Princes of the Outback Bundle (39 page)

But when she stepped off the tram and saw him on the opposite side of the road, waiting outside Caruso’s and scanning the street with the kind of restless impatience she recognized in her own blood, she knew she’d been fooling herself about why she’d agreed to meet him.

She’d been fooling herself, too, in thinking her choice of restaurant—a friendly, boisterous, Italian place—might make him feel uncomfortable and out of place. Ha. He’d dispensed with the corporate suit but still looked like a million dollars in dark trousers and a blue-gray shirt.

The same as in the gym two hours earlier, she couldn’t stop staring at the hard, chiseled beauty of his face. Couldn’t stop the memories of his kiss from unraveling in silky ribbons of response, a long yearning streamer of desire for
this
man, no matter how wrong, no matter how inopportune, no matter how destructive.

You shouldn’t have agreed to see him, Zara. You know that. Turn and walk—no, run!—away before it’s too late.

Except her feet remained rooted to the spot, not going
forward but not doing the smart thing and running away. And he saw her then, his restless gaze finding her face through the traffic and not veering for several long, breathless moments.
Run now,
her brain screamed, as he started toward her, his progress stalled by the rattling passage of two trams, one after another.

By the time he’d dodged both trams and several cars to reach her side of the road, by the time he’d paused to take in her batik skirt and vintage silk shirt and loose flow of hair, it was much too late to run. Then he smiled and took her hands and drew her so close she could feel the heat emanating from his body and her knees went weak with longing.

She swore he sniffed at her throat, just below her ear, before he kissed her cheek and drew back, still holding both her hands.

“What?” she asked, mesmerized by the hot pall of appreciation in his eyes and the kick of his smile.

“Just seeing if you smell as good as you look.”

Oh, yeah, it was much too late.

She was an absolute goner.

A
fter they ordered, Zara asked about Susannah and Alex told her about the phone call.

“Apparently there’s another man,” he said in an even voice.

Zara’s heart turned over.
Oh, Alex. Why would she want another man when she had you?
“Who is he? When did she meet him? How?”

“Someone from her past, apparently, who turned up again out of the blue. An American, obviously.”

Bowled over by this turn of events, by not knowing about any major man in Susannah’s past, Zara slumped back in her chair. She mulled over the signs from last week, when Suse had seemed distant and distracted. Then she considered the even, impassive way in which Alex had imparted the news. “Are you okay with this?”

“It would be hypocritical of me not to be,” he said wryly. “Given last weekend.”

Given meeting her. Given that kiss. Given the way he was looking at her now.

“Nothing has changed since last weekend,” she told him, wishing she could make her body believe the words. “I don’t want you to read anything into me being here.”

“This is just a meal.” He lifted one shoulder and both corners of his mouth, ever so attractively. “That’s all.”

Except dinner with Alex Carlisle was so much more than “just a meal.” One moment she talked and laughed in complete relaxation, the next she was struck dumb by the rush of heat when their legs brushed under the table and their eyes caught and captured the flame.

But there was more than the sexual thrall, more than the mesmerizing swirl of storm-blue eyes and her fascination with the lines that bracketed his face when he smiled, in the dusting of dark hair on the back of his hands and forearms. There was the sultry beat of desire when she thought about those hands on her body, and the ache of restraint because hers weren’t on him.

But mostly there was captivation, in his company and his conversation, in the connection she felt as they shared slivers of their lives, and in his attentiveness. Having a man like Alex Carlisle hanging on her every word was a heady, rich, empowering sensation that transcended anything she’d ever felt.

If she weren’t so enthralled and, yeah, turned on, she knew that would bother her on numerous levels. She shouldn’t need a man’s approval and attention to feel
this
good,
this
alive,
this
female. But she did feel all those things and for once she shoved all the be-responsible, think-about-tomorrow, look-after-your-own-happiness stuff aside, and immersed herself in the moment.

When he finally asked about her mother—as he’d prom
ised after breakfast five days before—she only smiled and met his eyes over the rim of her coffee cup. “I wondered when you’d get to that.”

“I wondered if you’d volunteer the information.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

And despite the casual exchange of lines, despite the smile on her lips and her relaxed posture, Zara felt a shiver of trepidation deep inside. This represented a new level of dinner conversation. This was the most important part of her life. This was everything that had shaped her world.

One part of her wanted to share, but another part warned her about the promise she’d made to Susannah and how easily that could be exposed if she didn’t tread warily. “You want to know why Mum was in the papers?” she asked, knowing she couldn’t avoid sharing this part. Hating what this would expose, nonetheless.

