Princes of the Outback Bundle (30 page)

By Friday morning she was completely frazzled and out of sorts. But she got on with her work and she worried about whether he would turn up as she watched the sky for any sign of his plane.

“Not that I know what kind of plane to watch out for,” she told Bach. Her worried eyes scanned the eastern horizon yet again.

I should have called. I should have told him to use Gordon’s strip. I don’t want to hear an engine overhead and go through another rough landing…or worse.

What would her pride be worth then?

“I’ll call,” she decided. “As soon as we get these cattle yarded, I will call.”

With a new sense of urgency she gunned her trail bike around the heifers she was bringing in for drenching. Bach skirted the flanks of the mob, hurrying the stragglers.

They were within a stone’s throw of the yards when she saw the plume of dust on her driveway. Her heart skittered.

“Silly,” she muttered, although her gaze remained glued on that approaching speck of a vehicle. Her heart continued to skip and skate. “He wouldn’t drive.”

Even from the airport?

Even from another strip?

A recalcitrant heifer attempted to break, and she forced herself to concentrate on her job, keeping the mob intact as she herded them toward the holding yard. When she looked back toward the road again the vehicle had disappeared. Her lungs felt constricted, tight with anticipation as she waited for its reappearance from behind the homestead.

Ridiculous, but she knew in her bones that it was him. Knew before the white Landcruiser came back into view, heading now for the yards. The air wheezed in her lungs as she sucked in a deep breath and attempted to steady the frantic beat of her heart.

Gordon Samuels’s vehicle. Just one figure in the cabin. The silhouette too tall, too refined, too familiar to that wildly beating heart to be anyone but Rafe.

She kicked down the stand on her bike and swung her leg over the seat.
Walk to the yards, Catriona. Shut the gate, secure the chain. Don’t forget to breathe.
Simple everyday things she was having trouble remembering.

And when she turned around he was getting out of the vehicle. Long legs in dark trousers. Dark shirt. Dark designer shades. A shiver of heat chased through her veins as his head came up and his shaded gaze fixed on her. He’d never looked more out of place, standing there in the red dust kicked up by a hundred milling cattle, and before Cat could start crossing that space between them she had to remind herself to breathe again.

A dozen emotions pounded Rafe as he watched her approach, all of them expected, most of them tight and tumultuous, none of them evident on his face. He kept his expression schooled, the same as his posture and the lazy cadence of his voice as he asked, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

A spark of irritation lit her eyes as she lifted her chin and met his gaze from under the broad brim of her stockman’s hat. “I’m working. As some of us do. Is that a problem?”

“I told you I was coming today.”

“And here you are. Should I have been waiting at the homestead?”

Rafe ignored the sweet sarcasm in that question and allowed a smile to curve his mouth. “That would have made things easier. But that’s never on your priority list, is it?”

The sting registered in her eyes, in the tightening of her lips. Good. She needed to know he’d had enough of her contrary behavior and stalling tactics.

“This—” he lifted his chin to indicate the cattle at her back “—looks like a job in progress.”

“I’m about to start drenching.”

“I assume this won’t take long?”

Her gaze narrowed. “Why would you assume that?”

“Because we have business to conclude.” Straightening, Rafe tapped a hand against the roof of the Landcruiser. “I gather you recognize this vehicle?”

The dog crouched at her feet growled. Her voice held a similar edge when she said, “Of course I do. I assume you wisely chose to use his airstrip.”

“That was convenient. Seeing as I also hand delivered a cheque.”

A flinch of emotion crossed her face but her gaze remained fixed and narrow on his. “You paid off my debt with Samuels? But I haven’t signed the contract.”

“Are you going to?”

“Did you make the alterations?”

“Would you sign if I hadn’t?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

Rafe smiled. “I figured as much. That’s why I let you have your changes.”

“All of them?”

“I expected you’d want to halve every payment or allowance I wanted to give you. That’s why I doubled them in the first place.”

Shock widened her eyes and widened Rafe’s satisfaction as he watched her take that aboard. “What about the clause I crossed out?” she asked, recovering. “The one about spending a week a month in Sydney?”

