Princes of the Outback: The Rugged Loner / The Rich Stranger / The Ruthless Groom

“Smart?” he wondered out loud, thinking words like contrived and cunning where closer to the truth.

Wasn’t it their right to mourn a father who’d done so much for them, been so much to them?

“It worked, didn’t it?” she asked.

Hell, yes. They’d barely had time to bury him before Jack Konrads called that meeting in the library and turned their sorrow into anger.

Tomas shook his head, dismissing the whole topic with a gesture of impatience. “His reasoning doesn’t change what we have to do.”

Angie’s silent regard, serious and thoughtful, tugged the bands of frustration in his chest tighter.

“What?” he barked.

“Rafe says you’re not…seeing…anyone.”

Her midsentence pause was just long enough for Tomas to know his brother had used another doing word. “What the hell would Rafe know about who I’m…seeing?”

For possibly the first time in her life, Angie’s gaze dropped away from his. Probably because of his brutal emphasis on that verb. Fine. He didn’t want to discuss his sex life, with her, with Rafe, with anyone.

Worse, he hated the notion that they’d been discussing it in his absence.

“Okay,” she said on an exhalation. “So, do you have any sort of a plan? Other than that crazy idea of paying someone?”

“What’s so crazy about it?”

“Yeesh, Tomas, do you really want that kind of woman to mother your child?”

“What kind would that be?”

She rolled her eyes. “The kind who’d do it for money.”

“I’m not talking prostitution.”

“Really?”

Something about her tone—and the arch of her brows—chafed his simmering frustration. “You got any better ideas? Women aren’t about to line up to have my baby.”

“You are so without a clue. I mean, look at you!” And she did. She leaned back and looked at him with a narrow-eyed thoroughness that reminded him all over again how much she’d changed. “Women find that whole rugged loner thing a complete turn-on.”

“What a load of bull!”

She made an impatient tsking sound with her tongue. “You get to the city occasionally…or at least you used to. You have to feel women looking you over. You can’t not know you’re like their living, breathing, outback fantasy.”

Fantasy? Big deal. What he needed was reality, female and available.

“Name me one of these women,” he said roughly. “One who’d have my baby.”

She blinked slowly and edged back another inch. Which is when he noticed that he’d gotten right in her face. Close enough that he heard the faint hiss of her indrawn breath. The only sound in the intense silence, until she spoke.

“I would.”

Two

Angie listened to those two short, stunning syllables echoing inside her head. I would. Where had that come from? Was she insane?

Definitely.

Otherwise she would be laughing, right? Not loopy, they’re-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha laughter, but a smooth chuckle as she nudged Tomas and said, “Ha, ha. Got you a good one, didn’t I?” Or something similarly offhand and flippant.

Anything to fill the awkward silence and the fact that her heart was thudding so hard it physically hurt, and that she really, really wanted to confess the truth.

Well, here’s the thing, Tomas…

I’ve loved you in some way pretty much all of my life. I’ve wanted to marry you ever since I was thirteen. Somewhere around fourteen I’d already named our babies—three of them, all boys, all with your baby blues.

Except she couldn’t admit that. She wanted to shove the intensity of her teenage crush back in the past where it belonged. She’d come down here to try and save their friendship, not to send it on a headlong plummet into disaster.

Angie swallowed, and wished that his gaze hadn’t dropped to her throat at that exact second. Her throat felt tight, her smile even tighter. “I’ve really weirded you out, haven’t I?”

“Yup.” He shook his head, looked away, then back at her. “Was that your intention?”

“No.”

“Then…why?”

She wished she could laugh it off, but she looked into his stunned blue eyes and she couldn’t laugh and she couldn’t lie. All she could find was some small version of the truth. “Damned if I know, but I have to tell you that your response is not very flattering. I mean, would it be so bad? You and me?”

She felt him staring, felt the puzzlement in his sharp regard take on another flavor. Was he actually contemplating the reality? Him with her, skin to skin, doing what was necessary to make babies? Her heart skipped. The tightness in her throat and her skin took on a new dimension, a new heat.

