Princes of the Outback Bundle

by Bronwyn Jameson

  Ninety minutes later Cat shifted the designer overnight bag she’d found in the Cessna from right hand to left, squared her shoulders and knocked on her guest room door. This time she would wake him. He’d slept long enough and she needed to know he was all right. She needed him dressed, fed and ready to go when Jennifer Porter called.

  Again, no answer.

  She edged the door open and found the bedclothes flung back, the bed empty. Her attention flew straight to the bathroom door. She couldn’t hear any sound of activity from beyond—no hiss of the shower, no running water, no telltale clank of pipes.

  What if he’d done the wonky thing again? What if he’d passed out in there? What if he’d knocked his head falling?

  “What if you get your butt over there and find out?” Cat muttered. It was the logical thing to do, the sensible thing to do, the practical thing to do…which all added up to the Cat thing to do.

  And she would do it, right after she put his bag down. And neatened the bed. Not that she was procrastinating. Much.

  She was smoothing the bottom sheet and pretending not to notice the lingering warmth from his body when she sensed or heard…something. Slowly she straightened and turned and there he was. Standing in the bathroom doorway, watching her. Wearing nothing but the gleam of residual moisture from his shower.

  Cat didn’t think about looking away. He was, after all, something to behold. And she was, after all, completely beholden. Then he cleared his throat and she realized how long she’d been staring and gave an apologetic caught-out shrug.

  “I brought your luggage.” She moistened her dry lips and gestured behind her, to where she’d left his bag. “From the plane. I thought you might appreciate some, ah, clothes.”

  Despite that rather pointed comment, he took his own sweet time reaching for a towel and wrapping it around his hips. He seemed as comfortable in the altogether as she was in her Wranglers. That, she supposed, came with the territory when one possessed the body of a Greek god.

  “Thanks.” His big smile matched the body. Perfectly. “For bringing my bag.”

  She probably murmured, “You’re welcome,” or something equally asinine.

  Or she might not have, since she’d become totally involved in watching him rake his hair back from his face as he strolled out of the bathroom. He came right up to the bed, to her side, and her mind went completely blank for a second or three. She forced herself to focus, to think. She couldn’t just stand there staring at the dark finger tracks in his shiny wet hair.

  Or pretending not to stare.

  “You’re looking good,” she said. Then silently cringed at how that could be taken. Ugh. “In comparison to last night,” she added quickly.

  He looked as if he knew exactly why she’d felt the need to clarify. The knowledge glinted in his eyes, in the teasing quirk at the corners of his mouth. “What a difference a night makes. I slept like a baby.”

  No, Cat thought, not a baby. There was something altogether too wicked, too knowing, completely not innocent, about this man for any baby analogy to stick. “For ten hours straight,” she said.

  “That long? Why didn’t you wake me?” Slowly, reflectively, he rubbed his stubbled jaw.” The Sleeping Beauty way would have been nice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “While I was in the shower I remembered you calling me that in the plane.” His gaze drifted to her mouth. “Isn’t there supposed to be a kiss involved? Or am I muddling my fairy tales?”

  “You were conscious?” Oh, man, what else did I say? And where did I have my hands at the time?

  Damn his smooth, knowing hide, he grinned at her. “Must have been something about your magic touch.”

  “I should have left you there!”

  “Nah. You enjoyed playing nurse too much.”

  “Let me think about that….” Cat tapped a finger against her chin. “Did I enjoy your whining? Nope. Prying your eyes open so I could test your pupils? Nope. Getting crushed when you fell on top of me? Nope again.”

  “I fell on you?”

  The man remembered one murmured line while coming out of unconsciousness but he didn’t remember lying thigh to thigh, hip to hip, hand to breast with her? Cat shook her head. “I was trying to get you into bed.”

  “I gather you succeeded?”

  “Eventually.”

  One dark brow arched skeptically—as if he didn’t quite believe he’d have put up a fight—and then he gestured toward his clothes, the ones she’d folded and placed on the bedside table. “And you undressed me?”

