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

Close your eyes, lie back, and think of Kameruka.

How many times had he closed his eyes this last week, lying back in the restless tangle of his sheets, and thought about Angie? Her soft lips grazing his skin, her exotic perfume adrift in his blood, her dark eyes filled with the wild promise of passion as she came to him in the dark.

It’s only sex.

If only he could believe that. If only he could get past the disturbing notion of the action and cut straight to the result. Because he could imagine Angie with a baby, in a wildly sensuous earth-mother way.

But Rafe’s baby?

The notion burned his gut like battery acid, the wrongness and the certainty that if his brother asked, Angie would say yes. Women didn’t say no to Rafe. Ever.

Ah, hell.

Instead of heading out to the street on a quest for cold and impersonal, he found himself in an elevator going up to the executive floor of the Carlisle Grande Hotel. And his gut burned worse than ever.

Four

He found her office empty, yet Tomas had no doubt that this was Angie’s workspace. Less than two days on the job—not enough time to even change the name-plate on the door—and already she’d stamped her personality all over the place. Some—Alex came to mind—would call her desk a disaster. She would shrug and call it work in progress.

Knowing Angie, that would mean at least a dozen pieces of work in simultaneous progress.

Amid all the open folders and scattered paperwork sat a bright blue coffee mug which he knew wouldn’t be empty. Angie rarely finished anything in one sitting. Relaxing a notch, he strolled over to the desk and checked. Yup, the mug was still half full.

Wry amusement twitched at the corners of his mouth as he straightened. His nose twitched at the scent of her per-

fume…or perhaps that was the bunch flowers shoved higgledy-piggledy into a red glass jar. She had a framed collage of pictures, too. One of her parents smiling into each other’s eyes on their wedding day, a more recent picture of her father gaunt with the illness that took his life, and a candid shot of the three Mori kids goofing off at the Kameruka Downs waterhole.

He’d probably been there that day—for all he knew, he could have taken the picture. There’d been so many days like that back then.

But what about now?

Tomas put the frame back, next to the coffee mug, amid the chaos that was Angie’s workspace. She’d taken a convenient job here with Rafe, but how long did she intend staying? Was she ready to settle down? Enough to raise a baby?

His mood had turned grim long before his thumb brushed over the rim of the mug, smudging the glossy imprint of her lipstick.

This was the Angie of now, the woman he didn’t know.

The one who stained her lips the color of mocha, whose lips had imprinted his with the fleeting taste of temptation. The one whose velvet-brown eyes spoke of another wildness, a different type of passion to the laughing girl in the waterhole picture. This was the woman who’d stood on the steps of the plane and calmly suggested that sex between them could be fun.

With a silent oath he jerked away from the desk, his action so abrupt he almost upset the mug. He righted it quickly, pushing aside papers to make some space. And that’s when he found the book.

Babies Made Easy.

He was still staring at the cover, bemused by her choice of reading material and the irony of that title, when Angie returned.

He heard the quick approach of footsteps in the corridor and sensed her hesitation in the doorway, her presence licking through him like the memory of her kiss—a sweet suggestion of heat and anticipation, chased away by instant hostility. Not toward Angie herself, but toward the unwanted response of his body. He didn’t know how to handle this new awareness, the strange tug in his gut, the tight dryness in his throat.

Because she was standing there watching him, eating him up with those big brown eyes.

“I didn’t expect to find you here.” She came into the room then, smiling with a warmth that made him think she didn’t mind the surprise. “How did the meeting go?”

Of course she knew they’d been meeting with the lawyer. Rafe would have told her. They talked a lot, after all. “A waste of everyone’s time,” he said curtly, irritated that the thought of her and Rafe doing anything together completely wiped away the effect of her smile.

“There’s no way out of the clause?”

“None we’re prepared to take.”

“So, you have to make a baby.” Not a question but a matter-of-fact statement as she leaned her hips against the desk at his side. She looked like a candidate for Ms. Hotel Management, in her crisp white shirt and knee-length black skirt, her hair sleek and neat, her only jewelry a fine gold neck-chain bearing the letter A.

