Rugged Loner

by Bronwyn Jameson

  You’re part feral goat, the boys had spat in disgust as they handed over her winnings, and it had taken Angie years to realize that comparison wasn’t exactly flattering.

  Her smile, wry and reminiscent, faded as she neared her destination. Moment of truth, sister. She rubbed warming hands up and down her goose-bumped arms. She would bet the vintage silk-georgette dress she’d vainly not changed out of—despite the chill night and a setting more suited to jeans—that Tomas had retreated to his usual lair.

  And when you find him, you say your piece and you make sure he listens. You don’t let him turn his back.

  She’d seen Tomas several times since her return from Italy a week earlier. At the hospital before his father passed away, at the memorial service held largely for his city business associates, at Alex’s Sydney home afterward. Yet he’d managed to evade anything beyond a quick consoling hug and a few token words of sympathy.

  So she’d stayed on at Kameruka Downs after the private funeral, begging a lift back to Sydney on the corporate jet with Alex and Rafe, instead of returning on the afternoon charter arranged for other mourners. She had to talk to Tomas, one on one. She had to set things straight between them.

  This had nothing to do with the disturbing clause in Charles’s will that she’d just learned about in the library. This was about guilt and regret and failing to be the kind of friend she wanted to be. It was about closure, too, and moving on with her life.

  And it promised to be damn-near the toughest thing she’d ever done. Tougher even than the night she’d confronted Tomas with her opinion on his upcoming marriage…and that had been Tough with a capital T!

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t liked Brooke. They’d been close friends at school. Tomas had met his future wife at Angie’s eighteenth birthday party, on a night when she’d dressed and preened and set herself on being noticed as a woman instead of his wild-child pseudosister.

  Instead—the supreme irony—he’d fallen into complete blinker-eyed besottedness with her petite and delicate friend. And eighteen months later he hadn’t wanted to hear Angie’s opinion on Brooke’s suitability to life in the outback. He loved Brooke. He married Brooke.

  And that had been one tough challenge Angie couldn’t face.

  Instead of accepting the bridesmaid’s gig, she’d taken off on a backpacking jaunt to Europe. Her grand adventure had started as an impulsive escape from pain and envy, from her fear that she wouldn’t make it through “does anyone have just cause” without jumping to her feet and yelling, “You bet I do! He’s supposed to be mine!”

  She’d missed the wedding and, worse, she’d missed Brooke’s funeral. But now she was back, needing to make peace with her conscience. She doubted she could make peace with the flint-hard stranger Tomas had become, but she had to try.

  “Moment of truth,” she muttered, out loud this time, as she ducked under a branch into the clearing beside the waterhole.

  Slowly she scanned the darkness and the empty shadows, before hauling herself up onto a rock overhang. On sure feet she climbed higher to the secret cave. Peered inside.

  Backed-up breath huffed from her lungs.

  Nothing. Damn.

  Disappointment expanded, tightening her chest as she slowly descended to the ground. She’d made a deal with herself, a deal about finding him and getting this over with tonight. How could she do that when he wasn’t here?

  Swearing softly, she turned to leave.

  Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to be found….

  Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps Tomas hadn’t changed completely. Perhaps now, as in the past, he wasn’t completely alone down here.

  Angie allowed herself a small smile before she lifted both pinkies to her pursed lips and whistled.

  Tomas figured someone—most likely Angie—would come looking for him. He’d counted on the night hiding his secluded location. He hadn’t counted on her whistling his dog.

  Ajay responded with a high-pitched whine of suspicion. Rough translation: You can whistle—point in your favor—but I’m no pushover. I’m a red heeler; I protect my boss. You better proceed with caution.

  Angie didn’t.

  The quick tread of her approach was as incisive and un-inhibited as her personality. Loose gravel dislodged by her climbing feet splished into the water below, and Tomas saw the hair rise along Ajay’s spine. Under his restraining hand he felt a warning growl vibrate through the dog’s tense body. It was a measure of his own snarled mood that he actually considered letting the heeler loose.

  He didn’t.

  His muttered “Stay” was probably for the dog—God knows Angie wouldn’t take a lick of notice!

  As if to prove his point, she appeared out of the darkness and used his shoulder to steady herself as she dropped down at his side. The floaty skirt of her dress settled around her legs where they dangled over the rock ledge, a flutter of feminine contrast to the rugged setting and the worn denim stretched over his thighs alongside.

  “Did you consider I might want to be alone?” he asked, surprising himself with the even tone of his voice. Ever since Jack Konrads read out that newly added will clause, tension had snarled through his blood and his flesh. An anger that had whipped the hollow numbness of grief and loss into something hot and taut and hazardous.

  “Yes,” she said simply, with a quick flash of smile.

  Although that could have been for Ajay, because on the heels of the smile came a softly crooned note of surprise. Her hand slid from his shoulder down his arm—from rolled-up shirtsleeve to skin—as she leaned around him to take a better look. “While I was clambering up here, I kinda thought you mightn’t have Sergeant anymore.”

  “He died.”

  For the tiniest hint of time, she stilled. Then the pressure of her hand on his forearm changed, a tactile expression of her next words. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “He got old.”

  “As we all do.” She leaned forward. “Well, aren’t you handsome.” And started to reach—

  “Best you don’t do that.”

  “I’m only saying hello.”

  And wouldn’t you know it? His wary-natured heeler didn’t take a piece out of her hand. Tomas breathed a tad easier…but only a tad. He was still struggling to reconcile the Angie he knew—the annoying, exasperating, teenage tomboy—with this exotic, alien creature who’d returned from Europe.

