Angie was good for him. But she looked the same as the last time he’d seen her, strong and healthy and vibrant. If she was pregnant, she sure as hell wasn’t suffering.
Turning a slow half circle, he scanned the small assembly in the central courtyard of the sprawling homestead that was now Tomas and Angie’s home, until he located his other sister-in-law. Catriona. He found her sitting in a quiet corner, head bent toward Mau, listening intently.
Rafe had told him how she’d resisted making this trip for the two months since they’d married, how shy she’d been of meeting all the Carlisles, but finally he’d talked her into this weekend. Alex had wondered if that was significant. But then he couldn’t imagine Rafe keeping quiet about anything, let alone impending fatherhood.
Right on cue, he felt a familiar thump between the shoulder blades.
“That’s my wife you’re ogling,” Rafe said. “Do I need to punch your lights out?”
Alex snorted. “You could try.”
They both watched Rafe’s wife a second longer.
“She seems to be getting along fine with Mau.”
“Are you thinking Dad knew what he was doing?”
Alex swirled the contents of the glass he’d forgotten he was holding. Whiskey. The color of Zara’s eyes. The knowledge tightened his chest as he considered Rafe’s question. “We assumed he wanted to see Mau happy again.” He dipped his glass in that direction. “She’s smiling now.”
“My wife has that effect.”
The tightness in Alex’s chest constricted further at those words. My wife. As he noted the proprietary look on Rafe’s face.
“The deadline’s past,” he noted. The three months they’d been granted to conceive, according to Chas’s will.
“Don’t take it too hard.” Rafe cut him a look. “Tomas and I both consider we’ve won even though we’ve missed out on the inheritance.”
“Neither of you?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty much.”
Alex considered the depths of his whiskey another second. Cleared his throat. “I have some news.”
Alex felt his brother’s gaze shift and fix on his face. “Jeez, Alex, don’t tell us you’ve been jilted again.”
As far as jabs went, that one was pretty effective. And Rafe didn’t even have a clue. Alex huffed out a breath and then looked up to meet his brother’s eyes. “It seems I’ve made the deadline.”
Rafe stared. The realization came slowly, in degrees, sharpening his gaze and curving his lips into a smile. “You sly dog.” He slapped Alex on the back and then turned and called out across the courtyard. “Hey, little bro. Get over here.”
Everyone turned and looked. Rafe grinned and shook his head. “I did not see that one coming.”
Alex ushered his brothers inside, before Rafe decided to yell the news to all and sundry. In the office where this had all started the afternoon they’d buried their father, he told them that Zara was pregnant and that for the moment that news stayed within these walls.
“She hasn’t even seen a doctor yet.”
“But she’s sure she’s pregnant?” Tomas asked. “Those home tests can be—”
“She’s sure. She’s studying medicine. She knows the symptoms.”
Tomas whistled. “A doctor. Nice.”
Rafe grinned. “Seems big brother’s been checking out her bedside manner.”
Alex ignored his brothers’ ribbing. He knew he should feel some measure of satisfaction. He’d fulfilled the terms of the will. He’d carried out Chas’s last wish.
But even when Tomas unearthed his father’s aged Glenfiddich to toast Alex’s success, he felt no joy. When Rafe made a second toast to the first Carlisle grandchild—“I’m going to be an uncle!”—Alex’s smile was forced.
And when he turned and saw his mother in the doorway, when he felt the shrewd sharpness of her eyes on his face, he knew she hadn’t missed a thing.
“Rafe. Tomas.” Mau’s gaze didn’t veer. “I would like to speak with Alexander in private.”
They left without demur. When their mother used a name in full, they knew she meant business.
“You have some news to tell me?”
Mau hadn’t been privy to the added clause in her husband’s will and when she’d found out she’d been ropable. She looked no happier now as Alex repeated what he’d told his brothers. A bare-bones version of how she was to become a grandmother.
“If everything goes well. Zara’s only eight weeks along.”
“Zara.” She seemed to weigh the name on her tongue, even as she weighed the story he’d told. Perhaps what he hadn’t. “How do you feel about this? You don’t look very happy.”
“I’m…” He huffed out a breath. Looked away as he battled a heart-ripping surge of emotion. And when he looked back up, he knew he couldn’t even try to hide all he felt from his mother’s keen eyes. “She won’t marry me. She’s independent and stubborn and she thinks she’s better off on her own. I’ve offered her everything. I don’t know what else I can do.”
“Have you told her you love her?” Mau asked.
“Why do you assume I love her?”
“I pray that you do, seeing as you seem so set on marrying her.”
“She’s having my child. Of course I’m set on marrying her.”
Mau shook her head sadly. “You should know better than that, Alexander. What do you think would have happened if I’d married your father? Or Rafe’s? I was too young and lost to know what I wanted then, but at least I knew enough not to marry for the wrong reason.”
He looked away again. Studied his untouched whiskey. Saw Zara’s eyes and heard her voice telling him about the right reasons. About love. “And if I do love her?”
