Princes of the Outback Bundle (46 page)

Turning the corner into her street, she started searching for her keys. She’d almost reached her house before she found them and when she straightened she saw him. Alex. Standing by her gate as if he’d been watching her approach.

Her heart thudded painfully hard as she came to a dead stop. Dimly she felt the key chain slipping through her fingers and when she heard the metallic jangle of keys hitting concrete, she tightened her grip on her tote bag. It felt like that might be the only thing she had a grip on.

“Hello, Zara.” His voice sounded different. Thick. But perhaps that was her hearing. He took a step closer and she thought, for one breathless second, that he was going to kiss her. But then he ducked down and picked up her keys. “You dropped these.”

Disappointment flooded her veins. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

She was pretty sure they’d had this conversation before. It felt eerily familiar. Zara frowned. “Weren’t you going to Kameruka Downs this weekend?”

“I’ve been. This morning I decided to fly down here instead of back to Sydney.”

“The doctor’s appointment isn’t until Tuesday.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” And she stood there in the quiet Sunday afternoon sunshine just looking at him. Her heart still beat too hard
to be healthy. All she could think was
How could I miss him this much?

His thick dark hair was slightly ruffled, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it. His blue-gray eyes swirled with some emotion she couldn’t pin down. The grooves in his cheeks looked deeper but she didn’t think it was from too much smiling. She wanted to reach up and trace them.

Wanted to touch him so badly she started to shake.

“Here. Let me take your shopping,” he said, perhaps afraid she’d keel over.

There was that danger. Then he reached for her bag and their hands tangled and brushed and oh, the heat. The charge. The catch in her chest that had to be her heart standing still.

“I’ll get the door for you,” he said, and she followed him through her tiny gate and up the two steps to her door. He leaned down and picked up something from the stoop, and looked back over his shoulder at her. “When you didn’t answer the door, I was going to leave this.”

This, she realized was a pot of flowers. She didn’t know what kind, only that they were bright and beautiful and shaking very badly when he put them into her hands. “Thank you,” she managed to say even though her throat was thick with emotion. “They’re gorgeous.”

Then they were back to staring at each other again, except this time he smiled and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re looking good, Zara. Rested.”

“Not like hell?”

“The opposite, actually.” His smile faded. “Please. Can I come in? There’s something I have to say to you.”

He looked so grave, so serious that Zara felt a belated jolt of apprehension. “Is something wrong? Is someone—”

His touch stilled her, silenced her. A hand on her shoul
der. The stroke of his thumb against her collarbone. “No. It’s nothing like that. I just…” He sucked in a breath and she realized that he also looked nervous. “Can we go inside?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” She nodded toward the keys in his hand. “It’s the second key. The gold one.”

Inside, she ushered him to the sitting room where he’d waited for her the last time. The day he’d got it all wrong. He put down her bag on the red sofa and when she fussed about making tea, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. This time he didn’t let go. This time he turned her toward him and looked into her face.

“Unless you need that cup of tea desperately, I’d like you to stay. To listen.” If he didn’t say this now, they’d end up sidetracked and arguing. “I’ve been thinking about us. And about the last time I saw you. What I said and what I didn’t say. I got it all wrong, Zara.”

She moistened her lips. Said nothing. In her throat he could see the beat of her pulse and touched it with his thumb.

“What I should have said…what I wanted to say…what I think you needed me to say…”

“Yes?” she prompted.

And there was something hopeful in her tone. Something in the depths of those beautiful eyes that steadied the wild jangle of his nerves and gave him the words he needed. Gave him the confidence to do this right. His hand slid down her arm until he held her hand in his. Then he went down on one knee.

“Zara Lovett, I want you to be my wife. Not because you’re going to be the mother of my baby. Not because I have this primal need to take care of you and it makes me crazy thinking that you’re sick and I’m not here to help. Not because I want you in my bed every night or because you still have to teach me that smooth fishing cast.”

His thumb stroked over her knuckles and he tightened his grip.

“I want you for my wife because I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me, Zara?”

For a long second she said nothing. She moistened her lips. She drew a breath that snagged in her throat, possibly because it felt like her heart was there. Crazy-dancing high in her chest.

Could she believe him? Oh, but she wanted to, so badly. He sounded sincere, but was this only to get his own way? Had he gone away and remembered what she’d told him about marriage? Is that why he’d gotten it so right—because she had supplied the lines?

“I’m on my knees here. Please, say yes.”

He tugged on her hand, until she gave in and came down to his level. “How can this work, Alex? I don’t know—”

“We can make it work,” he said fiercely. “If we want it badly enough.”

“There are things you don’t know about me.”

“You snore? Sweetheart, I know that. I’ve slept with you already.”

