Princes of the Outback Bundle

by Bronwyn Jameson

  “What’s that look about?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I’m just picturing you as a little girl.” His lips lifted into a smile and as quickly as that he turned the mood around. “Did you play at being a doctor?”

  “Yes.” Relief washed through her as she smiled back at him. Relief that he’d not wanted to pursue that serious moment, or press her about the father she didn’t want to know. That instead he’d chosen to lighten the tone. “I loved my red plastic stethoscope and the medical encyclopedia best.”

  “Interesting choice of reading.”

  “Oh, my mum read me traditional stories, too.”

  His lips quirked again. “Fairy tales?”

  “You betcha. She wanted me to know that Little Red Riding Hood and her girlfriends made some singularly bad decisions regarding big, bad wolves and kissing frogs and the like. She brought me up to believe I could rescue myself rather than waiting around for a stray prince or woodcutter.”

  “Cynical,” he said, eyes narrowed, thoughtful, “but interesting.”

  “Realistic,” she corrected, “but why interesting?”

  “At the cabin last weekend you said you would only marry for love.”

  “Yes, and one day I will. In the meantime I’m not hanging around waiting for my prince.”

  Unfortunate wording, she realized, when his eyes darkened with the impact of her word choice, but she refused to acknowledge that link to him. He wasn’t her prince. He wasn’t a prince at all, to anyone but the trash media she despised.

  Lifting her chin a fraction, she met his eyes. “In the meantime I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”

  “You’ve always wanted to study medicine?”

  “Pretty much. I danced when I was little, and then I got into sports. Along the way I developed a fascination for the human body and how it works, so that was always my first choice for university. I’d only done one year when Mum got sick.”

  “You deferred your course to look after her?”

  “Yes.” She shifted in her seat, uneasy talking about that soul-destroying time as her mother’s damaged nervous system gave out and her muscles wasted away. “Afterwards it took a while to get myself together. When I did resume my course work I was even more determined to get my degree.”

  “Because you promised her.”

  “There is that, but also…I wanted to do something that would make a difference. It’s hard to explain but it’s like…it’s like I didn’t want her suffering to have been in vain.” She finished up in a rush and then rolled her eyes self-consciously. “I know that sounds ridiculous.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  The quiet certainty of his voice, in his expression, made her heart trip in her chest. She drew a deep breath, cautioned herself again about feeling too much, responding too much. Falling too hard.

  “What about your father?” he asked after a moment. “Would he be proud of you too?”

  The automatic response, the I-don’t-give-a-damn-what-the-bastard-thinks, froze under his serious regard. For some reason she felt a connection, an emotional accord, and another answer altogether slid easily from her tongue. “I always thought I didn’t care, but before he died you know what I discovered? There was this rogue part of me that wanted to make a mark. To be a somebody, a success, so that one day he might come looking for me. That he might want to know me.”

  “You went looking for him?” he asked slowly. Astutely.

  “When I couldn’t look after Mum anymore, when she moved into care, I had to sell the house. Anyway, I found those paper clippings. She’d kept them all, I don’t know why, so he wasn’t difficult to find.”

  “And you wished you hadn’t bothered?”

  “No. Actually, I’m glad I found him.” Frowning, she searched for the words to explain what sounded like a paradox. “I guess I’d always wondered if things had been different—if he hadn’t been married or if he’d divorced his wife—what might have been. Meeting him cemented that we were better off on our own.”

  “You didn’t hit it off, huh?”

  “Nicely put.” And for once she realized that talking about Edward Horton hadn’t twisted her insides into knots. No aftertaste soured her mouth. An ironic smile curved her lips as she considered another aspect of those dark months. “On the positive side, I was into kickboxing at the time and meeting him had a big impact on my aggression.”

  Smiling at that, he reached across the table and trapped her hand in his. And when she looked into his eyes Zara actually felt something inside her give. “We had that in common,” he admitted softly.

  “You kickbox?”