“That’s a start.”

Zara nodded. Drew a breath. And decided she might as well tell it like it was. In straight, bald terms. “One of the tabloids found out she was mistress to a powerful man. He was a big name in business and society and he’d set her up a flash house, bought her all the pretty things.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a story,” he said mildly, meeting her eyes across the table.

“Possibly not. Except Mum was pregnant. At the same time as his wife, as it happens. Big story, big scandal, big scarlet woman.”

“She didn’t know he was married?”

“She didn’t know Mi—” She caught herself before the name slipped out. “His wife was pregnant, that’s for sure. She didn’t talk about him much, but I rather think he’d spun her the usual lines. His marriage was over but he couldn’t
end it for business reasons. To protect his fortune and his status, I imagine. Then, when this story broke, she found out he’d been less than truthful.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and Zara resisted a fierce urge to fill the silence by defending her mother for the unforgivable. To justify something Zara had only started to comprehend in the last week, since she’d met this man. Because, even knowing Alex Carlisle belonged to another woman, she had been tempted.

You know you could have had me.

I know.

“This was your father?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts.

“Yes, but please don’t ask about him. Nothing personal. I don’t talk about him to anyone.” She attempted a smile and felt the tug of its tight, bitter edges. “It’s not good for my sanity.”

“What about your mother’s?”

“Oh, she got over him. She had her pride and she was always practical. She had a baby to raise.”

“Appears she did a fine job.”

“Yes. She did,” Zara said with no false modesty. “No one had a better mother than I did.”

Something flitted across his expression as he watched her, an element she’d not seen before. Intense but with softer edges, it stole her breath and sounded alarm bells in her head. A warning that this man could steal so much more than her breath, that he could make her want too much and leave her wanting more.

Then his eyes narrowed a smidgen, deepening the creases at their edges.

“What’s that look about?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’m just picturing you as a little girl.” His lips lifted into
a smile and as quickly as that he turned the mood around. “Did you play at being a doctor?”

“Yes.” Relief washed through her as she smiled back at him. Relief that he’d not wanted to pursue that serious moment, or press her about the father she didn’t want to know. That instead he’d chosen to lighten the tone. “I loved my red plastic stethoscope and the medical encyclopedia best.”

“Interesting choice of reading.”

“Oh, my mum read me traditional stories, too.”

His lips quirked again. “Fairy tales?”

“You betcha. She wanted me to know that Little Red Riding Hood and her girlfriends made some singularly bad decisions regarding big, bad wolves and kissing frogs and the like. She brought me up to believe I could rescue myself rather than waiting around for a stray prince or woodcutter.”

“Cynical,” he said, eyes narrowed, thoughtful, “but interesting.”

“Realistic,” she corrected, “but why interesting?”

“At the cabin last weekend you said you would only marry for love.”

“Yes, and one day I will. In the meantime I’m not hanging around waiting for my prince.”

Unfortunate wording, she realized, when his eyes darkened with the impact of her word choice, but she refused to acknowledge that link to him. He wasn’t her prince. He wasn’t a prince at all, to anyone but the trash media she despised.

Lifting her chin a fraction, she met his eyes. “In the meantime I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”

“You’ve always wanted to study medicine?”

“Pretty much. I danced when I was little, and then I got into sports. Along the way I developed a fascination for the human body and how it works, so that was always my first
choice for university. I’d only done one year when Mum got sick.”

“You deferred your course to look after her?”

“Yes.” She shifted in her seat, uneasy talking about that soul-destroying time as her mother’s damaged nervous system gave out and her muscles wasted away. “Afterwards it took a while to get myself together. When I did resume my course work I was even more determined to get my degree.”

“Because you promised her.”

“There is that, but also…I wanted to do something that would make a difference. It’s hard to explain but it’s like…it’s like I didn’t want her suffering to have been in vain.” She finished up in a rush and then rolled her eyes self-consciously. “I know that sounds ridiculous.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

The quiet certainty of his voice, in his expression, made her heart trip in her chest. She drew a deep breath, cautioned herself again about feeling too much, responding too much. Falling too hard.

“What about your father?” he asked after a moment. “Would he be proud of you too?”

The automatic response, the I-don’t-give-a-damn-what-the-bastard-thinks, froze under his serious regard. For some reason she felt a connection, an emotional accord, and another answer altogether slid easily from her tongue. “I always thought I didn’t care, but before he died you know what I discovered? There was this rogue part of me that wanted to make a mark. To be a somebody, a success, so that one day he might come looking for me. That he might want to know me.”

“You went looking for him?” he asked slowly. Astutely.