She punched his shoulder lightly and he grabbed her fisted hand and kissed the knuckles, one by one. If she weren’t already on her knees, that would have done the trick.

“Is this secret about Susannah?” he asked. “And your father?”

She sucked in a breath, her eyes wide. “You knew? How?”

“I didn’t know for sure, until now.”

“You guessed?” Her voice rose a semitone. “How?”

“An educated guess. I told you I’d like your sister.” He smiled. “And I do. She introduced us, in a roundabout way.”

Zara just stared, completely undone.

“And, please, don’t say anything else about your mother
or your father or the scandal that might cause. If you marry me, you will be my wife. They can say what they like, it won’t change the fact that I love you.”

“I still want to finish my degree,” she said.

“Of course you do. I can live wherever I like. Wherever
you
like.”

“You would move?” she asked in hushed wonder. “To Melbourne?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Slowly she shook her head. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I love you. To be together.”

She blinked rapidly, to ward off the emotion brimming in her eyes. And then she couldn’t help herself. She had to put her hands on him, cupping his face. “You really do.”

He smiled, and she leaned in and kissed him on that smile, drinking its happiness into her body. Feeling it wash through her in a wave of bliss. “I love you, too, Alex. I had no idea how much until right now.”

His eyes closed for a second, and when they opened they were full of everything she was feeling. She touched her thumb to his mouth, traced the bow of his top lip. Kissed him again.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“Yes. That is definitely a yes.”

Zara let that sink in a moment. The fact that she had just agreed to marry him. The fact that despite her happiness, the concept of marriage still scared her some. Then he smiled at her and that shadow of fear faded to black.

“I did you another disservice,” she said.

“Oh?” His hands slid up her arms, then over her shoulders and down her back. As though he were learning her shape all over again.

“I thought I couldn’t love you because you weren’t a man I could have taken home to meet my mother.”

He stopped with his hands on her waist, his expression slightly affronted. “I would have loved to meet your mother. And she would have loved me.”

Zara raised her brows. “How do you figure that?”

“Because I’m going to love her daughter so well.” His hands slid lower until they cupped her hips. “And spoil her rotten by giving her whatever she wants.” He tugged her forward until their bodies touched. “And make her so damn satisfied she won’t ever stop smiling.”

She was smiling when he started to kiss her, and smiling even broader when he finished a long time later. Slowly her eyes drifted open and she snuggled against him, loving the feel of his body against hers. “Tell me about your house.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just…what it’s like.”

“It’s like a house.” Alex shrugged. “Walls, roof. Lots of rooms inside.”

She laughed, amused and delighted by that answer. “Does it have a pool?”

“Two.”

“Are you joshing me?”

“One outdoor, one indoor.” Then perhaps misinterpreting why she’d gone still, he said, “We can fill one in if you think that’s excessive.”

“Does it have a gym?” she asked after another moment.

“It has a first-rate gym,” he answered solemnly, and his hands slid under her shirt and peeled it from her body. “Now, is there anything else you want to know about my house? Because in about sixty seconds—” he unhooked her bra “—I’m not going to be able to talk.”

“Oh, why’s that?”

He pulled her bra off and tossed it. “My mouth is going to be otherwise occupied.”

“So,” she said some time later, when she’d regained her breath. They were in her bed, naked, sated. Happy. “How far is this house from Sydney University?”

Alex opened one eye. “Does this mean we’re going to live in Sydney?”

“Possibly. Although I want you to know that this isn’t to set a precedent. You will not always get your own way.”

Alex just smiled and hugged her body close against his and started planning when he would next have his way with her.

Z
ara did move into Alex’s Sydney home and she decided they would keep both pools. The gym was, indeed, first rate and Alex had his way with her several memorable times within its mirrored, equipment-packed walls.

He did not get his way over a quick wedding, however.

Zara refused to rush into marriage and insisted on a six-month cooling-down period. Things did not cool down and they were married in the courtyard of Kameruka Downs under the broad blue northern sky.

Rafe was Alex’s best man, which gave him license to drop all kinds of lines about being the best man. Susannah returned from America in time to act as maid of honor, and although she remained quietly mysterious about her man she completed Zara’s happiness by letting everyone know she was the bride’s sister.

Angie, of course, organized the reception party for fam
ily and a small group of friends. Catriona was supposed to help her with the food except her delicate early-pregnancy stomach objected to the first whiff of seafood. Angie smiled and patted her mini-bulge and thanked whatever fates had made her so hale and hearty.

Maura Keane Carlisle sat in the front row for the ceremony, holding Tomas’s hand tightly and smiling broadly despite the stream of tears coursing down her face.

And from up above “King” Carlisle looked down on them all and smiled. His beloved wife and his three boys, all happy, all smiling. His mission was accomplished.

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