At least she was smiling her usual Angie smile, warm and relaxed and spiced with a dash of wryness.

Then she noticed the book in his hand and her smile faltered. His appreciation of that smile nosedived right alongside. He tapped a finger against the book’s cover, right under the title. “Interesting choice of reading, Angie.”

“I thought I’d research the topic, in case I needed to help any friends out.”

“Friends like Rafe?”

“Like Rafe or Alex or Tomas,” she corrected without hesitation. “It’s fascinating reading…although I have to say the title is very misleading.”

No kidding.

“Did you know there’s only a seventeen percent chance of conceiving each month? With odds like that, you need to get started. You all do!”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Their eyes met and held for a second, and he sensed a stillness in her, a new intensity beneath her aura of casual confidence, as if he’d surprised the breath right out of her. Hell, he’d surprised himself even though the words had come out of his mouth!

“Have you changed your mind?” she asked.

“Have you?” he countered.

“About making a baby in some sterile clinic?” With a glancing brush of fingers, she took the book from him and tossed it onto the desk. “Absolutely not.”

“I meant about helping me.”

“Does it matter? Since we don’t see eye to eye on the method, my offer of help is moot.”

“Maybe we can compromise. About the method.”

“Really?” Eyebrows arched, she regarded him steadily for a drawn-out second. “How would that work, do you suppose?”

Tomas shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t have an answer. Until this last minute he hadn’t fixed on what he’d hoped to achieve by coming up here. Making sure she didn’t get tangled with his hound of a brother, yeah, but as for how—

“Yeesh, Tomas.” She interrupted his thoughts with obvious irritation. “You don’t know why you’re here, do you? Nothing’s changed from last week.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that you couldn’t even stand me kissing you, so why chance anything more intimate?” She blew out a short, impatient breath, and when she started to turn away Tomas reacted instinctively, stopping her retreat with a hand on her arm. For a long moment she just stood there gazing up at him, her eyes widened with surprise.

Good.

He’d caught her on the back foot for a change, and with subtle emphasis he shifted his grip on her arm, not exactly tightening but…adjusting. Just so she knew he meant to keep her there until he was done. Whatever he had to say, whyever he’d changed his mind and come upstairs, he had to put into words. Now. “You caught me by surprise last week.”

“So—” she lifted her chin “—if I’d given you more notice you wouldn’t have minded me kissing you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” she repeated softly, her gaze narrowing and darkening. “Do you want to find out? Or do you want to let go of my arm so I can get back to work?”

The challenge gleamed hot in her eyes, daring him to make that choice. It’s only a kiss, he told himself, but that phrasing didn’t help. Not when her words from last week twined sinuously through his consciousness.

It’s only sex.

And this was a test. If he could kiss her, if he could just bend his head to hers and go through the motions, then maybe he could do the sex part, too. Maybe.

He heard the huff of her exasperated breath, felt her start to pull away and blocked her escape with his body. Their eyes met and held. An awareness of what they were about to do charged the air between them, but a breath away from her lips, he paused, too charged with tension to breach that final inch of space.

“Go ahead,” she said softly. “I won’t bite…unless you want me to.”

His head reared back, dumbfounded when he should have expected no less. This was Angie, after all. Angie who was shaking her head with renewed exasperation.

“I was kidding. A joke, you know. Humor.”

Yeah, he knew, he just wasn’t in a kidding mood, not by a long shot.

And that she must had read on his face because she sighed, a soft relenting whisper, as she leaned forward and touched her thumb to his chin. Then she shocked the hell out of him by reaching up and kissing him there. He felt the softness of her lips, the moist warmth of her tongue and then her retreat.

A small smile hovered on her lips as she whispered, “Sorry.”

Sorry for the joke? Or for striking him dumb with that one swift touch of her tongue. Tomas tried to wrap his astonishment into words, to ask what she meant, but she took his face between her hands—the same as she’d done at the plane—and looked right into his eyes, her gaze dark and steady and serious.

