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

“I guess.”

“What matters is making sure everything goes right from here on in. You need to be in his face, Ange, showing him what he’s missing.”

“What do you suggest? That I turn up on his doorstep and chirp, ‘Honey, I’m home’?”

Rafe grinned. “You’re reading my mind.”

It took Angie a moment to realize he wasn’t joking. She wet her lips nervously. “What, exactly, are you thinking?”

“Two weeks, right? Until you can next make babies?”

Angie nodded.

“What if I fly you out there a bit earlier…?” Not really a question, since he didn’t wait for an answer. He picked up her desk calendar and studied it. When he looked up his eyes held a wicked glitter. “You know what this Saturday is?”

“Um…the twentieth?”

“The Ruby Creek Races.”

Angie frowned. The Ruby Creek weekend was an outback institution, more about socializing than horse-racing, but what did it have to do with her situation? “You want to go? You think I should go? Do you think Tomas will be going?”

“Unlikely. He doesn’t get out much these days. No, what I’m thinking is all the staff will be going and he’ll be home alone.”

Until she arrived. Angie’s pulse fluttered. “He won’t like it.”

“Does that matter?”

She smiled slowly and the glow of hope spread strong and rosy through her whole body. “No. I don’t suppose that it does.”

Tomas recognized the sound of the Carlisle Company plane coming in low over the Barakoolie ridge without lifting his gaze from the weaners he was tailing. He figured it was Alex or Rafe dropping in to visit with their mother. A wasted trip, since Maura had flown down to another of their stations to supervise the muster after the manager broke his leg. Tomas would have gone himself except…

His chest tightened as he recalled the plea in his mother’s pained eyes—a look that had cow-kicked him right where he lived. He knew what she couldn’t say. I’m lost and I’m hurting. I need to be busy, occupied, working as hard as my body can take. It’s the only way to live through this grief.

Oh, yeah, he knew better than anyone the benefits of physical exhaustion. Not a cure, but a salve to deaden the acute pain and a bandage dressing for the soul-deep loneliness. A means to fill the days and a way to find the salvation of sleep in a marriage bed suddenly left half-empty. So, yeah, he’d let Mau go with his blessing, and if either of his brothers gave him grief over it…After several weeks of fourteen- and fifteen-hour days he felt brutal enough to knock them both on their Armani-clad asses.

Thinking about that outcome gave him a grim satisfaction as he watched the King Air bank and turn before coming in low on its final approach to the airstrip. The young colt he was training jigged and danced beneath him. And if his pulse skipped in time with his fractious mount, that wasn’t because some rogue part of him remembered the last time one of company planes had sat on the Kameruka airstrip.

The way she’d tried to kiss him. The day she’d sowed the idea of only-sex in his brain.

“Easy boy,” he soothed. “It’s just a big old noisy bird.” With a big old noisy pilot.

He identified Rafe as the pilot by the way he approached his landing. Not sure and steady like Alex, but in a flamboyant rush.

The colt tossed his head, and with knees and thighs Tomas directed his attention back to the cattle. “We have a job to do, Ace,” he murmured. “Keep your eye on the prize.”

He didn’t turn back toward the strip. He would see his brother soon enough, whether he wanted to or not. And even though this was officially a holiday weekend on Kameruka, with all his staff away at the races or visiting friends or simply sitting it out at the local bar, his time off was this: training a young colt to tail cattle. Later he’d fly a bore check in the station Cessna. And there was a gate hinge to weld on the Boolah round-yard. All the stock horses and dogs to be fed.

Only when he was good and ready, would he return home to his visitor.

The sun had started its descent behind the rugged western cliffs of Killarney Gorge before Tomas returned to the homestead. His narrowed gaze scanned the deepening shadows of the veranda and, sure enough, found Rafe. He didn’t care. He was resigned to enduring his brother’s smart-ass company this evening. In fact, he was looking forward to crossing words if not swords—either would suit his mood. But first, he was looking forward to a long cold beer and a longer hot shower.

“Rafe,” he said in greeting, as he hit the veranda and kept moving.

“Pleased to see you, too. I was getting bored with my own company.”

