Princes of the Outback Bundle (10 page)

“The kiss worked here and now, with only a little notice,” she said with the same matter-of-fact logic. “Why not this, too?”

With a long slow stroke of her hands down her thighs, she straightened her skirt and walked around her desk. “I guess you’d planned to stay overnight?”

Tomas nodded and she picked up the phone and started dialing.

“With Alex or do you have a room booked?”

“A room. Here,” he managed. His throat was tight, his mouth dry, and that damn rug was moving way too fast.

“Hello, reception?” She greeted the voice on the end of the phone with a smile. “Hi, Lisa, it’s Angelina Mori in Mr. Carlisle’s office. You have a booking for his brother, Mr. Tomas Carlisle, for tonight? Yes? I’m looking for an upgrade if you have a suite available.”

Tomas stiffened. “That’s not necessary.”

“The Boronia Suite is perfect,” she said into the phone, ignoring both his spoken objection and the adamant shake of his head. “Yes, Lisa, only the one night. That’s all Mr. Carlisle requires.” Her eyes lifted to meet his, steady and direct and daring him to make something of it. “For now, at least.”

Two hours later Angie was still shaking her head over how she’d hijacked the arrangements so coolly and proficiently. She hadn’t let Tomas interrupt and she’d handled his objections with the same aplomb as the room upgrade.

“I’ve never been in a position to reserve a suite before,” she told him. “If I’m going to do this, why not with style?”

And then she’d settled behind her desk, telephone receiver anchored between shoulder and ear, and mentioned how much work she needed to get done before she could meet him upstairs. A very nice ploy, beautifully stage-managed, with no room for objection. Especially when Rafe arrived at her door, his curiosity diverted by his brother’s presence.

Tomas left. She shrugged off Rafe’s nosiness by pretending huge interest in a bogus phone call. Really, based on the whole scene in her office from start to finish, she should have been an actress. Her talents were much wasted. Who’d have known that her heart was racing, her insides churning, her bones quivering with nervous tension?

Now, two and a bit hours later, she smiled and made small talk with a Japanese couple as the Carlisle Grande’s high-speed elevator propelled her toward the upper-floor suites and her future. All in all, she felt remarkably calm. Considering she was about to have Tomas Carlisle.

Holy Henry Moses.

After she said goodbye to the couple on floor fifteen, Angie pressed an unsteady hand against her stomach, drew a deep breath, and willed everything to stop spinning. Although she hadn’t decided how, she knew she could go through with this. She knew because of the kiss that still burned strong and fierce in every cell of her blood, a kiss edged with darkness and barely leashed desperation.

He didn’t want her, but he
needed
her.

And if all went well, she might not only have Tomas Carlisle this once but she might get to keep him. To live with him as she grew big with his baby, to ease the haunted shadows in his eyes, to make him laugh and smile and live again. To be more than a helpmate to secure his inheritance—to be his wife and his partner.

And if it didn’t work out? If this turned into the disaster she’d alluded to in her office? Then perhaps that wouldn’t be all bad if it meant closure and a signal to move on.

Perhaps she might even silence the incessant heart-whisper that had stopped her committing to any other relationship, to a career or even to a place to live. The insistent whisper that she hold back a chunk of herself, to save it for this one man, this one home, this one life. Deep down she’d always hoped…and now those hopes were about to be realized.

If he hadn’t changed his mind all over again.

Outside the door to his suite—
their
suite—Angie hesitated only long enough to draw a deep breath before knocking. But then she couldn’t stand the waiting, the not knowing if he was inside or not. Fumbling, swearing softly at the tremor in her hand, she managed to swipe her security card through the lock. Red light. Swearing softly she tried again, her hand more steady this time.

Green light, hallelujah.

She pushed the door open and three slow paces into the entry vestibule her heart and stomach did the same free-fall as in the swiftly ascending elevator. Still, she went through the motions of checking the huge marble bathroom, the bedroom and huge closet, but nope. The whole suite stretched before her, quiet and pristine and empty.

He wasn’t here.

Angie didn’t assume she’d been stood up, at least not after she’d circled the whole suite several times and given his absence considerable thought. He may have changed a lot in recent years, but she couldn’t picture any version of Tomas hanging around a hotel room cooling his boot heels. He’d never done inactivity well.

She checked with reception, in case he’d left a message. Then she checked every horizontal surface—a five-star suite, she discovered, had many—and came up with no sign of a note. In fact there was no indication he’d even been here, but that was no reason to get her knickers knotted.

No, really, it wasn’t.

Most likely he had business to do, seeing as he came to the city so rarely these days. Or he could be downstairs in one of the hotel bars getting well and truly drunk. The Tomas she remembered didn’t need Dutch courage to tackle a wild bull or a woman, but this present one—well, she just didn’t know.