  “Eventually.”

  He shook his head slowly, almost solemnly. “Sorry I missed that.”

  Oh, he was good. The deep note of sincerity, the way he looked into her eyes. Cat looked right back and wondered how many women had fallen into those sea-green depths and drowned. Not her. She might live in the arid outback, but she wasn’t so parched that she’d swim with sharks.

  “I’m not,” she said, smiling a little, letting him know she had his measure. “It was…interesting. With you all but unconscious.”

  He laughed, a rich two-note sound of surprise that ended on a slight wince.

  Cat’s enjoyment of the moment, the bantering, his laughter, sobered instantly. “How does your head feel?”

  “Like it got hit by a plane. Here,” he invited. “Feel for yourself.”

  The instant he ducked his head, the mood dipped, too, slowing and swelling with sensuality. She breathed the scent of his nearness—her soap, her shampoo, but all different on his skin, in his hair. And she was suddenly aware, all over again, that he wore only a towel and that his skin was bare and warm, and that he was waiting for her to touch him.

  His head, silly. He only invited you to feel the bump on his head.

  Gingerly she palpated the lump, breath held, concern for his injury overriding her preoccupation with the slippery wet strands of his hair, with those damn tracks her own fingers itched to trace. With his sudden stillness and the sense of a new tension in the air.

  “Well?” he asked, straightening slowly.

  “Does it still ache?”

  His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “Whether a yes gets me more of your tender loving touch—” Rafe picked up her hand and ran his thumb lightly across her fingertips before releasing it “—or more of that light in my eyes.”

  “Testing your responses was on doctor’s order. If I could have gotten you to hospital, they’d have done the same.”

  “Except with significantly less wattage.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it, as his point about the flashlight’s power sunk in. “That’s my only torch. And it doesn’t appear to have done you any harm. Anyone else would have had a corker of a black eye.”

  “The cold compress helped.”

  “I guess.” Her gaze softened a little, relenting, relaxing. “What about the rest of you? You’re not stiff or sore anywhere else?”

  Oh, yeah, she realized how that could be taken about a second after the words left her lips. And it wasn’t in Rafe’s nature to let such a choice opportunity slide. He cocked a brow. “Would you like to check?”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  Rafe shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  She gave him a look that said she could. “It was a godawful line. You should be ashamed.”

  “Harsh.”

  “But honest.”

  Conceding her point, he tapped two fingers against his temple. “Can we blame it on damage to my head?”

  She smiled, but there was a worried edge to the gaze that followed his gesture. A knowledge that while he joked about head damage, it had been a very real concern to her in those long hours of the night.

  “I haven’t thanked you,” he said, watching her turn to pick up his bag. She set it on top of the bed.

  “For bringing your bag? I think you did that earlier. I’ll leave you to get
dressed, then.” She started to turn, preparing to leave, but Rafe caught her by the arm and waited for her surprised gaze to swing back to his.

  “Not only the bag,” he said quietly. “Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you for bringing me into your home and continuing with the observations even after I begged you to give it up. Thank you, Catriona.”

  She shrugged and shifted uneasily within his grip. “Anyone would have done the same.”

  “I know a lot of women—” she rolled her eyes in an I-bet-you-do way that Rafe ignored “—and most of them wouldn’t have known how to get into that plane, let alone thought to get me out.” With his thumb he traced a jagged white scar across the back of her hand. Then he smiled to ease the new note of gravity in the mood. “Most of them would have been afraid they’d break a nail.”

  “I dare say I’m nothing like most of those women you know.”

  That went without saying. No fawning, no flirting, not even the hint of a come-on. Most of the women he knew would have taken immediate, unsubtle advantage of his state of undress, but not Catriona McConnell. She was, indeed, a novelty. “When I picked your airstrip, I chose well.”

  She made a scoffing sound and tugged at her hand until he released her. “Any one of my neighbors would have helped you. And their strips wouldn’t have wrecked your plane!”