“No kidding.” He paused with the door half-open. “I’d have saved you the tedium if you’d rung first.”

“You’d have laid on hot and cold running housemaids?”

“I’d have told you Ruby Creek was on.”

Rafe chuckled softly. “I knew that. I’m heading out there in the morning, but I thought I’d spend the night with Mau first. I’m surprised she’s not home yet.”

“She’s over at Killarney, mustering.”

“Better that she’s keeping busy.” No surprise, no censure, barely a pause to digest the news. “I’ll fly down tomorrow and see her.”

“Only if you’ve got a couple of days free. She’ll be out in the back country by now.” And they both knew that no one—not even Rafe—could land a twin-engine there.

“How’s she doing?”

Tomas let the door swing shut and tipped his hat back. “She’s coping.”

For a quiet minute they were in accord, everything else forgotten in shared concern for their mother. Worry that she may sink back into the same depression as after she lost her baby daughter—their sister—so many years ago. Rafe made a scoffing noise and shook his head. “Why didn’t he just leave her one of the stations to run? That would have made more sense than this grandchild thing.”

“Is that why you think he did it? For Mau?”

“Don’t you?”

Tomas let his breath go in a long sigh. “Yup, I do.”

“Do you reckon it’ll make any difference? That she’ll buy we’re doing this because we want to?”

“Does it matter in the end? If she gets the grandchild to dote on?”

“Point.” Rafe expelled a long, audible breath. “I’ll fly out next weekend to see her.”

Tomas nodded, but he could see there was more going on in Rafe’s head than the fact he’d wasted a trip. He looked almost…pained.

“What are you doing about the baby?” Tomas asked, taking a stab at what bothered his brother’s usual carefree attitude. “Have you decided on a mother yet?”

“There’s someone I’m hoping to bump into at Ruby Creek tomorrow.”

Hence the look of a man headed for the gallows. If he didn’t feel a barrowload of empathy, Tomas would have found his brother’s situation funny—the last of the great playboys forced to choose one woman. He didn’t ask for the lucky lady’s name because the look on his brother’s face reminded him of his own circumstances. Of Angie, who Rafe would have seen as recently as yesterday. It had been over two weeks. She’d said she’d call as soon as she knew. She should have called.

He scowled down at his boots, tried to find the words he needed down there. How’s Angie? Two simple words, one question. How hard was that? Instead he found himself asking, “How’s the hotel business?”

“Booming.” Rafe stared at him a moment. “Can’t say you’ve ever expressed an interest before. Is there a reason? Anything specific you wanted to know?”

Tomas gritted his teeth. Okay, all he had to do was ask. He took off his hat, slapped it against his thigh. “How’sAngie?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Call her? His gut clenched and fisted. “Yeah, I guess I could phone her.”

“I meant you should ask her. In person.”

Tomas frowned. “In Sydney?”

“Inside.” Rafe hitched a shoulder in that direction. “I think she mentioned something about taking a bath. She liked the look of that new spa you put in.”

In his bathroom? Like hell!

Tomas barreled down the long hallway and shouldered through the half-open door. Yes, she’d taken a bath. In his bathroom. Wisps of steam wafted toward the open louver windows, and the moist sweet fragrance of honeyed bath oil still hung in the air.

The house had a half-dozen bathrooms and she’d had to use his? Dammit to hell and back…

He slapped his hand against the doorjamb, whipped around and his eyes narrowed in cold fury. His bedroom door lay open. Oh, no. No, no, no. No. A dozen long strides and he came to a grinding halt, everything locked up by the sight that greeted him through that open doorway.

Angie was bent over his bed, ratting through an open suitcase. Not that he took much notice of the suitcase, since she wore nothing but a towel. For a long minute his anger dissipated, swamped by the heated rush of a body remembering. The soft pliancy of her thighs. The full curves of her buttocks. The sheer carnal pleasure of sliding inside.

She stilled suddenly and turned, as if she’d heard the groan of his lust or the snarl of his restraint, and her eyes widened in surprise. Vaguely he was aware of something—hell, it could have been the crown jewels for all he noticed—drop from her fingers as she straightened.

“Hi.”