“When I couldn’t look after Mum anymore, when she
moved into care, I had to sell the house. Anyway, I found those paper clippings. She’d kept them all, I don’t know why, so he wasn’t difficult to find.”

“And you wished you hadn’t bothered?”

“No. Actually, I’m glad I found him.” Frowning, she searched for the words to explain what sounded like a paradox. “I guess I’d always wondered if things had been different—if he hadn’t been married or if he’d divorced his wife—what might have been. Meeting him cemented that we were better off on our own.”

“You didn’t hit it off, huh?”

“Nicely put.” And for once she realized that talking about Edward Horton hadn’t twisted her insides into knots. No aftertaste soured her mouth. An ironic smile curved her lips as she considered another aspect of those dark months. “On the positive side, I was into kickboxing at the time and meeting him had a big impact on my aggression.”

Smiling at that, he reached across the table and trapped her hand in his. And when she looked into his eyes Zara actually felt something inside her give. “We had that in common,” he admitted softly.

“You kickbox?”

A joke, sort of, but he didn’t laugh. “The aggressive streak because of a father who didn’t want to know me. Except I got lucky when my mother married Chas. I didn’t need to go looking. There was nothing I wanted from my biological father, I had nothing to say to him.”

“Is that why honoring your stepfather’s will matters so much?”

“It seemed the least I could do.”

“And now?” she asked.

“My brothers tell me there’s still hope. Tomas and Angie
are back together. Rafe and his wife have worked out their problems, apparently.”

“That must be a relief.”

“Of sorts.” His shrug looked tight, not quite casual. “I don’t like that I can’t uphold my end of the pact.”

No, he wouldn’t. Zara could see that in the stormy swirl of his eyes and the tight set of his mouth. He would view it as failure. “Worse,” she said solemnly, “to have married for the sake of the pact and then regretted it afterward.”

“Do you regret coming here tonight?” he asked after a moment.

“No.”

Heat sparked in his eyes as he turned her hand over and linked their fingers. Heat and everything else that had passed between them during what had never been “just a meal.” And in that instant she was back on the street, her gaze trapped by the smoky intensity of his, thinking
I am a goner.

“What are we going to do,” he said, low and gruff, “about this?”

The background noise faded to a dull blur as all Zara’s focus centered on him. The unsmiling intensity of his expression, the silent appeal in his eyes, the heated charge of his touch. “I don’t know.”

“Would you like to come back to my hotel room?”

Her simple “yes” almost brought Alex to his knees. So unexpected, so honest, so exactly how this night had to end. He didn’t question her motivation. He paid the bill; he ushered her outside; he made small talk about the food and the balmy spring night while they waited to hail a taxi in busy Sydney Road.

On the surface he maintained his cool. Inside anticipation
honed his focus to a keen knife’s edge. He had to get this woman—this woman he wanted more than his next breath—back to his hotel and into his bed before she reconsidered.

A cab pulled up on the opposite side of the street and he took her hand, towing her through the traffic until he could steer her into the back seat. He didn’t see any reason to let go of her hand. He liked the strength of her grip, the intimacy of their linked fingers, the charge of heat when he rested their joined hands on his thigh.

The grip of tension when her fingertips brushed the fabric of his trousers.

That touch, innocent but incendiary, blew whatever he’d been discussing with the cabbie clean out of his brain. Finals football? The pre-election polls? The upcoming spring racing carnival? Frowning, he struggled out of the lust fugue and forced himself to focus on the driver’s laconic commentary because, hell, if he started thinking about those fingertips on his skin, if he gave in to the urge and lifted her hand to his lips, if he tasted a hint of her sweet scent then he would be lost.

“Got a runner in the Cup this year?” the cabbie asked.

Alex knew he’d been identified before this giveaway question. The driver’s eyes kept darting to his mirror, watching, not missing a thing. Hence his caution with Zara. He’d kicked himself to kingdom come and back again after last week’s recklessly public kiss outside the hotel. It’s a wonder
that
hadn’t appeared front page in the tabloids!

Tonight he was being more circumspect. Hand-holding was fine. Anything involving tongues was definitely behind closed doors.

“Irish Kisses is entered,” he supplied in answer to the cabbie’s question about the Melbourne Cup. “We’ll see how her form holds up in the meantime.”

“Guess a lot can happen in…how long till the big one?”

Alex did the calculation. “Five weeks next Tuesday.”

And, yes, a lot could happen in that length of time. His horse could go lame, get sick, train off—any one of a dozen variables could rob him of a starter in Australia’s richest horse race.