to such a generous display.

This past year had been a rewarding one. Almost as if every mad idea for a better future he’d ever had in the past nine years was being acted out in front of him. Money, so much money available for his projects. Remote area cabins that were architectural marvels. Scientific research projects. Channel country preservation. His brilliant, talented, beautiful wife...

Bridie was inside the ballroom somewhere, but chances were she’d find him soon enough. She still wasn’t one for big crowds, and her growing status as an artist made her nervous at times, but she was his fiercest defender and she was in there tonight talking paint colours with his godmother, Eleanor. Bridie wasn’t just his North Star. She was all the stars in the sky.

He checked his clothes. White shirt cuffs with a quarter inch showing below the sleeve of his suit. His father’s watch, and his grandfather’s before that, partly visible when he extended his hand. Such things mattered to some of the people he was courting here tonight.

Bridie wore a pale blue gown tonight, her shoulders bare, a fitted bodice and a sleek fall of silk starting somewhere around her waist and finishing at the floor. A stunning blue opal, outlined in silver filigree, hung from a ribbon around her neck, her father’s work. Bridie had already fielded a number of questions about the piece and had gleefully turned them towards her father, especially the single ladies of good nature and mature age. Tomas, who epitomised the rugged, wary outback loner, had suffered the first few ladies with dogged, near-mute politeness, which only seemed to make the ladies try even harder to put him at ease.

Tomas had last been seen fleeing from the ballroom, with Bridie’s delighted laughter lingering in his wake.

Bridie laughed a lot these days and Judah never tired of the sound.

And then there was her beauty. Call him biased, but these days her considerable physical beauty seemed somehow lit from within. Contentment, she called it. Or maybe it’s wonder, she’d once said to him. So many new experiences had come her way this past year and she seemed determined to approach every one of them with wonder and gratitude.

Approaches like that were contagious, no question, given that he’d recently started doing the same.

It was all too easy to be grateful for the life he was living now.

‘Your wife has requested your presence at her side,’ said Reid, sliding into place beside him. Reid was a hair taller than Judah these days and broader across the shoulders. Responsibility sat more easily on those shoulders, and with it came an easy confidence his brother had more than earned.

If Judah was the visionary and dealmaker of the trio, then Reid was the project manager with the people skills to make it happen. Bridie was their media manager with full control over visual promotional material and how and where it was displayed.

Sometimes, when he was feeling especially smug, Judah thought that together the three of them could change the world.

‘She still with Lady Eleanor?’

Reid nodded.

‘Have you persuaded your school friend to come and chef for us yet?’

‘He says he can give us six months. I’m holding out for twelve so that he’s here when the visiting astrophysicists arrive. Have you seen their list of dietary requirements? Talk about special.’

‘Double what you’re offering him.’

‘I love spending your money. Consider it done.’ Reid smiled cheerfully. ‘Shouldn’t you be on your way to rescue your North Star, your refuge and your soul?’

He was never going to live that down.

He was, however, moving towards the ballroom door.

He found her to one side of the dance floor, his godmother nowhere in sight. She watched him walk towards her with a smile she just didn’t give anyone else. He tried to figure out what was different about the ones she saved for him but so far he hadn’t been able to.

Hooked him every time.

‘Dance with me,’ he said when he reached her and held out his hand, and she slid hers into it, warm and utterly sure of her welcome.

And why wouldn’t she be? She had him wrapped around her little finger.

‘I’d like the photographer here tonight to take some photos of us dancing,’ she said. ‘That okay by you?’

‘What for?’

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