The husky note of her greeting stroked his aroused glands like a velvet fist, and in that spun-out moment she had only to smile and unwrap her towel and he’d have forgotten every grievance. But she didn’t smile. And she clutched the front of the towel with an edginess that reminded him of everything wrong with this picture.

Her body, in his towel, in his bedroom. Uninvited.

“What are you doing here?” he growled, low and mean.

“Looking for clothes. I was about to get dressed.” Gathering her usual assurance, she let go the towel and leaned back into her luggage. “If I can just find my—”

“Dammit, Angie, you know that’s not what I asked!”

She knew it and she had to know how much was revealed when she leaned over like that, but it didn’t stop her dragging out the moment. Deliberately? Was she trying to provoke him? Entice him? Seduce him?

Tomas ground his teeth and forced his attention to her busy hands. They rummaged some more then paused, holding up a piece of ivory satin underwear that dangled from her fingertips like some blatant stroke-me invitation. Oh, yeah, this was deliberate, unsubtle and doomed for failure.

“Forget getting dressed,” he barked. “We need to talk.” Her gaze skittered with the same edginess she’d dis-

played earlier. Good. This was his home, his territory, and he was calling the shots. She had cause to look nervous.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said quietly. And as if her legs lost strength, she kind of flopped down onto the edge of his bed. “Instead of calling.”

“You’re pregnant?”

The thick ponytail on top of her head wobbled as she shook her head. “No. I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty much.”

“What does that mean? Did you do a test or not?”

Her backbone stiffened at his harsh tone, and her gaze snapped to his. “I mean,” she said clearly, evenly, “that unless I’m one of those women who bleed even when they’re pregnant, then I’m not.”

Tomas let go an audible breath. Restless, unable to meet the steady darkness of her gaze and unsure how to respond, he paced to the window. Hesitated a second before turning around. “You okay with that?”

“I’m disappointed. What about you?”

How did he feel? Thrown. Rattled. Disgruntled. And, yeah, disappointed that she hadn’t let him know. That she’d probably confided in Rafe first—why else would he have brought her out here?

“How long have you known?” he asked tightly.

“Only a day or two.”

“You said your cycle was regular as clockwork. I can do the sums, Angie. Either you—”

“Okay.” She jumped to her feet in a rush of fluttering towel and creamy skin. “I knew on Monday. Yes, I should have called, but I wanted to surprise you.”

What? He scarcely believed his ears. This was supposed to be a pleasant surprise? Here I am, in your bedroom, aren’t you glad?

She sucked in a breath, as if preparing to say more, but the action caused the towel-tuck over her breasts to come right undone. Before she could regather the gaping sides, Tomas caught an eyeful of dark nipples and curved belly and feminine curls. His body blistered with instant heat, his groin tightened with instant desire, but he rejected the quickening of lust and fixed her with a hard, cold stare.

“I don’t like surprises.”

He walked to the dresser and stared for a full twenty seconds before he realized what was wrong. Her hairbrush, a tub of face cream, her neck-chain, were scattered carelessly amidst his neatly arrayed belongings.

Tomas’s jaw set so hard he heard his teeth grind.

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want her here, not in his home, not in his bedroom, not in his days and his nights.

With one fisted hand he scooped up her things and tossed them into her suitcase. In another second he’d gathered up all the gauzy bras and filmy panties that had spilled onto his bed, and jammed the lid shut on it all.

He was fuming that she’d pulled this surprise-him stunt, that she’d thought she could take over his bedroom, that she’d brought all that skimpy underwear with her…for what? They were having sex, not a seduction. He clicked the snaps shut on her case and his icy rage turned to steam.

“I hope you didn’t buy all that specially,” he said, straightening with the luggage in his hand.

In silence she’d watched him, not objecting, not commenting, although her eyes now flashed with indignation. “You don’t like nice lingerie?”

“It’s a waste of money if you bought it for me.”

“Actually, I bought it for myself. I never thought for a minute that you’d wear a G-string.” She smiled silkily. “Although I do like how satin feels against my skin. Maybe you should feel it sometime.”

Tomas refused to let her taunt affect him, refused to picture her wearing a satin G-string and nothing else, refused to imagine his hands skimming over her curves, touching, feeling, caressing. Narrow-eyed he glared back at her. “It looks like I’ll have to.”