“You can’t have thought about it,” he said slowly, “at all!”

Oh, how wrong could one person be. Angie had thought about it—specifically, about her and Tomas doing it—ever since her first sex education lesson. “Actually I have thought about it quite a bit,” she said slowly. “The sex part, I mean, not the having-a-baby part.”

In the midnight quiet his expulsion of breath sounded almost explosive. Apparently the concept of Sex-with-Angie was so appalling that he couldn’t even look her in the eye when he told her so. He jumped to his feet and stalked to the sandstone wall at the back of the rock ledge.

Turning on his boot heels, he stared at her, all hard, shocked, affronted male. “Hell, Angie, you can’t be serious. You’re like…you’re…”

“So unappealing you couldn’t bring yourself to sleep with me? Even to keep Kameruka Downs?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said tightly.

No, she didn’t, and between the tricky dark and the distance he’d put between them, she couldn’t tell a thing from his expression. And, dammit, she wasn’t about to lose her oldest friend, her pride, and get a cricked neck out of this.

She stood and brushed the gritty sand from the back of her dress as she closed the distance between them. Moment of truth, sister. “Why don’t you tell me then? Why has the idea of me offering to have your baby got you so wound up?”

“Christ, Angie, we’re not doing some hypothetical here. We’re talking about a real situation. I need a baby.” Chin jutted, he started down at her, his whole expression carved as hard as the rock at this back. Possibly harder. “A baby the mother would have to raise on her own.”

Hands on hips she narrowed her gaze and stared back at him. Surely she’d heard him wrong. “Are you saying you wouldn’t want any part in this child’s upbringing?”

“You got it.”

“But why?” She shook her head. Huffed out a breath and waved her hand at their surroundings. “You have this fabulous place for a child to grow up, and—”

“Not everyone thinks it’s so fabulous.”

“Well, I do! And your father obviously thought so, too, since he chose to bring you all up here. Do you think, when he drafted that clause, that he wanted you to just sire some anonymous—”

“I don’t care what he thought.”

“Really? Then you have changed.”

“You’ve got that right, too!”

For a moment they stood toe to toe glaring at each other, until Angie realized that his expression wasn’t so much tight and flat as schooled. To hide his frustration, his anger, his pain? Perhaps even his fear that if he and his brothers failed to satisfy the will stipulation, he would lose this home and career and life that he loved, right on top of losing his wife and his father.

That knowledge caught in her chest, a thick ache of sympathy and shared pain and her own dawning realization: she wasn’t anywhere near to closing down this part of her past. Because for all that had changed in him, in her, in both their worlds during the last five years, one thing remained the same.

She still loved this man enough to do just about anything to ease his hurt.

Tears misted her eyes as she lifted a hand to touch the side of his face, blurring his features but not his rejection.

Both hands raised in a stop-right-there gesture, he reared back. “Forget it, Angie. Forget the pity and forget this whole crazy conversation!”

Angie’s hand dropped away. Okay. She could do this. She could shrug and pretend indifference while her face and her throat and her heart ached with the effort. Restraint—in words, in actions, in emotions—did not come easily or naturally, but she sensed that now was the time to exercise some self-control.

“I care too much to forget about it,” she said, slowly backing away, giving him the space he demanded, “so let’s talk this through. What are your alternatives? Say you do find a woman willing to have your baby for money. Unprotected sex with a stranger is a big risk, don’t you think?

“Unless you’re thinking of artificial insemination, which is worth consideration,” she continued, thinking on her feet, literally. “On the plus side, you get all the health checks and no awkward intimacy…I gather that is a plus, right?”

A muscle in his cheek jumped. Which probably meant he neither wanted intimacy nor wanted to talk about it. Tough. He’d stopped her leaving earlier, when she’d been ready to walk away, and now she was going to talk this through.