  A joke, sort of, but he didn’t laugh. “The aggressive streak because of a father who didn’t want to know me. Except I got lucky when my mother married Chas. I didn’t need to go looking. There was nothing I wanted from my biological father, I had nothing to say to him.”

  “Is that why honoring your stepfather’s will matters so much?”

  “It seemed the least I could do.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “My brothers tell me there’s still hope. Tomas and Angie are back together. Rafe and his wife have worked out their problems, apparently.”

  “That must be a relief.”

  “Of sorts.” His shrug looked tight, not quite casual. “I don’t like that I can’t uphold my end of the pact.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Zara could see that in the stormy swirl of his eyes and the tight set of his mouth. He would view it as failure. “Worse,” she said solemnly, “to have married for the sake of the pact and then regretted it afterward.”

  “Do you regret coming here tonight?” he asked after a moment.

  “No.”

  Heat sparked in his eyes as he turned her hand over and linked their fingers. Heat and everything else that had passed between them during what had never been “just a meal.” And in that instant she was back on the street, her gaze trapped by the smoky intensity of his, thinking I am a goner.

  “What are we going to do,” he said, low and gruff, “about this?”

  The background noise faded to a dull blur as all Zara’s focus centered on him. The unsmiling intensity of his expression, the silent appeal in his eyes, the heated charge of his touch. “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like to come back to my hotel room?”

  Her simple “yes” almost brought Alex to his knees. So unexpected, so honest, so exactly how this night had to end. He didn’t question her motivation. He paid the bill; he ushered her outside; he made small talk about the food and the balmy spring night while they waited to hail a taxi in busy Sydney Road.

  On the surface he maintained his cool. Inside anticipation honed his focus to a keen knife’s edge. He had to get this woman—this woman he wanted more than his next breath—back to his hotel and into his bed before she reconsidered.

  A cab pulled up on the opposite side of the street and he took her hand, towing her through the traffic until he could steer her into the back seat. He didn’t see any reason to let go of her hand. He liked the strength of her grip, the intimacy of their linked fingers, the charge of heat when he rested their joined hands on his thigh.

  The grip of tension when her fingertips brushed the fabric of his trousers.

  That touch, innocent but incendiary, blew whatever he’d been discussing with the cabbie clean out of his brain. Finals football? The pre-election polls? The upcoming spring racing carnival? Frowning, he struggled out of the lust fugue and forced himself to focus on the driver’s laconic commentary because, hell, if he started thinking about those fingertips on his skin, if he gave in to the urge and lifted her hand to his lips, if he tasted a hint of her sweet scent then he would be lost.

  “Got a runner in the Cup this year?” the cabbie asked.

  Alex knew he’d been identified before this giveaway question. The driver’s eyes kept darting to his mirror, watching, not missing a thing. Hence his caution with Zara. He’d kicked himself to kingdom co
me and back again after last week’s recklessly public kiss outside the hotel. It’s a wonder that hadn’t appeared front page in the tabloids!

  Tonight he was being more circumspect. Hand-holding was fine. Anything involving tongues was definitely behind closed doors.

  “Irish Kisses is entered,” he supplied in answer to the cabbie’s question about the Melbourne Cup. “We’ll see how her form holds up in the meantime.”

  “Guess a lot can happen in…how long till the big one?”

  Alex did the calculation. “Five weeks next Tuesday.”

  And, yes, a lot could happen in that length of time. His horse could go lame, get sick, train off—any one of a dozen variables could rob him of a starter in Australia’s richest horse race.

  Yet tonight all he could think about was whether or not, in five weeks’ time, he’d still be holding Zara Lovett’s hand. If she would be at his side in the stands cheering Irish home. If she would celebrate with him, or console him afterward with her silky sweet-tasting kisses.

