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

With a hitch of one shoulder, she started up the steps of the plane. The engines turned over with a high-pitched whine, and a sudden gust of wind plastered her skirt to her legs and tangled her shoulder-length hair. Pausing to rake the thick tresses back from her face, she felt compelled to take one last look over her shoulder.

Her attention snagged on a distant spurt of movement. Not the rapidly departing Jeremy and not an illusion, either.

A horse and rider loped steadily across the treeless flats, heading straight toward the airstrip.

Three

Angie pressed the palm of one hand flat against her chest. “Steady up there,” she cautioned her heart which had taken off at a wild gallop. Even if it is Tomas, he’s likely just coming to see us off or to deliver a last minute message to his brothers.

Or something.

Rafe called out to her from inside the plane, hurrying her along. Alex, she knew, was already in the pilot’s seat. She waved a stalling hand, her eyes fixed on the approaching rider. No one sat a horse quite like Tomas. The familiarity of that sight and the knowledge that she would get to say goodbye, soothed the ragged rawness of her emotions. Her pulse, however, continued to race as she watched him dismount and start toward her, not in any hurry yet still eating up the ground with his easy, long-legged stride.

No one wore a pair of Wranglers quite like Tomas.

Those work-worn jeans and the dusty roper boots beneath came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. Two steps up, Angie held a height advantage for the first time in her life and she felt a renewed surge of emotion.

This time it was good emotion, as strong and dazzling as the northern sun. Leaning down, she tipped back the tan Akubra that shadowed his face from the bright rays of that morning sun.

“You almost missed us,” she said.

“Damn straight he did.” Rafe, curse his timing, leaned out the aircraft door and broke their second of eye-meet connection. “Nice of you to drop by and see us off, bro’.”

“Wanted to make sure you were leaving, bro’.”

Rafe chuckled and Angie couldn’t suppress a grin at the dry banter. It was so typical, so familiar, so brotherly. Then Tomas’s serious gaze shifted back to hers and froze the amusement on her lips. “And I wanted to see Angie.”

“Don’t keep her too long,” Rafe warned. “Alex is itching to get back to work.”

He left them alone then, she and Tomas and the memory of their last conversation stretching tense and awkward in the ensuing silence. Angie’s nerves twitched impatiently.

“If this is about what I said last night—”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said—”

They both spoke at the same time; both stopped at the same time. Their eyes met and locked and Angie felt a curious breathlessness. “You first,” she managed to murmur. “Go ahead.”

“When you said you would—hypothetically—have this baby, was the offer…exclusive?”

What?

Angie felt her spine snap straight with the implication.

“I hope you’re not insinuating I would go around offering to have babies for every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

His disconcerted gaze flicked toward the plane and understanding dawned, startling a cough of laughter from Angie’s mouth. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry, just every…

“Rafe and Alex?”

He shifted his weight from one boot to the other. “Rafe seems to think you’d do this because you owe the family.”

“You discussed me with Rafe?” she asked on a rising note of disbelief.

“He brought it up. He seems to think you’re the perfect choice.”

“And what about you, Tomas? Have you given any thought to your choice?”

“I’ve been thinking about it all night.” His eyes narrowed, deepening the creases at their corners. Making those clear blue irises glint like cool water under a summer sky. Making her heart stutter and restart low in her belly. “Will you help me, Angie?”

And there it was, a simple request spoken so quietly and sincerely that it turned her inside out and upside down. Knowing how much fulfilling this will clause meant to Tomas, how could she refuse? “If I can,” she said, just as softly. “Yes.”

His nostrils flared a fraction. His eyes sparked with…something. “Why?”

Because you need me. Because I love you. “Because I can.”

He looked away, huffed out a breath, said something low and indecipherable and probably not meant for her ears. Slowly his gaze came back to hers. “Still as impetuous as ever?”

Angie shrugged. “Apparently.”

For a long moment they stood in silence, gazes locked, while Angie’s heart screamed at roughly the same decibels as the plane’s engines.

What are you doing? it wailed. What are you saying?

“What now?” she asked, knowing even as she asked what she wanted. Some sign that this was more real than it felt. That she really had just offered to have his baby. “Do you want me to stay?”

“No,” he said quickly. Adamantly. Then he lifted a hand to the brim of his hat, tipping it lower on his brow so his eyes were in shadow. “I’m coming to Sydney next week. I’ll make an appointment with a doctor.”

“You don’t need to…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered what she’d talked about, so glibly, the night before. Then it had been about some hypothetical partner with an unknown sexual history. Now it was about her and Tomas and…She drew a swift breath and lifted her chin. “Yes, we should have the tests, to make sure we’re both healthy.”

He stared at her a moment. “I meant a fertility center.”

“Surely there’s no need for that.”

“There is. For insemination.”

Angie’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding, right?”

He wasn’t. She could see that in the rigid set of his jaw, in the muscle that flexed and released in his cheek. “It’s got to be artificial.”

“Got to be?” Angie asked calmly, as if she weren’t flailing around trying to get a grasp of something solid. “Because when you asked for my help, when I said yes, I was thinking about doing this the way nature intended.”

“No,” he said tightly. “That’s not going to happen.”

Angie fought an irrational urge to laugh or cry or scream—or perhaps not so irrational. The situation, this conversation, the stilted way they kept tiptoeing around straight language, was all too unreal. She couldn’t believe how calmly she’d offered to sleep with Tomas, to make love, to try to conceive a baby.

And she couldn’t have imagined how much it would hurt, seeing how fiercely he objected.

“Is the idea of sleeping with me so distasteful that you’d prefer doing it on your own? Because most men—”