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that,’
    she grated out.
    ‘Have you stopped to think of what your father did want…instead of what you want?’
    ‘He didn’t accept your money while he was alive.’
    He pounced on that statement, inflamed by her antagonism towards him. ‘Because you argued against it?’
    ‘No. I didn’t know about any offer. You just mentioned it

    ‘No. I didn’t know about any offer. You just mentioned it yourself, Johnny.’
    Her eyes were clearly weighing its effect on Patrick’s wil . He blasted her calculation by informing her, ‘Ric and Mitch offered help, too. Al three of us, Megan.’
    Confusion looked back at him. ‘Then why choose you? ’
    It was eating at her. ‘Would Ric or Mitch have been more acceptable to you?’ he tested, wanting to know if his friends were equal y unwelcome in her life.
    ‘That’s not the question,’ she snapped evasively.
    ‘I think it’s pertinent. Why not me?’ he chal enged.
    Intriguing to watch the flush come again, sweeping into her cheeks with blazing heat. She dropped her gaze and fiercely claimed, ‘I can manage on my own. With the mortgage reduced, I can…’
    ‘What if you can’t? Why risk it?’ He paused, sure now in his own mind that he was the problem. ‘Is your dislike of me so great that you can’t bear to let me help?’
    ‘I don’t dislike you! It’s just not right!’ she burst out, banging her own hands on the desk as she leaned forward to deliver this declaration with vehemence.
    ‘Then what would make it right for you, Megan?’
    The storm of feeling in her eyes gave way to a dul bleakness. Johnny read the answer in her mind— Nothing.
    Was she looking down a black pit, too, with her father dead?
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ she muttered, shaking her head over the wretched admission and sagging back in the chair, shoulders slumped in defeat.

    She looked so miserable, for the second time this morning, Johnny felt the urge to pick her up, but not to shake her, to wrap her in a comforting embrace and promise her he would make everything better. He remembered doing that when she was a little kid.
    She’d been running to tel him something and fal en over, scraping her knees—such a sweet little girl, clinging to him, trusting him to make the hurt go away.
    He’d loved that little girl.
    Patrick’s youngest daughter.
    Maybe that was what Patrick’s wil was about…taking care of Megan. But how was he to do it?
    His gaze dropped to the chess table.
    What was the phrase used where no-one could win?
    Stalemate.
    He had to start again, adopt a strategy that would get past Megan’s pride. If she real y didn’t dislike him, there had to be other factors involved in her attitude towards him, perhaps a love affair gone wrong when she’d been at that agricultural col ege, seeding some drive to prove herself completely independent, basing her whole future on taking over from her father. If she was stuck in that groove, how could he ease her out of it?
    Not by anything she perceived as charity.
    Slowly, accompanied by a weird sense of many factors pushing it, an idea came to him.
    It was total y wild. Absurdly quixotic. Yet the more he thought about it the more it appealed to him. On many levels. Especial y the prospect of wearing down Megan’s resistance to it, winning her over.
    Though that mission could wel prove impossible.
    Stil , something was needed to break this hopeless impasse and the shock of his offer might open Megan up more, give him an understanding of how she viewed him.
    He certainly had nothing to lose by putting it on the table. In heaping more scorn on him, she would have to give reasons for it, reasons he could work on.
    He pasted an ironic little smile on his mouth and aimed it at her. ‘You know, Megan, you’d have the right to al I could provide…if you married me.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    MARRY him…
    Megan felt her jaw drop in sheer shock.
    Incredulity blanked her mind for several seconds.
    Her heart rocketed around her