Thirteen
Cat managed to keep him in her bed long enough that the Friday night show became a moot point. But she didn’t forget how he’d distracted her from asking more about his birth father, or how much she had revealed in comparison. Over the next two days she tried to entice more from him, but he had a way of deflecting the conversation if he didn’t like the topic, and he did so with such finesse that Cat didn’t know she’d been stonewalled until afterward. Usually after a couple of orgasms and a nap to recover.
All weekend they worked together, sometimes in surprising harmony, but more often than not arguing about the most efficient method. Rafe might be good at giving, but he was not so good at giving in or at taking orders. He excelled, she discovered, at delegation and negotiation and cutting deals.
He excelled, too, at making her laugh and snarl within the same minute. At keeping her mind entertained and her tongue sharp and her body sated. Constantly she fought the notion that she was getting too used to his company and too comfortable in his company, with him wearing jeans and boots and working alongside her.
Or wearing nothing at all and working alongside, on top of or beneath her.
This time there’d been some of all three, and now Cat lay sprawled beside him in the Sunday twilight quiet. Spent and satisfied but also shadowed in sadness because early in the morning he was returning to Sydney. Back to his job and his apartment and the life she felt no more ready to be a part of than five days earlier.
He’d asked, several times. And she’d tried to explain that she didn’t like the person she became in the city. Awkward and ill-at-ease and out of her element. She didn’t like spending time there. She didn’t want to damage what they’d forged this weekend, either.
Now, on the cooling sheets of her bed, she sensed him watching her again, and she didn’t have to ask what he was thinking. “Leave it,” she said, before he opened his mouth. “I won’t change my mind.”
“You said that about Vegas….”
“And look where that got me!”
Her debt paid off, a future for Corroboree, a possibility of family.
Feeling incredibly lucky and humbled and thankful, she turned her head to look at him. To quietly say, “Thank you.”
He didn’t smile and say, “My pleasure,” as she’d anticipated. He didn’t say anything for a long, solemn second. “How about you thank me by coming to Kameruka Downs next weekend.”
Not the first time he’d broached the subject of taking her to meet his mother, either. She shook her head against the pillow. “No. Not yet.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“No, I’m being practical. I have responsibilities here. My animals—”
“The Porters looked after them while you were in America. Is there any reason they can’t do that again?”
“I can’t ask them every weekend.”
“I’m not asking—”
“Please, Rafe,” she cut in, quiet, intense. “Not yet.”
For several strong, hard beats of her heart she didn’t think he would let it go. He had that look in his eyes she didn’t trust. That intentness and purpose that always set her on edge. But then he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I’ll come back here, then.”
The tight breathlessness in Cat’s chest eased. He was coming back. Another weekend, another chance to forge his indelible impression in her home and in her life. In her heart, too, but she was stoically trying to ignore that. “I hope you will.”
“Why don’t we invite your neighbors over,” he asked after another short pause.
“Now?” she asked, rising on her elbow. Indicating their nakedness with an arched eyebrow.
“Next weekend.”
“I gather you mean Bob and Jennifer Porter.” She eyed him a moment, trying to work out his angle. Suspicious of this seemingly random idea coming hot on the heels of his latest invitation to spend a weekend away. “Are you thinking of using them to persuade me I’m not needed here? Because—”
“I’m thinking they’re your closest neighbors and old family friends and you might like to introduce them to your husband.”
Taken aback by his tone and the matching snap to his eyes, Cat blinked.
“Unless there’s some reason you don’t want to,” he added.
“What would that be?”
“You tell me. You don’t have a problem with having me here, putting me to work, having me in your bed…but you don’t want to go anywhere with me. You don’t want to meet my family or me to meet your neighbors. I’m starting to wonder if you don’t want to be seen with me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Am I?” He asked, low and dangerous. “Who have you told about our marriage, Catriona?”
Her silence was telling.
“Not even your stepmother? You told me last week you’d love to wipe the floor with her patronizing attitude. Aren’t I a big enough prize?”
“Is that how you see yourself?” she countered. “Is that how you’d like me to introduce you to my neighbors next weekend? Jen and Bob, meet Rafe Carlisle, my prize husband. I won him on the roulette wheel in Vegas!”
He glared at her a long moment, then he shook his head and expelled a low oath. “I would like you to introduce me as your husband. That’s all.”
“I can do that,” she said softly, relenting. “Saturday night?”
“Saturday night is good.”
As always, the heat of their exchange shifted to another kind of heat, and he made love to her with an edgy intensity that set her pulse hammering and her blood roaring. And when he held her on the brink, fire burned in his gaze as he insisted on hearing his name on her lips.
Cat didn’t think about that conversation again until after he’d gone. Around midmorning on Monday she was drawing up a working budget—arguably the world’s most boring task—when she recalled Milla’s words that day on his terrace.
He’s a better man than he lets on, even to himself.
Unsettled, she rocked back from her computer spreadsheet and onto her feet. She knew she’d underestimated him from the start, dismissing him as lightweight and a charming diversion. That seemed to come so easily to him—he played on it, she knew—yet there were so many other layers to the man. Depth and capability and intelligence that he liked to bury beneath the sexy, playboy charm.