“I suggest you tell her so.”
“What if she doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Oh, Alex.” She put her hand on his arm. Squeezed gently. “I know you guard your emotions tightly and I think I know why. But you’re nothing like him, you know.”
His biological father. Alex didn’t have to ask.
“He was wild, he had a temper, and he never had the will to try and control it. You’re strong, like your grandfather and like the man Charles raised you to be. Sometimes I think you’re too strong-willed. Too set on keeping everything inside.” She squeezed his arm again. “Don’t let that make you unhappy. If you love her, Alex, you need to tell her.”
“And if she doesn’t want to hear it?”
“If she’s the right woman, that’s all she’ll want to hear.”
By Sunday afternoon, Zara had had enough of sleeping and recuperating from exam stress. Not that all that lounging about didn’t have its advantages. For example, she hadn’t thrown up since Friday morning. But on the other side of the coin, not thinking about cytology and urology and hematology meant she had too much thinking space for Alex.
Unable to sit around doing nothing, yet not sure she wanted to push herself too hard—she could get used to this not-throwing-up thing very easily—she searched for her knitting bag, last used in the winter when she’d knocked off a scarf for Tim and another for Mr. Krakowski next door. Luckily they both supported the same football team so she could use the same colors and pattern. Black and white stripes were not that complicated.
She rummaged through her bits and pieces but nothing inspired her. Then it struck her. The baby. She could make…she didn’t know what. She didn’t know what babies needed and that struck her as a huge hole in her education. Up until this weekend she’d been too busy and too sick, but suddenly she wanted to know. Suddenly she had time to go to town to look through the shops. To educate herself.
Three hours later, she didn’t feel educated so much as overwhelmed. Wandering back from her tram stop, she was a little excited, a little fearful, and incredibly thankful that she’d not been too proud to accept Alex’s financial help. Raising a baby, she had learned today, was a very expensive exercise.
Turn
ing the corner into her street, she started searching for her keys. She’d almost reached her house before she found them and when she straightened she saw him. Alex. Standing by her gate as if he’d been watching her approach.
Her heart thudded painfully hard as she came to a dead stop. Dimly she felt the key chain slipping through her fingers and when she heard the metallic jangle of keys hitting concrete, she tightened her grip on her tote bag. It felt like that might be the only thing she had a grip on.
“Hello, Zara.” His voice sounded different. Thick. But perhaps that was her hearing. He took a step closer and she thought, for one breathless second, that he was going to kiss her. But then he ducked down and picked up her keys. “You dropped these.”
Disappointment flooded her veins. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
She was pretty sure they’d had this conversation before. It felt eerily familiar. Zara frowned. “Weren’t you going to Kameruka Downs this weekend?”
“I’ve been. This morning I decided to fly down here instead of back to Sydney.”
“The doctor’s appointment isn’t until Tuesday.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” And she stood there in the quiet Sunday afternoon sunshine just looking at him. Her heart still beat too hard to be healthy. All she could think was How could I miss him this much?
His thick dark hair was slightly ruffled, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it. His blue-gray eyes swirled with some emotion she couldn’t pin down. The grooves in his cheeks looked deeper but she didn’t think it was from too much smiling. She wanted to reach up and trace them.
Wanted to touch him so badly she started to shake.
“Here. Let me take your shopping,” he said, perhaps afraid she’d keel over.
There was that danger. Then he reached for her bag and their hands tangled and brushed and oh, the heat. The charge. The catch in her chest that had to be her heart standing still.
“I’ll get the door for you,” he said, and she followed him through her tiny gate and up the two steps to her door. He leaned down and picked up something from the stoop, and looked back over his shoulder at her. “When you didn’t answer the door, I was going to leave this.”
This, she realized was a pot of flowers. She didn’t know what kind, only that they were bright and beautiful and shaking very badly when he put them into her hands. “Thank you,” she managed to say even though her throat was thick with emotion. “They’re gorgeous.”
Then they were back to staring at each other again, except this time he smiled and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re looking good, Zara. Rested.”
“Not like hell?”
“The opposite, actually.” His smile faded. “Please. Can I come in? There’s something I have to say to you.”
He looked so grave, so serious that Zara felt a belated jolt of apprehension. “Is something wrong? Is someone—”
His touch stilled her, silenced her. A hand on her shoulder. The stroke of his thumb against her collarbone. “No. It’s nothing like that. I just…” He sucked in a breath and she realized that he also looked nervous. “Can we go inside?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” She nodded toward the keys in his hand. “It’s the second key. The gold one.”
Inside, she ushered him to the sitting room where he’d waited for her the last time. The day he’d got it all wrong. He put down her bag on the red sofa and when she fussed about making tea, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. This time he didn’t let go. This time he turned her toward him and looked into her face.
“Unless you need that cup of tea desperately, I’d like you to stay. To listen.” If he didn’t say this now, they’d end up sidetracked and arguing. “I’ve been thinking about us. And about the last time I saw you. What I said and what I didn’t say. I got it all wrong, Zara.”
