Princes of the Outback Bundle (3 page)

The accident could have been a lot worse. A family on holiday, driving too fast in a four-by-four loaded with camping gear, got into trouble on a rutted dirt road and tipped the top-heavy vehicle over. The result: an unconscious mother, two kids with broken bones, and a helluvalot of pain and anxiety.

But with the medical care they were now receiving, they’d be all right. The Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft had taken off ten minutes earlier with the whole family on board, leaving Nic and Olivia alone again.

Hands on hips, Nic squinted into the distance where he could just make out Olivia’s slight figure. She’d walked off once the children she’d been comforting were in the hands of the medical team. He’d let her go, knowing she needed to compose herself.

At least a dozen times he’d wished he hadn’t asked her to come. The first was back at the Kameruka airstrip, when he saw her grow pale and almost rigid with fear as he buckled her into the station plane. And he remembered her words from that morning:
You won’t get me up in one of your dinky little planes.

“You don’t have to do this,” he’d said, suddenly struck by the extent of her fear.

“I want to,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Now stop wasting time. Get this thing off the ground before I lose my courage…and/or my breakfast!”

For a second he’d closed his hand over her white-knuckled grip on the seat, and once airborne he’d tried to distract her with a running commentary on the landmarks. Maybe it helped a little.

Their hairy landing at the accident site hadn’t.

Nic slapped a hand against the Cessna’s fuselage. Considering the lack of a formed strip, he’d done a decent enough job putting them down. But they’d hit a couple of deep ruts in the road—much the same as the tourists in their vehicle—and he wasn’t taking the plane up again until she’d been thoroughly checked out.

Now he had to break that news to Olivia.

“Please don’t tell me I have to get back into that thing,” she said as soon as he was within hearing distance. “Not yet.”

“Okay. I won’t. And you don’t.”

Exhaling long and loud with relief, she turned to look at him. Thank God she’d gotten some color back in her face. But deep in her eyes he could see the remnant strain, from both the flight and the chaos they found at the accident site.

Later they would talk about that…and other things. Like why she’d let him kiss her earlier and why she’d kissed him back. In his mind, that changed everything. But for now—

“Are you up for a walk?”

Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “Where to?”

“Boolah stock camp.” Nic tilted his head toward the south. “It’s a few miles thataway.”

Her gaze shifted in the direction he indicated. “What‘s there?”

“Well, I haven’t been there in ten years but I’m hoping there’s water and supplies from the last muster.”

“Supplies as in food?”

“Yup.”

Breakfast had been a long time ago and they’d missed lunch. He could tell by the look on her face that Liv liked the idea of lunch. And that she was putting together the rest of the story.

“Did that landing damage the plane?” she asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m not risking taking her up on a maybe call.”

Something sharpened in her gaze, an emotion, an agreement, then was gone. She moistened her lips. “Are you telling me we’re stranded out here?”

“Only until someone comes looking for us.”

He didn’t tell her that a search party wouldn’t leave until the morning. Or that he’d radioed Kameruka from the grounded plane and made sure of that.

Considering the alternatives—getting back in that devil-monster-with-wings or sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere until they were rescued—Olivia didn’t mind the long walk. For the first mile or two she appreciated the slow pace and Nic’s silence. Both helped unwind the knots of tension that had twisted tighter and tighter over the past few hours.

When he did talk, it wasn’t about the accident or their postponed we-have-to-talk talk. It was snippets about growing up here at Kameruka Downs with his brother Carlo and sister Angie and the three Carlisle brothers. Light, amusing stuff that kept her from dwelling on dark, unamusing thoughts.

She walked. She even managed an occasional smile, and degree by degree, mile by mile, she found herself relaxing. Perhaps, it would be all right. Perhaps, given all that had happened since, he would let the kiss slide. Perhaps, he wouldn’t press her to explain the unexplainable.

The hut, she soon discovered, came with primitive plumbing, shelter and storage for the stockmen’s supplies, and that was the whole caboodle. Since those supplies included food, she didn’t complain
too
much.

