Princes of the Outback. Bronwyn Jameson

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      One

       Six months later

      Angelina Mori didn’t mean to eavesdrop. If, at the last minute, she hadn’t remembered the solemnity of the occasion she would have charged into the room in her usual forthright fashion and she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

      But she did remember the occasion—this morning’s burial, this afternoon’s reading of the will, the ensuing meeting between Charles Carlisle’s heirs—and she paused and steadied herself to make a decorous entrance into the Kameruka Downs library.

      Which is how she came to overhear the three deep, male voices. Three voices as familiar to Angie’s ear as those of her own two brothers.

      “You heard what Konrads said. We don’t all have to do this.” Alex, the eldest, sounded as calm and composed as ever. “It’s my responsibility.”

      “News flash.” Rafe’s mocking drawl hadn’t changed a bit in the time she’d been gone. “Your advanced age doesn’t make you the expert or the one in charge of this. How about we toss a coin. Heads, you—”

      “The hell you say. We’re in this together. One in, all in.” Tomas’s face, she knew, would be as hard and expressionless as his voice. Heartbreakingly different to the man she remembered from…Was it only five years ago? It seemed so much longer, almost another lifetime.

      “A nice sentiment, little bro’, but aren’t you forgetting something?” Rafe asked. “It takes two to make a baby.”

      Angie didn’t drop the tray of sandwiches she held, but it was a near thing. Heart hammering, she pulled the tray tight against her waist and steadied it with a white-knuckled grip. The rattling plates quieted; the pounding of her heart didn’t.

      And despite what she’d overheard—or maybe because of it—she didn’t slink away.

      With both hands occupied, she couldn’t knock on the half-closed door. Instead she nudged it open with one knee and cleared her throat. Loudly. Twice. Because now the voices were raised in strident debate on who was going to do this—get married? have a baby? in order to inherit?— and how.

      Holy Henry Moses.

      Angie cleared her throat a third time, and three pairs of intensely irritated, blue eyes turned her way. The Carlisle brothers. “Princes of the Outback” according to this week’s headlines, but only because some hack had once dubbed their father’s extensive holdings in the Australian outback “Carlisle’s Kingdom.”

      Angie had grown up by their rough-and-tumble side. They might look like the tabloid press’s idea of Australian royalty, but they didn’t fool her for a second.

      Princes? Ha!

      “What?” at least two princes barked now.

      “Sorry to intrude, but you’ve been holed up in here for yonks. I thought you might need some sustenance.” She deposited her tray in the center of the big oak desk and her hip on its edge. Then she reached for the bottle of forty-year-old Glenfiddich—pilfered from their father’s secret stash—and swirled the rich, amber contents in the light. More than half-full. Amazing. “I thought you’d have made a bigger dent in this.”

      Alex squinted at the glass in his hand as if he’d forgotten its existence. Rafe winked and held his out for a refill. Broad back to the room, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black dress trousers, Tomas acknowledged neither the whisky nor her arrival.

      And no one so much as glanced at the sandwiches. They didn’t want sustenance. They wanted her to leave so they could continue their discussion.

      Tough.

      She slid her backside further onto the desk, took her time selecting a corn beef and pickle triangle, then arched a brow at the room in general. “So, what’s this about a baby?”

      Tomas’s shoulders tensed. Alex and Rafe exchanged a look.

      “It’s no use pretending nothing’s going on,” she said around her first bite. “I overheard you talking.”

      For a long moment she thought they’d pull the old boys’ club number, buttoning up in front of the girl. Except this girl had spent her whole childhood tearing around Kameruka Downs in the dust of these three males and her two brothers. Sadly outnumbered, she’d learned to chase hard and to never give up. She glanced sideways at Tomas’s back. At least not until she was completely beaten.

      “Well?” she prompted.

      Rafe, bless his heart, relented. “What do you think, Ange? Would you—”

      “This is supposed to be private,” Alex said pointedly.

      “You don’t think Ange’s opinion is valuable? She’s a woman.”

      “Thank you for noticing,” Angie murmured. From the corner of her eye she watched Tomas who had never noticed, while she fought two equally strong, conflicting urges. One part of her ached to slide off the desk and wrap him and his tightly held pain in a big old-fashioned hug. The other wanted to slug him one for ignoring her.

      “Would you have somebody’s baby…for money?”

      What? Her attention swung from the still and silent figure by the window and back to Rafe. She swallowed. “Somebody’s?”

      “Yeah.” Rafe cocked a brow. “Take our little brother, the hermit, for example. He says he’d pay and since that’s—”

      “Enough,” Alex cut in.

      Unnecessarily, as it happened, because a second later—so quick, Angie didn’t see it coming—Tomas held Rafe by the shirtfront. The two harsh flat syllables he uttered would never have emanated from any prince’s mouth.

      Alex separated them, but Tomas only stayed long enough СКАЧАТЬ