Princes of the Outback Bundle (13 page)

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Call her? His gut clenched and fisted. “Yeah, I guess I could phone her.”

“I meant you should ask her. In person.”

Tomas frowned. “In Sydney?”

“Inside.” Rafe hitched a shoulder in that direction. “I think she mentioned something about taking a bath. She liked the look of that new spa you put in.”

In
his
bathroom? Like hell!

Tomas barreled down the long hallway and shouldered through the half-open door. Yes, she’d taken a bath. In his bathroom. Wisps of steam wafted toward the open louver windows, and the moist sweet fragrance of honeyed bath oil still hung in the air.

The house had a half-dozen bathrooms and she’d had to use his? Dammit to hell and back…

He slapped his hand against the doorjamb, whipped around and his eyes narrowed in cold fury. His bedroom door lay open. Oh, no. No, no, no.
No.
A dozen long strides and he came to a grinding halt, everything locked up by the sight that greeted him through that open doorway.

Angie was bent over his bed, ratting through an open suitcase. Not that he took much notice of the suitcase, since she wore nothing but a towel. For a long minute his anger dissipated, swamped by the heated rush of a body
remembering. The soft pliancy of her thighs. The full curves of her buttocks. The sheer carnal pleasure of sliding inside.

She stilled suddenly and turned, as if she’d heard the groan of his lust or the snarl of his restraint, and her eyes widened in surprise. Vaguely he was aware of something—hell, it could have been the crown jewels for all he noticed—drop from her fingers as she straightened.

“Hi.”

The husky note of her greeting stroked his aroused glands like a velvet fist, and in that spun-out moment she had only to smile and unwrap her towel and he’d have forgotten every grievance. But she didn’t smile. And she clutched the front of the towel with an edginess that reminded him of everything wrong with this picture.

Her body, in his towel, in his bedroom. Uninvited.

“What are you doing here?” he growled, low and mean.

“Looking for clothes. I was about to get dressed.” Gathering her usual assurance, she let go the towel and leaned back into her luggage. “If I can just find my—”

“Dammit, Angie, you know that’s not what I asked!”

She knew it and she had to know how much was revealed when she leaned over like that, but it didn’t stop her dragging out the moment. Deliberately? Was she trying to provoke him? Entice him? Seduce him?

Tomas ground his teeth and forced his attention to her busy hands. They rummaged some more then paused, holding up a piece of ivory satin underwear that dangled from her fingertips like some blatant stroke-me invitation. Oh, yeah, this was deliberate, unsubtle and doomed for failure.

“Forget getting dressed,” he barked. “We need to talk.”

Her gaze skittered with the same edginess she’d dis
played earlier. Good. This was his home, his territory, and he was calling the shots. She had cause to look nervous.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said quietly. And as if her legs lost strength, she kind of flopped down onto the edge of his bed. “Instead of calling.”

“You’re pregnant?”

The thick ponytail on top of her head wobbled as she shook her head. “No. I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty much.”

“What does that mean? Did you do a test or not?”

Her backbone stiffened at his harsh tone, and her gaze snapped to his. “I mean,” she said clearly, evenly, “that unless I’m one of those women who bleed even when they’re pregnant, then I’m not.”

Tomas let go an audible breath. Restless, unable to meet the steady darkness of her gaze and unsure how to respond, he paced to the window. Hesitated a second before turning around. “You okay with that?”

“I’m disappointed. What about you?”

How did he feel? Thrown. Rattled. Disgruntled. And, yeah, disappointed that she hadn’t let him know. That she’d probably confided in Rafe first—why else would he have brought her out here?

“How long have you known?” he asked tightly.

“Only a day or two.”

“You said your cycle was regular as clockwork. I can do the sums, Angie. Either you—”

“Okay.” She jumped to her feet in a rush of fluttering towel and creamy skin. “I knew on Monday. Yes, I should have called, but I wanted to surprise you.”

What? He scarcely believed his ears. This was supposed
to be a pleasant surprise?
Here I am, in your bedroom, aren’t you glad?

She sucked in a breath, as if preparing to say more, but the action caused the towel-tuck over her breasts to come right undone. Before she could regather the gaping sides, Tomas caught an eyeful of dark nipples and curved belly and feminine curls. His body blistered with instant heat, his groin tightened with instant desire, but he rejected the quickening of lust and fixed her with a hard, cold stare.

“I don’t like surprises.”

He walked to the dresser and stared for a full twenty seconds before he realized what was wrong. Her hairbrush, a tub of face cream, her neck-chain, were scattered carelessly amidst his neatly arrayed belongings.

