Princes of the Outback Bundle (33 page)
Read Princes of the Outback Bundle Online
Authors: Bronwyn Jameson
By Bronwyn Jameson
I
’m
sorry, Alex, but I can’t marry you today.
Usually it took a lot more than a single line of print to shake Alex Carlisle’s carefully constructed composure, but that particular line leaped off the innocent sheet of paper and rocked him like a thunderbolt.
Jilted. Two hours before he was due to sign the marriage contract. And he hadn’t glimpsed a hint of it coming.
The rest of Susannah’s
I-need-some-space-and-time-to-think, I’m-sorry
explanation swam before his eyes in a swamping tide of frustration. To hell with apologies. He didn’t need an explanation; he needed a wife in his bed.
Tonight, if not sooner.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
Easing his crumpling grip on the page, Alex nodded to the hotel concierge who’d handed him the message. “Thank you, Emilio. Yes.”
Everything would be all right, Alex decided, setting his jaw as the first wave of reaction subsided. Once he found Susannah and got to the bottom of what the hell had changed since yesterday when they’d last spoken.
Last-minute jitters, that’s all it could be. Even serene, sensible Susannah had a right to wedding-day nerves, right? Especially with the importance of what the marriage entailed to Alex and his family weighty on her shoulders.
Carefully his fingers smoothed over the note, then folded it along the existing crease lines. She’d known about his father’s will from the start. He’d been honest and direct about his immediate need for a baby to satisfy that clause…or to satisfy his determination to fulfill that clause.
One baby between the three Carlisle half brothers, conceived within three months. That’s “all” Charles Carlisle had asked for, and they’d made a pact, he and his brothers. One-in, all-in, to increase the odds of success.
As the eldest he considered it his duty, his responsibility, made all the more pressing by his brothers’ lack of success to date. Not that that surprised him. Neither Tomas nor Rafe had tackled the problem with a strategy. Neither Tomas nor Rafe had wanted the marriage/family/baby deal.
Alex did.
He wanted his baby born within a family unit. He wanted a wife and he’d chosen Susannah, a friend and business associate, for all the right reasons. She just needed reminding of those reasons.
Discreetly the concierge cleared his throat. “The flowers were delivered to your suite half an hour ago, Mr. Carlisle. And the delivery from Cartier has been put in the hotel safe for security. I believe everything is now in order.”
Everything was in order for the low-key exchange of vows they’d chosen because of the short time frame and
because neither of them had wanted a media scrum. Everything was in order except for the bride.
“There is one more thing.” Alex snapped his brain out of contemplation and into action. “My fiancée may be late. See if the officiant can block out a longer period of time this afternoon.”
“How much longer, sir?”
“Indefinite. But I’ll make any inconvenience worth her while.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll need my car out front in ten minutes.” To go and fetch Susannah from wherever she’d taken those last-minute jitters. Hopefully her mother would know. Or one of her employees. “I have some phone calls to make and then I’m going out. But if the lady who delivered this note…”
“Zara.”
“Susannah,” he corrected, frowning.
“I believe she’s a friend of your fiancée, sir. Zara Lovett. She dropped off the envelope on her way to work.”
Alex’s inner tension loosened a notch, then strengthened with a new sense of purpose. If this friend delivered the note, she must know Susannah’s whereabouts. “Do you know where Zara Lovett works?”
“Of course, sir. She’s a personal trainer with an agency we secure quite often for our guests. I have her card on file.”
Susannah wasn’t here.
Botheration.
Zara Lovett’s leather-clad shoulders slumped a tad as she completed a second slow circuit of the cabin on her motorbike. No vehicle lurked around the back; no windows lay open to air. The single-room hut sat crouched in the center of its cleared mountain block, still sleeping off a pro
longed winter hibernation. The only sign of life was the choral chortle of kookaburras in one of the mountain gums.
Laughing, no doubt, at her wasted efforts.
A two-and-a-half-hour ride out from Melbourne, ten bucks blown on a lousy roadhouse lunch, and all for nothing. She’d been so certain Susannah would be here. When her one o’clock client hadn’t shown at the inner-city gym as arranged, she’d considered it a sign and a blessing.
