Princes of the Outback Bundle (44 page)

“Yes,” she said with quiet intensity. “And I can’t deal with that kind of stuff. It’s too much.”

“Do you think I like it? Do you think I want to feel like I’m—” He stopped abruptly, eyes blazing in his tightly drawn face. “Hell, Zara. In your note you said it was great. Your best time ever.”

Her heart wailed a protest, but she lifted her chin and refused to listen. It didn’t matter what she felt because she couldn’t have him. He was the pain and the dread of front-page revelations. He was a man used to getting his way, a man not used to compromise. Ridiculous that she’d thought they could work out some basis for a long-distance relationship.

Ridiculous that she’d considered he could be her man, her soul mate, her love.

Abruptly he swung away, slamming a hand through his hair in a gesture of abject frustration. But he turned back just as quickly, fire still blazing in those razor-sharp eyes. “What do I have to do to change your mind, Zara? Do I have to ask you to marry me? Will that make you reconsider how much I want you?”

“Marry you?” she repeated, her eyes wide with disbelief.

And then she started to laugh, an edgy stop-start sound that did nothing to soothe the roar in Alex’s ears and in his blood. The temper he so badly needed to control.

He turned away, focused on an irritant he could control. The damn shower still spraying at full blast. Quickly he strode over, reached into the enclosure and shut it down.

“You find that funny?” he asked, turning back around.

As quickly as it had started, her laughter shut down too. “That wasn’t amusement. That was astonishment.”

Which she hardly needed to state. Alex saw it in her eyes, in the soft set of her mouth. Stunned, yes, but also taken aback by his uncharacteristic outburst.

“Nothing will change my mind or anything else about this situation. Including any other temper tantrum you might be thinking of throwing.”

Her calm words hit him with the cold dose of realization he needed. He’d almost lost it. Like some spoiled rich kid denied his candy.

You can’t always have what you want.

Hell.

He’d almost let passion and frustration override his usual cool counsel and that shamed him and horrified him and scared him in equal measures.

“You’re right, of course,” he said stiffly. “It seems you bring out the best in me and the worst in me.”

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

He met her eyes and knew she’d slipped away as surely as the rapidly dissipating steam. Knew there was nothing he could do to keep her. “Not half as much as I am.”

Zara didn’t have anything else to say because there was nothing left to say. Her expression as rigid as her posture, as tight as the cloying atmosphere in the tiny room, she watched him turn and walk out the door without any word of goodbye. And that was okay. Her emotions did not need any further battering.

And when he was gone, she expelled one long, broken breath and got on with what had to be done.

She showered, she dressed, she got herself to her study session and forced her mind to participate at some remote
automated level. She kept it all together until later that night when Tim wandered into her room and flung himself on her bed, as he was wont to do when he needed a break from study.

He took one look at her face and asked who’d died.

A tightness grabbed the back of Zara’s throat and, dammit, she felt the raw burn of tears. “PMS,” she muttered.

“Ah, The Hormones,” Tim intoned with suitable gravity. Then, bless his heart, he fetched her two Tim Tams from his secret stash and the chocolate cured her ridiculous urge to cry.

For the moment.

Over the next few days, she resorted to the chocolate fix frequently and unrepentantly. This breakup—and, okay, she’d only met Alex three weeks ago but their connection had been so intense, it felt like much longer—could not have happened at a worse time.

Her hormones were doing a crazy dance with her emotions. She wasn’t sleeping well and the pressure of approaching exams and of watching the papers every day with a sick feeling they may yet pounce on her mother’s story or her relationship with the late, esteemed Edward Horton, had delayed her period.

That had happened before. She wasn’t worried; she was just…stressed. They’d had sex—a lot of sex—that weekend but they’d always used condoms.

And thinking about that, about the powerful pleasure of making love with Alex, did not help her insomnia.

Hands fisted in her pillow, Zara squeezed her eyes shut tighter against the memories and the tide of longing that rose swift and strong. This was the part she hated most. The doubts that swelled in the dark of night, in the hours when she felt her loneliness most, when her heart asked why she
hadn’t admitted her feelings when he’d given her the chance.

In the light of day, the answer came all too easily.

Why admit she loved him when they had no future? One day she did want love, commitment, marriage, but with a man she could spend the rest of her life alongside. One she could be honest with about every aspect of her past. One she would have gladly taken home to meet her mother, Ginger Love, stripper and scarlet woman.

She could not see Alex Carlisle in that role.

Besides, the marriage thing had been an expulsion of his frustration. A taunt rather than a proposal. Imagining they could make a marriage work because they had great sex was ludicrous. Her life plan was based around finishing her interrupted degree. That’s what mattered to her.

