Princes of the Outback Bundle (16 page)

It bolstered her resolve and reaffirmed her reason for riding out to see him today.

The notion had been simmering around in her brain for the five days since Maura’s return, since the morning at the barn when he terminated their arrangement. In that time she’d caught occasional glimpses of the old Tomas, and the more she saw, the more she wanted that man back. Over and over she’d recalled her conversation with Rafe about coming out here.

He needs you more than he needs this baby, Ange. He needs you so he doesn’t hole up in his shell like a hermit crab.
That’s why she’d come out here, and she was determined to do whatever she could with the little time remaining—not to get him back in her bed, but to remind him of the life he’d cut himself off from.

This morning Maura, unknowingly, handed her the perfect first step.

A slow smile spread across her face as she remembered her excitement as the plan took shape in her mind. As she recalled turning Maura’s initial horrified, “Oh, no, child, no thank you,” to nervous consent.

If Tomas approved.

Her smile wavered momentarily, but she forced it wider and lifted her chin. He would approve. She had her argu
ment all worked out, an answer for every permutation of
no
she’d anticipated on the long, slow ride out here.

It was, simply, a flawless plan…and she’d been unable to sit around all day and wait.

“Moment of truth, sister,” she muttered, and started to climb down into the action.

Tomas didn’t see her arrival. What he saw was a jackaroo’s distraction and a bullock charging at the draft. In one swift motion, he managed to push the kid aside and grab control of the gate.

“Shee-oot.” The youngster dusted off his backside and cast a sheepish glance in Tomas’s direction. “That was a close one.”

“Unless you like hospitals, you don’t even blink when you’re working the draft. Understood?”

“Yes, boss.”

Tomas nodded and handed control of the gate to the head stockman on this camp. “Watch him, Riley. I don’t want any accidents.”

“Then you better get the girl out of here.”

Shee-oot.

He swung around and instantly saw the reason for, not one, but pretty much every ringer’s distraction. Angie, wearing jeans that molded every inch of her backside, climbing into the yards. And smiling widely at every man who tipped his head and said “G’day, Ange.” And paying scant regard or respect to the beasts in the yard.

What in the blue blazes did she think she was doing?

Jaw set in a heated mix of fury and fright for her safety, he strode in her direction. A few curt words set the men back on task. A few deep breaths brought his seething response under control.

Her smile faltered and dimmed when he caught her by the arm and swung her back into the relative protection of a corner. “What are you doing?” she asked, when he kept turning her until he was happy he could see both her and the cattle.

“I’m making sure you don’t step into the path of half a ton of beef.”

“I know what I’m doing.” Eyes narrowed with indignation, she waved her free arm toward the activity. “I’ve been around cattle ten times as long as some of these kids.”

“Then you should know this is the most dangerous place on the station. You shouldn’t be distracting those kids.”

She blinked slowly, and her gaze turned contrite. “You’re right. I guess I should have waited up on the rail until you were done.”

Tomas shook his head. Did she really think that sight wouldn’t have distracted any red-blooded male? Her perched up there in her pretty pink shirt and tight jeans and Cuban heeled boots? His gaze narrowed on the footwear and then on the roping gloves that protected her hands. His gut tightened with a new and different fear. “Did you ride out here?”

“Of course I did. Why?”

He swore softly. Shoved his hat back from his brow. “What if you’re pregnant?”

“I rode Charlie, not one of these bulls. I don’t see how that could hurt.” She looked perplexed, as if she didn’t understand his concern. Hell, he didn’t understand it completely. Not the almost irrational rush of terror when he imagined her galloping down here at the bone-rattling speed she’d favored in her youth.

“Charlie, huh.” Readjusting his hat, he exhaled a long, slow draft of remnant fear. Charlie was a safer conveyance
than anything on wheels. He’d overreacted, big time. “I can’t imagine you enjoyed that much.”

“He has two speeds—slow and slower. I swear that snails overtook us on the way out here.” She smiled, but the softening of her expression kind of hitched in the middle when their eyes met and held. Still smiling, she reached out and touched his arm but her eyes were serious, dark, solemn. “I’ll be careful, okay?”

That expression, that touch caught at his throat. He knew he’d have to clear it to speak, if he had anything to say, so he just nodded. And his gaze slid down to the warm pressure of her hand on his arm, not so much arousing as…unsettling. Because he wasn’t thinking about those kid-gloved fingers stroking his bare skin. He wasn’t thinking about them sliding down inside his jeans and folding around him. He huffed out a breath. He was thinking about them sliding down and folding around his hand and, hell, that’s what he didn’t understand.