“But that all takes time, the checks and tests and the getting an appointment and such, when you don’t have much leeway. Three months to conceive, right?” Angie winced. “That is not a lot of time. Especially since the conception rate would be lower.”

“Why lower? A.I. works fine in cattle.”

Trust Tomas, the consummate cattleman, to equate this to livestock!

Angie lifted her shoulders and let them drop in an exaggerated shrug. “How would I know? It’s not as if I’ve actually investigated the process. I just read about it somewhere. I was trying to help you work through the possibilities is all.”

“You sure you don’t want to make the decision for me?”

“You’ve never once taken my advice on anything, why would you start now?”

“That’s never stopped you offering it.”

Did he mean her previous advice? About not rushing into marriage with Brooke? She stared back at him, found the answer in the grim blue hostility of his gaze. Yep, that’s what he meant all right.

“I thought you wanted to talk this through,” she said, finally accepting the futility of the conversation. Same old story, really. “You’d do better talking to the cliff face there. At least it won’t tell you anything you don’t want to hear!”

He started to say something. Judging by the look in his eyes and the hands-on-hips aggressiveness of his stance it was neither pretty nor appeasing, so Angie cut him off.

“I offered to help you, Tomas. Your answer: ‘forget this whole crazy conversation.’ Well, perhaps that is the best advice that’s been tossed out here tonight!” She lifted a hand, part frustration, part farewell. “I’ll say goodbye in the morning. When I’m not feeling so inclined to slug you.”

Jaw clenched and silent, Tomas watched her disappear into the darkness from whence she’d come. He hadn’t meant to hark back to the last time they’d stood toe to toe at this same waterhole. The last time she’d offered advice that he didn’t want to hear.

I know you think you love her, T.J., but don’t rush into marriage. Not unless you’re very, very certain Brooke can handle living out here.

Yup, he’d ignored that advice and they’d both suffered the consequences, he and Brooke. Through three roller-coaster years of passion and conflict, of separations and loneliness, of stand-up fights and emotional making-up. Three years that ended in the mother of all fights and no chance to make it up, not once Brooke was gone.

He had no interest in finding another woman, but he did need to satisfy the terms of his father’s will. For his mother, for Kameruka Downs, for his brothers, for himself. All he had to do was find the woman who’d do it his way.

That woman was not Angie. No way. She was too used to dancing to her own wild, unscored tune. Unpredictabil-

ity was the only predictable thing about her. Even her off-the-cuff “I would” offer to have his baby shouldn’t have floored him as it had done.

Angie had been pulling I-didn’t-think-this-through stunts all her life.

No, it wasn’t so much the offer that had rendered him speechless as the disturbing stuff that went hand-in-hand. She’d thought about having sex with him. Quite a bit, she’d said.

Sensations burned through his blood, images burned into his brain, and with a low growl of frustration he flung his body at the path and attacked the climb back to the homestead.

That wasn’t going to happen. Not with Angie. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of her in those terms. Not naked, not in his bed, not beneath his body.

No, no, absolutely no.

She hadn’t meant she would, really, have his baby. Only hypothetically. And even if she had meant it, she would soon change her mind. A woman who couldn’t settle in one place—in one job—for longer than a month or three wasn’t going to cut it as a mother. Sure, she’d changed. She’d grown up some, but she hadn’t yet settled down. He didn’t know if her gypsy heart ever would.

Back at the homestead he found Rafe lurking in the shadows by the door. An ambush, he suspected. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied by the worrying exchange with Angie, he might have suspected as much and avoided it.

“Alex gone to bed?” he asked, stepping onto the veranda.

“He’s on the phone. Business continues.”

Even past midnight on the night of his father’s funeral. That was Alex.

Rafe lifted his liqueur glass. “Care to join me in a nightcap?”

“Another time.”

But when he reached for the door, Rafe sidestepped to block his way. So neatly and pseudo-casually that Tomas knew it was no accident. “Don’t suppose you happened across Ange out there in the dark?”