  “The landing gear malfunctioned. I was never going to land smoothly.”

  Eyes wide and appalled, she stared up at him. Her face seemed to have paled a shade, so the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out starkly. “Your landing gear malfunctioned? You could have crashed? Badly?”

  “Hey,” Rafe said softly, reaching for her. But she was already backing away, hands held up in classic don’t-touch mode. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was never going to crash-land.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’m too good a pilot.”

  She huffed out an incredulous breath. “Well, at least we know your ego wasn’t damaged.”

  “Why do I have the feeling it will suffer if I stick around here much longer?”

  From the doorway she paused long enough to cut him a look that perfectly illustrated his point. “Lucky for your ego, you won’t be.”

  Three

  “What is it with you guys and that whole macho ‘I’m too good a pilot’ business?”

  Cat paused in ratting through her pantry for ingredients—anything!—to add to her breakfast hodgepodge and glared at the only male present and therefore answerable. Bach, however, had nothing to say in his gender’s defense. He merely tilted his broad canine head and looked curious. Or puzzled. Or possibly both.

  “Have you any idea how that cavalier attitude bothers other people?” How it robs their breath and turns their stomachs sick with dread? Even when they’re virtual strangers?

  Halfway across her kitchen, hands filled with cans and condiments, she stopped and frowned, disturbed by the extremity of her reaction to the idea that Rafe Carlisle could have crash-landed.

  Must have been the timing, she justified. The surprise element. Plus after seeing him in all his glory he just seemed too vital, too larger than life, to imagine damaged and scarred. Or cold and lifeless.

  “Too good a pilot?” With an unladylike snort, she dumped her ingredients on the bench top. “Lucky is more like it!”

  Up until that disclosure about his landing-gear malfunction, she’d been handling herself so well, too. Hardly turning a hair when she’d caught him in the buff. Holding her own in the ensuing exchange. Then he’d gone and turned all serious with the thank-you speech, as if she’d done something special.

  Well, it was no news flash that Cat McConnell didn’t do special. She did capable, she did practical, and some people said she could do stubborn better than anyone. But she sure did not do up-close, skin-tingling, hand-holding seriousness with seminude strangers.

  No wonder she’d reacted so intensely to the landing-gear shocker. No wonder the breath had caught in her lungs while her stomach roiled with—

  The microwave timer pinged, startling her out of her unsettling memories.

  Wake up, Cat, you have breakfast to finish. A guest to get on his way. Normalcy to be returned.

  But as she crossed the kitchen to check on the concoction of minced beef and sundries she was nuking, her gaze caught on the photo on the fridge. Drew Samuels with his lopsided grin and black Resistol and laidback cowboy charm.

  No, not normalcy. She doubted her life would ever feel normal again. Not if her best friend, her only lover, had let her down as badly as she feared.

  “Lucky I’ve got you,” she told Bach, “to keep my faith in males from going completely down the gurgler.”

  Ears pricked, her dog pattered to her side and growled deep in his chest. Not so much in understanding as in hunger, Cat noted, since she’d lifted the lid on the nuked breakfast dish. Steam spiraled to her nose, piquant, aromatic, and she dipped in a spoon and lifted it, cautiously, to her lips. Tasted. Cocked her head in the dog’s direction.

  “Not too bad, considering.” Considering the amount of scrambling she’d done to find anything substantial enough to feed a man who’d eaten nothing the previous night.

  Whimpering, Bach touched a paw to her leg and gave her the big doggy-eyed look.

  “Oh, please!” She rolled her eyes and saw him out the door. “I’ll get you something in a tick, mate. This is for the guest and I doubt there’ll be any leftovers.”

  Since the guest looked like a man of appetite.

  Cat expelled a breath, a swift wisp of air that matched the swing of the door closing behind her dog. She rested her shoulders against the door’s solid weight for a moment. Closed her eyes. Rafe Carlisle, she mused, looked like a man with all manner of appetites, food being but one of them.