She’d worked her butt off to keep up the distinction average needed for a shot at next year’s honors program. She couldn’t blow it now. She couldn’t allow the distraction of Alex Carlisle to encroach upon her study time.

He was gone, done, over.

During the next week, she trained herself not to jump whenever the phone rang. Forced herself to stop checking the door of the gym every session in case he suddenly appeared. And because this was driving her nuts, she told the Personal Best receptionists not to give out her schedule or whereabouts to anyone—
anyone!
—without her approval.

But he didn’t call or try to contact her.

This is good,
Zara told herself, as she paid for her purchase and strode out of the campus pharmacy. Her stomach churned with anxiety and she gripped the paper package more tightly. Outside she paused—she had to pause because she suddenly felt a bit dizzy. Light-headed.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Zara said, recovering. And when she looked around at the woman who’d expressed concern, her eyes widened in recognition.

So did Professor Mark’s. “Zara! I haven’t seen you in months and now today of all things peculiar!”

“Why is today peculiar?” Zara asked before she could stop herself.

Her favorite professor, her mentor through the tough first semester when she’d resumed study, smiled. “Oh, I’ve just come from a meeting where we were discussing some of the honors candidates for next year.” She pursed her lips. “No guarantees, you understand, with this year’s finals still to come. But there is a short list.”

Zara’s heart lurched and raced, but she didn’t whoop and yell. She did smile very broadly. “I understand. Of course.”

They talked a little more about how she was managing her course load before going their separate ways. Zara’s stride bounced with elation. No guarantees, but she was short-listed.

All she’d aimed for, all she’d strived toward, was within her grasp. All she had to do was keep up her study schedule so she performed in her exams next month.

Smiling like a fiend, she punched the air with her fist…and came back to earth with a dizzying thud. Her fingers tightened on the little bag in her hand and her stomach lurched sickly.

Okay, she told herself, sucking in a deep breath. No need for alarm. This test is just in case. To eliminate the likelihood. To stop the clutches of night panic.

All the way home she dealt with her gathering nerves by refusing to accept the possibility. She could not be pregnant. Fate could not be so cruel.

Half an hour later, she sat on the edge of the bathtub and the bottom fell out of her world.

She stared at the distinct second line on the stick, compared it again with the control band and with the instructions, and accepted the inevitable.

Fate could be that cruel.

She was pregnant.

S
he had to tell Alex, but after the disastrous episode with the note, Zara was leery about how. In her heart she knew this deserved face-to-face—in her heart, she
wanted
to tell him face-to-face—but the logistics defeated her. She couldn’t jump on a plane and go to Sydney. Not when she was having trouble jumping out of bed each morning.

And therein lay the biggest logistical problem.

As if triggered by the appearance of that second pink line, morning sickness had struck instantly. She wasn’t completely debilitated, just severely limited. And tired. And anxious about how long this would last and how many lectures she would miss and how this might affect her ability to concentrate for her upcoming exams.

Yup, a trip to Sydney was out of the question, which meant she would have to ask Alex to come and see her. That provided her next challenge. A dozen times she’d com
posed her side of the conversation. Two or three times she got as far as picking up the phone.

But the thought of asking him to come and see her without telling him why, imagining him jumping to several different conclusions and insisting on the full story over the phone, never failed to churn her stomach into a new bout of nausea.

If only she could pick the perfect time to leave a message on his voice mail. That seemed like the perfect, simple solution. She’d started working on the message.

Hello, Alex. This is Zara. I need to see you. It’s rather important. When you’re next in Melbourne could you give me a call?

At which point, she would see the flaw in her perfect, simple plan.

He would have to call her back to arrange the meeting. He would want to know why, and she didn’t want to blurt out, “I’m pregnant,” in a tense, overheated telephone conversation.

She wanted…oh, gads, she didn’t know what she wanted.

When she wasn’t being sick or recovering from being sick or worrying over her life falling apart, she teetered between fear and burgeoning wonder. A baby. Would she be able to manage all the change and the challenges that entailed? Would she make a good mother, the kind a child could laugh with and learn from and love with all their heart?

Oh, she hoped so. She’d had the best example. And then she would think of Alex and his part in her baby’s life and worry would pitch her stomach again.

She recalled his strong opinion on two-parent families, their heated debate the night of the storm, his reasons for wanting to marry Susannah.

And she could not bring herself to pick up the phone.

Next week,
her newly discovered inner coward whispered.
Next week you might be handling the morning sickness better and next week he might be in Melbourne for the races and you can leave a message saying you’ll meet him at his hotel at a specific time.