  Reflexively his grip on her hand tightened. Her fingers curled hard against his thigh and that touch arrowed straight to his groin. Heat washed through his skin, so intense he felt perspiration break out down his spine.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said softly, squeezing his hand. Subtly reminding him to ease off the pressure. He did, stroking his thumb across her knuckles, rolling the tension from his shoulders, breathing a silent sigh of relief when the taxi pulled in to the hotel driveway.

  Finally—and only because he had to—he released her hand so he could pay the fare.

  And when he closed the door and straightened, he realized they were standing in the exact spot where he’d first tasted the lush temptation of her mouth on Sunday. Their gazes met and everything he’d felt in that moment, everything that clamored through him now, was reflected in her whiskey eyes. All he could think about was kissing her again, same place, same way, except this time they would walk away together. All the way to his bed.

  Circumspection be damned, he closed the car’s-width space between them, cupped her face in one hand and gave in to his fierce need.

  One kiss, tempered with a world of restraint, while the stroke of his thumb along her jaw and the burn of passion in his eyes told her that this was only the start. Never dropping his gaze, she stretched closer so her body brushed his in a dozen fleeting places and the subtle flick of her tongue drove a groan from his lust-tight throat.

  “Inside,” he growled at her ear. “Before we draw a crowd.”

  She laughed, low and husky and erotic.

  Oh, yeah. He would definitely have to find a way to make her laugh once they got naked. Her laughter, her hands, her legs, the silky shimmer of her shirt as she turned into the glare of the lobby light—she blew him away on so many levels, had done so too many times to count these past hours.

  This woman, his gut told him as he took her hand and led her through the lobby, is the one you’ve been waiting for.

  The clarity of that knowledge didn’t shake him. Last weekend he’d known, at the same instinctive level, that more than physical attraction forged this connection. But he’d walked away because of the will and what he took as his duty.

  “Hey.” Tugging on his hand, she drew him out of his reverie. “Whatever you’re thinking about—stop!”

  “What if I’m thinking about you?”

  “I hope you weren’t, actually.”

  Alex pulled up short and turned her toward him. “You don’t want me thinking about you?”

  “Not if it makes you look so…intense.”

  “Ah, but you do make me feel intense,” he said, tightening his grip on her fingers. “Whenever I think you might change your mind about stepping into this elevator.”

  Their gazes tangled and the moment hung with renewed tension, with the hint of wariness that stole across her face.

  Alex’s heart kicked with sudden fear but he kept his gaze direct. Unflinching. A part of him warned against pushing too hard and scaring her off, but at this moment he simply could not do light and easy. Until he had her upstairs, a smile was impossible. “Make up your mind, Zara. Here and now.”

  “My mind is made up,” she said after the briefest pause. “If I don’t do this, I will only spend another week wondering.”

  “Wondering?”

  One corner of her mouth lifted in the smallest hint of a smile. “About whether this will be as good as I’ve imagined.”

  Relief poured through Alex as he pulled her closer, relief and a parallel stream of desire because she’d been imagining this—imagining him in her bed—all week. He threaded her hair behind her ear, stroked his fingers down its silken length and saw the spark of response in her eyes.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart.” He pressed a brief, hard kiss to her lips, then turned them both back toward the elevator. “It’ll be better.”

  Eight

  Alone in the elevator, Alex gave in and kissed her like he’d wanted to in the lobby, under the portico, in the taxi. In the street outside the restaurant. In the gym earlier that afternoon. He wound his fingers in her hair and pulled her hard against his body and simply immersed himself in the mind-numbing sweetness of her mouth.

  That taste, he knew, was already under his skin, in his blood, hot-wired into his hormones. One sip and they raged into life, screaming for more. He kissed her until the doors opened on the hotel’s top floor, and once he had her inside his suite he backed her against the door and kept on kissing her until they were both breathing harder than after their run through the sleet.

  Winded, knocked off center by the power of his need, by the fevered roar of blood in his ears, Alex leaned his forehead against hers, flattened his hands against the door and struggled for control. He had, at least, to get her into his bedroom before he tore her clothes off and gave himself up to this raging need.

