Princes of the Outback: The Rugged Loner / The Rich Stranger / The Ruthless Groom

That knowledge caught in her chest, a thick ache of sympathy and shared pain and her own dawning realization: she wasn’t anywhere near to closing down this part of her past. Because for all that had changed in him, in her, in both their worlds during the last five years, one thing remained the same.

She still loved this man enough to do just about anything to ease his hurt.

Tears misted her eyes as she lifted a hand to touch the side of his face, blurring his features but not his rejection.

Both hands raised in a stop-right-there gesture, he reared back. “Forget it, Angie. Forget the pity and forget this whole crazy conversation!”

Angie’s hand dropped away. Okay. She could do this. She could shrug and pretend indifference while her face and her throat and her heart ached with the effort. Restraint—in words, in actions, in emotions—did not come easily or naturally, but she sensed that now was the time to exercise some self-control.

“I care too much to forget about it,” she said, slowly backing away, giving him the space he demanded, “so let’s talk this through. What are your alternatives? Say you do find a woman willing to have your baby for money. Unprotected sex with a stranger is a big risk, don’t you think?

“Unless you’re thinking of artificial insemination, which is worth consideration,” she continued, thinking on her feet, literally. “On the plus side, you get all the health checks and no awkward intimacy…I gather that is a plus, right?”

A muscle in his cheek jumped. Which probably meant he neither wanted intimacy nor wanted to talk about it. Tough. He’d stopped her leaving earlier, when she’d been ready to walk away, and now she was going to talk this through.

“But that all takes time, the checks and tests and the getting an appointment and such, when you don’t have much leeway. Three months to conceive, right?” Angie winced. “That is not a lot of time. Especially since the conception rate would be lower.”

“Why lower? A.I. works fine in cattle.”

Trust Tomas, the consummate cattleman, to equate this to livestock!

Angie lifted her shoulders and let them drop in an exaggerated shrug. “How would I know? It’s not as if I’ve actually investigated the process. I just read about it somewhere. I was trying to help you work through the possibilities is all.”

“You sure you don’t want to make the decision for me?”

“You’ve never once taken my advice on anything, why would you start now?”

“That’s never stopped you offering it.”

Did he mean her previous advice? About not rushing into marriage with Brooke? She stared back at him, found the answer in the grim blue hostility of his gaze. Yep, that’s what he meant all right.

“I thought you wanted to talk this through,” she said, finally accepting the futility of the conversation. Same old story, really. “You’d do better talking to the cliff face there. At least it won’t tell you anything you don’t want to hear!”

He started to say something. Judging by the look in his eyes and the hands-on-hips aggressiveness of his stance it was neither pretty nor appeasing, so Angie cut him off.

“I offered to help you, Tomas. Your answer: ‘forget this whole crazy conversation.’ Well, perhaps that is the best advice that’s been tossed out here tonight!” She lifted a hand, part frustration, part farewell. “I’ll say goodbye in the morning. When I’m not feeling so inclined to slug you.”

Jaw clenched and silent, Tomas watched her disappear into the darkness from whence she’d come. He hadn’t meant to hark back to the last time they’d stood toe to toe at this same waterhole. The last time she’d offered advice that he didn’t want to hear.

I know you think you love her, T.J., but don’t rush into marriage. Not unless you’re very, very certain Brooke can handle living out here.

Yup, he’d ignored that advice and they’d both suffered the consequences, he and Brooke. Through three roller-coaster years of passion and conflict, of separations and loneliness, of stand-up fights and emotional making-up. Three years that ended in the mother of all fights and no chance to make it up, not once Brooke was gone.

He had no interest in finding another woman, but he did need to satisfy the terms of his father’s will. For his mother, for Kameruka Downs, for his brothers, for himself. All he had to do was find the woman who’d do it his way.

That woman was not Angie. No way. She was too used to dancing to her own wild, unscored tune. Unpredictabil-

ity was the only predictable thing about her. Even her off-the-cuff “I would” offer to have his baby shouldn’t have floored him as it had done.

Angie had been pulling I-didn’t-think-this-through stunts all her life.

No, it wasn’t so much the offer that had rendered him speechless as the disturbing stuff that went hand-in-hand. She’d thought about having sex with him. Quite a bit, she’d said.

Sensations burned through his blood, images burned into his brain, and with a low growl of frustration he flung his body at the path and attacked the climb back to the homestead.

That wasn’t going to happen. Not with Angie. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of her in those terms. Not naked, not in his bed, not beneath his body.

No, no, absolutely no.

She hadn’t meant she would, really, have his baby. Only hypothetically. And even if she had meant it, she would soon change her mind. A woman who couldn’t settle in one place—in one job—for longer than a month or three wasn’t going to cut it as a mother. Sure, she’d changed. She’d grown up some, but she hadn’t yet settled down. He didn’t know if her gypsy heart ever would.

Back at the homestead he found Rafe lurking in the shadows by the door. An ambush, he suspected. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied by the worrying exchange with Angie, he might have suspected as much and avoided it.

“Alex gone to bed?” he asked, stepping onto the veranda.

“He’s on the phone. Business continues.”

Even past midnight on the night of his father’s funeral. That was Alex.

Rafe lifted his liqueur glass. “Care to join me in a nightcap?”

“Another time.”

But when he reached for the door, Rafe sidestepped to block his way. So neatly and pseudo-casually that Tomas knew it was no accident. “Don’t suppose you happened across Ange out there in the dark?”

Trick question. Tomas’s whole body tensed although he schooled his face into passive indifference. Either Rafe had already seen her coming in—had maybe even talked to her—or she’d snuck under his radar by using the side entrance. “Isn’t she inside?”

“She wasn’t in her room when I checked a while back.”

Tomas crossed his arms. Said nothing, gave away nothing. He suspected Rafe would fill him in on why he was looking for Angie without any prompting on his behalf.

“I had this notion, y’see, about the will.” Lips pursed, Rafe swirled the liquid in his glass. Tokay. The same dark amber as Angie’s eyes. The same eddying whirlpool as in Tomas’s gut as he waited for Rafe to continue. “I think Angie’s the answer.”

“This isn’t her problem,” Tomas said tightly. “Leave her out of it.”

“She knows the whole story so no tricky explanations are necessary. And Mau loves her like a daughter already.”

And there was the problem. Angie and her brothers had grown up like part of the family. Their father had cooked for the Carlisles—he’d moved out to Kameruka Downs after his wife died, head-hunted by Chas because he’d cooked at Maura’s favorite Sydney restaurant. The Moris had occupied one of the workers’ cottages but the kids had spent as much time in the homestead as their father. The six of them, Carlisles and Moris, had grown up together, played together, been schooled together.

“From where I’m standing,” Rafe continued, “Angie’s the perfect solution.”

“From where I’m standing, she’s too much like one of the family.”

“You mean like our sister?” Surprise whistled out on Rafe’s exhalation. “Can’t say I feel the same way, not since she’s come back from Italy with the new haircut and that body and the walk.” Rafe eyed him a moment. “You did notice the walk?”

The sexy sway of her hips? The gauzy skirt that clung to her legs? The glint of a gold ankle chain against smooth olive skin? “No.”

“The sad thing is I believe you.” Rafe shook his head, his expression a studied mix of disgust and pity. He sipped from his drink, then narrowed his eyes. “Although this does make things less complicated.”