Princes of the Outback Bundle (2 page)

“Would you like coffee?”

She was leaving Australia. Going to America to work with Grant Rose
freakin
warne, big shot movie man. And her ex-lover. She might as well have walked right up and punched him in the solar plexus. Instead, she was asking if he wanted coffee.
Yeah, sure, and then we’ll talk about the weather!

He declined the coffee with a gesture. “When do you leave?”

“For America? The end of next week. When I get back to Sydney from here, I’ll only have six days. And I have so much still to do. Packing. Putting furniture in storage.”

Her words spilled in a rush, one sentence on top of the next, and all the while she didn’t stay still—putting away the extra cup, rinsing her spoon, wiping the bench. Finishing one coffee and pouring herself another.

Before she could take a sip, Nic crossed the kitchen in six sharp strides and confiscated the cup. More caffeine she did not need. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

As if taken aback by his abrupt action, his question, his proximity—perhaps by all three—she blinked slowly. “I didn’t know about this job until last month, but I told you in my letter I was looking for a change. You knew I wasn’t happy—”

“What letter?”

She finally stilled completely. A frown drew her fine brows together. “The one I wrote after your last visit. After you left to take this job in Malaysia.”

“That’s more than six months ago.”

“You didn’t get the letter,” she said softly, and she kind of slumped back against the bench, as if all the nervous energy had drained out of her. Troubled eyes lifted to meet his. “You didn’t reply. You didn’t call. And then you pulled that stunt earlier.”

“That…stunt?”

“Getting into bed with me. I thought you were just being…” She blew out a breath. Shook her head slowly.

“Being what, Liv?”

“Insensitive. Stubborn. Obtuse. I don’t know.” She pushed off the bench, started pacing again. “I thought you were trying to catch me at a weak moment so you could change my mind. I didn’t expect you’d like me ending it that way. Especially in a letter.”

It took Nic several seconds to latch on to the key words.
Ending it.
Then he only heard the black churn of rejection in his brain. The fire of challenge in his blood.

She was right about one thing: he did not like her ending it—
thinking
she was ending it—by any method.

“Let me get this straight,” he said slowly, quietly. “You sent me a letter in…January?”

She nodded.

“Right after we spent a week in that condo in the mountains doing it every which way but Sunday, and not once did you mention ‘ending it’. Where the hell did this come from, Liv?”

“I didn’t mention it then because I didn’t
know
then,” she fired back, hot and indignant. “I never
think
when I’m with you, Nic, because we’re too busy doing it every which way! It’s after you go that I start to think. I’m almost thirty. I can’t do this…whatever we do…anymore.”

Everything inside him railed against her words. Everything—body, eyes, voice—tightened in fierce rejection. “Out of the blue you realize you’re getting older? So
you
decide that
we’re
over?”

He watched her face pale, her eyes darken, her lips tighten. Shit. Hard-ass confrontation never worked with Olivia. If he was to change her mind—which he would, or die trying—then he would have to rethink his method.

What were her earlier accusations? Insensitive. Stubborn. Obtuse. He owned up to the latter two, but he wasn’t so insensitive he couldn’t see she was out on her feet, exhausted by the drive, emotionally drained from visiting her sister’s grave…then his unexpected appearance.

“We need to talk about this, Liv. But now doesn’t seem to be a good time…is it?”

“You think there is a good time?”

With a wry sound of agreement, he closed the space between them. Before she could guess his purpose, he dropped a chaste kiss on her forehead. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, when he would start proving they were nowhere close to ending anything.

Olivia woke with the same thought circling her mind as when she’d—eventually—fallen asleep. Nic had walked away much too meekly. So, okay, she’d been relieved that he hadn’t pressed her further. Last night she hadn’t been up for an emotionally wrenching showdown.

Lord knew she was no more ready that morning!

After sending the letter, she’d been over and over the fallout sooooo many times in her imagination. Preparing for his phone call that never came. At least now she knew his lack of response wasn’t indifference. All those nights, worrying over his reaction, then hurting because he didn’t respond, and he hadn’t even received the letter.

Now she knew. Now she had to deal with it all over again. Today. Face to face.

She took her morning coffee onto the verandah and prayed that the long, flat, serene landscape would calm her anxiety. She thought about her sister Brooke’s love-hate relationship with this place. She’d loved her husband; she’d hated the outback’s loneliness. Her death two years ago in a light plane crash had impacted so many lives—her heartbroken husband, her grieving parents.

