A sense of peace enveloped him like a gentle breeze as delicate footsteps scuffed the hardwood floor behind him. He chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s scarier, you blabbering out my most embarrassing childhood secrets, or you just standing there without saying a word.”
“Watch it, junior. I don’t care how big and tough you think you are, I’ll still slap that smug smile right off your face.”
She’d have to jump pretty high, but he’d learned a long time ago never to underestimate Naya Harper. The woman was barbed wire tangled around a rusted fence post and twice as tough.
She shuffled across the same veranda he’d spent way too much of his youth sweeping and snaked her arms around his waist. “I still can’t believe you’re home for good.”
He pressed her hands to his stomach and eased back into his mother’s embrace. “Why the hell did it take me so long to figure out this is where I belong?”
“You were never that bright.”
He caressed her slender hands and took care not to scratch the delicate skin that had somehow stayed soft and smooth despite the lifetime she’d spent mustering cattle, mending fences, and wrangling stockmen and feral kids. “I blame my parents.”
She rested her cheek against his back and squeezed tighter. “If I’m to believe all the news reports and the medals hanging in the lounge room, you did okay out there for a big dumb country boy who’s too stubborn for his own good.”
Up until two days ago his mother had been the only person with the power to instantly ease the tension in his muscles and put a smile on his face. Now there were two. Only the second also had the power to stop his heart and stir up sensations and emotions that had no place being associated anywhere near the woman who’d raised him.
He shook the carnal visions of Abi and the unforgettable torture she’d inflicted on him that morning and patted his mother’s hands. “You going to tell me why you dragged Jarrah out here early, or am I going to have to beat it out of Jeddah?”
“Good luck.” His mother hooted before releasing her hold and squeezing in beside him.
She allowed the silence to close in around them, no doubt hoping he’d let it go, but he wasn’t a distracted teenager anymore, and his stubborn streak had only gotten wider with age.
She rewarded his patience with a muttered curse and a resigned sigh. “The Carters are making another play for Wingarra.”
His smile transformed into a snarl, and he had to force himself to relax before he ripped off the railing and brought the verandah’s bullnosed roof crashing down on them. “How? The greedy son of a bitch died six months ago.”
“It might be Jai.”
Memories flooded Ryder’s mind. The four outback horseman of the apocalypse terrorizing the poor inhabitants of Wingarra and then hiding behind their mother when the town got sick of their bullshit and came hunting for blood. Three Harper street rats in hand-me-down clothes and one Jai “Richie Rich” Carter in all his brand-spanking-new thousand-dollar outback sheik R.M. Williams glory. “So he ended up like his old man after all.”
His mother bumped him with her shoulder. “All he ever wanted was to be like you and your brothers. It wasn’t his fault he was born into old money.”
He nudged his mother back as regret joined the anger boiling in his gut. Jai Carter had been his third brother, his mother’s seventh adopted child, and his sister’s first—and as far as he could tell, only—love. “I should’ve let Maddie kill the scrawny runt when she had the chance.”
“Easy there, tiger. We still don’t know all the facts.” His mother tried hiding her pain and disappointment behind hope but failed miserably. She gently pried loose the fingers he’d clawed into the handrail before resting her hand over his. “Remember, not everyone had a dad like you.”
And just like that the righteous rage surging through him chilled, and he was once again the angry orphaned son of a wife-beating, drug-dealing criminal standing before a terrifyingly huge white man who’d taught him everything about being a loving, honorable, and decent man.
He wrapped an arm around his mother and pulled her close. “I still hear and feel him when it’s quiet.”
She nuzzled into him and sighed. “Ditto.”
He closed his eyes and extended his senses into the night and was rewarded by his father’s booming laughter and shotgun voice. Harden up, princess, and take care of my girl for me. Phillip Reginald Harper, seventh-generation English colonial, tough-as-nails stockman, ferocious protector, justice warrior, adoring husband and father, and the best man he’d ever known.
Ryder smiled to himself and pecked his mother’s head before straightening. “I thought all this would’ve ended when Satan finally ordered old-man Carter back home.”
“I did, too. Apparently someone at Carter Industries has got a team of three-piece suits ferreting around for anything Jarrah may have missed in the original court case, and they’re not keeping anything a secret.”
Jarrah may have been a womanizing smart-arse with way too much money and way too fine a taste in apartments and cars, but without his huge lawyer brain and even bigger balls, they’d have not only lost their home but the land they were responsible for protecting. “Jarrah didn’t miss anything.”
“We know that, the Queensland government knows that, and somewhere deep down in their rotting guts Carter Industries knows that, too, but that hasn’t stopped them lobbying the Federal Mining Minister. Apparently the media and their shareholders have finally realized profits and export revenue are no longer an excuse to mistreat animals. If Carter can’t meet the government’s animal protection standards, they’re going to shut him down.”
“So he’s going after the minerals?”
She shrugged. “Mining’s a lot easier to manage than a herd of cantankerous cattle, and much more profitable.”
And the environment could go fuck itself. He unclenched his jaw and shook his head. “I might have to pop around and catch up with Mr. Carter tomorrow.”