“I hated approving that one, but I did.”

“Why?” Obviously nonplussed she spread her arms, palms up. “Why would you do that? And why would you pay off Samuels without my signature?”

“I was always going to do that, Catriona.”

She stared back at him, still and quiet, for a long moment. “And what if I don’t sign now?”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“What if I’ve decided that this whole marriage is a complete sham and I can’t do it anymore? I mean, that’s possible isn’t it? People annul those quickie Vegas marriages all the time. No one need even know.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

Knowledge flared in her eyes. Knowledge of wedding-night heat, of all they’d shared, of what they may have created.

“Even if you’re not pregnant, Catriona—” he let his gaze drift down to where one of her hands hovered near her belly, and he felt a deep and rich stirring in his “—there are others who know we got married.”

“Your brother. And your neighbor.”

“
Your
neighbor, too.”

“You told Samuels? Did you have to?”

Renewed irritation burned in Rafe’s belly at her indignant tone. “Why is that such a problem? Would you prefer he spread the word that you’d slept with me in return for that cheque?”

“Isn’t that what I did?”

“No, Catriona. You married me.” And this time he didn’t attempt to hide his irritation or his impatience. “I have a contract in the vehicle that you asked for, with amendments you requested. Sign it or not, that’s your choice. What matters to
me is the deal we made in Vegas, the vows we exchanged in that chapel and in your bed.”

A pulse fluttered in her throat, heat rose in her cheeks. But her voice, when she finally spoke, was clear and even. “And after I sign?”

“I would like you to come back to Sydney with me. For the weekend.”

“Because of this charity thing tonight?”

“Yes.”

She moistened her lips. “You wouldn’t want to take me to something like that. I’d hate it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know, okay?”

But beyond the obstinate answer he saw a glimmer of appeal in her eyes that he couldn’t refuse. And, hell, if he could just get her to sign the contract after that panicky talk about annulment he’d be happy.

And afterward…well, afterward he intended to make them both very happy.

“So—” he looked beyond her at the cattle “—how long should it take us to knock this lot over?”

“Us?”

Rafe’s gaze rolled back to lock on hers. “I’m going to help you, Catriona. And in return you’re going to tell me the whole story about what happened on Tuesday to send you running home.”

Cat didn’t bother objecting to his help—she could see he meant business—and that help more than halved the time taken. There was no opportunity to talk about her flight from his apartment. With one of them feeding the draft and the other on the drenching gun, they weren’t ever working side by side, so their conversation was restricted to shouted instructions and the odd passing remark about the job they were doing.

They returned to the homestead separately and met up
again over a cold drink of water in her kitchen. She thanked him for his help, and he grinned and thanked her for letting him help. “I haven’t done any cattle work in years. I enjoyed myself.”

“Really?”

He told her how all three brothers learned the ropes at an early age on Kameruka Downs, going out on stock camps during their July and October school holidays.

“I never pictured you as a cowboy,” she said.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he countered.

A frisson of unease skittered through her bones, not because of all she didn’t know about him but because of all she did. She suspected the negligent playboy charmer thing was just a clever disguise. When it came down to it, he could do purposeful as well as anyone she’d ever met. And he had such a way of twisting things around to get what he’d wanted all along.

Is this what he’d wanted?

The two of them together in her house, her day’s work finished with an afternoon stretching long and lazy before them?

She looked up and found him watching her in a way that chased all thought from her mind and all breath from her lungs. It was the look of a hunter eyeing its prey. A look of intensity and purpose and soul-searing heat.

Cat’s heart thundered. She put down her glass, carefully, afraid it might slip through her trembling fingers. Despite the water she’d just finished, her mouth felt thick and dry. “I’d like to take a look at that contract now.”

“If you like.” He lifted a shoulder, casual, negligent, while his eyes told another story entirely. “I’d like to take a shower…if that’s all right.”

“Of course. I’ll just make sure there’s a towel.”