Trick question. Tomas’s whole body tensed although he schooled his face into passive indifference. Either Rafe had already seen her coming in—had maybe even talked to her—or she’d snuck under his radar by using the side entrance. “Isn’t she inside?”

“She wasn’t in her room when I checked a while back.”

Tomas crossed his arms. Said nothing, gave away nothing. He suspected Rafe would fill him in on why he was looking for Angie without any prompting on his behalf.

“I had this notion, y’see, about the will.” Lips pursed, Rafe swirled the liquid in his glass. Tokay. The same dark amber as Angie’s eyes. The same eddying whirlpool as in Tomas’s gut as he waited for Rafe to continue. “I think Angie’s the answer.”

“This isn’t her problem,” Tomas said tightly. “Leave her out of it.”

“She knows the whole story so no tricky explanations are necessary. And Mau loves her like a daughter already.”

And there was the problem. Angie and her brothers had grown up like part of the family. Their father had cooked for the Carlisles—he’d moved out to Kameruka Downs after his wife died, head-hunted by Chas because he’d cooked at Maura’s favorite Sydney restaurant. The Moris had occupied one of the workers’ cottages but the kids had spent as much time in the homestead as their father. The six of them, Carlisles and Moris, had grown up together, played together, been schooled together.

“From where I’m standing,” Rafe continued, “Angie’s the perfect solution.”

“From where I’m standing, she’s too much like one of the family.”

“You mean like our sister?” Surprise whistled out on Rafe’s exhalation. “Can’t say I feel the same way, not since she’s come back from Italy with the new haircut and that body and the walk.” Rafe eyed him a moment. “You did notice the walk?”

The sexy sway of her hips? The gauzy skirt that clung to her legs? The glint of a gold ankle chain against smooth olive skin? “No.”

“The sad thing is I believe you.” Rafe shook his head, his expression a studied mix of disgust and pity. He sipped from his drink, then narrowed his eyes. “Although this does make things less complicated.”

“How’s that?”

“No need to toss you for her.”

Tomas frowned. “I don’t follow…”

“Ange is the perfect solution for one of us. If you’re not interested, then I’ll ask her.”

To sleep with him, to have his baby? Tomas was shaking his head before the thought finished forming. “You and Angie? No way.”

“Why not?”

Tomas forced himself to relax. His fingers, he realized, had curled into fists. His gut felt about the same. “What makes you think she’d be interested in helping either one of us out?”

“She has this thing about owing the family. For Mau looking out for her with all the girl stuff and Dad getting her into the fancy boarding school. For keeping her father on the payroll even after he was too sick to work.”

“That’s bullshit.” Not what the Carlisles had done for Joe Mori and his family—that was all true—but the debt thing. “She doesn’t owe us a thing.”

“She thinks she does.”

“You’re not serious. About asking her to…” Tomas couldn’t say the words. They stuck in his throat, all wrong.

“There isn’t anyone I’d rather ask.”

“I thought you didn’t give a damn about your inheritance.”

“I don’t.” Rafe swallowed the rest of his drink, then clamped a hand on Tomas’s shoulder. Their eyes met and held, his brother’s intensely serious for once. “But I know how much you care about yours.”

“You’re not martyring yourself for me.”

“One in, all in. Your words, little brother, and the only way to do this thing. We increase our chance of success and lessen the onus on any one of us. No martyrs here, Tomas, just realists out to get the job done.”

“Not with Angie,” he said tightly.

“Think about it, bro’. She is just about perfect.” And with a last squeeze of his shoulder, Rafe turned and disappeared into the house.

The motionless silhouette of horse and rider etched against the clear blue sky must have been a mirage, because when Angie lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the morning sun, only a single Leichardt pine broke the horizon. She sat forward in the passenger seat and stared harder through the Land Rover’s dusty windscreen.

Right the first time—nothing broke the mile-long line of ridge save that tree. The crazy woman not only let fly with impulsive offers in the midnight dark, but now she’d started seeing things! With a rueful half laugh, she sank back into her seat. And heard the driver clear his throat.