Now she wondered why…and Milla’s comment and that Sunday evening conversation drifted through her consciousness.
Surely he couldn’t have any kind of inferiority thing. Not Rafe Carlisle. Surely he didn’t believe that she’d kept their marriage from her friends and distant family because he was lacking. That was laughable in an ironic way, seeing as she’d been thinking the exact opposite.
That she might be seen as deficient by his family and friends.
She knew she lacked nothing here in her environment, in the life she’d chosen as a child riding at her father’s side. Here she was herself, she was happy, and that was that. If she fell pregnant, she would have an added link with his family, a bond beyond her marriage.
Then she would travel to Kameruka Downs and meet his mother. Then he could take her to a fancy restaurant to lunch with his brothers, but not before. It would be hard enough saying goodbye to Rafe when he decided to end their marriage.
She did not want to lose her heart to his family, as well.
Cat hated to admit it—even to herself—but all week she’d been like a kid waiting for Christmas. She had enough work to fill her days. She had his phone calls to look forward to each night. It shouldn’t have taken so long for Friday to come around. And when it did and she arrived home to a message saying he wouldn’t be arriving until Saturday, she should not have felt such a dismal sense of letdown.
It’s okay, Cat told herself, since she wasn’t a kid waiting for Christmas. She was an adult. Independent and capable of dealing with the first hiccup in their long-distance marriage. He, too, had responsibilities.
Saturday mornin
g she’d intended to wait for Rafe before starting work, but the early arrival of her period had her wired tight and sharp as a newly strained barb. She couldn’t sit around wringing her hands in disappointment because she hadn’t fallen pregnant the first time. Now, there was no reason not to yard the cows herself.
Mustering gave her some time to think and to decide she didn’t like her happiness hanging on his arrival or nonarrival. Perhaps she should reevaluate their relationship. Perhaps the long distance thing would never work.
And perhaps she shouldn’t make any decisions on a day when she felt so funky and out of sorts. Or while working with large, unpredictable animals, she added, when a cow balked suddenly almost knocking the gate from her hands.
She paid more attention then, as she prepared to start drafting off the dry cows. The day was warm already, the air thick with dust churned by racing hooves. She ducked through the railed fence and was unlatching the gate at the end of the draft when she thought she heard the buzz of a plane overhead. Even as she tipped back her hat to scan the sky she called herself silly. The airstrip hadn’t been graded. He would fly to the Samuelses’ again.
Swinging back, she saw the danger a millisecond too late. A cow hit the gate she held, knocking it from her grip and driving it into her chest. Before she could regain her balance, the whole yard sniffed the open gate and charged full tilt for freedom.
This time the iron bar caught her on the side of the head and she went down for the count.
Rafe had a bad feeling gnawing at him all the way from Sydney. It made him fly cautiously for a change, but once on the ground and behind the wheel of his borrowed vehicle he nearly flew the ten miles to Corroboree. He barely slowed for the cattle grids or the sharp turn by the house. He could see the dust cloud of activity at the cattle yards a mile farther on that confirmed his gut feeling was spot-on.
He’d told her not to start without him. She’d argued that she’d been working cattle on her own since her teens. He pointed out that since he had a vested interest, he’d prefer she didn’t do such work on her own again. Not when she could be pregnant.
“And of course you have to do it your way,” he ground out as he wheeled to a halt beside the yards.
His hot anger morphed to cold fear the second he slammed the door on the utility. The cattle wheeled around the yards in obvious agitation stirring up a choking cloud of dust, but even through that he should have been able to pick out Cat’s figure.
He couldn’t. Yet her bike was here. He took the fence at a run, climbing two rails at a time and feeling his heart lurch in his chest when he saw her from the top. Crouched in the corner of the yard, her dog at her feet.
He called her name as he hit the ground, but the croaky sound was swallowed up in the bellowing chaos of the startled herd. She’s all right, she’s conscious, she’s trying to get to her feet, she’s all right, chanted through his mind as he pushed through the next fence and finally she looked up, her face pale beneath a coating of dust, a smile trembling on her lips.
Her legs started to wobble, and before he could get there she started to sink to the ground. Rafe hunkered down with her, his own limbs felt wonky with fear and shock and relief because at least she was conscious.
“It’s okay, baby,” he told her. “I’m here now.”
Her attempt at a smile was wan. “There’s two of you.”
“That’s a good thing, surely.”
“Ish it?” There was a definite slur to her speech. “’Nough trouble handling one…”
Her voice trailed off as she slumped into unconsciousness and Rafe swore silently as he bent to scoop her up.
“You just need more practice.”
Cat couldn’t remember anything about the accident or getting to the hospital. Dimly she recalled an altercation over her admission and the objections swirling in her dizzy brain because she didn’t want to be hospitalized. She remembered being blind-sided by the pain of her head injury and her broken ribs, and the sharp note in Rafe’s voice as he demanded a doctor’s attention.