“That was your notice.” She stretched to kiss one corner of his mouth and then the other. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

Before he could begin to recover his equilibrium, she moved her lips against his with soft restraint, as if she was expecting his withdrawal…or waiting for him to take a more active role. A raw, male part of him itched to take over, but a stronger, harsher voice hammered away in resistance. It wouldn’t let him forget that this was Angie, and he had no business wanting to close his eyes and immerse himself in the lush temptation of her lips.

“Relax,” she whispered, her breath a shiver of sensation on his skin and in his blood. Her thumbs stroked his cheeks, down to the corners of his mouth. “It’s only a kiss.”

And then she kissed him the same way she tackled everything—with the same energy and heat and wholehearted passion. She kissed and she willed him to open up, to unwind, to let go. She made a sound low in her throat, a kind of smoky humming that rolled through him in one long, hot wave of desire that caught him totally unprepared, completely at a loss. All he could do was close his eyes and thread his hands into the thick softness of her hair and kiss her back.

Lord, how he kissed her back. With a hunger he couldn’t control, with a thoroughness he no longer wanted to control, with a yearning for all the intimacies he’d missed in the last years.

Since Brooke died.

That thought stalled his senses, slammed at his conscience, dragged him out of the drugging depths of that hot, wet contact. Intimacy was not what he wanted. No way. This was only a trial, proof that he could close his eyes and forget himself for long enough to do what had to be done. A means to an end and that was all.

He hauled himself back into his own space and switched his expression to deadpan. Not difficult—he’d had a lot of practice in recent years. Angie had slumped back against the desk. She shook her head as if to clear it and her eyes looked a little dazed. Her hair was a wild tumble, her lips kissed naked and pliant, and when she crossed her arms under her breasts, he couldn’t help but notice the outline of her nipples right through her respectable white shirt.

Heat tightened his skin, itched in his hands, swelled in his flesh. He looked away, forced himself to focus on the next step, now he’d conquered the first.

“So,” she said on a breathy exhalation. “That didn’t seem to go too badly.”

His eyes met hers, held, didn’t let go. “Do you still want to help me?”

For a long second she didn’t react, and he wondered if she hadn’t cottoned on to his meaning, if he needed to spell out what he was asking. Again. Then her hand drifted to her throat, and she twisted the fine chain around her index finger. Her throat moved, as if she’d swallowed. “My way?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” She eyed him a moment, her expression circumspect. “That’s a big step up from a kiss.”

“I know that.”

“And you think you can take your clothes off and climb into bed with me? That you can do—”

“I don’t know, okay?” And he sure as hell didn’t need her talking him through every step. He could feel the heat in his face, the tightness in his jaw, in other places he didn’t want to acknowledge, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, rearranging his weight and the tightness and the jumble of words in his brain. “I don’t know, but I want to try.”

“Because you want a baby?”

“Because I need a baby.”

“Right.”

There was a sting in her tone, a darkness in her eyes, and Tomas knew he’d blown it. He knew but he didn’t have the words or the sentiment to save the situation. What could he say? He had nothing to offer, no incentive, no promises, no smooth lines. None of the weapons a man like Rafe might use. And he could no more spin her lies than he could beg for her help.

“I don’t expect you to commit to this right off,” he said. “Not without a trial.”

“Trial sex? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“One night without any commitment. If it works, then we can talk about—” He gestured toward the discarded book on top of her desk.

“Making a baby?” She stared back at him a moment, her expression inscrutable. “All right.”

All right? Tomas swallowed and stared into her eyes. She meant it. For a panicky second his world tilted and spun, as if someone had hauled the rug out from under his feet. But then she was talking, planning, asking questions, and he forced himself to focus.

“Do you want me to come home with you?” he heard through the roaring in his ears. “I could—”

“No!” Not in his home, not in his bed. “No,” he repeated less stridently. “That’s not necessary.”

“Well, I can’t invite you home to my place because I don’t have a place. I’m staying with Carlo.”

Her brother, his friend. God, no! “I think we should keep this quiet, just between us.”

“In case it’s a humiliating disaster and we can’t look each other in the eye again?”

