Princes of the Outback Bundle (15 page)

“And when did you start drinking beer?”

“It’s, um, not mine, actually.”

“Speaking of which—” amusement, rich and redo
lent, colored Rafe’s voice “—where is the man of the house?”

She flashed him a warning glance. “I wasn’t expecting you. Either of you.”

“Obviously.”

Maura looked at him narrowly, then back at Angie. “Rafe flew out to visit me at Killarney. I had him bring me straight home when I heard the news.”

Angie stiffened. “What news?”

“Alex has set a wedding date.”

“In two weeks.” Maura’s lips came together in a disapproving line. “Civil vows in Melbourne! Why are they in such a rush? Alex fobbed me off with some cock-and-bull story about their busy lives. Rafe knows something and won’t tell me. Do
you
know what’s going on?”

Fixed with those straight blue eyes, Angie started to squirm.

Maura didn’t miss that reaction. Her gaze narrowed. “Is Susannah pregnant? Is that what you’re all trying to keep from me? “

“I don’t know,” Angie answered honestly, her gaze sliding away to Rafe’s in silent appeal.

“Oh, for land’s sake, will you two stop treating me like a fool! I know there’s something going on with you all, not just Alex. I’ve been too wrapped up in myself since…” Her eyes sharpened, as if with remembered pain, but she drew a deep breath and continued. “Does this have anything to do with your father’s will?”

Rafe rubbed at the back of his neck. Angie studied the bottle in her hand. Maura clicked her tongue in disapproval.

“I won’t accept that. One of you is going to tell me the whole story and—”

“What story?”

Tomas? They all turned as one, three sets of eyes fixed on the new arrival. Angie felt her stomach drop as if a high-speed elevator had taken off and left her a nanosecond behind. Where had he arrived from? And why couldn’t he have done so five minutes earlier?

His gaze slid from one to the other before settling on Angie. “What’s going on?”

T
he dinner didn’t unfold as it had done in Angie’s imagination. While she attempted to stretch a meal-for-two four ways—she shouldn’t have bothered, since no one had much of an appetite—Tomas and Rafe had drawn Maura a pretty thin sketch of the will clause. Angie knew it was sketchy by the questions Maura continued to ask after they’d all sat down for dinner.

They’d discussed Alex and Susannah and their no frills wedding. Maura, who’d given up all pretence of eating, supposed she wouldn’t be able to do a thing to change her eldest son’s mind. Silently Angie sympathized. Tomas was equally stubborn, when he made up his mind. And as for Rafe…

“What are you doing about this clause, Rafferty?”

Uh-oh. Maura used her sons’ full names rarely. The upshot was always trouble. Angie put down her cutlery and
started to collect plates—escaping to the kitchen and washing dishes suddenly looked very attractive.

“I’m still considering my options,” Rafe said carefully.

“Of course you are.” Maura’s tone hovered between disgust and anger. “And what about you?” Her gaze speared Tomas. “Please tell me that’s not why Angie’s here.”

The crockery in Angie’s hands rattled its own answer, even after she gripped hard to stop the telltale clatter. She could feel Maura’s eyes on her face, could feel the heat rising from her chest through her throat and into her cheeks. First tears and now she was blushing. What could she possibly do for a grand finale?

She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to look this woman she loved like a mother right in the eye and tell her the truth. But she couldn’t; she’d promised Tomas. Seated beside him at the table she could feel his tension even though he answered Maura’s question with enviable composure. “I’ll talk to you later, Mau. After we’ve—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We all know what’s going on.” Maura looked from one to the other, daring them to disagree. “Don’t we?”

“It’s no one’s business but mine and Angie’s. I’m not discussing it at this table.”

For a long second the silence was chillingly complete, then Maura exhaled through her nose in a sound of pure exasperation. “If I’m reading your lack of denial and outrage correctly, you two are sleeping together to make a baby. Because Charles thinks—
thought
—he could make up for something that happened twenty-six years ago.”

Angie put the stack of plates down with a loud clatter. Is that why Charles added this clause? To replace the baby his wife lost at childbirth? To make up for the devastation of that loss?

“We don’t know that,” Rafe said.

“No one knows why he attached that clause,” Tomas added.

“I do,” Maura said with more conviction than either of her sons. “I always wanted more children but after Cathy died, I couldn’t, physically or mentally. Charles vowed he would make that up to me, that he’d make me happy again.”

She shook her head slowly, sadly, and for the first time that night tears misted her vivid blue eyes. She hadn’t been happy in a long, long time, Angie knew, but usually she maintained a stoic facade.

“You, child—” Maura pointed across the table at Angie. “You made me happy when you came to live here. You were such a wild, joyous little thing. So full of life and so eager to give these boys a kick in their arrogance.”

