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

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      “Alex says he’s going to marry Susannah.”

      “Yeah, right. When they both can schedule a free hour between meetings. And as for Rafe…” He made a scoffing noise that said it all.

      “Yeah,” Angie agreed, and in the ensuing silence—as they both contemplated the unlikely image of Rafe, the consummate playboy, choosing one woman for the job—it almost felt like the old Angie sitting at his side, driving him bonkers one minute, completely in accord the next. “Why do you think he made this stipulation? Your father, I mean.”

      “For Mau.”

      She contemplated that for a moment. “He knows you guys would do anything for Maura—that’s a given—but he had to know she wouldn’t want some token grandchild. That she wouldn’t be happy unless you all were happy, not forced into it by a clause in his will.”

      “Yeah, but she’s not to know anything about it. That’s why Konrads wanted to see us alone.”

      “Good luck with that!” She cut him a look, part thoughtful, part rueful. “Although I do think he was pretty smart. I mean, what surer way to distract you all from mourning him?”

      Tomas turned sharply, stared at her for a minute. Trust Angie to come up with that angle.

      “Smart?” he wondered out loud, thinking words like contrived and cunning where closer to the truth.

      Wasn’t it their right to mourn a father who’d done so much for them, been so much to them?

      “It worked, didn’t it?” she asked.

      Hell, yes. They’d barely had time to bury him before Jack Konrads called that meeting in the library and turned their sorrow into anger.

      Tomas shook his head, dismissing the whole topic with a gesture of impatience. “His reasoning doesn’t change what we have to do.”

      Angie’s silent regard, serious and thoughtful, tugged the bands of frustration in his chest tighter.

      “What?” he barked.

      “Rafe says you’re not…seeing…anyone.”

      Her midsentence pause was just long enough for Tomas to know his brother had used another doing word. “What the hell would Rafe know about who I’m…seeing?”

      For possibly the first time in her life, Angie’s gaze dropped away from his. Probably because of his brutal emphasis on that verb. Fine. He didn’t want to discuss his sex life, with her, with Rafe, with anyone.

      Worse, he hated the notion that they’d been discussing it in his absence.

      “Okay,” she said on an exhalation. “So, do you have any sort of a plan? Other than that crazy idea of paying someone?”

      “What’s so crazy about it?”

      “Yeesh, Tomas, do you really want that kind of woman to mother your child?”

      “What kind would that be?”

      She rolled her eyes. “The kind who’d do it for money.”

      “I’m not talking prostitution.”

      “Really?”

      Something about her tone—and the arch of her brows—chafed his simmering frustration. “You got any better ideas? Women aren’t about to line up to have my baby.”

      “You are so without a clue. I mean, look at you!” And she did. She leaned back and looked at him with a narrow-eyed thoroughness that reminded him all over again how much she’d changed. “Women find that whole rugged loner thing a complete turn-on.”

      “What a load of bull!”

      She made an impatient tsking sound with her tongue. “You get to the city occasionally…or at least you used to. You have to feel women looking you over. You can’t not know you’re like their living, breathing, outback fantasy.”

      Fantasy? Big deal. What he needed was reality, female and available.

      “Name me one of these women,” he said roughly. “One who’d have my baby.”

      She blinked slowly and edged back another inch. Which is when he noticed that he’d gotten right in her face. Close enough that he heard the faint hiss of her indrawn breath. The only sound in the intense silence, until she spoke.

      “I would.”

      Two

      Angie listened to those two short, stunning syllables echoing inside her head. I would. Where had that come from? Was she insane?

      Definitely.

      Otherwise she would be laughing, right? Not loopy, they’re-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha laughter, but a smooth chuckle as she nudged Tomas and said, “Ha, ha. Got you a good one, didn’t I?” Or something similarly offhand and flippant.

      Anything to fill the awkward silence and the fact that her heart was thudding so hard it physically hurt, and that she really, really wanted to confess the truth.

       Well, here’s the thing, Tomas…

       I’ve loved you in some way pretty much all of my life. I’ve wanted to marry you ever since I was thirteen. Somewhere around fourteen I’d already named our babies—three of them, all boys, all with your baby blues.

      Except she couldn’t admit that. She wanted to shove the intensity of her teenage crush back in the past where it belonged. She’d come down here to try and save their friendship, not to send it on a headlong plummet into disaster.

      Angie swallowed, and wished that his gaze hadn’t dropped to her throat at that exact second. Her throat felt tight, her smile even tighter. “I’ve really weirded you out, haven’t I?”

      “Yup.” He shook his head, looked away, then back at her. “Was that your intention?”

      “No.”

      “Then…why?”

      She wished she could laugh it off, but she looked into his stunned blue eyes and she couldn’t laugh and she couldn’t lie. All she could find was some small version of the truth. “Damned if I know, but I have to tell you that your response is not very flattering. I mean, would it be so bad? You and me?”

      She felt him staring, felt the puzzlement in his sharp regard take on another flavor. Was he actually contemplating the reality? Him with her, skin to skin, doing what was necessary to make babies? Her heart skipped. The tightness in her throat and her skin took on a new dimension, a new heat.

      “You can’t have thought about it,” he said slowly, “at all!”

      Oh, how wrong could one person be. Angie had thought about it—specifically, about her and Tomas doing it—ever since her first sex СКАЧАТЬ