“In case it doesn’t work out,” he said, meeting her eyes and refusing to think about such dire consequences. “Neutral territory would be best.”

“I suppose a hotel room shouldn’t be too hard to organize, given your family owns a whole chain.” Despite that wry observation, her eyes remained dark and serious. Slowly she moistened her lips. “When do you want to conduct this…trial?”

“I’m not sure when I can get away.”

“You’re away now,” she pointed out, crossing her arms under her breasts again. Tomas forced himself to concentrate on her words. Not her body. Not the disquieting notion that he’d never seen her naked, but soon would. And he felt the rug start to shift beneath his feet again.

“The kiss worked here and now, with only a little notice,” she said with the same matter-of-fact logic. “Why not this, too?”

With a long slow stroke of her hands down her thighs, she straightened her skirt and walked around her desk. “I guess you’d planned to stay overnight?”

Tomas nodded and she picked up the phone and started dialing.

“With Alex or do you have a room booked?”

“A room. Here,” he managed. His throat was tight, his mouth dry, and that damn rug was moving way too fast.

“Hello, reception?” She greeted the voice on the end of the phone with a smile. “Hi, Lisa, it’s Angelina Mori in Mr. Carlisle’s office. You have a booking for his brother, Mr. Tomas Carlisle, for tonight? Yes? I’m looking for an upgrade if you have a suite available.”

Tomas stiffened. “That’s not necessary.”

“The Boronia Suite is perfect,” she said into the phone, ignoring both his spoken objection and the adamant shake of his head. “Yes, Lisa, only the one night. That’s all Mr. Carlisle requires.” Her eyes lifted to meet his, steady and direct and daring him to make something of it. “For now, at least.”

Two hours later Angie was still shaking her head over how she’d hijacked the arrangements so coolly and proficiently. She hadn’t let Tomas interrupt and she’d handled his objections with the same aplomb as the room upgrade.

“I’ve never been in a position to reserve a suite before,” she told him. “If I’m going to do this, why not with style?”

And then she’d settled behind her desk, telephone receiver anchored between shoulder and ear, and mentioned how much work she needed to get done before she could meet him upstairs. A very nice ploy, beautifully stage-managed, with no room for objection. Especially when Rafe arrived at her door, his curiosity diverted by his brother’s presence.

Tomas left. She shrugged off Rafe’s nosiness by pretending huge interest in a bogus phone call. Really, based on the whole scene in her office from start to finish, she should have been an actress. Her talents were much wasted. Who’d have known that her heart was racing, her insides churning, her bones quivering with nervous tension?

Now, two and a bit hours later, she smiled and made small talk with a Japanese couple as the Carlisle Grande’s high-speed elevator propelled her toward the upper-floor suites and her future. All in all, she felt remarkably calm. Considering she was about to have Tomas Carlisle.

Holy Henry Moses.

After she said goodbye to the couple on floor fifteen, Angie pressed an unsteady hand against her stomach, drew a deep breath, and willed everything to stop spinning. Although she hadn’t decided how, she knew she could go through with this. She knew because of the kiss that still burned strong and fierce in every cell of her blood, a kiss edged with darkness and barely leashed desperation.

He didn’t want her, but he needed her.

And if all went well, she might not only have Tomas Carlisle this once but she might get to keep him. To live with him as she grew big with his baby, to ease the haunted shadows in his eyes, to make him laugh and smile and live again. To be more than a helpmate to secure his inheritance—to be his wife and his partner.

And if it didn’t work out? If this turned into the disaster she’d alluded to in her office? Then perhaps that wouldn’t be all bad if it meant closure and a signal to move on.

Perhaps she might even silence the incessant heart-whisper that had stopped her committing to any other relationship, to a career or even to a place to live. The insistent whisper that she hold back a chunk of herself, to save it for this one man, this one home, this one life. Deep down she’d always hoped…and now those hopes were about to be realized.

If he hadn’t changed his mind all over again.

Outside the door to his suite—their suite—Angie hesitated only long enough to draw a deep breath before knocking. But then she couldn’t stand the waiting, the not knowing if he was inside or not. Fumbling, swearing softly at the tremor in her hand, she managed to swipe her security card through the lock. Red light. Swearing softly she tried again, her hand more steady this time.