“It was an easy target.”

Maura’s smile couldn’t disguise the lingering sadness in her eyes. “And now you’re making a baby with my son. Have you planned a wedding I know nothing about, too?”

“We’re not getting married,” Tomas answered, and his voice was about as tight as the constriction in Angie’s chest.

“Even if a baby comes of this?”

“That’s right.”

Maura stared at her son a second longer, then shifted her attention one place to the left. “And is that all right with you, Angie?”

“Tomas was very straight with me,” she said carefully, “about not wanting to marry again. I offered to have this baby, regardless.”

Maura nodded once, accepting that answer even though she obviously didn’t like it. Her disapproval and disappointment fisted hard around Angie’s heart and squeezed with all its might. She longed to blurt out the truth, to say
she wanted the marriage, the together, the forever, and she would probably keep on wanting it until the day she died. If she couldn’t change the stubborn man’s mind in the meantime.

“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, Angie, that’s not my place. But you know I was a single mother, twice over. I was lucky Charles came along and gave us all his love and this life and a complete family. I know which option I preferred, and that’s all I have to say to you.”

That’s
all?
Lucky there was no more because Angie’s poor heart would have caved. And the damn tears prickled the back of her throat so she couldn’t even look Maura in the eye and say she knew what she was doing. Then she felt Tomas’s hand on her knee, not a prolonged caress, but a single moment of pressure that expressed support and comfort and solidarity even.

It also made the battling-tears thing much, much worse.

“If you want to talk to me, Angelina,” Maura said, pushing back her chair and getting up from the table, “you know where to find me.”

“Thank you,” Angie managed.

“Angie won’t be staying much longer,” Tomas said at the same time.

Maura paused, her gaze flicking from one to the other and obviously reading Angie’s reaction correctly. “Charles and I told you a long time ago that this is your home,” she said. “You stay as long as you want.”

“I thought you were going to Wyndham today.”

Angie’s voice cut cleanly through the chill pre-dawn, catching Tomas midway through saddling his horse. His hands froze for a full second while his mind processed the facts. Angie. Out of bed. This early. At the barn. Carefully
he finished cinching the girth before he turned to acknowledge her greeting. “I am.”

“It’s a long way on horseback.”

Another time, after more sleep, he might have smiled at that comeback. Wyndham was a bloody long way by any transport other than plane. “I don’t have to leave till eight. I’m riding out to Boolah first.”

“Feel like some company?”

He hesitated—not to consider her request, but to decide how to put her off without a prolonged debate. After Maura’s return and last night’s dinner he knew they needed to talk, but not here, not yet. He hadn’t slept more than an hour and as for Angie…

“You look like you should still be in bed.”

“At this hour of the morning,
everyone
should still be in bed.”

“Funny.”

Except he didn’t smile, not when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and drew his attention to what she was wearing and not wearing. Like shoes. In fact, she looked like she’d rolled out of bed, tossed a denim jacket over her pajamas and raced from the house. And if her elevated breathing was anything to go by, she’d not only raced but sprinted the hundred yards from bedroom to barnside.

He gestured at the bare feet she was busy shuffling between. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll step in something fresh?”

“Funny.” And she did manage a smile. “I heard you walk by my room and I was in a hurry to catch you before you left. For Wyndham. Since I thought that’s where you were going.” Her explanation started off jaunty and bright and then trailed off, as if she’d suddenly noticed his flat expression. At least that’s what he was striving for. Flat, forbidding, go-back-to-bed-Angie.

“Sorry I woke you,” he said, turning back to his horse and trying to recall where he’d left off with the saddle.

“Oh, you didn’t. I was awake. Still.”

“Yeah, well, after last night I don’t imagine any of us slept well.”

He heard her shift feet again, heard the soft exhale of her breath, and when he walked around his horse to check the offside he noticed that she’d started twisting her chain—the one he’d fixed for her yesterday—around her fingers.
A for aftermath.

“It wasn’t only what Maura said. I lay awake thinking you might come.”

To her room? As he’d done the previous two nights?

Across his saddle their eyes met and held, sparking sudden heat into the chill morning air. For a long moment there was nothing between them but that heat and her honesty, and Tomas found he couldn’t lie. “I thought about it,” he said, moving back to his horse’s head, gathering his reins. “Most of the night.”

“But you didn’t…because of what Maura said?”

His hands tensed on the reins and Ace tossed his head in protest. With a few soothing words, he rubbed the green colt’s nose and promised to do better. For the horse, for his mother, for Angie who deserved much better than his recent treatment.

“I’m sorry she found out like that.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly, and he sensed her coming closer, felt the way his body responded. “The will clause stated she wasn’t to know.”