She moistened her lips. Said nothing. In her throat he could see the beat of her pulse and touched it with his thumb.
“What I should have said…what I wanted to say…what I think you needed me to say…”
“Yes?” she prompted.
And there was something hopeful in her tone. Something in the depths of those beautiful eyes that steadied the wild jangle of his nerves and gave him the words he needed. Gave him the confidence to do this right. His hand slid down her arm until he held her hand in his. Then he went down on one knee.
“Zara Lovett, I want you to be my wife. Not because you’re going to be the mother of my baby. Not because I have this primal need to take care of you and it makes me crazy thinking that you’re sick and I’m not here to help. Not because I want you in my bed every night or because you still have to teach me that smooth fishing cast.”
His thumb stroked over her knuckles and he tightened his grip.
“I want you for my wife because I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me, Zara?”
For a long second she said nothing. She moistened her lips. She drew a breath that snagged in her throat, possibly because it felt like her heart was there. Crazy-dancing high in her chest.
Could she believe him? Oh, but she wanted to, so badly. He sounded sincere, but was this only to get his own way? Had he gone away and remembered what she’d told him about marriage? Is that why he’d gotten it so right—because she had supplied the lines?
“I’m on my knees here. Please, say yes.”
He tugged on her hand, until she gave in and came down to his level. “How can this work, Alex? I don’t know—”
“We can make it work,” he said fiercely. “If we want it badly enough.”
“There are things you don’t know about me.”
“You snore? Sweetheart, I know that. I’ve slept with you already.”
She punched his shoulder lightly and he grabbed her fisted hand and kissed the knuckles, one by one. If she weren’t already on her knees, that would have done the trick.
“Is this secret about Susannah?” he asked. “And your father?”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes wide. “You knew? How?”
“I didn’t know for sure, until now.”
“You guessed?” Her voice rose a semitone. “How?”
“An educated guess. I told you I’d like your sister.” He smiled. “And I do. She introduced us, in a roundabout way.”
Zara just stared, completely undone.
“And, please, don’t say anything else about your mother or your father or the scandal that might cause. If you marry me, you will be my wife. They can say what they like, it won’t change the fact that I love you.”
“I still want to finish my degree,” she said.
“Of course you do. I can live wherever I like. Wherever you like.”
“You would move?” she asked in hushed wonder. “To Melbourne?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Slowly she shook her head. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I love you. To be together.”
She blinked rapidly, to ward off the emotion brimming in her eyes. And then she couldn’t help herself. She had to put her hands on him, cupping his face. “You really do.”
He smiled, and she leaned in and kissed him on that smile, drinking its happiness into her body. Feeling it wash through her in a wave of bliss. “I love you, too, Alex. I had no idea how much until right now.”
His eyes closed for a second, and when they opened they were full of everything she was feeling. She touched her thumb to his mouth, traced the bow of his top lip. Kissed him again.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
“Yes. That is definitely a yes.”
Zara let that sink in a moment. The fact that she had just agreed to marry him. The fact that despite her happiness, the concept of marriage still scared her some. Then he smiled at her and that shadow of fear faded to black.
“I did you another disservice,” she said.
“Oh?” His hands slid up her arm
s, then over her shoulders and down her back. As though he were learning her shape all over again.
“I thought I couldn’t love you because you weren’t a man I could have taken home to meet my mother.”
He stopped with his hands on her waist, his expression slightly affronted. “I would have loved to meet your mother. And she would have loved me.”
Zara raised her brows. “How do you figure that?”
“Because I’m going to love her daughter so well.” His hands slid lower until they cupped her hips. “And spoil her rotten by giving her whatever she wants.” He tugged her forward until their bodies touched. “And make her so damn satisfied she won’t ever stop smiling.”
She was smiling when he started to kiss her, and smiling even broader when he finished a long time later. Slowly her eyes drifted open and she snuggled against him, loving the feel of his body against hers. “Tell me about your house.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Just…what it’s like.”
“It’s like a house.” Alex shrugged. “Walls, roof. Lots of rooms inside.”
She laughed, amused and delighted by that answer. “Does it have a pool?”
“Two.”
“Are you joshing me?”
“One outdoor, one indoor.” Then perhaps misinterpreting why she’d gone still, he said, “We can fill one in if you think that’s excessive.”
“Does it have a gym?” she asked after another moment.
“It has a first-rate gym,” he answered solemnly, and his hands slid under her shirt and peeled it from her body. “Now, is there anything else you want to know about my house? Because in about sixty seconds—” he unhooked her bra “—I’m not going to be able to talk.”
“Oh, why’s that?”
He pulled her bra off and tossed it. “My mouth is going to be otherwise occupied.”
“So,” she said some time later, when she’d regained her breath. They were in her bed, naked, sated. Happy. “How far is this house from Sydney University?”
Princes of the Outback Bundle Page 51