Read Online Millionaire Dad's SOS by Ally Blake - Free Book Online

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.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘Z ACH ,’ 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.’
    A smile spread across her face—a radiant thing that made the sun beaming down upon the lake pale into insignificance. ‘Well, now, that’s just about the best news I’ve heard all day.’
    He shook his head, hoping for clarity. None came. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
    ‘The fact that you want to know is a good thing. A wonderful thing.’
    She even reached out and patted his hand, as if he’d accidentally given her the password to a treasure he didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t the kind of touch he wanted from her.
    ‘Then hurry up and tell me.’
    ‘I’m not going to break her confidence that way. Come on.’
    Zach glanced at the clouds above Meg’s head. Who in heaven had he screwed over to be made to live through