And she must have misunderstood his intense interest in her touch, because she suddenly withdrew her hand and tucked it into the front pocket of her jeans. He had the weird feeling that she’d taken something from him and tucked it away.

Unsettling? Holy hell, yeah.

There was an uncomfortable passage of silence before Angie tipped the brim of her white hat and cleared her throat. “So,” she said brightly, “do you want to hear why I put up with the slow ride all the way out here?”

Yeah, he did. But not here at the yards where she’d managed to turn him inside out with protective concern. With emotions he didn’t want, didn’t need, didn’t understand. “You can tell me while I drive you back to the homestead.”

“What about Charlie?”

“Riley can bring him home.

Her eyes narrowed with a frown, but Tomas didn’t give her a chance to object. Yeah, he knew Charlie was old and slow and safe. But he also knew he couldn’t go back to work knowing she was out there on horseback. Or still here at the yards with cattle milling around. Remnants of his earlier fear still twisted tight in his gut and sweated on his backbone. “This isn’t debatable, Angie. I need to know you get home safely. You’re riding in my ute.”

A
ngie was enjoying this protective concern of Tomas’s a little too much, especially since she knew in her heart it was all about the baby—a baby she might not have conceived. And she really had wanted to spend some time at the yards, maybe even working the cattle alongside the ringers, as she’d done so many times in her teens. Another day, she promised herself. Today she had a more important agenda.

“So.” Tomas glanced across at her from the driver’s seat. “What’s so important it couldn’t wait until tonight?”

“Alex rang this morning. He and Susannah are coming out next weekend, to visit with your mother.” A compromise, seeing as Maura—in fact, all of the family—would not be at their wedding. That’s the way they wanted it, apparently. No fuss, low key, over and done. “Anyway, I was thinking it would be nice to invite a few neighbors over on Saturday night. The ones who’ve been here while you all grew up. Alex’s friends.”

“A party?”

“A very small one. Hardly a party at all, really, because Maura wouldn’t come if there were too many people.” Silently she apologized to Maura for using her obsessive dislike of crowds so shamelessly. “I thought it would be good for her, too, to see a few friends in a nonintimidating environment.”

He made a sound that might have been agreement…or might not have. She snuck a quick peek at his face for reaction. None. Did he realize she was thinking that
he
needed to see a few people? To start mixing with
his
friends again?

“And in the interests of killing a few more birds with the one stone, I’d get to catch up with them, too. Before I leave.” Deliberately she’d left that point till last. Since she rather thought the point about her leaving would score high points. She crossed all her fingers, metaphorically. “So, what do you think?”

“I think Mau won’t have a bar of it.”

“Well, you’d be wrong. She agreed…if you did.”

He was silent for several long moments, his profile set in that obdurate fashion she knew so well.

“You won’t have to do anything,” she pressed. “Nor Maura. I’ll do all the work.”

“Bored with living out here already?” he asked.

The question sounded casual, like one of those by-the-way observations that can catch a person completely off guard. He didn’t turn and look at her. His profile remained stern, hard, serious. And Angie’s heart gave a warning bump. This was an important issue. She knew without knowing why…or perhaps she did know why.

Had Brooke grown tired of the outback life? Had she ever accepted the isolation? The absence of social stimulation, of shopping?

Not that she could ask, not when he’d cut her off so categorically the last time.

“Bored?” She laughed softly and shook her head. “I’ve never been bored out here. You know how keen I was to get back every school holiday.”

“School was a long time ago. You’ve changed.”

“Have I?” she asked, turning to face him, curious. “Because when I put on these jeans and boots I feel the same as I did back then.”

“They’re only clothes, Angie. Anyone can look the part.”

“True, but I’m not playing a part, Tomas. I’m just me. The same old Angie.”

“You’re not the same, Angie. No more than I am.”

“It’s true that some things change or are colored by our experiences, but we’re still the same here—” she tapped her chest, over her heart “—where it matters.”

They’d pulled up outside the homestead and she knew she had to get out of the ute before she said too much about what was in her heart where it mattered, and how little had changed.

“Can you think about the party?” she asked as she opened her door. “Because I won’t go ahead without your permission. Just think about it and let me know tonight, okay?”