“Are you saying you want to try again?”

“I take it that’s why you’re here.”

“Yes,” she answered calmly. “Bad news, I’m not pregnant. Good news, we get to do it all over again. If that’s what you want.”

Eight

Oh, yeah, he wanted, but this time he was setting the rules—starting with not in his bed. Suitcase in hand, he turned toward the door. “You’ll have your own bedroom. That’s not negotiable, Angie.”

“If you want me out of your bedroom—” her eyes flashed a challenge “—you’ll have to carry me.”

He only hesitated long enough to think: dentist, throbbing tooth, get it over with quick. Eyes fixed on hers, he marched across the room, picked her up like a sack of chaff and tossed her over his shoulder.

She wiggled, she kicked, she punched. Against his shoulder he could feel the soft schmoosh of her breasts but he kept on walking. The towel rode up and his hand ended up cupping her bare backside, but he gritted his teeth and didn’t stop until he’d dumped her inside the best of the guest bedrooms. Too bad if Rafe was using it, he was too damn mad to care. “This is your room and when we do it, we do it here. When are you fertile?”

“You did the sums before.”

So he did them again, counting off the days on his fingers. “Next weekend.”

“How many times?”

He’d turned to leave, had actually taken his first step out into the corridor, but her question stilled him. He could feel her eyes boring into the back of his neck, could feel their dark heat and fierce indignation.

“How many times are we doing it?” she asked again. “The book I read says a woman can conceive if she has intercourse any time up to five days before ovulation and twenty-four hours afterward. Conception isn’t an exact science.”

“I’m well aware of that.” He turned and pinned her in place with an uncompromising look. “The article I read stated the optimum time as two days before and the day of ovulation. And you told me you’re a twenty-eight-day clock.”

“You’re choosing three days of unregulated, unprotected, whenever-you-feel-like-it, however-you-want-it sex over six? Yeesh, Tomas, you’re the only man I know who’d prefer that option!”

“Not whenever, however. Once a night, missionary position, in your bed.” The exasperated sound she choked out turned his voice even colder while heat of every hue pumped through his blood. “This isn’t personal preference. This is to preserve sperm count and let gravity do its bit.”

“That’s such an old wives’ tale!”

“I have a housekeeper,” he continued coldly, ignoring her interjection, “and a mother who visits regularly. I don’t want either to know about this unless there’s a positive result to tell. Either way, they’ll both be here long after you’ve gone.”

The expression in her eyes turned from willful to stunned in one blink of her long, dark lashes. Yeah, what he’d said was harsh but he wouldn’t back down. If you gave Angie an inch, she always took a hundred miles. If he gave her access to his bed, she would keep on chipping away, wanting more and more of a life he had no intention of sharing, with her or anyone.

He watched her nostrils flare as she sucked in a breath, saw a grim determination replace the hurt in her eyes. “So, if this is going to be all clandestine, how will I know when to lie on my back and expect you?”

Tomas clenched his jaw. “You’ll know.”

“How is that?” she cocked her head on the side, all fake sweet-voiced curiosity. “Will there be some secret code?”

“You’ll know when I turn up in your bed.”

Angie hated everything about that hurtful snarky exchange, but she did accept his edict on separate bedrooms. It was his home, after all, and she had arrived uninvited. In retrospect, that hadn’t been such a great idea. And if she thought he’d been hostile with her…

Five days later her body still did a kind of internal shudder and wince remembering the unpleasantness of their dinner with Rafe that night.

All her fault.

She should have called and let Tomas know she wasn’t pregnant. She should have allowed him—not his brother—a say in what transpired next. Backing a stubborn man into the proverbial corner was not the way to win his cooperation. Lord knows, she came from a household steeped in testosterone. She should have known better.

She should have left his bedroom with better grace and some dignity, too. She shouldn’t have let him light a match to her temper. And she definitely should not have kept pushing and provoking until he ground out that line about after-she’d-gone. Mostly she wasn’t one to dwell on should-haves and most of that list she’d put well behind her by Thursday—all except the leaving thing and that bothered her deeply.