Inside the guest bathroom, she slumped against the wall a moment to catch her breath and think. Except, all she could think about was the last time Rafe had used this bathroom…and that he’d soon be naked here again. All she could
picture was the look in his eyes across her kitchen, and when she opened her eyes he was there, in the door of the bathroom.

Not yet naked but working on it.

“W
hat do you think you’re doing?”

The squeaky rise in her voice and the flush of heat in her cheeks gave Rafe no end of satisfaction. He’d followed her into the bathroom to catch her off guard while she found him a towel, and while her guard was down he intended finding out what had gone wrong in Sydney. Here they wouldn’t be working at opposite ends of a cattle draft. Here she would be naked and unable to escape.

He dropped his shirt on the bathroom floor and met the nervous flicker of her eyes as they rose from his bare chest to his face. “I told you I was taking a shower,” he said.

“And I said I was making sure you had a—”

Rafe peeled off trousers and underwear in one efficient pass and straightened. “A…towel?”

Her gaze whipped back up to his. “You could have waited until I’d finished in here.”

“I could have. But then I remembered how you liked effi
ciency.” Eyes still linked with hers, he reached into the shower enclosure and turned on the taps. “I thought we’d save time by getting two things out of the way at once.”

“Two things?”

Her voice was barely audible above the hiss of the shower as he leaned into the water to test the temperature. When he straightened and raked his dripping hair back from his face, she licked a nervous tongue across her lips. Anticipation surged in his body, a solid rush of heat beneath the cool patina of wet skin.

“Two things…or possibly three.” Slowly he closed the space between them, smiling as he backed her up against the vanity. “If you ask nicely.”

Her eyes flashed, cross, indignant, but the effect was spoiled by her quick intake of breath when he rested his hands on the vanity on either side of her hips. Trapping her inches from the jut of his aroused body.

“What are the first two?” she asked.

“Getting clean.” His gaze swept over her dusty face and braided hair. “And having that conversation I mentioned earlier.”

Her mouth opened but all that came out was a wheezy gasp as he straightened, wrapped his arms around her and started backing toward the shower. “What are you doing?”

“Let’s start with getting clean.”

Her eyes widened with shock as he walked them both under the water. He hadn’t planned this part, but it seemed to be working out well. He’d definitely caught her off guard. Her hands flapped uselessly, trapped at her side. “My clothes,” she spluttered. “They’re getting soaked.”

“We’d best get them off you, then.”

But before he let her down, Rafe turned them a half circle until she was cornered in the small enclosure. Barricading her there with his body, he started unbuttoning her shirt. Of course she protested. Naturally she batted at him with her hands, but he used his elbows to block her arms, and when she tried to
duck out of reach he took advantage of her widened stance to press a naked thigh between her jeans-clad ones.

She sucked in a shuddery breath, but her wide eyes snarled in a satisfying way. “You said you’d never imposed yourself on a woman.”

“I’m not imposing.”

“You’re just taking?”

That gave him pause.

His gaze rose swiftly to meet hers, but Cat found it hard to focus on their sea-green complexity. The heels of his hands rested on her breasts, distracting her with their rough-edged heat even through the soaked fabric of her shirt. She attempted to focus instead on the tiny pulse that beat at the corner of his jaw.

“I think you have the wrong idea, wife.” Very deliberate, very slow, he leaned closer and she felt the increased pressure of every point of contact. Shock waves of heat pulsed through her breasts and tightened in her nipples. She didn’t realize his purpose until he’d rolled back, the bottle of shower wash in his hand. “I’m only washing you. And your clothes, too. Efficient, aren’t I?”

He pumped a glob of the creamy wash into the palm of each hand, then smoothed it over her chest, tracing her collarbone and the swell of her breasts above her bra. Then while she was still savoring that delicious touch of sensory pleasure, he efficiently peeled off her shirt and slung it over the glass partition.

“Turn around.”

Cat obeyed. She felt his hands at her back, unhooking her bra, sliding the straps down her arms until it, too, was gone.

“Can you hold your plait up, out of the way?”

She did, and he made a soft sound of approval in his throat. A perfect accompaniment to his hands as they slicked the body wash over her shoulders and back.

“We worked well together today, don’t you think?”

