Page 2 of Cinderella and the Outback Billionaire

This raised a smile, as it was likely meant to do. ‘Thing is, I do wish my old school mate a strong, nurturing, happy marriage. I want that for him. Hell, I want that for me.’

It was the closest he’d come in years to admitting his loneliness.

Judah sighed and wrapped a big hand around the back of his neck, a sure tell that he was uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. ‘You staying or going?’

‘Going.’ Right after he looked at the weather radar. Or maybe not, given how long it would take for that information to download. ‘Going right now. Just as soon as I collect my cupcakes and say goodbye to your women. You realise they like me better than they like you?’

‘If I truly believed that I’d have to shoot you.’

‘You say that...but would you do it? Would you really?’

Judah smirked, cutting creases in his weatherworn face. ‘They do say practice makes perfect.’

It was a testament to how solid their relationship was these days that they could talk freely about the incident that had put Judah in prison for most of his twenties. On the other hand, Reid had his own suspicions about what had gone down on the night of that shooting and, no matter how many times he’d tried to get Judah to reveal all, his older brother had never confided in him. When he was younger, that lack of trust had worn Reid down like sandpaper on sapwood. These days, Reid had a far more flexible understanding of what people ‘needed to know’.

‘Dust storm incoming,’ Judah said again. ‘Didn’t you say you were leaving?’

He was. He couldn’t wait around for a weather map that might never download. Besides, wasn’t as if he wouldn’t be able to see a dust storm coming. ‘See you in a week.’

‘The homestead’s all stocked up and ready for you.’

‘Aw, you shouldn’t have.’

‘I didn’t. Gert swung past last week.’

Gert had been Jeddah Creek station’s part-time housekeeper ever since Reid could remember. She served two other remote Outback stations as well, driving a circuit around the three properties every two weeks. When Reid and Judah had bought the Cooper place to the north it had seemed only smart to keep that rotation in place for as long as Gert wanted the work.

‘Fly safe.’

Reid nodded as he shoved his laptop and cord connections into his carryall and zipped it closed. He’d been flying helicopters since his teens and designing and building them since his early twenties. That ‘mosquito’ outside had a revolutionary engine design and a flight range more than double its closest competitor. ‘I always do.’

Twenty minutes later, after a quick safety check and two cupcakes, Reid was in the air and heading north. There were no other passengers—he was on his own at last and happier than he’d been in a long while.

Judah was the reclusive rebel of the two Blake brothers, which meant that Reid often doubled down when it came to fronting the various company holdings they held between them. Reid was the people person, the gregarious showman everyone could talk to without fear. No one—and that included his brother—knew how much he hated the constant scrutiny he was under twenty-four hours of every day, or how the flippant, indestructible, playboy veneer he’d cultivated over the years was beginning to seem like a bad idea. Mainly because after years of shielding his innermost feelings from absolutely everyone, he no longer knew how to let people in.

Every move one of his engineering companies made was scrutinised by the market, by other companies on the cutting edge of renewable energy, and by an ever-increasing array of lobby groups. Markets rose and fell beneath the weight of his words. It was enough to make him wish for the good old days when it was just him, alone at seventeen, with only a vast and fickle channel country cattle station to care for.

His parents recently deceased and his brother in prison for killing a man.

Yeah, the good old days.

There’d been no functional adults in the room when his brother had got out of jail and together he and Judah had bought up vast tracts of Australian channel country and set about turning it into a reserve. No one to stop Reid as he’d poured money into renewable energy research and prototype engines geared towards clean energy flight. No one to warn them that vast amounts of money, power and position attracted even more money, power, position and responsibility, ready or not. And they had proved ready. Reid was proud of everything he and Judah continued to achieve. But some days, and this was one of them, all he really wanted was blue sky all around him and the red dirt and saltbush scrub of channel country far below. After months of relentless hard graft—be it intellectual, social or political—and way too many people urging him to go faster, slower, sideways or over a cliff, there truly was no place like home.

He pointed the little helicopter north over familiar ground, his attention split between the harsh beauty all around him and the faint hint of dust in the sky to the west. Dust storms weren’t that uncommon but flying into one was not recommended. Even the air currents ahead of a dust front were dangerous. If he had to land and let the weather front roll over him he would, but it wasn’t his first preference.

Outrunning it was by far his preferred plan.

‘C’mon, little darling, gimme all you got.’ He maxed out the speed and felt a familiar sense of exhilaration slam through him. He’d been a lonely teen out here after his father had died and before Judah had been released from prison. Flying had been his first love and it still ranked right up there with sex as far as he was concerned.

Not that he’d ever mentioned it. The ridicule potential attached to his preference for flight above sex was high. He’d never live it down.

Billionaire Stud. The media ate that one up and people believed it, and for all that Reid joked his way around it, and used it as a shield to hide a tender heart, the description grated. Even before his disastrous experience with Jenna, he hadn’t been able to tell if a woman wanted to get up close and personal with him because she actually liked him. Too many women over the years had wanted him for his money. That or they’d wanted him to use his influence to forward their political agendas. They’d used him to advance their careers or, like Jenna, claim a spotlight they couldn’t command on their own.

Romantic relationships had been so transactional for so damn long...

Was it any wonder he preferred flying to sexual intimacy?

That wall of dust—and it was a wall, stretching to the north as far as the eye could see—was edging closer. ‘Sweetheart—’ he patted the console in front of him ‘—we need to go a little faster.’

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