If he wouldn’t let her stay, then how could she prove herself and her love? If he was never home and their paths crossed as rarely as they’d done in the past five days, then how could he see that she’d fitted happily back into station life?

She didn’t assume he was avoiding her. It was a hectic time with mustering and branding and weaning and trucking out stock for sale and fattening. Tomas was responsible for managing a hundred thousand head of cattle and fifty employees. He was a busy man. So busy that he’d neglected to tell her he was flying out on a three-day visit to the company’s eastern feed-lots.

She simmered and seethed inside for a good twenty-four hours, but what could she do? She could prepare for his return, that’s what. She could make sure he did notice her seamless integration into his home and station life, and she could do so without another sharp-worded confrontation.

A few casual questions to a head stockman and she had an estimated time for the boss’s return. She prepared dinner herself and chose the perfect wine accompaniment from Chas’s extensive cellar. She soaked for a good hour in the honey and cinnamon bath-milk she’d bought especially for the trip—the same one she’d used in the hotel that night. “For you, Tomas,” she stated with some defiance as she poured a liberal dose into the tub. “Same as all the pretty underwear.”

Oh, and she gave the housekeeping staff the night off.

Tonight was the first of her three nights with Tomas, and she intended on making the most of it.

Despite the good food, the wine and the satin she’d chosen to wear next to her bath-softened skin, Angie didn’t go for a full-out seduction scene. In the interests of subtlety—and not scaring him off—she scuttled the candles and flowers, and left the stereo turned off. That would help, too, with hearing his incoming plane.

Ready early, she couldn’t stand still. She fussed over the lasagna and greens and bread rolls she’d baked earlier. She applied a third coat of Nude Shimmy polish and wandered restlessly around the gardens while her nails dried and the sun clocked off for the day. She even considered straightening her hair, just to fill some time.

But when she looked into the mirror at the mass of curls, she remembered Tomas saying he didn’t like sleek. She set down the straightening tool and smiled slowly. “Oh, yeah. I rather like it wild, too.”

Except she wasn’t thinking about her hair.

She huffed out a breath, hot with memories and keen with anticipation, and eyed her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a woman thinking about sex. Heat traced the line of her cheekbones and glowed dark in her eyes. And when she stood up and braced her shoulders, she felt the sweet tug of arousal in her breasts and satin panties.

Perhaps she should really surprise him and take them off. Perhaps she would after she’d fortified her bravery with a glass of merlot.

Yes, she needed a glass of wine. And to check the meal one more time. She straightened the neckline of her white gypsy top, smoothed the sitting-down wrinkles from her jeans, and set off for the kitchen at the opposite end of the house. With every step she could feel the friction of her clothes against each sensitive peak and fold of her body. Perhaps she should take everything off and really surprise him…although that would take a lot more than one glass of bravado!

Smiling at herself, she pushed through the kitchen door and came to a stunned standstill.

Tomas was home.

Right there in the middle of the kitchen, actually, although he hadn’t yet noticed her arrival. He stood in profile, a tall, dark, dusty hunk with a long-neck bottle in his hand. She watched his head tilt back as he raised the beer to his lips. Watched the movement of his throat as he drank…and she drank in his almost sybaritic enjoyment of that first long, slow pull from the cold bottle.

In that moment he wasn’t Tomas Carlisle, heir apparent to Australia’s richest cattle empire. He wasn’t any “Prince of the Outback.” He was just an ordinary cowboy at the end of a hellishly long working day.

A quiver of pure desire slid through her body, from the tingling in her scalp all the way to the freshly painted tips of her toes. She wanted to walk right up and kiss him on his drink-cooled lips and breathe the commingled scents of horse and leather and Kameruka dust on his skin. But more even than the physical, she longed to share dinner without sniping and harsh words. She wanted to let the evening flow naturally all the way to the moment when they stood in unison and walked hand in hand to bed.

Was that too much to ask?

Suddenly the hand holding the bottle stilled halfway back down from his mouth, and Angie had enough time to answer her own question—yes, definitely too much— before his head turned slowly her way. She could feel the tension in her bones and knew it seeped into the innocent kitchen air. And all she could think to say was, “You’re home.”