Olivia—once she’d gotten through the initial stages of grief—had come to realize that she needed more from her own life. Which lead her right back to thinking about The Letter and the explanation she owed Nic. She’d faced worse conversations. Telling her parents their youngest daughter was dead, for example.

Compared to that hellish day, this would be sunshine and laughter.

That didn’t stop her nerves skittering back to life when she heard the steady clip-clop of horses’ hooves. Two of them ambled into view, Nic riding one and leading the other.

He stopped at the edge of the garden and raised his hat in a very cowboy way. “Mornin’, ma’am.”

That phony western accent should have made her smile. It did steady her nerves somewhat, although her heart did a funny skip. How could she have known it harbored a secret cowboy fetish?

“Must say I didn’t expect to see you up this early.”

“Been up for hours,” she lied.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“I need to get an early start. It’s a long drive back to Darwin.” And that was only the first leg of her trip back home. From that northern city she faced a four-and-a-half hour flight to Sydney. This truly was the middle of the outback, a long, long way from anywhere.

Nic’s eyes were shaded by his broad-brimmed stockman’s hat, but she felt his gaze narrow on her face. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No.”

For a second, nothing. He just sat there on his horse, quiet as the morning, studying her. Then, “I thought you had more sense.”

Livvy stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“You drove all the way from Darwin yesterday. Nine hours straight?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

“You look like you slept about as good as me.”

“I slept just—”

“And now you’re going to turn around,” he said over the top of her, “and drive back.”

“I have a ticket on tonight’s flight. I need to get home. To pack.”

He eyed her silently another moment. “I can fly you back tomorrow. Direct, here to Sydney. No long drive to the Darwin airport. No check-in line. No airline food.”

She was shaking her head before he finished. “Uh-uh, no way. You won’t get me up in one of your dinky little planes.”

“The King Air’s neither dinky nor little. The Carlisles had it custom fitted. It’ll be like flying in your own private plane.”

It would mean staying here, with you, an extra day and night.
“I don’t think so.”

“What about this talk we need to have? You want me to come up there and we can go at it right now?”

Livvy’s stomach churned.
Oh, God. I’m so not ready for this.

“On the other hand, if you stayed, you could save it till tonight or tomorrow morning.” His voice was slow and reasonable and ever so tempting. “There’d be no rush at all.”

Nic knew he had her, but he reined in the urge to grin and
yee-haw
like the cowboy he was decked out as. He didn’t want to get too cocky. Getting her to stay an extra day was only half the battle.

“You want to go and get dressed?”

“Why?” she asked, eyes narrow with suspicion.

He bit back the instant answer:
because the sight of you in pajamas is making sitting on a horse pretty damn uncomfortable
. Even with the wild hair and the dark circles under her eyes, she made his insides tight just looking at her. “We’re taking you riding.”

“We?”

“Yes, ma’am. Me and Charlie here.” He lifted the reins on the lead horse. “He’ll be your steed for today.”

“He appears to be asleep.”

“Charlie can sleep just about anywhere. That’s half his charm.”

After a little more cajoling, she dragged herself off. While he waited, Nic amused himself by picturing her getting dressed. Also not the comfortable thing to do while sitting in an unforgiving saddle.

Half a lifetime later she sauntered back out wearing jeans and boots and a hat belonging to Maura Carlisle. She could have passed for a regular stockhand ready for a day’s muster, until she stood beside the horse and looked up. “That looks like a long way to fall.”

“Trust me, you won’t fall.”

Helping her denim-wrapped backside into the saddle was a treat in itself. As he adjusted her stirrups and showed her how to hold the reins, Nic congratulated himself on this inspired idea. Lying awake during the night he hadn’t come up with a lot more in the way of ideas.

Oh, he’d thought about sabotaging her car so she couldn’t leave but that hadn’t sat right. Then he’d tried to imagine coming home from his contract stints overseas without having her waiting for him afterward. And, yeah, the sabotage idea had then sat a whole lot straighter.

Lucky he hadn’t needed to resort to that. Postponing their talk had been enough. That and the lure of a ride back to Sydney in one of the Carlisles’ private planes.

“This isn’t so hard.”

Nic turned to find her smiling, delighted at her achievement of staying on board. “You look like you were born to it, Annie Oakley.”

“Yeah?”

Man, she was something when she smiled. Pure sunshine and, hell, the emotion just kind of welled up from his chest. He couldn’t find any words to describe it—nothing but, “Christ, I’ve missed you, Liv.”

And, of course, the clouds came over her smile and he kicked himself all the way to purgatory and back again.