“You all right, mate?”

“Fine,” she assured Jeremy, the stockman who’d been coopted into driving her to the airstrip. “I thought I saw someone up on the ridge is all.”

“Coulda been the boss.”

“Oh?” Angie forced herself to sound casual. “He’s out riding then?”

“Went out at sunup. Coulda been him up there.”

Good to know she wasn’t delusional. Not so good to know that Tomas had ridden out at dawn, was likely somewhere beyond the Barakoolie ridge right now, and therefore stood no chance of arriving at the airstrip before they left for Sydney.

Disappointment spiked, quick and sharp, in her chest. She shook her head. What had she expected? A chance to say goodbye or a last second I’ve-been-thinking-about-what-you-said-last-night turnaround?

Is that what she even wanted?

After a night spent tossing and turning, she’d thought not. Sometime in the hour before dawn she’d managed to talk herself into a rational, sensible acceptance that she had no business offering Tomas anything.

So, okay, she had felt rudderless in the last months, unsure what she wanted to do with her life, where she wanted to live, how she wanted to live. She’d returned to Australia because Charles Carlisle was dying, but now she knew she was home to stay.

But having a baby, even Tomas’s baby…

In perfect synchronicity with her heart and stomach, the Land Rover lurched and bounced through a series of potholes.

“That snuck up on me, mate. Sorry.”

Jeremy, barely seventeen and a hoon at heart, grinned unapologetically without slowing down. In fact, he applied a tad more gas as he swung the vehicle in a wide circle before skidding to a dusty stop alongside the plane. Angie tsked her disapproval although she’d driven in much the same way growing up here.

As she slid down from the cab her gaze skimmed along the empty horizon one last time. She called the resultant hollow sensation deep inside hunger. After all that tossing and turning and self-debating, she had slept eventually. Right through her alarm.

Meaning Rafe had turfed her out of bed with no time for anything but a hasty shower and a quick farewell to Maura and the household staff. Too late to catch a lift when the boys left to perform their pre-flight checks. Too late for breakfast.

She ferreted a fruit bar from her bag and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything less healthy on you?” she asked Jeremy as they walked side by side to the plane.

“Nah. Sorry, mate.”

“Too bad.” While Jeremy stowed her luggage she finished the breakfast substitute, but the hollow feeling in her stomach only intensified. “Do you suppose they’re almost ready for takeoff?”

“Just about.”

For some reason Angie wasn’t. She’d come up north for the funeral, but also to say farewell to her childhood home and her teenage daydreams. Instead she felt…fretful.

As if she were leaving something behind, unfinished.

“See ya later then, Ange.”

With a casual wave, Jeremy started to turn away and ri-

diculous panicky I’m-not-ready-to-leave tears sprang to Angie’s eyes. Before she could stop herself she grabbed hold of the young jackaroo and planted a smacker on his cheek.

So, okay, the kid looked a dozen shades of embarrassed as he sidled away, but she felt better. She even managed a big smile as she called after him, “Look after yourself. And drive carefully.”

Holy cow. She sounded like a mother!

Was that some kind of a sign? Her destiny sneaking up to answer all the unanswered questions of the night?

Smile fading, she let her hand drop away from its cheerful wave as the ute sped off, dust billowing in its wake. She didn’t know if this atypical fragility stemmed from returning home after so long away, the emotional circumstances of her visit, or lack of sleep.

Most likely, all of the above.

With a hitch of one shoulder, she started up the steps of the plane. The engines turned over with a high-pitched whine, and a sudden gust of wind plastered her skirt to her legs and tangled her shoulder-length hair. Pausing to rake the thick tresses back from her face, she felt compelled to take one last look over her shoulder.

Her attention snagged on a distant spurt of movement. Not the rapidly departing Jeremy and not an illusion, either.

A horse and rider loped steadily across the treeless flats, heading straight toward the airstrip.