Dev Masters obviously despised the fact that Raina was an urban socialite who had been a virtual stranger to her now dead father but nevertheless he was the man she wanted to help her keep the homestead intact ... she needed him as her husband.

"Will you marry me?" she blurted out

Raina could hardly believe the words had come from her lips. How could she ask Dev Masters, of all people, to enter into such a relationship?

Dev Masters despised her. He thought she was a good-for-nothing greedy socialite who had neglected her father. Yet Dev Masters was the one man qualified to run her father's outback station, the only one who could help save her inheritance.

Dev eyed her flushed cheeks intently as she rushed on to explain. "Of course, it would be only a platonic business arrangement. Nothing else!"

Excerp
Shades of amazement, not to mention some little dismay, were evident in Raina Cameron's deep blue eyes as she lifted them from the telegram in her hand to gaze agitatedly at her mother, Eve, and her stepfather, Michael Halliday.

`Why on earth didn't you get in touch with me when this first arrived?' she half questioned, half accused. `You could have contacted me at Rottnest.' That being a popular island resort just off the coast from Perth in the State of Western Australia. `Now there's been a full day wasted and it will probably be
impossible for me to get up there in time.'

Resting on a comfortably cushioned lounger on a terrace that overlooked the brightly sparkling waters of the Swan River, Eve Halliday gave an eloquent shrug. `It never occurred to me you would want to go.' `To my own father's funeral?' Raina's finely marked brows rose expressively.

`Well, you could hardly say he's done much to warrant the title ... or your sudden, seeming allegiance,' her mother replied in pungent accents. `After all, he made it plain enough he neither wanted to see, or have anything to do with you-or even any of the other members of his family, if it comes to that- from the time he and I were divorced some sixteen years ago. Since then you've seen him how many times? The grand total of once?' Her brown eyes widened sardonically. `While even when we were married, you know as well as I do that he wasn't the slightest bit interested in his daughter. Male heirs were all he ever wanted!'

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