  The hell of it was he didn’t want to tear her clothes off. He wanted to undress her slowly so he could savor her amazing body, inch by silky inch. He wanted to seduce her, for Pete’s sake, into giving him much more than her body.

  “I had hoped to offer you a drink.” His voice was a deep mixture of arousal and wryness. “To put on some music. To show you my smooth side.”

  After a second her hands slid from his neck, down his chest to his sides. “Which is your smooth side, Alex? Left or right?”

  That surprised a laugh from him, a laugh that snagged in the middle when she stroked a hand up and down one side and then the other. A simple touch made intricate by the extravagance of his body’s response. Or perhaps by the way she tipped her head back against the door and studied him through half-lidded eyes, her hair mussed by his hands and her lips full and sultry from his kisses.

  “Maybe you need to work that out for yourself,” he said, levering himself slowly off the door. Spreading his arms wide, he dared her with both body language and his steady gaze to find her own answer.

  Heat flared golden in the depths of her eyes and resounded low in Alex’s body. A challenge given. A challenge accepted.

  She rolled off the door and Alex smiled at his own unconscious description. Yeah, she rolled…or maybe flowed. Whatever, it was a long, sinuous unraveling that he wanted to freeze-frame in his memory.

  Hell, who was he kidding? He loved everything about the way she moved. Sometimes full of energy and purpose. Sometimes loose and athletic. Sometimes with smooth leonine grace.

  Like now, he thought, as she circled him, not touching, just studying him like a hunter on the prowl. A lithe, agile hunting cat, hungry for his body. His every muscle bunched with anticipation, tightened with heated arousal at the thought of her stalking him, taking him down, her mouth on his body.

  She disappeared behind him, the flutter of her exotic patterned skirt a whisper of sound and motion, her scent in the air and in his nostrils as he waited. Waited for her touch until he thought he might snap. And then he sensed her closeness, felt the warmth of her breath between his shoulder
blades an instant before her hands skimmed down his arms, then repeated the flat-palmed glide up his sides and down his back.

  Frustration twitched in his flesh. He wanted more. He wanted those hands beneath his shirt, that breath on his skin. That mouth on his body.

  She circled back to the front and their gazes collided. “Hard to tell which is your smooth side.” Her voice reflected her eyes. Hot. Aware. Turned on. “You’re hard as a rock.”

  And she hadn’t touched him anywhere below the waist.

  “You need a closer inspection.” He lifted a hand, brushed his thumb across her lips. “Why don’t you undress me?”

  Her lips quivered under his touch. “Here?”

  She had a point. They stood a scant two feet inside the door. A whole spacious suite beckoned. A king-size bed, with the best linen Carlisle money could buy, lay turned down and waiting.

  But still…

  His thumb ghosted across her cheek, lingered on the beauty spot. “I’m not fussy about where. You walk into a room and you’re all I see. You touch me and everything else fades to black.”

  Her breath hitched, a sound of wonder, of wanting, and she turned in to his body, so close her skirt skimmed against his thighs and their knees brushed. Warm breath shuddered against his chin, his throat. “I think I just discovered your smooth side.”

  “It’s not a line, Zara. It’s the truth.”

  For a second she went still, and he sensed her weighing that, analyzing it in her sharp brain, and then her fingers lifted to touch his abdomen and chest in a half-dozen places. The merest drift of a caress. The hottest lick of flame.

  Alex sucked in air. Her scent, sweet, warm, female, went straight to his head. He trapped her hands against his chest, held them against the thickened drumbeat of his heart, before drawing them to his top button. “Take off my shirt. Please, Zara. I want to feel these hands on my skin.”

  He felt the flutter of response in her hands, or perhaps it was his flesh that shuddered because when he dropped his hands away she started unthreading buttons with surprising sureness, her fingers quick and steady until they neared his waist. Then she fumbled with delicious effect. Warm breath huffed against bared skin and her knuckles dragged over his tensed abs while she battled with that last button.