She chuckled and patted his arm. “Won’t do you any good. He’s on his way back to London. Plus, I can’t have you going off and getting arrested because I’ll need you to stop Maddie from killing him with her bare hands if and when he returns.”
“Jesus, I’ll be safer back in the Middle East.”
His mother’s laughter echoed into the silence as she slapped his shoulder. “Cut her some slack. She’s been run off her feet preparing for the muster. She’ll die before admitting it, but she’s almost as happy as I am to have you back. She could use a pair of giant paws and a strong back.”
“Gee thanks, nice to be missed.”
She wrenched him down and smacked a kiss onto his cheek. “Anytime, my teddy bear.”
He winced and whispered a curse. “You let that little nugget slip in front of Abi and I’m re-enlisting.” His lips curved, and something warm and gooey settled in his gut. Just the thought of her had him smiling like an infatuated teenager.
His mother chuckled and kissed him again before settling herself back on the rail beside him.
“What was that for?”
“Nothing.”
Like hell it was nothing. He didn’t need to look at her to know what was running through her devious mind.
His mother picked at some flaking paint before regarding him. “Abi turn in for the night?”
And there she blows. He nodded and hip-checked his chuckling mother. “I’m surprised you waited this long to get to her. You must be slowing down in your old age.”
The punch his mother delivered to his ribs confirmed she hadn’t slowed down much, but it still couldn’t wipe the stupid grin from his face.
Abi had barely been able to keep her eyes open while his family had gathered around mugs overflowing with Kira’s world-famous hot chocolate and Jeddah’s not-so-world-famous homemade marshmallows to share more humiliating stories of his childhood and adolescence. She’d finally admitted defeat around the time Jarrah had started regaling everyone with Sergeant
Ryder Harper’s botched encounters with the opposite sex. She got Jarrah to promise to tell her everything in the morning before allowing Ryder to drag her from the table.
He’d ended up practically carrying her up the stairs leading to the loft above the barn that he and his brothers had converted into a bachelor pad. After almost a decade of hosting video-game marathons and hangovers, tonight was probably the first time the weathered hardwood walls and rusted, corrugated iron roof had actually hosted a real-live woman. “You didn’t need to fix up the barn. We would’ve been happy in one of the spare rooms.”
His mother patted his shoulder. “Honey, those not-so-secret looks you shot each other over the dining table were hot enough to ignite ice. There’s no way I was risking the pair of you burning down the Big House during the night.”
So much for his covert training. His mother was slipping down the other side of middle age, but even after all these years he couldn’t get anything by her.
She stared out into the night. “I’m surprised you came back. I thought you two would be setting fire to the barn.”
Now it was his turn to laugh. He should’ve been embarrassed, he should’ve been mortified, but the woman standing beside him and pretending not to be studying him out of the corner of her eye knew him better than he knew himself, and he needed to get this talk over and done with so he could focus on Operation Abi. “She passed out as soon as her head hit the pillow.”
Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. Abi had done everything short of climbing onto his back to drag him into bed, but despite her willing spirit, her body had simply given out. The headache she’d smiled and laughed through during dinner had only gotten worse as his homecoming had progressed, and though he’d heard sex was a headache cure, he knew damned well that if he’d given in to the dark side, there was no way in hell he’d have been able to stop himself from ravaging her the way he’d daydreamed of the entire journey west from the coast. Even after she’d fallen asleep it had taken all his willpower not to stand there like a sparkly vampire and watch the breath enter and leave her body. She was his personal brand of crack, only more powerful and more addictive.
“She’s an amazing girl.”
He’d been shocked his mother had delayed the interrogation this long. “Yup.”
There were a hundred words he could use to describe the woman who’d stormed his world and flipped it on its axis but amazing pretty much covered it.
“She’s pretty keen on leaving in a few days.”
He smiled and glanced at her. His mother was as nosy as a tabloid reporter and about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but if it hadn’t been for her guilting Abi into helping set up the kids’ classroom, he’d still be trying to figure out how to get her to hang around short of chaining her to his bed. He hated admitting it, but when it came to women he needed all the help he could get.
“Took me thirteen hours and half my meals on the plane to convince her to spend the night with me. I woke up this morning and caught her trying to make a break for it. Thanks to you and that evil mind of yours, at least I’ve got a little more time to work with.”
“Here to help.” She leaned in and bumped him with her hip. “I see you’ve still got a way with the ladies. How’d you get her to drive five hundred kilometers into the middle of a desert?”
He could field strip and reassemble any firearm blindfolded, hot-wire anything from a scooter to a tank, and disable 95 percent of the security systems out there, but he could only guess as to what was going on behind Abi’s damned glasses and hypnotic amber eyes. “Free accommodation, complimentary tour-guide services, and more begging than I’d care to disclose.”
His mother laughed, but it lacked her usual humor.
He turned, but she pretended not to notice him and stared into the nothingness stretching out from the veranda. “She’s dealing with a lot at the moment. God only knows the horrors she’ll face when she gets back home.”
