He didn’t answer, except to groan a deep thankful note as her arms and her legs wrapped around to draw him flush with her body. He didn’t answer because he forgot the question when she rocked against him, breast to chest, groin to groin, soft to hard. Unerringly he found her lips in the dark and kissed her deeply, a long, wet play of tongues and mouths and throaty murmurings that seemed to hang suspended in the heavy curtain of night. He didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t have to hide in the darkness, didn’t have to fear what he might see in her eyes or what she might learn from his.
Slowly he kissed his way down her body, drinking in the soft taste of her skin and the husky rasp of her breathing and the strong arch of her back when he took each nipple into his mouth. When he palmed the curve of her belly and slid lower to part her thighs, she sucked in a ragged breath.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
And he did. With tongue and lips, with a hunger long repressed, and when she tensed and cried out, when he felt her press down hard and start to come, he knew he had to be there. Now.
“Ready?” he asked, and for answer she arched her back and welcomed him inside with a low guttural sound that echoed through his chest and gut, all the way to the organ that drove down hard inside her.
Staggered by the power of his pleasure, he held himself still and rigid as he fought the urgent desire to keep on driving to an end. He was deep, all the way inside her climaxing body and her legs had wrapped around him, holding him tight against her.
“I’m always ready for you.”
God, but that undid him. The thickness of her turned-on voice, the taste of her on his lips, the intensity he felt in her stillness as she watched him start to move. The way she rose to meet the drive of his body, thrust for thrust, flesh meeting flesh. The gentle caress of her fingers on his face and throat, and the not-so-gentle bite of her teeth when she came again without any warning. Against the heat of his skin, where chest and breast met and brushed and drove into hard contact again, he felt the cool brush of her necklace and his fingers twined around the chain and held on while the beast of desire swallowed him whole.
Head back, he took the last uncontrollable plunge and roared over the edge into completion.
Somehow Tomas managed to rouse himself before the lure of taking Angie again or letting her sleep in his arms took hold. And when he sat on the side of her bed and rubbed a hand over his face to clear the last traces of temptation from his consciousness, he realized that he held her A-letter necklace in his hand. In the last minutes of that wild ride he must have gripped her chain so hard that he broke a link.
He rubbed his thumb over the tiny charm and put it down on the bedside table. A for aftermath, afterward, awkward. The time to leave before he got comfortable in the lush folds of her sated body. A, he thought as he scooped up his clothes and retreated to his own bed, for another night, another time, another chance at conception.
Two more times and that was it. Done.
Then she was going home.
Angie heard the drone of a plane coming in from the west and her heart banked and rolled. In fact her whole body revved to instant Tomas-is-home, here-look-at-me! attention a good thirty seconds before logic kicked in. He hadn’t said anything about flying anywhere…but then that didn’t mean anything…more often than not he didn’t say…and with so much acreage to get around, flying was an everyday feature of station life.
But she couldn’t deny the punchy anticipation low in her stomach, the heaviness in her breasts, the tightness of her nipples. A little early, but Tomas was definitely home…almost. She shoved the last of the flowers she was arranging—until now, artfully—into the table centerpiece and dashed for the bathroom. No time for soaking in milky baths tonight. If he drove straight from the airstrip, no stops in-between, she had a maximum of ten minutes.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Shedding clothes along the way, she hit the shower running…then ducked straight back out for a shower-cap. No time for drying hair—she needed every precious minute for essentials. The red wine should be opened to breathe. Vegetables peeled. Cream whipped. For a wet, soapy second she rued letting the staff off early, again, so she could savor every detail of preparing and serving this special dinner.
An intense wave of nervous tension gripped her body. Ovulation day, she’d joked at breakfast this morning. I’ll make a celebratory dinner. Don’t be late.
It was a measure of the progress they’d made in twenty-four hours that she could joke about such a thing, even if neither of them had laughed. Even if his eyes had darkened and flared with unnamed emotion as they fastened on hers across the breakfast table.
Yes, they’d eaten breakfast together. The previous night they’d eaten dinner together, too, and he’d relaxed a tiny bit more, talking, smiling, even laughing at one of her anecdotes about Stink, the mechanic. For the second consecutive night he refused her offer to help with whatever office-work compelled his devotion, and she went to bed alone.
Around midnight he came to her room and made love with the same fierce power as the night before. Just once, damn him, and again he’d left her in the cooling sheets of her bed, hoping and wishing and praying that the next night might be different.
Well, Angie, the next night is about to begin.
Angie held her face tilted up for a last cool rinse and switched off the taps. Last night, last chance. She’d joked about this dinner but underneath, deep inside where her stomach was knotted with trepidation, she’d fastened her determination to make it special. A lot had changed in twenty-four hours, but not her conviction.
What had transpired between them in her bed the last two nights was too real, too huge, too intense, to cast aside as a purely physical joining. So many times she’d had to bite her tongue—or his shoulder—to stop herself blurting out what filled her heart. She’d curbed her natural inclination to tell it all, to lay it on the line, to charge ahead too fast.
She’d reined herself in and she would continue to do so.
Even when he asked her to go back to Sydney until she knew the result of this round of baby-sex—which she knew he would, probably tonight—she would keep it together. While preparing dinner, she’d also prepared her argument for staying and coached herself on delivering it with cool, direct logic.