Sometime later she’d drifted into consciousness and he was there, sitting beside her bed, holding her hand and murmuring something she couldn’t catch through the blur of pain medication. She’d floated back to sleep with a smile on her lips and in her heart, but when she woke again the chair was empty. Perhaps it was the drugs, but that small vignette of the big picture had seemed profoundly significant. He’d been there, looking out for her, making her smile, easing her loneliness, and then he was gone.
On Monday, when she opened her eyes and found him smiling down at her, the sweet ache of joy was almost unbearable. She could have put that down to her injuries—her chest hurt like the devil—but deep inside she acknowledged the inevitable. She wanted the glorious impossibility of Rafe Carlisle’s smile whenever she opened her eyes. She wanted him as her real husband, at her side, forever.
In that instant she knew that nothing less than his love would do.
“Nice shiner,” he drawled, parking himself on the edge of her mattress. But the kiss he pressed to her lips was tender, the depths of his eyes dark with concern.
“You’re here.”
“Did you think I’d leave you? All beaten up? In this place?”
“I thought…” Her frown hurt like the blazes, but not as much as the leap of her heart against her bruised and broken ribs. “I thought, maybe, you would need to be at work today.”
“I needed to be here today.” He lifted her hand and held it against his face for a second. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was trampled by a herd of beasts.”
The low note of his laughter did glorious things to her aching body. So did the brush of his fingers against her cheek. “I brought you some flowers and fruit.”
“Thank you.”
“And this.”
“This” turned out to be diamonds. A diamond necklace, to be precise. Cat blinked in shock. Then—she couldn’t help herself—she laughed. Flowers and fruit and, as an aside, diamonds. That was so over-the-top. So Rafe.
And so not her.
The laughter, the warmth, her delight in his presence suddenly turned brittle. She stared at the dazzling stones without touching them. “Where on earth did you get that?”
“In Vegas.”
“It’s…” The same as those clothes. Beautiful, expensive, impractical.
“You don’t like it?” With a casual-looking shrug, he snapped the lid of the box shut and tossed it on the bedside table. “No matter.”
But it did matter. In all kinds of ways. It mattered that he’d spent all that money on her…and that he didn’t seem to care whether she liked the gift or not. Easy come, easy go. He could afford to buy a necklace like that with his lunch money. He was Rafe Carlisle.
It mattered even more over the next few days as he breezed in and out of the hospital, coloring the spare hospital room with his beauty, dazzling the nursing staff with his sexy grin, and entertaining her with his company, with covert kisses, and with news from Corroboree.
At first his interest and involvement in her station pleased her no end. They did have common ground. They just might have grounds for a relationship that worked in places other than in bed. Then she learned of the changes he was making, the money he was spending, all communicated in the same negligent tone as he’d delivered the diamonds.
I bought you a new Landcruiser. I’ve ordered a new hot water system. You need a better kitchen.
It mattered that he was infiltrating her life, her home, her business. Corroboree was hers, and she needed to keep control of that one last bastion. Her last remaining link with her parents; her strength; her confidence.
It mattered that when she attempted to explain this to Rafe, he shrugged it off in a way that grated all over nerves stretched taut by her enforced inactivity. “I want to do this for you, baby. I can afford it. Indulge me.” Then he’d distracted her with wicked suggestions of how he’d like to indulge her in the new spa bath he’d order
ed.
Today it had to end. Everything…including her hospital stay, which she was sure had stretched longer than necessary due to Rafe’s influence. She was itching to get back home, to take over her life, but Rafe threw her planned speech right off balance by arriving on the heels of the breakfast cart—at least three hours before official visiting hours—dressed in a suit.
“I’m on my way to the airport,” he told her after a soul-stirring kiss. “Board meeting I can’t miss.”
While she was recovering from his unexpected arrival, from the aftershocks of his kiss, he nabbed a piece of toast from her plate.
“Had to leave too early for breakfast,” he said around his first bite. Then, “I saw your doctor outside. He says you’ll be all right to go home tomorrow. I’ll—”
“Today.”
Rafe stopped chewing.
“I’m all right to go home today, if anyone would care to consult with me.”
“Look, baby—”
“Oh, no. Don’t even start with that.”
“What?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.
“‘Look, baby. Don’t worry, baby. I’m handling everything, baby.’” Apparently, she was mocking his tone, although not very well. She shook her head and continued in her own voice. “I tried to explain this yesterday, and I’m going to try again now. I don’t want you handling everything. I want to worry about my business, about my life.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
Alerted by her sharp inflection, by the glint of temper in her eyes, Rafe put down the remains of the toast and brushed the crumbs from his fingers. “Is there something specific I’ve done to upset you?”
“Everything you’ve done without asking first upsets me! The new vehicle, the stove, the spa you tossed into the equation.”
“They’re just things, Catriona. To make your life easier.”
“They’re things I didn’t ask for, things I don’t want.” Her brows drew together in an uncompromising line. “None of this was part of our deal, Rafe.”
Princes of the Outback Bundle Page 35