He smiled to himself. “I wondered why you two were gone so long.”
She shrugged. “We needed some girl time.”
And that had been the only reason he hadn’t chased after Abi when she’d excused herself during dinner, but he hadn’t expected his mother to interrogate her. “Please tell me you didn’t waterboard her.”
The back of his mother’s hand thudded into his shoulder before her fingers slid down his forearm and captured his fingers. It was such a simple gesture, but like everything his mother did its meaning went far deeper.
The tiny part of him that wasn’t focused on the woman sleeping fifty meters away sighed with relief. He was running out of ideas. Maybe his mother could help. “This’ll be the third time they’ve cut her head open.”
She slowly nodded as her fingers tightened around his. “Do I want to know the odds?”
He shook his head and stared into the darkness.
His mother sighed and slid her arm around his waist as she leaned into him. “Does she know you’re in love with her?”
He could’ve denied the truth, but what was the point? He’d have to meet his mother’s gaze sooner or later and then he’d be toast. “She’s the one.”
He and Abi had practically sat on top of each other for thirteen hours straight, fourteen and a half if he counted time on the runway. They’d shared a dozen meals, argued more times than he could remember, spent the night together, washed each other, played show-and-tell with their defective body parts, and covered more than five hundred kilometers in a car without stopping to ask for directions. That had to add up to at least a couple of months’ worth of dating, hadn’t it? But no matter how thoroughly he analyzed the last two days or how often he recalculated the numbers and reran the data, he kept coming up with the same conclusion—he was freaking nuts.
His brothers would’ve burst out laughing at the news. Kira would’ve screamed and jumped into his arms. Jeddah would’ve stared openmouthed before joining their brothers. And Madison would have called him every foul name in her extensive repertoire before beating the crap out of him. But Naya Harper didn’t say a word, not one damned word to her insane son.
He pulled her close and pretended it was for her benefit. “You’re not going to tell me I’m crazy?”
“I’ll leave that to your brothers and sisters.” She squeezed his waist. “I happen to think a little bit of crazy is a fantastic thing.”
She reached up and cradled his jaw. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”
The only thing he knew for sure was letting Abi go was going to hurt a shitload more than whatever life threw their way.
He dropped his cheek onto his mother’s forehead. “Has that ever stopped me before?” Her whispered chuckle eased some of the tension tightening his chest. “You ever going to stop worrying about me?”
She gazed up at him with humorless eyes. “I have to. My son’s not as indestructible as he thinks he is.”
Chapter Nineteen
Warm water cascaded over Abi’s superheated skin and diluted the guilt and fear that had been slowly poisoning her as surely as the bitch inside her head. She’d collapsed into bed last night and fallen asleep with Naya whispering in her ear and Doris pounding on her brain, but as exhaustion claimed her, Naya’s words grew louder and followed her into her dreams. I wasn’t as smart or as courageous as you.
Yeah right, then why had Abi been trembling behind Naya as they’d snuck back into the kitchen for dessert?
It took me years to finally figure out he was the one. Was Ryder the one, and if he was, how the hell would a practical stranger know how she felt when she had absolutely no idea herself? Naya may have been an indigenous elder, but she couldn’t read minds, could she?
Abi groaned and leaned into the mountain of muscle she’d clung to through the night like he was her gravity. He was the fierce protector who’d scared her demons away and the man who’d calmed her, excited her, and helped her ignore the turmoil swirling inside her head and the darkness looming on her horizon.
&nbs
p; Ryder’s magic fingers slid down her stomach and between her thighs as her moans burbled through the water dribbling over her lips. “I think you covered that area on your first pass.”
He pulled her close using the same hand that had been playing her nipples with the mastery of a classical pianist and gently massaged her swollen sex with the other. “Just making sure. Wouldn’t want to miss anything.”
Jet lag and a nuclear headache had saved him from her lust the previous night. But when she’d woken to find him leaning on one elbow and studying her in the moonlight filtering into the barn’s loft, she’d wrenched off his sweat shorts, thrown off her panties, and ridden him until they’d exploded in a sweat-soaked tangle of sheets and limbs. That had been an hour and a shower orgasm ago, and judging by the rigid cock wedged securely between her butt cheeks, her man was good to go for his second ride on the roller coaster for the day.
She picked up the foam-covered bar of soap he’d used to reduce her legs to jelly and lathered her hands before turning into his embrace. She cupped his balls with one hand and captured his shaft with the other. “This must be filthy.” Or was it just her mind?
She was still getting to know the sex maniac who’d taken control of her, but so far, so very, very good. The veins in his neck and arms puckered as he tensed and thrust his hips against her while he continued to work her sex. She pumped his slick, rock-hard flesh in rhythm with the fingers slowly gliding in and out of her body. The insatiable need that had filled her dreams consumed her once again, and just like it had done so many times already, her mind drifted into a magical place somewhere beyond reality where only the two of them existed.
With a guttural curse he slid his fingers from between her thighs and pulled free of her grip.
Against All Odds (Outback Hearts) Page 20