The conversation was light-hearted. They discussed the music. The McKinnon party had spent the night out on Jack’s boat cruising the Broadwater, and had some fishy tales to tell, mainly about the ones that got away.
The man himself—why did Maggie think of him thus? she wondered—had a deep, pleasant voice, a lurking grin and a wicked sense of humour.
All the same, Maggie did feel uneasy and it was all to do with Jack McKinnon, she divined. Not that he paid her much attention, so was she still stinging inwardly from that ironically raised eyebrow and her curious inability to tear her gaze from his?
Well, if he thought her scrutiny was the prelude to her making a pass at him, if that was why he was now virtually ignoring her, he was mistaken and she was perfectly content to be ignored.
Or was she?
It occurred to her that what he was doing was a deliberate insult and before much longer everyone was going to realize it, to her humiliation. Her blood began to boil. Who did he think he was?
Then he trained his grey gaze on her and said musingly, ‘Maggie Trent. David Trent’s daughter, by any chance?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she replied briefly.
‘The David Trent?’ Lia asked, her big dark eyes wide. ‘Ultra-wealthy, from a long line of distinguished judges and politicians, grazier, racehorse owner, champion yachtsman?’
Maggie shrugged.
‘Maggie doesn’t like to trade on her father,’ Tim murmured.
What an understatement, Maggie marvelled, considering how stormy their father/daughter relationship had sometimes been.
‘Lucky you, Maggie,’ Paul commented.
‘Yes,’ Jack McKinnon agreed. ‘Do you actually do anything useful, Maggie? Not that one could blame you if you didn’t.’
Even Tim, obviously a fan of Jack McKinnon, did a double take.
As for Maggie, she stared at Jack out of sparkling green eyes—green eyes sparkling with rage, that was.
‘I knew there was one good reason not to like you,’ she said huskily. ‘I detest the little boxes you build and the way you destroy the landscape to do so. Now I have another reason. Wealthy, powerful men who are completely in love with themselves mean absolutely nothing to me, Mr McKinnon.’
She got up and walked away.
She had a rostered day off on Monday, and she spent the morning with her mother.
In contrast to her sometimes stormy relationship with her father, Maggie adored her mother.
In her middle forties, Belle Trent looked years younger. Her straight dark hair was streaked with grey, but it was so glossy and beautifully cut many younger women envied it. With her fine dark eyes and slim figure she was essentially elegant. She was also a busy person; she did a great deal of charity work.
Yet there were times when Maggie sensed a current of sadness in her mother, but it was an enigmatic kind of sadness Maggie couldn’t really fathom. She knew it had to do with her father, that at times their marriage was strained, but for no real reason Maggie could put her finger on.
Belle never complained and there was never any suggestion that it might break up, although, with a certain cynicism, Maggie sometimes wondered whether neither her mother nor her father could face the Herculean task of sorting out a divorce settlement.
But that Monday morning as she had coffee with her mother at a chic Sanctuary Cove pavement café, Maggie had something else on her mind.
‘Do you know anything about the McKinnon Corporation and Jack McKinnon, Mum?’
Belle stirred sugar into her latte. ‘Uh—I believe he’s a bit of a whizkid. He started with nothing, I heard. Somehow or other he persuaded a bank to finance his first development and he hasn’t looked back since. He now not only develops the estate but he has a construction company that builds many of the houses. Of course housing estates are not the only string to his bow.’
‘No?’
Belle shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Once he made his first few millions he diversified into boat- building. McKinnon Catamarans have taken off. If you looked through this marina—’ she waved a hand towards the forest of masts and all sorts of boats moored in the Sanctuary Cove marina just across the road from the shopping and restaurant precinct ‘—you’d probably find quite a few.’