Cooling heels wasn’t big with Angie, either, but what else could she do but wait? Tracking Tomas down wasn’t an option, not when he wanted to keep this meeting (encounter? rendezvous? one-night stand?) secret. Yeesh, but she hated not knowing what to expect or even what to call whatever-this-was she’d agreed upon. Not knowing how long she might be waiting made her even more skittish, and determined to find some way of relaxing.

If she could expend some of this pent-up emotional energy then maybe she stood a chance of loosening up Tomas. That, she knew, was essential if this night was going to work out.

She ordered up a bottle of merlot. Then, on a whim, changed her order to the kind of French champagne she’d
only tasted once before, at her heartbreaker of an eighteenth birthday party. Courtesy of the Carlisles, as it happened. If Tomas Carlisle was going to make her wait, then he could pay for the luxury of unwinding her nerves!

While she waited for room service to deliver her Dom Pérignon, she filled the spa and added a liberal dash of bath-oil from the complimentary basket labeled “Body Bliss.” Then she stacked the stereo with music designed for relaxation. The spa occupied roughly the same space as Carlo’s whole bathroom, so she figured if the music didn’t work she could use up some stray nervous energy swimming laps of the monster-tub.

Midway through the champagne and chin-deep in richly scented water, Angie felt a sudden sense of…no longer being alone. Her skin tingled, lifting hairs on the back of her neck and over her forearms. Startled, she jackknifed upright and waited, perfectly still but for the wild pounding of her heart. The music masked any sound, but when the bathroom door didn’t move from its half ajar position her heart rate slowly subsided.

So much for the relaxing, luxuriating experience.

She’d started to rise from the water, to reach for a bath sheet, when the music volume dipped noticeably. Instantly her pulse skipped, her exposed nipples tightened, anticipation fizzed in her blood—as happened pretty much any time Tomas Carlisle came into the picture. Not that he was exactly in the picture, but he was close enough that her body knew; her heart knew.

And as she slid back into the water’s warm embrace, she wondered if her patience could hold out until he came looking for her.

H
ow long, he wondered, could a woman stay in a bath?

Teeth gritted, Tomas attempted to block out another slush of water, another image of slick olive skin, another rush of heat to his loins. For the past two or ten or twenty minutes—God knows, it felt like an eternity!—he’d wished back that second when he’d turned down the music. Her selected volume (raucous) would have shut out the constant reminders that Angie was two open doors away, wet and naked.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to cross to the bedroom, and then to the bathroom, to do what he’d come up here to do. He didn’t know what he would say. He didn’t know how to begin.

Hell.

He focused hard on the view beyond the window, the lights of a city not yet ready for sleep, the traffic inching toward the bridge, late workers heading home from their
jobs the same as every other evening. Everything normal, routine, unchanged in their worlds while his was spinning into some unknown dimension.

And then he caught a flutter of movement, a reflection in the glass before him, and his shoulders bunched in instant reaction. She’d exited the bedroom wearing one of the hotel’s white robes, and he tracked her path across the room, saw her stop, heard the rattle of ice as she lifted the bottle.

“Can I get you a glass of champagne?” she asked. “Or would you prefer something else? I imagine there’s anything you want here….”

Plus a whole lot he didn’t want to want, either, he thought grimly as he turned to face her. All wrapped up in a fluffy bathrobe, dark hair gathered in a tousled ponytail on top of her head, brows arched in silent query, she stood waiting for his response.

Tomas shook his head. He’d had enough to drink downstairs. Just enough to numb the edges of his fear, but not enough to lose sight of what tonight was about.

Apparently Angie had no such reservations. He watched her pour a glass from the near-empty bottle, felt himself tense even more as she padded toward him, her bare feet noiseless on the plush claret carpet. Fine gold glinted at one ankle, and as she bent to adjust the stereo volume the chain at her neck swung forward in a slow-motion arc, then back again to settle between her breasts.
A for abundant.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

Frowning, he forced his attention away from the deep vee of her robe. Away from the exposed slope of one breast, from the disorienting speed of blood rushing south and to the swirl of classical piano notes that seemed such an unlikely Angie-choice. “I don’t mind, although that doesn’t sound like your kind of music.”

“Relaxation therapy, along with this—” she lifted her glass in a silent salute “—and the spa. Which, I must say, was a treat and a half.”

“You needed to relax?”

“A little.” The corners of her mouth quirked. “Okay, more than a little. Although I figure I now have the advantage over you, in the relaxation stakes.”

“That’s not saying much,” Tomas admitted, and their eyes met and held in a moment of shared honesty. This wasn’t going to be easy—they both knew it, they both acknowledged it.

And being Angie, she also had to try to find a way to fix it. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Or the bathroom’s free and I can really, really recommend the spa. No?”

