Australia’s Most Eligible Bachelor Read Free Page A

stepmother, your father’s wife —owes me. I can’t go to her. I loathe and despise her. She abandoned me when I was only a few weeks old.”
    “You can prove it?” His voice was harsh with unsuppressed emotion. “Or is this some highly imaginative ploy to make money?” The flaw in that was he could well see Leila doing such a thing. The only person Leila cared about was herself. Not his father. Although his father, business giant that he was, was in sexual thrall to her.
    “I’m not stupid,” Miranda said. “I’m not a liar or a con artist. Of course I can.” She had to swallow hard on a sudden rush of tears. “I was brought up by my grandparents—my mother’s parents—believing I was theirs. A change of life baby. Both of them are now dead. My grandmother very recently. She told me the truth on her deathbed. She wanted to make a clean breast of it. The last years of her life were terrible. She died of cancer.”
    His expression softened at the very real grief he saw in the depths of her crystalline eyes. “Miranda, I’m sorry, but your mother must have had a reason for doing what she did. That’s if these photographs are of my stepmother. People do have doubles in life.” Even as he said it he knew it was Leila.
    “You know in your bones they are,” Miranda told him bleakly. “I even look a teeny bit like her, don’t you think?”
    “Not really, no. Maybe the point to the chin—although Leila’s is less pronounced.”
    “So I must have my father’s colouring.” There was a yearning note in her voice he picked up on. “Whoever he might be. She never would say. Anyway, I have a whole scrapbook if you want to see it. My birth mother was adored. My grandparents were lovely people. Yet she cut them—her own mother and father—ruthlessly out of her life. I didn’t matter at all. Good gracious, no. I was just a huge mistake. You know how it is. She wasn’t going to allow an unwanted baby to ruin her life. She ran away and never came back. Not even a postcard to say she was okay.”
    “You’re sure about that?” he asked grimly. “Your grandmother mightn’t have told you everything. People have secrets. Some they take to the grave.”
    “Tell me about it,” Miranda countered with real sadness. “I loved Mum—Sally—my grandmother. I nursed her. I was with her at the end. She told me everything. Not a pretty story. I had to forgive her. I loved her. She was so good to me. Yet the person I had trusted more than anyone else in the world had lied to me. God, it hurt. It will always hurt.”
    “I imagine it would.” He studied her downbent face. She had a lovely mouth, very finely cut. Leila’s mouth was positively lush . This girl wore no lipstick. Maybe a touch of gloss. “I expect your grandmother thought it was best at the time. Then it all got away from her. Where did you live?”
    She told him. “The Gold Coast Hinterland, Queensland.”
    “A beautiful area. I know it well. So your grandparents were farming people?” he asked with a frown. “According to Leila she was born in New Zealand.”
    “She was. And just look at how far she has come.” Miranda gave a theatrical wave of her hands. “Married to one of the richest men in the country. You can bet your life she didn’t want any more children. She’s only thirty-three, you know. But children would only cramp her style.”
    True of Leila. “The woman you claim is your mother told my father she wasn’t able to have children,” he volunteered.
    “I think you can take it she’s a born liar. Anyway, your father has you and your sister. You’re the heir.”
    “You bet your life I am.”
    “Don’t look at me !” She slumped back against the rich leather upholstery. “ I don’t want to muscle in.”
    “I thought you did.”
    He had very sexy brackets at the sides of his mouth. “No way!” She shrugged, unsettled by his proximity. In a matter of moments this stranger had got under her skin. Definitely not allowed.