Tomas’s jaw set so hard he heard his teeth grind.

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want her here, not in his home, not in his bedroom, not in his days and his nights.

With one fisted hand he scooped up her things and tossed them into her suitcase. In another second he’d gathered up all the gauzy bras and filmy panties that had spilled onto his bed, and jammed the lid shut on it all.

He was fuming that she’d pulled this surprise-him stunt, that she’d thought she could take over his bedroom, that she’d brought all that skimpy underwear with her…for what? They were having sex, not a seduction. He clicked the snaps shut on her case and his icy rage turned to steam.

“I hope you didn’t buy all that specially,” he said, straightening with the luggage in his hand.

In silence she’d watched him, not objecting, not commenting, although her eyes now flashed with indignation. “You don’t like nice lingerie?”

“It’s a waste of money if you bought it for me.”

“Actually, I bought it for myself. I never thought for a
minute that you’d wear a G-string.” She smiled silkily. “Although I do like how satin feels against my skin. Maybe you should feel it sometime.”

Tomas refused to let her taunt affect him, refused to picture her wearing a satin G-string and nothing else, refused to imagine his hands skimming over her curves, touching, feeling, caressing. Narrow-eyed he glared back at her. “It looks like I’ll have to.”

“Are you saying you want to try again?”

“I take it that’s why you’re here.”

“Yes,” she answered calmly. “Bad news, I’m not pregnant. Good news, we get to do it all over again. If that’s what you want.”

O
h, yeah, he wanted, but this time he was setting the rules—starting with not in his bed. Suitcase in hand, he turned toward the door. “You’ll have your own bedroom. That’s not negotiable, Angie.”

“If you want me out of your bedroom—” her eyes flashed a challenge “—you’ll have to carry me.”

He only hesitated long enough to think:
dentist, throbbing tooth, get it over with quick.
Eyes fixed on hers, he marched across the room, picked her up like a sack of chaff and tossed her over his shoulder.

She wiggled, she kicked, she punched. Against his shoulder he could feel the soft schmoosh of her breasts but he kept on walking. The towel rode up and his hand ended up cupping her bare backside, but he gritted his teeth and didn’t stop until he’d dumped her inside the best of the guest bedrooms. Too bad if Rafe was using it, he was too
damn mad to care. “This is your room and when we do it, we do it here. When are you fertile?”

“You did the sums before.”

So he did them again, counting off the days on his fingers. “Next weekend.”

“How many times?”

He’d turned to leave, had actually taken his first step out into the corridor, but her question stilled him. He could feel her eyes boring into the back of his neck, could feel their dark heat and fierce indignation.

“How many times are we doing it?” she asked again. “The book I read says a woman can conceive if she has intercourse any time up to five days before ovulation and twenty-four hours afterward. Conception isn’t an exact science.”

“I’m well aware of that.” He turned and pinned her in place with an uncompromising look. “The article I read stated the optimum time as two days before and the day of ovulation. And you told me you’re a twenty-eight-day clock.”

“You’re choosing three days of unregulated, unprotected, whenever-you-feel-like-it, however-you-want-it sex over six? Yeesh, Tomas, you’re the only man I know who’d prefer that option!”

“Not whenever, however. Once a night, missionary position, in your bed.” The exasperated sound she choked out turned his voice even colder while heat of every hue pumped through his blood. “This isn’t personal preference. This is to preserve sperm count and let gravity do its bit.”

“That’s such an old wives’ tale!”

“I have a housekeeper,” he continued coldly, ignoring her interjection, “and a mother who visits regularly. I don’t want either to know about this unless there’s a positive result to tell. Either way, they’ll both be here long after you’ve gone.”

The expression in her eyes turned from willful to stunned in one blink of her long, dark lashes. Yeah, what he’d said was harsh but he wouldn’t back down. If you gave Angie an inch, she always took a hundred miles. If he gave her access to his bed, she would keep on chipping away, wanting more and more of a life he had no intention of sharing, with her or anyone.

He watched her nostrils flare as she sucked in a breath, saw a grim determination replace the hurt in her eyes. “So, if this is going to be all clandestine, how will I know when to lie on my back and expect you?”

Tomas clenched his jaw. “You’ll know.”

“How is that?” she cocked her head on the side, all fake sweet-voiced curiosity. “Will there be some secret code?”

“You’ll know when I turn up in your bed.”