A decent plan. Better than decent, really, because she wasn’t asking him to fly down here specially. Except then she remembered him joking about taking her to the races in her trucker’s cap, which made her remember him undressing her beside the mountain stream and tossing the cap aside.

She remembered how he’d looked at her when he pulled the band from her ponytail and let her hair fall around her face. How he whispered the word
beautiful
over and over when she came apart beneath his body.

And tears clogged her throat because she knew they could never regain the magic of that weekend. Not with the complications of an unplanned pregnancy and all kinds of compromises and decisions to be made.

Then, the day before the Melbourne Cup, her plan backfired.

Tim was studying the form guide, pretending that might help him pick the winner. Since this was the only horse race and only form guide he ever looked at, year to year, Zara sincerely doubted it. She was studying histology and paying no attention to his occasional muttered comment.

Until she heard the magic word.

She swung around, staring over the top of her reading glasses. “Did you say Carlisle?”

“His horse is scratched. Tough break,” he added, with no sympathy whatsoever. Although he continued to read out the newspaper piece about Irish Kisses, Zara barely listened.

All she could think was: his horse isn’t running; there goes my plan.

“When are you going to tell him?”

Tim’s quiet question twined through her thoughts and she sighed heavily. “I thought he’d be in town for the races. I was planning on seeing him tomorrow.”

“There’s always the phone,” he said after a pause. “In case you hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’m still working on what to say.”

Tim snorted. “Call him now, Zee. Don’t think about it. Just pick up the phone and do it.”

“Tomorrow,” she decided, turning back to her books, and her inner coward breathed a sigh of relief at the reprieve. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

Alex didn’t want to be in Melbourne. It might be a big city, one he loved for its racing and its restaurants and its people, but now his mind only conjured up one of those people. Zara. As soon as his jet landed, he felt a new tension in his muscles and an edginess in his veins.

He wasn’t going to see her. She’d made her feelings perfectly clear on his last visit and he sure as hell didn’t need to haul his pride through those hot coals again.

That same bruised pride wouldn’t allow him to call off his Melbourne Cup trip, either. Despite the disappointment of Irish’s injury, he wanted to be at the track on Australia’s biggest race day. It was a tradition and he supposed at some level a test.

Go to Melbourne, Alex. Prove to yourself you can spend two nights and a day in the city without tracking her down.

Well, here he was. One night down and this morning he hadn’t given in to the temptation of calling Personal Best and booking her for a training session. And, yeah, he was man enough to admit that he had been tempted.

“Masochist,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Instead of facing memories he’d as soon forget in a hotel gym, this morning he’d swum. Exercise for his body and to clear his head from a late night at the Cup Eve Ball. He showered, he dressed, and while he had coffee he checked for messages with the hotel and then on the phone he’d not taken with him last night.

When he got to the last of the voice-mail messages, everything inside him stilled.

“Um. This is Tim Williams. In Melbourne. Zara’s housemate. I, uh…can you call me…if you get this message tonight?”

The voice paused, then came back with a phone number. Alex didn’t bother writing it down. He knew it by heart. And all he could think was that something must be wrong.

Why else would her housemate call?

He started punching in the number. Then stopped and closed his phone. Tim had asked him to call last night. On a Tuesday morning he would probably have already left for classes.

And if he was home?

Alex reached for his suit jacket and started for the door.

If he was home, then Alex would soon know why he’d called.

If she started the day slowly, if she ate some dry cereal in bed before moving at all, if she concentrated on relaxation and not on that wasted first hour, Zara’s morning sickness was bearable and she could function for the rest of the day. Skip any of those steps and the first wasted hour could stretch to two, three, or right through the rest of the day.

Today she’d woken too early and after too little sleep,
already anxious over the phone call she’d vowed to make and with no bedside snack. Three strikes and with no one to blame but herself. Shivering from however long she’d spent on the cold bathroom floor, she crawled back into bed and closed her eyes.

Half an hour, she thought weakly. I just need thirty minutes to gather the strength to go downstairs and eat. To dress and get to the university.

She must have slept. She didn’t remember nodding off but she woke with a foggy head and a dry mouth and a surprisingly steady stomach. When she turned her head and saw the mug and bowl on her bedside table, she managed a feeble smile.

“Tim, you are a sweetie.”

Moving slowly to guard her precious equilibrium, she sat up and started the breakfast he’d left. Dry cereal and raisins. Tea gone cold. And suddenly it wasn’t her physical or gastric stability at risk, but her emotional calm. Tears thickened her throat until she couldn’t swallow and she had to cradle her mug in both hands to stop it shaking.

Damn, damn, damn.

