One Night With The Billionaire: Sparks Fly with the Billionaire / The Nanny Plan / Second Chance with the Billionaire. Marion Lennox

Myra and Jack’s farm has been home to aged circus animals ever since. They’ve fought to keep it going, but finally they’ve lost.’

      So any thought of asking—begging—them to keep the elephants on for free was out of the question, Allie thought miserably, but, as she thought it, Matt’s hand closed over hers. Firm, warm and strong.

      ‘Friends today,’ he repeated softly. ‘Finance tomorrow.’

      Surely only in Australia could such an area be one farm. Jack and Myra’s holding was vast. They circled before they landed. Allie saw a vast undulating landscape with scattered bushland, big dams, a creek running through its centre, beef cattle grazing lazily in the sun—and the odd giraffe and elephant.

      It was so incongruous she had to blink to believe she was seeing it.

      Jack came forward to greet them as the chopper landed, elderly, lean, weathered, taciturn. He gripped Allie’s hand. ‘Myra’s feeling a bit frail. Sorry, it’ll be only me doing the tour.’

      She owed this man so much money. That Jack and Myra hadn’t been paid …

      ‘I’m so sorry,’ she started but Jack’s hand gripped hers and held.

      ‘You’re Allie,’ he said. ‘We know why your animals came to us. Myra’s loved you even though she’s never met you. Your animals have had ten years of good living, thanks to you. You tried your best, girl, as did your grandpa, and there’s no grudges. Want to meet them?’ He motioned towards an ancient mud-spattered truck. ‘Let’s go.’

      ‘Yes, please.’ Friends today, she thought as she glanced at Matt and he smiled and ushered her towards the truck. Problems tomorrow.

      And two minutes later, there they were, beside the dusty dam where two elephants soaked up the morning sun.

      They were together as they always had been, two elephants lazing by the bank of a vast man-made dam, half a mile from the homestead. Minnie was still smaller than her mother. She declined to rise from reclining on the mud bank, but Maisie started lumbering across to meet them.

      Jack climbed out of the truck and called. Maisie reached Jack, touched him with her great trunk—and then her small eyes moved to see who was accompanying him.

      Allie was out of the truck. Maisie and Minnie. Friends.

      And Maisie reacted. Her trunk came out and touched Allie—just touched—a feather-touch on the face as though exploring, confirming what she’d suspected.

      And it was all Allie could do not to burst into tears.

      These guys had been her friends. She’d been the only kid in the circus, home schooled, isolated. Her dogs were with her always, but these two … She’d told them her problems and they’d listened; she thought they’d understood. At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen she hadn’t been able to bear the chains around their great stumps of legs. She’d made such a fuss that her grandfather had mortgaged everything.

      It didn’t matter now. She leant all her weight against Maisie’s trunk and Maisie supported her and she thought she’d do it again. Whatever the cost. She’d have no choice.

      ‘The … the lions?’ she managed. ‘And the monkeys?’

      ‘They’re a bit more closely contained,’ Jack said ruefully. ‘I can’t give them a hundred miles to roam, much as we’d like to. They only have a couple of miles we can fence securely.’

      A couple of miles. She thought back to the six foot by ten foot cages and she thought … she thought …

      She thought she just might finally burst into tears.

      He stood his distance and watched.

      That these elephants knew this woman had never been in doubt. They seemed to be as pleased to see her as she was to see them—that was if he was reading elephant language right which, he had to admit, was a bit of a long call. But Allie surely knew them. She was between the two elephants, hugging as much as she could of them, looking close to tears.