In the dry season Tomas spent almost as much time away from home as at Kameruka Downs. That came with the Carlisle Cattle Company’s growth and acquisition of stations and feedlots right across the north of Australia. He accepted the travel along with the management challenges, and compensated with as much hands-on cattle work as he could fit into his time on home territory.

This time he’d been gone three days and nights, a standard excursion to the Queensland fattening properties,
nothing out of the ordinary. Yet as his plane dipped into its final approach to the Kameruka strip he felt much more than the usual dose of homecoming satisfaction. There was nothing standard about the powerful mixture of anticipation and anxiety that tightened his chest and gut.

That response owed nothing to the half-dozen station Cessnas parked alongside the strip, or the company plane that signified Alex’s presence. Rafe was in America, allegedly on business—although Tomas suspected there was a woman involved. With Rafe there usually was.

No, Angie’s party didn’t excite him; seeing Angie again did. Too tired to muster the usual denial, he accepted the truth much the same as he’d accepted the done-deal with tonight’s party.

How could he have said no to Angie’s arguments? It might be his home, but this was a party for Alex and Susannah, for Maura, and for Angie.

As for Tomas…well, he had considered not turning up. It would have been easy to make a last-minute excuse so he could escape the speculation and covert looks and awkward pauses after someone spoke Brooke’s name in a less-than-hushed tone. He hated all that. It was easier to avoid social functions—easier for him and easier for them.

As he taxied in he identified the various parked craft by their owners. All longtime neighbors and friends, so he’d have to be civil and spend at least a couple of hours in their company.

And after he hangared the plane and climbed into his ute, it struck him that their presence might actually have an up side. Already they were curbing an urgency in his blood, an impulse to flatten his foot and drive helter-skelter for home. If she were there alone—if she were waiting in the garden wearing a killer dress and a welcoming
smile—he might do something stupid and foolhardy and ill advised.

A house full of visitors would curb those crazy-man homecoming urges. Alex’s solid presence would remind him of the benefits of self-control. And Angie’s presence… His heart pulsed hard in his chest with a sudden raw swell of nervous emotion.

Angie’s presence would remind him of the date and the fact that today, tomorrow, the next day—one day very soon—they would know if she was pregnant or not.

The night was going about as well as Tomas had imagined. He went through the motions, talking to whichever of the guests cared to seek him out in his corner of the courtyard garden. Mostly they wanted to thank him for the invitation—apparently,
he’d
invited them!—and to congratulate him for handing the organization over to Angie.

Apparently she was a sensational hostess.

Ginger Hanrahan raved about her barbecue marinades. Di Lambert gushed about the fairy lights and asked if she could borrow them for her husband’s surprise fortieth. “Surprise?” her husband muttered. “The only surprise is that none of you Carlisles has snapped up Angie. Are you all blind?”

No, Tomas wasn’t blind. He could see that Angie wore the same dress as the night of their aborted dinner…except tonight she wore a bra. The tiny ivory one he’d scooped up from his bed the day she arrived, he discerned, since every time she leaned over the buffet table he caught a glimpse of one delicate satin strap.

It was driving him mad, the dress and the peekaboo strap and the fact that he couldn’t stop watching her.

“Knockout dress,” Alex said at his side.

Tomas scowled, not because Alex had noticed The Dress—who hadn’t?—but because he’d noticed Tomas noticing The Dress. Continuously. He had to stop staring.

“Enjoying your party?” he asked his brother.

“Tolerably.”

Tomas lifted a curious brow at that answer.

“We only agreed to come for Mau’s sake,” Alex said. “We didn’t need a party.”

Tomas’s silence was empathetic, since he didn’t need a party, either. His gaze scanned the several small groups, found Angie, of course, but not Alex’s fiancée. “Where’s Susannah?”

“Gone to bed.”

“Already?”

“Headache.”

Which explained why she’d looked so pale and tense, he supposed, although to his mind Susannah never looked anything else. His gaze slid back to Angie, Susannah’s vibrant, strong antithesis. She was talking to David Bryant, her head tilted as she listened intently, and in the muted garden light she practically glowed. For a second he was struck breathless by her sultry beauty, and then by his unconscious description.

His heart thudded hard in his chest. Was that the pregnancy thing they talked about? That inner glow?

At two weeks? Yeah, right. More likely it was the reflection off her party lights and the heady excitement of mixing with other people, new people, party people like herself.

He turned his head and looked away, and when Alex wandered off to check on Susannah, he found a shadowy corner where he couldn’t see Angie. She could talk till she was blue in the face about loving this place and this life,
but what she loved was people. Lots of people and stimulation and conversation. She wouldn’t be any happier living here than Brooke, not once the honeymoon was over.