He expected her to think? With his big hands making those slow, gliding strokes over her back and down her sides. Teas
ing the outsides of her breasts with each pass. Closer and closer. Slower and slower. With a low groan she slumped forward and pressed her forehead against the cool tiles.

“We work well together in other ways, too.”

His voice was close to her ear, a low rumble of heat in her blood as his hands slid around her ribs. As his thumbs stroked the underside of her breasts.

Then retreated.

The breath left her lungs in a hot gust of frustration. But when she tried to turn around he pressed a splayed a hand across her abdomen and held her there. Trapped between the wide spread of those fingers and the wall of hard, wet body at her back. Trapped in a web of wanting that twined through her, as warm and slow and liquid as the gentle wash of water on their bodies. As warm and slow and liquid as his open-mouthed kiss against the side of her throat.

“I’m not taking,” he murmured, moving that sensuous mouth up to nip at her earlobe. “I’m giving.”

And, finally, his hands closed over her breasts, cupping each with finely textured skin and finely hewn restraint. Cat didn’t give a damn who was giving or taking or receiving. Shamelessly turned on, she arched her back and drew a long breathy moan of pleasure at the dual friction of her nipples against his palms and her backside against his erection.

“Can I take off my jeans?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

His hands slid from her breasts, down over her abdomen to rest at her hipbones.

She turned her head, frowned at this lessening of contact. “You said you were washing me.”

“And your clothes.”

“Well, you’re taking your time and that isn’t efficient!”

He laughed, low and gruff and sexy. “If I take off your jeans, I’m likely to get very inefficient. And I haven’t washed your hair, yet.”

Cat growled impatiently as he rolled away from her back, but then his hands were in her hair, unbraiding her plait, separating the thick sections and playing them against her skin. Working a thick lather of shampoo, massaging her scalp, turning her weak with the impact of that whole sensual experience.

The brush of wet skin, belly to back, as he leaned past her to reshelve the bottle. His hands smoothing a delicious path from her shoulders down her arms until they closed over her hands and linked their fingers. His face nuzzling her wet hair aside, his mouth at the junction of her shoulder, kissing, biting, sucking.

The press of his body at her back and the sweet ache of hunger in her blood and her body.

“My hair is done,” she said, and her voice felt as thick as her blood, as clumsy as the fingers that struggled to unsnap her jeans. “Can you get this blasted thing?”

His laughter rasped over her as he turned her around. As he stroked those wonderful hands over her shoulders and upper arms and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Most inefficient, she thought, but then his hands were at her waist and tugging at her jeans and she decided he might just be getting the message.

He released her mouth with a last long stroke of heat, tongue to tongue, a last nip of her bottom lip, and his half-lidded gaze lifted to hers. “We are having that conversation.”

Talk? Coherently? Was he serious?

“I want to start by making one thing clear.” He lifted his hands and cupped her face, a gentle, cool contrast to the searing intensity of his eyes. “I haven’t thought about another woman since I opened my eyes in that Cessna.”

Cat blinked. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“In case you need any reassurance.”

“I need,” she said slowly, “you to take off my jeans.”

One corner of his mouth lifted but his hands didn’t move from her face. “I’ll get to that. After you tell me why you ran away.”

“That’s blackmail.”

“Let’s just call it enticement.”

He leaned forward and kissed her again. And because of the sweet hunger in that kiss and the straight heat of his gaze and, yes, the enticement of getting his clever hands to soap where her jeans now covered, she met his eyes with complete honesty. “I was homesick. And scared. I panicked.”

“Scared of…?”

“Your home…it’s so…” How could she explain? How could he expect her to find words with him naked and—

“You don’t like my home?”

He sounded stung, and Cat closed her eyes and tried again. “You know it’s beautiful, but I didn’t feel at home. It’s all too much.”

“It’s just an apartment.”

“Like you’re just a man?” She laughed softly at the incomprehension in his voice. “You’re Rafe Carlisle.”

“So?”

Her eyes drifted open when she shook her head. “Do you really think you’re no big deal?”

“To you I should be a big deal. I’m your husband.”