With a whole afternoon on her hands, she could do something about the worry fretting away at the back of her brain.
Her worry wasn’t over Susannah calling off today’s wedding. For that she’d raised a heartfelt hallelujah. No, her concern centered on the out-of-character suddenness of Susannah’s decision and the fact that she’d gone incommunicado. Susannah, who didn’t go to the bathroom without at least one phone!
That’s why Zara had thought of the cabin. It belonged to Susannah’s grandfather and was the only place Zara could imagine her going that didn’t boast communication facilities. And her early morning message—a harried-sounding voice-mail asking Zara to deliver a letter to her fiancé’s hotel—had mentioned going away somewhere to think.
Zara had spent time up here herself for just that purpose. When it came to escaping, to thinking about one’s life direction, this cabin was a tried and tested location.
She slowed her bike to a stop, turned off the engine and kicked down the stand. She might as well stretch her legs and fill her lungs with some clean high-country air before heading back to the city. After shucking gloves and helmet, she unzipped her jacket…then zipped it back up again when the wind snapped at her bare skin.
So much for the gorgeous spring day she’d left behind in Melbourne. Squinting up at the cloud-laced sky, she decided
to limit her walk to a brisk five minutes. Then she’d be out of here if this fickle weather decided to blow up a storm.
A flash of…something…through the trees caught her attention as she prepared to dismount. Staring into the thick bushland, she waited until the gleam reappeared and took form as the highly polished panels of a car. A second later she heard the motor, heard it slow to turn in to the cabin, and she released her breath on a slow puff of relief.
“About time, Suse.”
Her gaze narrowed on the dark vehicle as it crawled into view. The same prestigious European badge, the same darkly tinted glass, the same sleek lines, but a bigger, gutsier model than Susannah’s.
And that definitely wasn’t Susannah behind the wheel, she decided, as the car purred to a halt ten yards away. The driver’s door opened and a man stepped out. Zara’s heart did a half kick against her ribs.
Alex Carlisle.
Although they’d never met, she recognized him instantly. She noted that his dark suit looked as sleek and expensively European as the vehicle. Noted his broad shoulders and flat stomach as he buttoned his jacket over a crisp white shirt.
Noted how his gaze fixed on her without hesitation.
Zara had seen his picture often enough to know those eyes were the same blue-gray as a winter storm on Port Phillip Bay. She imagined they were just as cold and forbidding. Despite her leathers, goose bumps shivered over her skin as his car door snapped shut with a decisive note.
Yep, that was definitely Alex Carlisle cutting down the distance between them with long, purpose-filled strides. But what on earth was he doing out here? How did he even know about this place?
Boots planted solidly on either side of her bike, she lifted her chin and prepared to ask. Then their eyes met with a force that licked through her body like electric flame and fried her questions on the spot. By the time her synapses recovered, she’d lost the advantage. By then his gaze had narrowed a fraction, deepening the creases at the corners of his eyes. “You’re Zara Lovett?”
“That’s right.”
He nodded, a brief, terse acknowledgment, before asking, “Where’s Susannah?”
He certainly didn’t waste any time getting to the point. Or any breath introducing himself. Zara supposed when your picture appeared pretty much daily somewhere in Australia’s press, you assumed recognition. “I don’t know,” she said in answer to his question.
His gaze shifted, sliding over the cabin and its surroundings in one measuring sweep before returning to her. “She’s not here?”
Zara shook her head, which he might or might not have caught since he’d started walking, past her and up onto the cabin’s porch. “Don’t you believe me?” she called after him, turning to watch as he peered in one window, then the second.
Hands on hips, he turned. “Your boyfriend told me you’d come out here to find her.”
Her
what?
Zara opened her mouth and closed it again. He could only mean her housemate, Tim. Which meant— “You rang my home? How did you get my number?”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes. Yes, it does.”
“No,” he countered with the same certainty. “What matters is locating Susannah. Where is she, Zara?”
“I don’t understand. Didn’t you get the note I left at your hotel?”
“I don’t understand why
you
left the note.”
“Because Susannah asked me to.”
“Don’t play games with me, Zara.” Something glinted in his eyes, a fierceness at odds with his even tone. “I am not in the mood to play nice.”