She must have gleaned that answer from his expression, because he hadn’t said a word or moved a muscle. He’d just stood there, growing more tense and rigid while she strolled right up to him. Was it his imagination or did her eyes glint with wicked purpose?

“Okay, then take off your shirt.”

What?

She pushed her glass into his hand and somehow wrapped his stiff fingers around the stem. Apparently because she needed to flex her fingers, then shake them, as if limbering up.
To do what?
All that southward-rushing blood congregated in very unlimber anticipation of those fingers reaching, touching, closing around him.

“If you don’t want to bother with the spa—” Angie wriggled those damn fingers some more “—then how about I give you a massage?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Rubbish! You look tense enough to snap and I’ve been told I have magic hands.” Turning to leave, she cut him a
trust-me look across her shoulder. “I’ll just go fetch some oil from the bathroom and then—”

“No.”

“No oil?”

No oil, no magic hands stroking his shoulders, no naked thighs straddling his back.
“No massage. No spa. No drinks.” With subtle emphasis he placed her glass on the sill at his back, right out of her reach. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“No, but—”

“No buts.”

Their eyes met, held, locked, the air charged with the knowledge of why they were here. Sex. Not for pleasure, but for a purpose. A trial. Angie’s throat moved as she swallowed, and he noticed that one hand had come up to twist at the chain at her throat. “I had this notion that we might…I don’t know…sit around and talk for a bit to ease the awkwardness. Maybe order up dinner and a bottle of wine.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Then why order dinner? This isn’t a date, Angie.”

Her gaze darkened, maybe hurt, maybe a little shocked at the harshness of his tone. But, in typical Angie fashion, she lifted her chin and fired right back at him. “That’s it then? You just want to do it?”

“Yes.” That’s exactly what he wanted—to do it. No fancy trimmings, no window-dressing, no talk. And, dammit, he shouldn’t feel bad about wanting what they’d both agreed on, just because she was doing him the favor. Just because she was standing there twisting that chain, looking for all the world like—

“Are you nervous?”

Probably he shouldn’t have barked the question, but he
couldn’t contain the surly flanks of his mood. And it seemed so unlikely that confident, unflappable, in-your-face Angie could be suffering a case of the jitters.

“Of course I’m nervous,” she answered. “Aren’t you?”

“Why ‘of course’? You said it was ‘only sex.’”

Shaking her head, she released a soft breath of laughter. “Trust you to remember that!”

“You didn’t mean it?”

“Of course I didn’t mean it. Saying ‘it’s only sex’ is like saying this is only a hotel room, and Dom Pérignon is only a sparkling wine, and this—” she tugged at her lapel “—is only a bathrobe.”

He could have asked why in blue blazes women didn’t say what they meant, but that would be like asking why the wet season followed the dry. It simply was. But Angie? He’d always thought her a straight-shooter, and what her heated words implied sent a paradoxical chill through his blood.

“Why are you here? Why did you agree to do this?”

“I told you—because I can.”

“The truth, Angie.” He met her eyes, held her gaze. “No bull.”

Angie stared back at him, taking in the uncompromising set of his jaw, the icy chill in eyes she’d always thought of as hot summer-blue, and her stomach swam with anxiety. Everything rested on her answer…yet if she told him her expectations, her belief that she could heal his wounded heart if he only gave her the chance, she wouldn’t see him for dust.

Yet she couldn’t lie. Not to him and not to herself.

“Well, there is the fact I’ve always wanted to sleep with you,” she said slowly. Truthfully. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. I told you that last week, at the waterhole. When I first suggested having your baby.”

“That was hypothetical.”

“Maybe you thought so. I didn’t. I had a crush on you as a teenager, not that you noticed, but that’s the truth. Do you remember my eighteenth?”

“The party at Shardays?”

Stupid question. Of course he remembered, since he’d met Brooke that night. But he’d asked for the truth and, painful topic or not, she couldn’t stop midstory. “I remember going shopping and picking out the sexiest dress I could find for that party. It was white, this real slippery fabric that clung in all the right places.” She shaped her hands over her body as she talked, remembering how excited she’d been to see herself in that dress, how keen her anticipation when she walked into the nightclub. She’d been humming with it, buzzing, singing. “I picked it out thinking about you, Tomas. I had this fantasy going that you’d see me in it and that would be it.”

“You had a boyfriend.”

“Yes, but he was a boy.” She shrugged. “You were a man.”

He made a rough sound, of disbelief or rejection or both. “That was seven years ago.”

“And I’ve always wondered what it would be like, you and me.”

“You mean you and me scr—”

“Yes.” She spoke over the top of him, blocking out the harsh word he’d chosen. Deliberately, she knew, to shock her.

“Because that’s all it can be,” he said tightly, as if he needed to drive the point home. “Only sex.”