They rode up to the Barakoolie ridge with its commanding view of the station. Either the startling vista, the relaxing cadence of horseback or the breathtaking combination of sky and earth and ranges chased the clouds away again. Side by side they sat and took it all in, and Nic felt that same chest-full feeling as when Liv’d smiled.

The same as when he’d landed yesterday, only more so because of the woman at his side.

As if feeling the gravity of his gaze on her face, Liv turned in her saddle and met his eyes. They were so close that when his horse fidgeted their knees brushed. So close that she leaned across and touched his hand when she said, “Thank you for bringing me up here. For this alone, I’m glad I stayed.”

Nic couldn’t think of anything to say to that. So he turned her hand over, trapping it in his. There was nowhere for her to go, no way she could escape, and as soon as his mind latched on to that fact, he couldn’t help himself.

He leaned across and kissed her.

There was a moment before their lips met when Olivia could have ducked away. A hint of hesitation as their gazes linked and she read the question in his eyes.

Your choice, Livvy: yes or no?

Perhaps, she could have resisted if that was all. But beyond the simple, she read the complex—a dark yearning, a fierce heat, a watershed of emotion that washed through her from head to toe.

And then the moment was gone, engulfed in sensation as he closed that last inch. His lips were warm, his touch restrained, as if he were savoring that first contact as much as she.

She drew a breath, and her senses filled with the scent of leather and earth and Nic. As his lips moved against hers, touching, retreating, returning, her eyes drifted shut and she let herself drift, too.

Back to the day they met, here at Kameruka Downs, at her sister’s wedding to Tomas Carlisle. She’d been with Grant at the time, but she’d seen Nic watching her. They’d danced—one long, slow, up-close number—and at the end he’d kissed her hand. One brief, glancing lick of heat and her knees had almost given out. She’d known then that his kisses would change her world.

They didn’t hook up until two years later, but holy Toledo, she had been right about his kissing!

One of the horses snorted and she felt his mouth kick into a smile even as he deepened the kiss. One of his hands slid around her neck, holding her still, drawing her closer, while he slowly—oh, so slowly—tasted his way into her mouth.

He started to retreat. She followed. Wanting more, not nearly ready for the kiss to finish. It would be their last, she reasoned, and how fitting it should be here, at Kameruka, where it all began.

Around the edges of her senses a noise intruded—a vague rumble that sounded like a vehicle. Then her horse shifted beneath her and she started to tip sideways. Nic rescued her, his hand sliding from her neck to her arm, holding her steady until she’d regained her balance.

“Okay?”

She nodded, unsure which had rocked her more—the threat of tumbling from the side-stepping horse or Nic’s kiss. Or could it be the fact she’d succumbed so easily and completely to his move?

His hand slid away from her arm and she realized that his attention had also shifted.

Following the direction of his narrowed gaze, she saw a vehicle stopped at the end of the track and recognized it as the sound that had disturbed their kiss.

“It’s Jeremy.” Nic frowned. “One of the jackaroos. I’d better see what he wants.”

Nic urged his horse forward and then into a canter. Olivia followed at her own pace, which was slow. Her heart, however, had started to gallop. Even from this distance she could see the serious expression on the young stockman’s face, could sense the tension in Nic as he dismounted.

Was it bad news from the hospital? About Mr. Carlisle?

Clinging to the saddle with hands, knees and willpower, she clicked Charlie up a gear and somehow made it to the men without falling off. “What’s happened?”

“A rollover on the Boolah road,” Nic said shortly. “A family. They need help, urgently.”

“What kind of help? Is there a flying doctor available?”

The Royal Flying Doctor Service operated all over the outback, as far as she knew. They flew in to provide medical care in isolated communities and took the injured and ill to hospital.

“They’re on their way but at least an hour away, maybe more.” Nic didn’t waste time with instructions on dismounting—he just hauled her body from the saddle and handed the reins over to Jeremy. Nic began to sprint toward the vehicle, so she followed. “We can get there in half that time.”

“In the truck?”

He cut her a quick look as she slid into the passenger seat. “By plane. That’s why Jeremy came to fetch me. The other pilots are out on muster. I’m it.”

“But how can you help?” Her voice came out croaky, husky with fear. She should have stayed with Jeremy, helped with the horses, but already they were tearing across the plain, heading straight for the airstrip. “What can you do when you get there?”

“Mark out a landing strip for the doc’s plane, then do whatever I can. There’s kids, Liv. Whether they’re hurt or not, they’ll be scared. Are you coming with me?”