Green light, hallelujah.

She pushed the door open and three slow paces into the entry vestibule her heart and stomach did the same free-fall as in the swiftly ascending elevator. Still, she went through the motions of checking the huge marble bathroom, the bedroom and huge closet, but nope. The whole suite stretched before her, quiet and pristine and empty.

He wasn’t here.

Angie didn’t assume she’d been stood up, at least not after she’d circled the whole suite several times and given his absence considerable thought. He may have changed a lot in recent years, but she couldn’t picture any version of Tomas hanging around a hotel room cooling his boot heels. He’d never done inactivity well.

She checked with reception, in case he’d left a message. Then she checked every horizontal surface—a five-star suite, she discovered, had many—and came up with no sign of a note. In fact there was no indication he’d even been here, but that was no reason to get her knickers knotted.

No, really, it wasn’t.

Most likely he had business to do, seeing as he came to the city so rarely these days. Or he could be downstairs in one of the hotel bars getting well and truly drunk. The Tomas she remembered didn’t need Dutch courage to tackle a wild bull or a woman, but this present one—well, she just didn’t know.

Cooling heels wasn’t big with Angie, either, but what else could she do but wait? Tracking Tomas down wasn’t an option, not when he wanted to keep this meeting (encounter? rendezvous? one-night stand?) secret. Yeesh, but she hated not knowing what to expect or even what to call whatever-this-was she’d agreed upon. Not knowing how long she might be waiting made her even more skittish, and determined to find some way of relaxing.

If she could expend some of this pent-up emotional energy then maybe she stood a chance of loosening up Tomas. That, she knew, was essential if this night was going to work out.

She ordered up a bottle of merlot. Then, on a whim, changed her order to the kind of French champagne she’d only tasted once before, at her heartbreaker of an eighteenth birthday party. Courtesy of the Carlisles, as it happened. If Tomas Carlisle was going to make her wait, then he could pay for the luxury of unwinding her nerves!

While she waited for room service to deliver her Dom Pérignon, she filled the spa and added a liberal dash of bath-oil from the complimentary basket labeled “Body Bliss.” Then she stacked the stereo with music designed for relaxation. The spa occupied roughly the same space as Carlo’s whole bathroom, so she figured if the music didn’t work she could use up some stray nervous energy swimming laps of the monster-tub.

Midway through the champagne and chin-deep in richly scented water, Angie felt a sudden sense of…no longer being alone. Her skin tingled, lifting hairs on the back of her neck and over her forearms. Startled, she jackknifed upright and waited, perfectly still but for the wild pounding of her heart. The music masked any sound, but when the bathroom door didn’t move from its half ajar position her heart rate slowly subsided.

So much for the relaxing, luxuriating experience.

She’d started to rise from the water, to reach for a bath sheet, when the music volume dipped noticeably. Instantly her pulse skipped, her exposed nipples tightened, anticipation fizzed in her blood—as happened pretty much any time Tomas Carlisle came into the picture. Not that he was exactly in the picture, but he was close enough that her body knew; her heart knew.

And as she slid back into the water’s warm embrace, she wondered if her patience could hold out until he came looking for her.

Five

How long, he wondered, could a woman stay in a bath?

Teeth gritted, Tomas attempted to block out another slush of water, another image of slick olive skin, another rush of heat to his loins. For the past two or ten or twenty minutes—God knows, it felt like an eternity!—he’d wished back that second when he’d turned down the music. Her selected volume (raucous) would have shut out the constant reminders that Angie was two open doors away, wet and naked.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to cross to the bedroom, and then to the bathroom, to do what he’d come up here to do. He didn’t know what he would say. He didn’t know how to begin.

Hell.

He focused hard on the view beyond the window, the lights of a city not yet ready for sleep, the traffic inching toward the bridge, late workers heading home from their jobs the same as every other evening. Everything normal, routine, unchanged in their worlds while his was spinning into some unknown dimension.