After they wolfed down a very basic, very late lunch, Nic dragged two bedrolls out from the hut. Olivia frowned. “What are those?”

“You’ve never seen a swag before, city gal?”

Frowning, she watched him unroll the first to reveal a thin foam mattress inside blanket-lined canvas.

“Outback bedding,” he explained. “Perfect for sleeping under the stars.”

“Don’t you think someone will find us before then?”

He looked up sharply, and something in his dark gaze caused her pulse to trip. Then he smiled, the slow charmer’s grin that didn’t help calm her elevated heart rate. “Probably. But in the meantime, why don’t you take a nap? You look bushed.”

Ridiculously conscious of his presence, of their isolation, of all the days and nights they’d shared a bed—of her body’s reaction to that smile—she hauled her swag into the sheltering shadow cast by the hut. She closed her eyes and she worried.

This was the perfect opportunity to talk, but she couldn’t bring herself to take that first step. There would be fireworks, drama, distress, and after the hours at that accident she wanted some respite from anguish. Later, they would talk. After she’d rested her eyes, her mind and her raw emotions.

Surprisingly, she slept; right up until Nic roused her to watch the sunset. At the time she had mumbled and moaned. Now she was glad.

“That was worth waking up for.” Stretched out on her swag, significantly cleaner after a bushman’s bath and significantly more relaxed after her nap, she was watching Nic tend to the campfire. And trying not to notice how damn much she enjoyed watching him. Much like the sunset, she couldn’t look away.

He cut her a sideways look. “The beans or the coffee?”

“The sunset. They were one of the few things Brooke liked about the outback. She tried to describe the colors to me, but they don’t translate into words.”

Like love, like grief, like all emotions.
She’d discovered that while trying to compose that letter. While thinking about what she had to tell him that night.

“Brooke didn’t like the outback?”

“She hated the isolation and the lack of amenities. She would have hated this!”

Even as she said it, an inner voice whispered
liar
. Brooke wouldn’t have hated everything about camping if she’d been with Tomas. She would have loved watching him in the firelight. She would have felt the same for Tomas as Olivia was feeling for Nic right now…

When would he put the poker down and walk over to her?

“And you, Olivia? You don’t hate it?”

His voice curled through her, as soft as smoke, and she shivered a little. It was the way he said her name—her whole name. That never failed to turn her inside out.

“No,” she said, just as softly. “I don’t hate it.”

Carefully, he put aside the poker and her shiver turned to heat. Then he started to walk toward her.

Nic sat down on the edge of her swag because, hell, he couldn’t keep his distance any longer. Although she wriggled away to create some space between them, she didn’t bolt. That had to be a good sign.

Not that he was making any moves. Yet. They had all night and a nice slice of the morning, so he didn’t need to rush.

There were bits of him ready to rush—bits hard and aching from watching her sleep on this makeshift bed for half the afternoon, and from putting his hand on her soft and sleep-warm shoulder to wake her. And from noticing how she’d discarded half her clothes after she washed.

Inside her cozy swag, not six inches away, her legs were bare. He’d lay odds she’d discarded her bra as well. For all he knew she might be bare-ass naked except for the long western shirt.

Which he was not going to think about while he was fully dressed. Sitting down. In jeans.

He shifted, stretching his legs out in a vain attempt to get comfortable. “You never told me about your sister hating the outback.”

“You never told me about running away from boarding school,” she countered, quoting one of the stories he’d told her while they’d walked. It was an effort to distract her from the accident, to wipe the sad shadows from her eyes. “Or about putting a cane toad in Angie’s bed. Or the blindfold race down the bluff to the waterhole.”

Nic shrugged. “They’re just stories.”

“Just stories or a symptom?”

“Of…?”

“In all the years we were together, we never talked much, did we?”

All Nic heard was her use of the past tense—
were
together—and denial kicked in.

“We talked more than enough. When I got back you always asked about where I’d been, my last job.”

