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

“Alex has set a wedding date.”

“In two weeks.” Maura’s lips came together in a disapproving line. “Civil vows in Melbourne! Why are they in such a rush? Alex fobbed me off with some cock-and-bull story about their busy lives. Rafe knows something and won’t tell me. Do you know what’s going on?”

Fixed with those straight blue eyes, Angie started to squirm.

Maura didn’t miss that reaction. Her gaze narrowed. “Is Susannah pregnant? Is that what you’re all trying to keep from me? “

“I don’t know,” Angie answered honestly, her gaze sliding away to Rafe’s in silent appeal.

“Oh, for land’s sake, will you two stop treating me like a fool! I know there’s something going on with you all, not just Alex. I’ve been too wrapped up in myself since…” Her eyes sharpened, as if with remembered pain, but she drew a deep breath and continued. “Does this have anything to do with your father’s will?”

Rafe rubbed at the back of his neck. Angie studied the bottle in her hand. Maura clicked her tongue in disapproval.

“I won’t accept that. One of you is going to tell me the whole story and—”

“What story?”

Tomas? They all turned as one, three sets of eyes fixed on the new arrival. Angie felt her stomach drop as if a high-speed elevator had taken off and left her a nanosecond behind. Where had he arrived from? And why couldn’t he have done so five minutes earlier?

His gaze slid from one to the other before settling on Angie. “What’s going on?”

Ten

The dinner didn’t unfold as it had done in Angie’s imagination. While she attempted to stretch a meal-for-two four ways—she shouldn’t have bothered, since no one had much of an appetite—Tomas and Rafe had drawn Maura a pretty thin sketch of the will clause. Angie knew it was sketchy by the questions Maura continued to ask after they’d all sat down for dinner.

They’d discussed Alex and Susannah and their no frills wedding. Maura, who’d given up all pretence of eating, supposed she wouldn’t be able to do a thing to change her eldest son’s mind. Silently Angie sympathized. Tomas was equally stubborn, when he made up his mind. And as for Rafe…

“What are you doing about this clause, Rafferty?”

Uh-oh. Maura used her sons’ full names rarely. The upshot was always trouble. Angie put down her cutlery and started to collect plates—escaping to the kitchen and washing dishes suddenly looked very attractive.

“I’m still considering my options,” Rafe said carefully.

“Of course you are.” Maura’s tone hovered between disgust and anger. “And what about you?” Her gaze speared Tomas. “Please tell me that’s not why Angie’s here.”

The crockery in Angie’s hands rattled its own answer, even after she gripped hard to stop the telltale clatter. She could feel Maura’s eyes on her face, could feel the heat rising from her chest through her throat and into her cheeks. First tears and now she was blushing. What could she possibly do for a grand finale?

She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to look this woman she loved like a mother right in the eye and tell her the truth. But she couldn’t; she’d promised Tomas. Seated beside him at the table she could feel his tension even though he answered Maura’s question with enviable composure. “I’ll talk to you later, Mau. After we’ve—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We all know what’s going on.” Maura looked from one to the other, daring them to disagree. “Don’t we?”

“It’s no one’s business but mine and Angie’s. I’m not discussing it at this table.”

For a long second the silence was chillingly complete, then Maura exhaled through her nose in a sound of pure exasperation. “If I’m reading your lack of denial and outrage correctly, you two are sleeping together to make a baby. Because Charles thinks—thought—he could make up for something that happened twenty-six years ago.”

Angie put the stack of plates down with a loud clatter. Is that why Charles added this clause? To replace the baby his wife lost at childbirth? To make up for the devastation of that loss?

“We don’t know that,” Rafe said.

“No one knows why he attached that clause,” Tomas added.

“I do,” Maura said with more conviction than either of her sons. “I always wanted more children but after Cathy died, I couldn’t, physically or mentally. Charles vowed he would make that up to me, that he’d make me happy again.”

She shook her head slowly, sadly, and for the first time that night tears misted her vivid blue eyes. She hadn’t been happy in a long, long time, Angie knew, but usually she maintained a stoic facade.

“You, child—” Maura pointed across the table at Angie. “You made me happy when you came to live here. You were such a wild, joyous little thing. So full of life and so eager to give these boys a kick in their arrogance.”

“It was an easy target.”

Maura’s smile couldn’t disguise the lingering sadness in her eyes. “And now you’re making a baby with my son. Have you planned a wedding I know nothing about, too?”

“We’re not getting married,” Tomas answered, and his voice was about as tight as the constriction in Angie’s chest.

“Even if a baby comes of this?”

“That’s right.”

Maura stared at her son a second longer, then shifted her attention one place to the left. “And is that all right with you, Angie?”

“Tomas was very straight with me,” she said carefully, “about not wanting to marry again. I offered to have this baby, regardless.”

Maura nodded once, accepting that answer even though she obviously didn’t like it. Her disapproval and disappointment fisted hard around Angie’s heart and squeezed with all its might. She longed to blurt out the truth, to say she wanted the marriage, the together, the forever, and she would probably keep on wanting it until the day she died. If she couldn’t change the stubborn man’s mind in the meantime.

“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, Angie, that’s not my place. But you know I was a single mother, twice over. I was lucky Charles came along and gave us all his love and this life and a complete family. I know which option I preferred, and that’s all I have to say to you.”

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