If she failed, if he wouldn’t listen to her reasoning, then at least she would get to experience something approximating a date. Tonight she wouldn’t allow him to retreat to his work. Tonight they would walk hand in hand to bed. Tonight the light stayed on.
He owed her that much.
The dress she’d decided on earlier lay waiting on her bed. She traced one of the bright pink flowers and fingered the silky georgette material in momentary indecision. Too much? Probably, but in that second she heard the solitary bark of Tomas’s heeler a second before the whole kennel joined in. A vehicle was coming.
Swallowing her hesitancy whole, she pulled the dress over her head and wriggled until the satin lining shimmied its way over her hips and down to her knees.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she muttered. And of course the zipper stuck. She left it half-undone to shove her feet into white mules, to grab her brush and drag it through her moisture-messed hair…a task made easier when she remembered to take out her ponytail scrunchie. She slapped on some tinted moisturizer, glossed her lips, traced her eyes with kohl and smudged the lines.
Done!
She sucked in a quick breath…and realized she should be wearing a bra. If this were a real restaurant date, with other people present, she would take the extra minute to find one, to make some effort to disguise the hard jut of her nipples. But there were no other people…just her and Tomas and the fact that she couldn’t think about him without this obvious result. Why hide that truth?
As she rushed to the living end of the house, she struggled to free the stuck zipper and strained her ears for the sound of his vehicle pulling up outside. She wanted to greet him at the door, to smile and s
ay, “Hi, I missed you.” To hand him his beer and, if she caught him really on the hop, surprise him with a kiss.
The canine chorus rose to a second crescendo as she entered the kitchen, then quieted immediately as if in response to a slash of the conductor’s baton. Or a one-word command from their master. In the same instant—perhaps in response to the excited jump of her hand—the zipper released and glided effortlessly all the way to the top. That had to be a good omen, Angie decided.
She collected his beer and walked calmly to the door. Her heart, naturally, raced at a thousand miles an hour. That, she hoped, didn’t show as clearly as her nipples.
Then she heard a vehicle pull up outside and her skin flushed with heat. The ice-cold bottle in her hand was suddenly very enticing. If she rolled it over her forehead, her throat, her breasts…
Tempting, but she didn’t. Instead she drew a deep breath and walked out onto the veranda, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the rays of the sinking sun. A car door slammed, then a second. Voices? The brief murmur was too far away to identify but it sounded like a brief exchange of words.
Lord, but she hoped the second was one of the mechanics who’d bummed a lift back from the airstrip and not a visitor. She cast a nervous glance downward. Yep, there they were. Both the girls still at full hello-Tomas, boy-are-we-pleased-to-see-you attention.
Okay, she was definitely going back to change. Except that decision had barely formed before the first figure walked into view—no strode into view—and it was not Tomas or any mechanic.
“Maura,” she cried, nipples forgotten in a stunned blast of astonishment and joy. Back from the Killarney muster early and unexpected. And here at the homestead, not her own place.
Maura stopped, luckily, because that gave her a chance to brace herself before Angie hit at full speed. She wrapped her arms around Maura’s reed-thin body and held on for all she was worth until her bubbles of surprised laughter turned to tears.
How did that happen? And why? Angie didn’t burst into tears for no reason. She just…didn’t.
A bit stunned, a lot embarrassed, she pulled back and attempted to gather herself.
“What’s the matter, child?” Maura was frowning, her expression a mixture of confusion and concern. “Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.” She scrubbed harder at her face. “I think it’s just the surprise of seeing you.”
“Do I look so bad?”
Angie rolled watery eyes. In her youth Maura Carlisle had been a world-renowned model. In her mid-fifties, even her bad days couldn’t hide that beauty. But before Angie could voice that opinion she glimpsed movement beyond Maura and her body stiffened reflexively.
Oh, no. She did not want to be caught crying. She was the strong, outback woman who would sail through the toughest days at his side.
But it wasn’t Tomas who walked into her blurry wet-eyed field of vision, but Rafe. Her eyes widened…so did his, as they took in her dress, the bottle in her hand, the smudged kohl under her eyes.
“You’re crying,” he pointed out.
“I know that.”
And if both Carlisles would stop looking at her so oddly she might be able to get some control over herself. Emotions and hormones and surprises and tears. Holy Henry Moses, she had to get a grip. She sucked in a breath, waved a hand in front of her face, and finally managed to halt the waterworks.
Rafe and his mother were still looking at her oddly.
“Nice dress,” Rafe said.
“Is there a special occasion?” Maura asked. Then she turned on Rafe. “Did you know Angie was here?”
Oh, dear. Angie inhaled and wet her lips. “I just—”
“And when did you start drinking beer?”
“It’s, um, not mine, actually.”
“Speaking of which—” amusement, rich and redolent, colored Rafe’s voice “—where is the man of the house?”
She flashed him a warning glance. “I wasn’t expecting you. Either of you.”
“Obviously.”
Maura looked at him narrowly, then back at Angie. “Rafe flew out to visit me at Killarney. I had him bring me straight home when I heard the news.”
Angie stiffened. “What news?”
“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 sleep
ing 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.
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