Angie hated everything about that hurtful snarky exchange, but she did accept his edict on separate bedrooms. It was his home, after all, and she had arrived uninvited. In retrospect, that hadn’t been such a great idea. And if she thought he’d been hostile with her…

Five days later her body still did a kind of internal shudder and wince remembering the unpleasantness of their dinner with Rafe that night.

All her fault.

She should have called and let Tomas know she wasn’t pregnant. She should have allowed him—not his brother—a say in what transpired next. Backing a stubborn man into the proverbial corner was not the way to win his cooperation. Lord knows, she came from a household steeped in testosterone. She should have known better.

She should have left his bedroom with better grace and some dignity, too. She shouldn’t have let him light a match
to her temper. And she definitely should not have kept pushing and provoking until he ground out that line about after-she’d-gone. Mostly she wasn’t one to dwell on should-haves and most of that list she’d put well behind her by Thursday—all except the leaving thing and that bothered her deeply.

If he wouldn’t let her stay, then how could she prove herself and her love? If he was never home and their paths crossed as rarely as they’d done in the past five days, then how could he see that she’d fitted happily back into station life?

She didn’t assume he was avoiding her. It was a hectic time with mustering and branding and weaning and trucking out stock for sale and fattening. Tomas was responsible for managing a hundred thousand head of cattle and fifty employees. He was a busy man. So busy that he’d neglected to tell her he was flying out on a three-day visit to the company’s eastern feed-lots.

She simmered and seethed inside for a good twenty-four hours, but what could she do? She could prepare for his return, that’s what. She could make sure he
did
notice her seamless integration into his home and station life, and she could do so without another sharp-worded confrontation.

A few casual questions to a head stockman and she had an estimated time for the boss’s return. She prepared dinner herself and chose the perfect wine accompaniment from Chas’s extensive cellar. She soaked for a good hour in the honey and cinnamon bath-milk she’d bought especially for the trip—the same one she’d used in the hotel that night. “For you, Tomas,” she stated with some defiance as she poured a liberal dose into the tub. “Same as all the pretty underwear.”

Oh, and she gave the housekeeping staff the night off.
Tonight was the first of her three nights with Tomas, and she intended on making the most of it.

Despite the good food, the wine and the satin she’d chosen to wear next to her bath-softened skin, Angie didn’t go for a full-out seduction scene. In the interests of subtlety—and not scaring him off—she scuttled the candles and flowers, and left the stereo turned off. That would help, too, with hearing his incoming plane.

Ready early, she couldn’t stand still. She fussed over the lasagna and greens and bread rolls she’d baked earlier. She applied a third coat of Nude Shimmy polish and wandered restlessly around the gardens while her nails dried and the sun clocked off for the day. She even considered straightening her hair, just to fill some time.

But when she looked into the mirror at the mass of curls, she remembered Tomas saying he didn’t like sleek. She set down the straightening tool and smiled slowly. “Oh, yeah. I rather like it wild, too.”

Except she wasn’t thinking about her hair.

She huffed out a breath, hot with memories and keen with anticipation, and eyed her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a woman thinking about sex. Heat traced the line of her cheekbones and glowed dark in her eyes. And when she stood up and braced her shoulders, she felt the sweet tug of arousal in her breasts and satin panties.

Perhaps she should really surprise him and take them off. Perhaps she would after she’d fortified her bravery with a glass of merlot.

Yes, she needed a glass of wine. And to check the meal one more time. She straightened the neckline of her white gypsy top, smoothed the sitting-down wrinkles from her jeans, and set off for the kitchen at the opposite end of the
house. With every step she could feel the friction of her clothes against each sensitive peak and fold of her body. Perhaps she should take everything off and
really
surprise him…although that would take a lot more than one glass of bravado!

Smiling at herself, she pushed through the kitchen door and came to a stunned standstill.

Tomas was home.

Right there in the middle of the kitchen, actually, although he hadn’t yet noticed her arrival. He stood in profile, a tall, dark, dusty hunk with a long-neck bottle in his hand. She watched his head tilt back as he raised the beer to his lips. Watched the movement of his throat as he drank…and she drank in his almost sybaritic enjoyment of that first long, slow pull from the cold bottle.

In that moment he wasn’t Tomas Carlisle, heir apparent to Australia’s richest cattle empire. He wasn’t any “Prince of the Outback.” He was just an ordinary cowboy at the end of a hellishly long working day.