  And it struck her, standing there in the very real surrounds of her kitchen, her home, her niche, how surreal this all was. Everything from Gordon Samuels’s revelation about the origin of the money she’d borrowed from Drew, through to watching one of the princes of the outback drop out of the sky, and on to this morning when she’d unwittingly eyed his impressive, um, scepter.

  To top it all off, here she was making breakfast for him. Rafe Carlisle. One of Australia’s highest-profile playboys, a former Bachelor of the Year, a socialite pin-up who dated actresses and swimsuit models. Oh, how she’d love to share that tasty tidbit with her stuck-up stepsisters!

  Smiling—ruefully, given she tried to avoid seeing those witches whenever possible—she opened her eyes and pushed off the door.

  And jolted to startled attention when she realized that she was no longer alone. The former Bachelor of the Year lazed against the doorjamb on the opposite side of the kitchen, looking so languid and comfortable that she wondered how long he’d been there.

  “Ready for breakfast?” she asked, refusing to be rankled. She had, after all, watched him sleep. And he was, after all, now fully dressed.

  In a smooth unraveling of long limbs and relaxed muscles—Cat fought to suppress a strong visual of those muscles bare-skinned, as she’d seem them earlier, rippling into lazy motion—he straightened and came into the room. Right past the table, which she’d already set, to rest his hips against the bench. To watch her fill the toaster and turn on the kettle and stir the mystery mince.

  He leaned close and drew a long, appreciative sniff.

  Then—oh, crikey—he rubbed his belly and made the same sound she remembered from the night before, when he’d fallen into the soft folds of her nanna’s handmade quilt.

  It was a sound that went with croissants or frittata or eggs benedict served on a sun-drenched terrace. The sound of a man who came to breakfast wearing designer jeans and a butter-colored knit that looked soft enough to melt under the strong outback sun. A sound too luxurious, too rich, too sensuous for her utilitarian kitchen and her tossed-together breakfast.

  A sound too rich for Cat, which made it easy to dismiss.

&n
bsp; “You cook, too?” he asked.

  “Save the praise until after you’ve tasted,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve not been shopping in a while, so this is whatever I could find. It’s not gourmet cuisine.”

  Not that she was apologizing. He was bloody lucky she’d found anything.

  When he didn’t respond, she glanced sideways and found him looking at her—no, not so much looking as giving her the once-over. Lifting her chin, she met his examination head-on but he didn’t look the least chagrined. In fact a smile kicked at the corner of his mouth, not apologetic, just caught out and not caring.

  The toast popped, distracting them both, but Cat shot him one last raised-eyebrow glance. “If you’re finished with the inspection, take a seat and I’ll bring you breakfast.”

  “And if I’m not…?”

  “Take a seat, anyway—” she marched past him and deposited the casserole dish in the center of the table “—you can finish while you eat.”

  “Are you going to join me?”

  “In a tick.”

  He waited, watched, and only sat after Cat had finished making the tea and taking her own seat opposite. Nice manners, she admitted, a trifle grudgingly since that only indicated two things: he’d been brought up well, and he’d shared a lot of breakfasts with a lot of ladies. Most of whom wouldn’t have served him minced beef.

  There was a moment when he pushed up his sleeves, and her gaze became riveted on the details. The dark hair on his forearms. The silver links of an expensive-looking watch. His long elegant fingers. The remembered warmth of his touch on her arm and stroking the back of her hand.

  Then he caught her looking, and the moment stretched with a warm awareness that quickly morphed into awkwardness—on Cat’s side of the table, at least—as she poured tea and fussed with the food. A stranger sat at her table, long fingers folded around the handle of one of her mugs. Her cutlery was transporting the food she had prepared to his mouth, touching his lips, his tongue.

  The intimacy of it all shivered through her like quicksilver. More intimate even than before, in the bedroom, although perhaps this disquieting sensation was just the whole twenty-four hours catching up with her.