  She wore dresses, for pity’s sake. She’d straightened her unruly curls into one of those city-girl do’s, all sleek and dark and glossy. And every time she moved he heard the delicate tinkle of the jewelry she wore on her wrists and ankle.

  Hell, she even had some kind of rings on her toes. And as for the perfume…

  “What’s with the perfume?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Yeah, excuse him. He hadn’t meant to say it, the question that blared in his brain every time he breathed around her. Ever since that first day he saw her again—hell, was that only last week?—when she’d rushed down the hallway of the hospital to throw her arms around him, to hug him and hold him and leak tears and words and more tears into his shirt.

  Except instead of feeling comforted, he’d dragged in air rich with this perfume and he’d felt her curves against his body and he’d tensed. His hands had set her aside, this woman who no longer felt anything like Angie should.

  She’d changed when all he wanted was someone—something—to stay the same. To anchor him to the past that fate kept wrenching away.

  “You smell…different,” he accused now. She smelled different, she looked different, and right now in the dark he swore she was looking at him different, too. “You’ve changed, Dash.”

  His use of her childhood nickname surprised a laugh from her full lips. With a clink of bracelets, her hand slid away from his arm, thank God, and into her lap. “Wow. There’s a blast from the past. No one’s called me Dash in…forever.”

  Yeah, forever about summed it up.

  Forever since the last time she’
d followed him down here, bent on telling him how the outback and Brooke would never see eye to eye. Like he hadn’t known. And like he’d not been young enough and cocky enough to think it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “It’s only been five years, but you’re right. I’ve changed, you’ve changed, everything’s changed,” she said softly, and suddenly the darkness seemed more intense. Suffocatingly so. “I’m sorry about your father, that he got so sick and had to suffer and that the last weeks were so hard on you all. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, and I hope—”

  “You didn’t have to come down here to tell me that. I’ve heard it more than enough times this last week.”

  “Yeah, well, you haven’t heard it from me. At least not without cutting me off midsentence and walking away.” She angled her chin in that determined way she had. “I have more to say, actually, and this time I want you to stay put until I finish.”

  Something about her tone and the sympathetic darkness of her eyes alerted him to what might be on her mind, and he started to move, to get the hell out of the conversation. But she put her hand on his knee, stopping him. It was the Angie-of-old, exasperating and annoying and not letting him get away without first saying her piece.

  “Did you get my letter?” she asked.

  Yeah, he’d gotten the letter she’d written after Brooke was killed. What did she expect him to say? Thank you for your kind thoughts? They really helped me cope when my heart had been ripped bleeding from my chest.

  “I hated that a lousy letter was all I could send,” she continued. “I wish I could have been here. I wish I could have found better words.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “It would have to me.” She moved her hand—had she always been such a toucher, or had that changed, too?—this time covering his fist where it sat clenched on this thigh. She squeezed his tense knuckles. “I wasn’t here for you when it mattered, when I should have been. What kind of friend does that make me?”

  Was he supposed to answer that? Or just sit here like some priest in an outdoors confessional and let her talk so she’d feel better about herself?

  He hoped she wasn’t after absolution, because that sure wasn’t anything he was qualified to give!

  “Your friendship matters to me. Are we still friends, T.J.?”

  His childhood nickname, but it sounded all wrong on her lips because she’d leaned closer, her arm pressed warm and soft against his, her perfume a sensuous drift of woman in his nostrils. And then she did that squeezing thing again, probably meaning to reassure him but only screwing his tension up another notch.

  He wrested his hand away, put hers back in her lap. “If it makes you feel better, why the hell not?”

  “Yeesh, Tomas!” She let her breath go sharply, exasperated. “Can’t you at least pretend to accept sympathy from a friend? Would that hurt so very much?”

  When he didn’t answer, she shook her head slowly. The slippery ends of her hair skimmed against his bare forearm as if coolly mocking one of the reasons he didn’t feel like she was his friend. This strange awareness that he didn’t want or like or need.

  The disturbing notion that little Angie had grown up into a woman…and his man’s body wouldn’t stop noticing.

  “That’s all I came down here to say,” she said abruptly. “Accept it or don’t. I’ll leave you to enjoy your pity party alone.”

  She’d already started to rise, not using his shoulder for leverage this time, and Tomas should have let her go. Shouldn’t have felt the irrational need to ask, “That’s it? That’s all you came down here to say?”

  “Oh, boy.” Beside him she stilled, then her laughter rumbled, as soft and husky-dark as the night. “I really want to say, yes, that’s it. I really, really know I should.”

  “But?”

  “But you wouldn’t have baited me to stay unless you needed to talk.” She sank back down and he felt her gaze on his face, felt it turn serious. “It’s that will clause, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t think that’s worth throwing a pity party over?”

  She didn’t answer that question, not directly. Instead she sighed and shook her head. “It’s worth worrying about, sure. But wouldn’t you be better off back at the homestead talking it through with your brothers?”

  Tomas snorted. “What’s there to talk through?”

  “For a start, there’s some worry about how you’ll choose a mother for this baby you think you have to produce.”

  “There’s no ‘think’ about it.”

  “My understanding is that only one of you needs do this. One baby between the three of you.”

  “You think I’d leave it up to my brothers? When I stand to lose all this?” He gestured around him, indicating the land that was more than a family legacy. Kameruka Downs was the only place he’d ever wanted to live and all he had left since the plane crash that took his wife’s life, his happiness, his future.

  “Your brothers know this place is everything to you,” Angie said softly.

  Wrong. It wasn’t everything; it was the only thing.

  “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—an
d 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.