“That doesn’t make any of us feel a whole lot better.”

“I know.”

They stood in silence for several seconds, still but for the
stroke of her hand on his horse’s neck. That he could see from the corner of his eye, a long, slow, absent caress that made his own skin tighten. That made it remember every touch in the dark, every slow caress, every driving stroke of passion.

“I’m sorry, Angie,” he found himself saying. “That first night in Sydney, you told me about the teenage crush. I knew you expected more from me than what I was prepared to give, but I didn’t let it stop me. I should have. I’m sorry I’ve let you down.”

“You haven’t.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know you wanted more these last nights.”

Her hand stopped the idle stroking, and his horse whinnied a protest. Tomas sympathized. She had that effect, with her soft hands and warm eyes and easy touch. “It wasn’t all bad,” she said. “In fact some of it was pretty good. And I had plans for a spectacular last night.”

“I noticed the dinner, the flowers, the candles. The dress.” Especially the dress and the fact she’d not been wearing a bra. Same as now. When she lifted her hands to twist at her chain or rub at her arms—as she was doing now—he could see the dark outline of her nipples through the thin material of her pajama top.

“You liked the dress?”

Tomas swallowed. “Yeah.” He liked.

A small smile touched her lips, a sweet and innocent contrast to the sultry heat in her eyes. “Maybe it’s not too late. If you wanted to give this ride a miss and, well, you said you don’t have to leave till eight.”

Two hours. One last time. And it would be all about her, about what she liked, about her fulfillment.
A for atonement.
His body thickened in readiness; the air thickened with anticipation. And somewhere in the world beyond, a
ringer whistled tunelessly as he approached the barn and the start of his working day.

“Mornin’, boss,” he said. Then, “Bit early for you, eh, Ange?”

He continued on his way, but his interruption hurtled Tomas back into the real world.
His
real world. “I think it best if we leave things as they are.”

The hand at her throat stopped twisting the chain. “Do you mean altogether? Not try again at all, even if this time didn’t work?”

“Yes. I do mean altogether,” he said stiffly. He gave the girth one final check and excused himself so she stepped out of the way.

“Because Maura doesn’t approve?”

He put his boot into the stirrup and looked her right in the eye. “Because Maura was right not to approve.”

“But what about the inheritance?” She waved her arms wide. “What about all this? What about the ownership you’ve worked so hard for?”

“I’ve tried. It’s up to Alex and Rafe now.”

“Alex isn’t married yet, and Rafe said he’s still considering.”

He swung into the saddle, adjusted his weight. “He’s made up his mind…he’s not telling Mau is all.”

As intended, that news sidetracked her attention. She huffed out a breath. “Really?”

“Apparently he’s going to ask her tomorrow night.” He held up a hand, anticipating her next question. “Don’t ask me. Ask him.”

“I will, but I still won’t believe it until I see it. I mean, Rafe as a father?”

“He never backs down from a challenge.”

Her abstracted expression tightened and she looked up
at him sharply. “Is that what this is between you three? A challenge?”

“Not to me. Not to Alex. But to Rafe…probably. A challenge is the only thing that drives him.” He gathered up his reins. “He’s flying back to Sydney today.”

“And you think I should go with him?”

“That’s not my decision to make.”

“I’m not staying if you want me gone,” she said simply. “So it is your decision.”

And what could he say?
Go, because I’m afraid to have you here. Go, before I can’t walk past your door at night. Go, because I’m afraid of what you expect of me, afraid of what I can’t give.

“Stay until you know if you’re pregnant. Then we’ll both know.”

“Well, Charlie, here we are then.” Angie coaxed the elderly stock horse right up to the fence and sucked in a deep, dusty breath. “Wish me luck.”

Being of the seen-it-all-before persuasion, Charlie didn’t wish her anything that she could detect. In fact she thought the old darling might have nodded off around the three-mile mark and sleepwalked the rest of the trip. But he’d got her here, albeit slowly, and that was the main thing.

“Here” was the stockyards at Spinifex Bore, where Maura suggested she might find Tomas. And as she gathered up her reins and prepared to dismount, she cast her eyes over the cattleyard activity and zeroed in on his broad shoulders and tan hat instantly. Angie climbed from her saddle to the top rail without shifting her gaze from that tall, powerful figure standing right in the middle of the bellowing melee of cattle and dust and ringers. As always the
sight of him turned her breathless, tight, hot in a dozen separate places, but as she watched him work the desire softened like candle wax before reshaping into a fuller, richer craving.

This was a man in his element, doing what he loved, what he was born for. This was her man, and this was the life she longed to live with him. Even through the pall of dust raised by a thousand milling hooves, nothing could have been clearer in Angie’s eyes or mind.