“Are you ever?”
“When I want to—” he said, deceptively soft, deceptively smooth, as he started toward her “—I can be very nice.”
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”
When he stepped off the porch, Zara’s pulse skipped. Not nerves, but the same kind of adrenaline spike that used to accompany her onto the mat before a fight. Especially one with an expert opponent.
Time, she decided, to get off her bike.
At six foot in her biker boots, Zara was used to setting men back on their heels just by standing and meeting their eyes. Alex Carlisle stood an inch or two taller and he met her gaze without a flicker of surprise. Zara looked right back and for a moment got lost in the intensity of his eyes. Not exactly blue, too vivid to be gray, and with a dark rim around the iris that sucked you into their powerful focus.
And it struck her, in that long, silent sizing-up moment, that it would take a lot to put Alex Carlisle on the ropes. That once he set his mind to something he would follow through with ruthless purpose. She didn’t mind that in a person—in fact she liked purpose, she liked directness, she liked a spark of go-get-’em—but, oh, Susannah.
Now I understand your reluctance to tell him face-to-face. You wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“Let’s start over,” he said in that same low voice. “I’m sorry I came on so strong. It’s been a hell of a day.”
Then he smiled and offered his hand and his name, and she realized why Susannah might have been persuaded into such a coldhearted marriage arrangement.
He’s not so cold,
she realized, as the heat from his grip and the impact of that smile seeped into her blood.
“When you saw Susannah this morning—”
“No.” She extracted her hand and smoothed it down her thigh. She really, really hoped the sparks she felt were only static electricity. “I didn’t see her. I didn’t even speak to her. She left a message on my machine, then she e-mailed the letter I left at your hotel.”
Irritation pinched between his dark brows. “Why couldn’t she call me? Tell me herself?”
“She said she tried to contact you this morning, before you left Sydney.”
“Yet here I am.”
A six-hundred-mile plane trip from his home in another state. Yet Zara didn’t think the inconvenience of a wasted journey played any part in the darkened intensity of his eyes, the flare of his nostrils. For the first time, she let herself see his side of this picture. Effectively left at the altar, he had a right to some anger, some hurt and some answers.
“Suse really did try,” she said on a softer note. “Her message to me sounded all flustered because she hadn’t been able to contact you. When she said she was going somewhere to think, when I couldn’t get her on her mobile phone, I thought she’d come up here.”
“Flustered doesn’t sound like Susannah.”
“No, but then everything about this situation is unlike Susannah.”
“Meaning?”
Zara shrugged. “Suse is careful, a bit cautious, then out
of the blue she decided to marry you. No offense, but I thought your relationship was all about business.”
“We’d dated.”
“Once or twice? That’s hardly grounds for marriage!”
“Don’t you think that’s between Susannah and me?” His voice turned icy, as chill as the wind that buffeted her jacket hard against her back and whipped her hair across her face.
Impatiently she captured the long strands in one hand. “Yes, it is, but I can’t ignore the way she sounded on the phone and the fact she changed her mind overnight.”
His eyes narrowed. “You saw her last night?”
“We had dinner. And she sounded dead set on marrying you then.”
There must have been something in her tone or her expression, because his narrow gaze sharpened on her face. “Dead set in spite of your views on what constitutes grounds for marriage?”
“I didn’t force Susannah to do anything, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“You only…what…suggested she take some more time to think about it?”
“That was my advice.” Zara met his eyes without apology. They darkened with a ruthless determination that sent a frisson of alarm skittering through her bones. “Why did you come up here? Why were you looking for me?”
“To find Susannah. I have an officiant on standby.”
Oh, no, he was not going to bully Susannah into this. Not if she could help it!
When he turned toward his vehicle, Zara swung around too, right into the face of the wind. It caught at her hair, her breath, and a sudden wild gust sent her bike crashing to the ground. Whipping back around, she bent to pick up
the machine but Alex beat her by a second. When she attempted to take over the handlebars, their shoulders and hands grazed with a startling tingle of heat. She didn’t meet his eyes as she thanked him. She didn’t want to know if he’d felt that unsettling zing too.