That word choice settled hard in his gut. What was he doing comparing Angie with Brooke? And talking about honeymoons? He’d definitely had too long a day; he needed sleep. But as he stood glowering in the shadows, wondering how quickly he could execute a round of farewells, music started up in the great-room that opened onto the courtyard.

A few couples took to an arbitrary dance floor and he knew he’d missed his moment for a quick leave-taking. He watched the dancers, drawn by the image of coupledom and unable to look away. He watched their hands connect and their bodies brush, saw their shared smiles and moments of eye-meet, and felt a restless emotion swell inside him, a pain he didn’t want to name or know. A loneliness he thought he’d learned to control.

Abruptly he turned to leave, and swung right into Angie.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you.” And she had, for most of the night. Covertly watching, noticing how he always stood a little apart, how he never seemed to relax or laugh or embrace the party spirit. How at times he watched her with a quiet intensity. How at others he looked as remote and inaccessible as his Territory home.

Now she looked up into his darkly shadowed face and realized that his expression wasn’t flat and remote. At close quarters his eyes burned with a harsh blue light, a wildly ambiguous mix of yearning and heat and restraint that reached inside and fisted around her heart. Had she actually thought that throwing a party and forcing him to mix with a few old friends would somehow ease his inner torment? She was such an idiot. Such a Pollyannaish, rosy-glass-wearing fool.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, a hoarse whisper that sounded as dark and intense as the moment.

“Sorry? For what?”

How could she say for everything? All the things she longed to change and for not knowing how or where to start? She huffed out a breath, jerked her head toward the partygoers. “For making you endure this. It hasn’t been much fun, has it?”

“I’ve never been much for parties,” he said. “Don’t judge this one’s success by me. You did a great job.”

Yes, right, and she knew that. She knew the party had been a big success for the neighbors who still danced and talked and laughed, and a milder success for Alex and Susannah and Maura. But she’d wanted so much more from this evening. More of the impossible, she supposed, as always seemed to be the case with Tomas.

She looked away, off at the dancers who were moving in sinuous rhythm to a slow, torchy soul number. She’d deliberately chosen this song for tonight’s mix, thinking to get him on the dance floor. Thinking to wind her arms around his neck and to nestle against his shoulder and to brush knees and thighs and bodies. It was a song for lovers to dance to, to undress to, to make love to with the same sizzling beat.

So, sister, why are you standing here dying with wanting? Why don’t you take his hand and coax him onto the dance floor? Isn’t that why you sought him out?

“So.” He cleared his throat, and turned at the same time as Angie. Their hands collided in a brush of heat that singed the words on her tongue. For a moment they stood staring at each other, all burning eyes and dark heat and electric want. She didn’t imagine it. It was there, blue fire in his eyes, the only impetus she needed.

She tilted her head toward the music. “Do you realize we’ve never danced together?”

Heat flickered in his eyes, heat and a note of restraint. “I don’t dance, Angie.”

“Never? Or just with me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Come on, Tomas, humor me. I chose this music specially and I—”

“Leave it alone, Angie,” he said harshly. “I’m not dancing with you.”

“Because you don’t want to touch me? Or because you do want to?”

Acknowledgment, hot, strong, direct, charged the air as their gazes met and held. Angie’s whole body swelled with the unspoken but conceded knowledge—he wanted her. He might not like it, he might deny it tomorrow, but tonight he wanted her. She watched his nostrils flare slightly, watched the almost visible pull of restraint as he gathered himself, as he prepared to speak.

To tell her it made no difference. To call it sex, desire, lust. To say—

“Either of you care to join me for a nightcap?”

Alex. Angie sucked in a breath and prepared to tell him that, for an organizational genius, his timing sucked. But Tomas was already accepting the invitation to escape. Angie let her breath go and shook her head. “No, not me.”

When Alex headed back in search of a decent port, Tomas hesitated a moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow. At breakfast.”

Angie sensed this was more than a casual comment, but she was riding too fine a line between frustration and annoyance to pay more heed. “Sooner,” she said shortly. “In all probability.”

He tensed in a most satisfying way. “Sooner than breakfast?”

“I’m going to need to use your bathroom at some point. If that’s all right.”

“Come on, Angie, stop playing games.” A muscle ticked in his jaw, and she couldn’t tell if that was about tension or fear or just plain annoyance. “Tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”