She hated these debilitating, emotional jags that waylaid her at the least provocation. This one because of Tim’s thoughtful gesture. And because he’d remembered what she’d forgotten and because her prized self-sufficiency was as shaky as her hands and because she didn’t know how much longer this would go on and because she hated feeling incapacitated, weak, reliant.

And because, she realized as the tears brimmed and started to roll down her cheeks, she would likely lose Tim as a housemate and surrogate brother. How could he stay and study with a baby crying through the night? How could she keep this house with its steep stairs and temperamen
tal heating? Where would she be in twelve months and how would she be managing?

Gripping her mug a little tighter, she controlled the fretful tears by thinking about what she needed to do. She had to start making decisions, thinking about her future and all the changes this would bring.

Today she would call Alex. Today it would start.

With renewed resolve, she finished her breakfast. She wouldn’t rush to try and make her nine o’clock lecture. She needed to let the food settle. Then she would shower and dress. She could be out the door by—

Above the muted music downstairs she heard the leaden rap of their front-door knocker. Her pulse lurched, for no good reason, and she rolled her eyes at herself.

It isn’t him. It can’t be him.

Still that didn’t halt the prescient quiver that snaked up her spine.

The knocker sounded again and she put down her mug. Carefully, since her hand was shaking again. Perhaps Tim had already left. Often he did that, waltzing out the door without turning off the radio or the lights or his computer.

She started to swing her legs out of bed and then stilled—everything stilled—when she heard the distinctive creak of the front door opening. And voices. Tim’s droll drawl and a deeper, stronger pitch that sent her recently subdued emotions into another fever pitch of turmoil.

Alex was here. Downstairs. In her home.

And she was about to lose her breakfast.

Another minute. Alex eyed the door of the front room where Tim had left him waiting, pacing, putting his patience through the wringer. He eyed the door but he pic
tured the stairs in the narrow hallway beyond, the stairs he’d heard the housemate bound up at least five minutes ago.

Another minute and then he’d…what? Go and find her for himself? Force her to see him, when the message delivered by her nonappearance was as clear as the scowl on his face? As loud as the female rocker screeching on the radio in the room next door?

Alex paced another round of a room not designed for pacing. He’d tried sitting, on the bright red sofa that dominated the tiny room, but he’d sunk so deep that the cushions heaped all over the thing had spilled into his lap. And then he’d heard the sound of running water upstairs and he’d sprung to his feet in an instant.

She hadn’t appeared then. She hadn’t appeared since.

What the hell was he doing here anyway?

Yes, Tim had called. But when he answered the door this morning, he’d looked sheepish and ill at ease. “Look, man, I might have overstepped, y’know.”

“You did call about Zara?”

Tim had scratched at his chin and winced. “Sort of. I didn’t expect you’d call in person.”

“Is she home?”

“Yeah, but she’s still in bed.”

“Is she sick?” he’d bit out instantly, remembering the morning at the cabin. Remembering her languid stretch and her guilty grin when she admitted she never slept in. “Is that why you called?”

“She’s, um, a bit off color. Look, why don’t you come in and I’ll see if she’s up yet.”

Running water and every screaming instinct told Alex she was up, but avoiding him. His pride suggested he take the hint and leave. But then he heard footsteps in the hall outside and he whipped around just as the door opened.

He saw her and didn’t see her; felt too much, too swiftly, to take in anything except the fact that she was here, and he still wanted her more than his next breath.

Then she flipped back her hair, loose, no ponytail, and that simple action steadied his first rush of response, focused his gaze on the woman who stood in the doorway looking gaunt and pale and still.

Realization hit him like a tidal wave, knocking the breath from his lungs, sucking the sand from under his feet. Slowly his gaze dipped to her waist and he heard the intake of her breath and saw the flutter of nerves in her hand the second before she pressed it to her flat stomach.

Reflexive, protective, and more revealing than any words.

“When were you going to tell me?” His gaze rolled back to her face. “Or weren’t you going to bother?”

Her eyes widened slightly, hurt, shocked. “Of course I was—”

“When?”

“Today. I was going to call you today.”

Right. “And that’s why your housemate felt he should intercede?”

Her lips tightened visibly. “Tim thought he was doing me a favor.”

“Yes. He was.”

For a second he just stared at her, battling a barrage of conflicting emotions. At the moment anger was ahead on points and she must have read that on his face and in his body language because she sucked in a breath and lifted her chin a little. “Please, Alex, can we not do this now? I can’t—”

“You want me to come back later? You want me to walk away and go about my business after finding out you’re pregnant?”

“No,” she said in cool, clear contrast to the rising heat in his voice. “I want you to understand that I’m not up for a fight. Sorry, but if that’s what you want then you will have to come back another time.”

Their eyes met, clashed and he felt a gut-punch of remorse. “You look like hell.”