“Well, there’s a problem right there. I have trouble thinking of you as that. There’s so much I still don’t know about you.”

“Then learn me,” he rasped. Eyes sparking with what looked like irritation, he took her hand and put it on him, traced it over the hard sculpted muscles of his chest, rested it against the heavy thud of his heart until his heat seeped into her skin and chased through her blood.

Her husband. A mystery, a heartbreaker, a very big deal.

Cat shook her head.

“What?” he growled, leaning closer again, driving the worrying impact of that thought from her mind with the intensity of his expression. She lifted her other hand and traced the sculpted line of his jaw, his cheekbone and the brooding fullness of his mouth. Then she stretched up on her toes and
kissed him with all she had to offer in her heart, while her fingers spread over his skin and learned the thick steady beat of his heart.

Her big-deal husband would break her heart when he left. She did not have enough to keep his attention here in the outback and she could not live in his city. He would leave and she would regret, but for now—this time and maybe again tomorrow, maybe a few more weekends—she would take what he had to give.

And she would give back in equal measure.

Easing back from that rich, earthy soul kiss, she touched his lips and asked, “Will you take my jeans off now?”

The corner of his mouth lifted under her fingers. “Are you asking nicely?”

Eyes linked with his, she slipped her other hand down his sleek wet hide until it closed around his sleek wet erection. “Is that nice enough?”

He licked at her bottom lip. “Did you say please?”

She squeezed until he groaned and pushed more fully into her hand. “Pretty please,” she said sweetly. “With sugar on top.”

He took her jeans off then, although it wasn’t an easy task. The wet denim might well have shrunk already. It stuck to her skin and he kept dipping in to lick at each new exposed portion of her body. To nuzzle her thighs with the bristly texture of afternoon whiskers. To pump a new dose of body wash onto his hands and smooth it over her bottom and the backs of her legs.

By the time she kicked the weight of sodden denim aside she was breathing heavily and an inch away from begging. He rose in one smooth movement, and she saw the ripe color of arousal along his cheekbones and in his lust-dark eyes. They locked on hers, and his nostrils flared as she breathed one word.

“Yes.”

His hands on her hips lifted her, a long cool slide against the wet tiles and she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. She felt him, hard and hot between her legs and felt a swell of need, unbearably intense.

“Take,” she whispered against his mouth, “whatever you want.”

His hands cupped her buttocks, held her there wide and open as he plunged, one full thrust of his hips that slid her hard against the tiles and drove the air from her lungs and filled her with heat and sensation and emotion so big it burst from her lips in a wild primal cry. But her eyes remained locked with his, linked in a supercharged arc of connection, lost in the sensual thrall of their sea-green intensity and the awed revelation that he felt the same magnitude, the same power, the same intensity.

He didn’t need to touch her anywhere else, didn’t need to do anything except drive her with the primitive rhythm of his body and look at her in exactly that way and whisper her name until she came apart in a swell of sensation that rose and rippled and peaked, only to come again as he drove deeper and faster and spilled himself in a spasm that resounded over and over and over in her blood.

She felt the slump of her boneless weight against the slick tiles and muttered something about letting her fall, and his grip on her hips tightened. “I won’t let you fall, baby.”

“I won’t feel a thing if you do.”

His laugh was a rasp of sound, and she smiled along with it, feeling marvelous and spent and impossibly invigorated all at once. Then his laughter exploded into a raw curse and rush of movement as he tried to evade the water that beat down on his back.

In the shelter of his body, Cat started to laugh. “I guess the hot water ran out,” she gasped between chuckles.

He went very still. “So, my wife thinks that’s funny.”

“In a laughing
with you
kind of way.”

“Huh.” His eyes narrowed and gleamed dangerously. “They say marriage is about sharing…”

And she had barely enough time to yelp before he redirected the showerhead and a stream of cold water onto her.

Rafe turned off the water and warmed his wife’s cool skin with a thorough toweling before he carried her from the bathroom.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked when he kept walking past the guest-room bed.

“Your bed.” He stopped and looked into her face. “Did you expect I would want my own room?”