“I hear you, although I think you should know for me it’s never ‘only sex,’ not with any man. I’m a woman, in case I need to point that out.”

“You don’t.”

For a long moment she stared back at him, her annoy
ance at his stubborn stance yielding to those two little words. He’d noticed her as a woman. And he could talk until he was blue-faced about “only sex” but her heart swelled with the knowledge that it would be so much more. If he would only give her the chance. The chance she may have blown with the honesty of her confession.

Moistening her dry lips, she concentrated on what mattered to Tomas—the reason he’d agreed to “only sex” in the first place.

“You know that book I’ve been reading?” She waited for his nod of acknowledgment, for him to remember the title and make the mental switch from sex-with-Angie to the end result. “Well, I’ve read all about fertility and conception and, frankly, you couldn’t get a better candidate if you advertised. My cycle is regular as a twenty-eight-day clock, which the book says is pretty rare. I’ve never had any gyno problems. I’m strong and I’m healthy and I’m at my prime.”

“You’ve thought about this. You really want to have a baby?”

“Several, eventually. All perfect angels who don’t cry or give their mother a minute’s grief.”

She smiled. He didn’t. And she sensed that she’d taken this one step too far. That perhaps she should never have admitted to nerves and thus diverted his focus back at “just do it.” But, with all that had been said in the interim, how could she get back to that point?

Perhaps she did need to remind him about being a woman…a naked woman who’d agreed to have sex with him.

Slowly she closed the space between them, releasing her hair so it tumbled down past her shoulders. As she came up beside him she raked a hand through the thick tresses, no longer slick and straight but rendered thick and curly
by the bathroom steam. She leaned down to recover her glass from the windowsill and her arm brushed against his in a slow heated slide. And again as she straightened.

“Have to enjoy this while I can,” she said, taking a long sip of champagne. Their gazes connected over the rim of her glass. “If I do fall pregnant, I’ll not have the opportunity much longer.”

Something shifted in his eyes, sharpening their focus to a hard glitter for a split second before he turned abruptly to stare out the window. “There’ll be a lot you have to give up.”

“There’ll be a lot to gain.”

“What about your job?”

“It’s only temporary. I’m replacing somebody on maternity leave. There’s a certain irony in that, don’t you think?”

He didn’t answer, and Angie’s confidence gave a nervy little jitter. She didn’t think it possible that he could look any tenser than when she’d first come out of the bathroom, but he did. Because it was time to get down to it, to just do it, and that was easier said than done.

She took another sip of champagne but all she tasted was her own anxiety. “Awkward, huh?” she said into the lengthening silence. “This. Us. Standing here wondering what to do next.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“How about we go into the bedroom? At least that’s a first step.” When he didn’t answer, she turned and started to walk in that direction.

“Angie.”

She whipped back around, caught him watching her in a way that made her heart thunder like a bronco let loose on the northern plains.
Heat and fear; fear and heat.

“Don’t expect too much,” he said stiffly.

“I never do.”

That was a straight-out lie. Seven years she’d been waiting, wondering, ever since her coming-of-age party. Tonight she had expectations, and Tomas had no one to blame but himself.

He’d asked about her nerves. He’d insisted on the truth. No bull, he’d said, and wasn’t that a load of it!

Disgusted in himself, he dragged a hand through his hair. She even remembered the damn dress, when all he remembered about that night was meeting Brooke. The only woman he’d ever loved; the only woman he
would
ever love. The only woman he’d ever taken to bed.

How the hell was he going to do this? How was he going to walk through that door and take off his clothes and lay down with another woman? What in blue blazes had made him think that doing it with Angie would be easier than with a nameless, faceless stranger?

And if he wanted honest, no-bull truth between them, why hadn’t he told her about his lack of sexual experience?

Jaw set, he fought to contain the icy spread of fear through his tense body. Struggled to take the first steps toward the bedroom door, left open like an invitation to sin.

Only sex, he reminded himself. Sex with a lush, sensual woman who kissed like she loved everything about the whole man-woman intimacy thing. He imagined she wouldn’t be too shy to use that mouth in all manner of ways. He imagined she wouldn’t be afraid to take the initiative once he walked through that door. Maybe he should just take her advice:
Lie back, close your eyes and think of Kameruka.

How hard could that be?

About as hard as the pounding of his pulse, he thought ruefully. And like a nagging toothache it would only get
worse the longer he stood here thinking about it. Better to suck up the fear and dread of the dentist’s chair and march right in there and get it over with.

If he didn’t think about the intimacy, if he just concentrated on the mechanics of undoing buttons and stripping off clothes, if he focused on the part of him that cried out for a woman’s slick warmth in the dead of night, the part of him that was sick of his hand providing its only satisfaction, then he could do this.