A quiver of pure desire slid through her body, from the tingling in her scalp all the way to the freshly painted tips of her toes. She wanted to walk right up and kiss him on his drink-cooled lips and breathe the commingled scents of horse and leather and Kameruka dust on his skin. But more even than the physical, she longed to share dinner without sniping and harsh words. She wanted to let the evening flow naturally all the way to the moment when they stood in unison and walked hand in hand to bed.

Was that too much to ask?

Suddenly the hand holding the bottle stilled halfway back down from his mouth, and Angie had enough time to answer her own question—
yes, definitely too much—
before his head turned slowly her way. She could feel the
tension in her bones and knew it seeped into the innocent kitchen air. And all she could think to say was, “You’re home.”

He grunted—possibly an acknowledgment, possibly a commentary on the intelligence of her opening remark.

“I didn’t hear your plane,” she continued, with a sweeping gesture toward the roof.

“I’m not surprised.”

Angie frowned. She’d turned off the music so she wouldn’t miss his arrival. “What do you mean?”

“You were in the bath.”

What? That was hours ago. And how did he know she—

“You wouldn’t have heard me above the music.”

Holy Henry, he must have been in the house earlier. How could she not have known?
Angie blanched, remembering how she’d belted out whatever lyrics she knew and improvised the rest. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked on a note of dismay.

“I only came in to change.”

And since he wasn’t laughing or looking horrified, perhaps he hadn’t heard her singing. Relaxing a smidge, she now realized the significance of her first impression. He wasn’t dressed for a business trip but for get-down-and-dirty cattle work, because he’d returned early and come to the house to change. Her gaze slid over his dusty blue Western shirt and lingered on the Wranglers he wore so well.

“What’s going on, Angie?” he asked with a hint of suspicion. And when her gaze flew back to his face she caught him giving her a similar once-over. “Where is everyone?”

“I gave Manny—” who’d been rostered for kitchen duty “—the night off.”

“Why?”

“I thought it would be easier, given you want to keep this just between us.”

He’d started to lift his beer again, but hesitated as the knowledge of what that meant arced between them, hot and sultry and heavy as a summer’s night. At least that’s how Angie’s body felt. Without breaking eye contact he took another long drink, another long swallow. “Is that why you’re all dressed up?”

She almost laughed out loud, remembering how many times she’d changed her clothes in an attempt to dress
down.
But, still, she liked that he knew she’d made an effort. She wasn’t afraid of letting him know she wanted him.

Slowly she crossed the kitchen floor, closing down the space between them, never losing that hot eye-to-eye connection. She ached to kiss him, to hold him, to have him right here and now. But beyond the surface of his blue-heat eyes she detected a flicker of wariness that held her back. Instead of reaching for the man, she reached for his beer and lifted it to her lips.

As she drank she watched
him
swallow, and desire beat so hard in her veins she swore she could feel its echo in every cell of her body.

“You’re why I gave Manny the night off and you’re why I’m wearing satin underwear,” she said huskily. “But first you’re having a shower, and then we’re having dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

While he showered Tomas tried to work up a decent sense of outrage. Without asking she’d used his bathroom again. She’d given
his
staff the night off. He’d let her know, in plain language, how this would happen and she’d gone ahead and set up a seduction scene.

But it was hard to maintain rage in a body tight and hot
with anticipation.
She’s waiting out there alone,
it throbbed,
for you. She’s wearing satin underwear,
it pulsed,
for you. She’s starving,
it thundered,
for you.

Despite the insistent ache of arousal he forced himself to dress unhurriedly, to arrive slowly, to sit and eat and talk. The wine helped. After one glass he realized he wasn’t going to ignite every time their eyes met in an awkward conversational lapse, or each time his gaze was drawn to the erotic caress of her thumb over the rim of her wineglass.

It only felt that way.

He shifted in his chair, surreptitiously rearranging that insistent ache of arousal. He was a sad case. There she was, chatting away about the innocuous and everyday, oblivious to the effect of her unconscious glassware fondling. Lucky he’d worn roomy chinos because sitting down in jeans, in his condition, would have been murder.

“Hello?”

He looked up to find her waving her hands to attract his attention.

“You didn’t hear a word of that, did you?”

“I was—” Tomas frowned “—thinking.”

“Looks serious.”

Yeah, deadly.

She eyed him a second. “About the trip you made to Queensland? Is there a problem?”

His pulse kicked up a notch as he met her eyes across the table and imagined telling her his real problem.
I’ve been at least half-hard ever since I hauled your naked backside into your bedroom five nights ago. The waiting’s killing me, Angie. Let’s skip the pretense and—

“Because I’m all ears. If you need to talk it through.”