Her face was in shadow. He couldn’t see her expression, but he heard her soft expulsion of breath. “Oh, we’d start out in the right direction. But then somewhere around the second sentence…”

The soft heat in her eyes would fry the words on his tongue and the only thing he’d think of to say would be, “Ah, Liv, I’ve missed you like crazy,” as he’d reach for her. And as quick as he could utter “unzip me” they’d be naked and halfway to paradise.

Nic frowned and shoved those images aside. Remembering the softness of her hands on his skin and her husky
hurry-up
murmurings and her sexy cat’s smile when she had him right where she wanted him—hell, none of that was doing him any favors right now.

“So, talk to me, Liv,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended. Because he was about half-a-memory away from turning and saying,
Ah, Liv, I’ve missed you like crazy
. And,
unzip me
.

“About?”

He heard the caution in her voice and knew what she was thinking. But he didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to break the tentative strands of connection he’d allowed to slowly build through this long day. “Today. After the accident. You went very quiet.”

For a long, tense minute he thought she was going to clam up. He shifted closer, moving so he could see her face in the flickering light.

And the sadness on her face, in her eyes, punched him in the heart.

“It was that little girl, Hollie. I was holding her and she put her arms around my neck. And it was just like when I used to hold…when Brooke was little…she used to—”

Her voice, already low and husky, caught on her sister’s name, and although she drew a shaky breath and tried to continue, she couldn’t. Because, ah hell, she was crying. Those silent, heartbroken tears that always did him in.

Nic didn’t think. He just reached for her.

Olivia let him comfort her. At first it was an awkward hug, with him sitting and her lying down, but then he stretched out beside her and pulled her close.

How could she object? She’d always loved the solid strength of his chest and the way their bodies matched up. She loved how his hands stroked her back and tucked her hair back from her face.

She even loved the slight tension she felt in his big body. He was a man, after all, and inherently averse to tears.

Yet he held her, the same as he’d done at Brooke’s funeral and for so many days and nights afterward. And when the initial flood of tears eased, he tucked her even closer, and pressed a tender kiss to the top of her head.

She knew if she stayed right where she was long enough—maybe another minute or two—he’d make some crack to ease the what-next awkwardness. He’d managed to make her laugh in days when she thought she’d never laugh again.

“It’s a gift,” he’d told her more than once, and thinking about that now—thinking about her decision to walk away from a man with such a gift—jabbed sharply in her heart.

Suddenly, she couldn’t wait for him to make funny. She didn’t want to be reminded of how things used to be between them. How, after the wisecrack, he’d dry her tears and then he’d kiss her, and within the space of a long stroke of his magic hands the kiss would turn from tender comfort to warm arousal to consuming flames.

As always when he held her, she’d managed to get her hands on his chest. Beneath them she felt the solid thud of his heartbeat. And the heat of his body. As always, her body hummed in response, even as she used those hands to lever some space between them.

“I’m sorry. I keep doing this to you.” She batted at the dampness of his shirt, attempting to lighten the mood. “Not what you expected when you suggested we talk.”

“It’s been a rough day.”

“On top of not enough sleep.”

“On top of waking up with a strange man in your bed.”

That memory flooded her body with liquid heat. “And here we are again,” she murmured.

“Yup. Here we are again.”

This time there was no teasing in his voice, and she felt a new and dangerous tension…in the big body so close to hers, in the hands that still rested on her shoulders, pervading the air in their own tiny cocoon of firelight.

“Not talking,” she murmured, “again.”

A piece of firewood cracked and splintered, sending a trail of sparks into the darkness.

He laughed, a dark, husky sound that caused the same trail of sparks in her blood. “Yeah, well, the last time I suggested you talk to me, it opened the floodgates.”

True, but she’d been sidetracked by memories of Brooke. Now was the time to talk about their relationship. To explain everything she’d poured onto the pages of that letter. To explain why they could no longer do this.

But when she tipped back her head, when she lifted her eyes and met the steady intensity of his gaze, she knew she’d left it too late.

One of his hands cupped her face. His thumb stroked across her bottom lip.

Olivia swallowed. “What are you doing?”

“I hope I’m about to finish what we started this morning.”