Princes of the Outback Bundle

by Bronwyn Jameson

  “She manages the impossible by being impossible,” she told Rafe. “You do not want to meet her, believe me.”

  “Okay. But I would like to hear how she influenced your decision.”

  The jumbo had reached the runway and it lumbered in a slow arc to face east, the ocean, her future. Cat’s heart started to thunder like a stampeding steer. Why not tell him? Talking might take her mind off the rising panic that threatened to engulf her—a turbulent anxiety that rivaled the high-pitched whining of jet engines impatient for takeoff.

  “Pamela loves to tell me all about her daughters and their brilliantly successful careers.” Compared to, say, her own spectacular struggle to survive. “And she can’t resist reminding me, in subtle little ways, how much keeping Corroboree in the family meant to my father.”

  “And has she helped you to do that?”

  “She offered once, but…” Cat shrugged instead of finishing the sentence. But I chose to take Drew’s money instead. At the time it had seemed the better option. Better than accepting help from a woman who didn’t think she could do the job, who undermined her confidence at every turn, who made her sweat with guilty, angsty fear over letting down her father.

  “But…?” Rafe prompted.

  The giant engines roared and he leaned across the console between their seats, ducking his head to wait for her answer. Expecting her to speak that answer close to his ear.

  Cat stared. At the smooth curve of hair behind his ear and the bristly texture of his sideburn before it. At the squared edge of his jawbone and the flat plane of his cheek. She swallowed. Her fingers curved reflexively around the ends of the armrests, gripping tight, partly because the plane was accelerating down the tarmac and partly because her senses had been hijacked by wild imaginings.

  Pressing her lips to that ear. Touching his skin. Biting the lobe.

  His prompting question forgotten, she closed her eyes and held on tighter. Then his hand covered hers, enclosing it in heat and the surprise of his palm’s texture. Not silky smooth like the rest of him, but slightly rough and very male.

  She couldn’t stop the sensual shudder that rose from deep inside when the pressure of his hand increased, stroking over her knuckles and between her fingers. And when he leaned closer to say, “We’ll be up there soon. Just hang on tight,” she couldn’t help the flare of her nostrils as she breathed deeply and caught the musky note of his scent.

  Yes, she was slightly nervous of flying.

  Yes, he was helping her overcome it—not with his reassuring words, but by guaranteeing she forgot all about the unlikely physics that kept 350 tons of metal airborne.

  Did he know how violently he affected her?

  Probably. She imagined all women responded the same way to his sexy sweet-talking appeal. God knows, the gossip magazines insinuated so. Not that Cat read them, as a rule, but in the last week she’d allowed her curiosity to type his name into an internet search engine. She’d allowed that curiosity to start reading from some of the sites unearthed…until she’d realized what she was doing and shut her computer down in self-disgust.

  The plane lifted and her stomach took a lifetime to catch up. She eased her grip on the armrest but he didn’t take his hand away until she wriggled and tugged. “I’m okay now.”

  And because he was looking at her too closely, his amazing eyes narrowed and fixed on her face, his expression speculative and ready to call her on that lie, she circled back to their interrupted conversation about her stepmother.

  “Pamela withdrew her offer of help. She’s just waiting for me to fail.”

  “Is that why you want to save your station so badly?”

  “No, that’s for my father and myself.” The quiet intensity of her words resonated with the same vibrant power as the climbing jumbo for several seconds. Maybe longer. Then a touch of wryness curved Cat’s lips. “Although I wouldn’t knock back the chance to do something—just once—to wipe the floor with her patronizing attitude.”

  “I imagine that goes for Samuels, too.”

  “Crikey, yes! Doubly.”

  Settling back in the superwide seat, she allowed herself to image that scenario. For the short time it lasted, my, it was good, but then the raw reality of her situation shoved its ugly head into her fantasy. She had no clue how to resolve her mess. This trip to America was only to answer questions, to close her past with Drew, to arm herself with the truth before facing her future.

  “I take it he’s not looking after your place then, while you’re away?”

  Cat pulled a face. “Good guess. Bob and Jen Porter are feeding the animals and keeping an eye on things.”

  “Good neighbors.”

  “Yes.” Her only good neighbors. Her only support. And not nearly enough in the long run.

  Perhaps he saw the change in her expression because he leaned closer, his voice lowered to an intimate, conspiratorial level. “Whatever you’re thinking, Shauna will be along in a minute to cure it.”

  Cat frowned. “Shauna?”

  He indicated the flight attendant with a nod and a wink. The latter was for the sleek and beautiful Shauna. Figured that he knew her name already. Figured that he was flirting with her already. What didn’t figure was Cat’s own fierce reaction.

  “How will she cure me?” she asked, testy with herself for what felt like the razor’s slice of jealousy. She had no right to those feelings. No right to any feelings for Rafe Carlisle.

  He turned her way again, just a slight roll of his head against the soft leather headrest and he was looking right into her eyes. Smiling right into her eyes. “She’ll be along with champagne.”

  “The universal first-class cure-all?”

  “I didn’t know you were such a cynic.”

  “I’m a realist, Rafe, and this—” she waggled her hand, indicating everything around her in the first-class cabin, including him “—only happens in the movies. It’s not real. Not in my life.”

  He raised a lazy eyebrow. And before she realized his purpose, he twined his fingers through hers and picked up her hand. Mesmerized by the soft stroke of his thumb across the center of her palm, by the unwitting intimacy of their linked fingers, by the flare of heat in her belly, Cat blinked slowly. She sat helplessly entranced while he stroked her knuckles against the soft leather of the seat. While he lifted them to brush his cheek and then to touch the sensual fullness of his bottom lip.

  “See—” the warm breath of his word washed against her knuckles “—it is all real.”

  Crikey, he was lethal.

  She was in trouble if he kept this up all the way to L.A.

  She tugged her hand, and after a short tussle that brought heat to her cheeks, he let her reclaim it. He touched the back of his hand to her face and she jerked back, furious with herself for overreacting, but also with him for playing his games with her. Surely there had to be better in-flight entertainment.

  “This is a long flight.” She kept her voice and her gaze even, despite the furious heat in her cheeks. “Let’s get a few things straight, so there are no mixed messages.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m serious, Rafe. Please.”

  “So am I,” he said, mimicking her stern tone. “What messages are getting mixed, Catriona?”

  “I’m not a plaything,” she said tightly. “Don’t toy with me.”

  “Toy with you?”

  “This…thing…you do with women.”

  “This…thing?”

  She clicked her tongue with annoyance. Did he have to repeat everything she said in that pseudo-studious way? “Flirt. Kiss. Touch. The lines, the looks. We both know you don’t mean it, so just cut it out!”

  For a long moment he eyed her in a way she couldn’t fathom. Then, with devastating slowness, he brushed his fingertips down the length of her hair. “I promise I won’t toy with you, Catriona. But I can’t promise not to touch you.”

  What was that supposed to mean? Cat’s heart beat hard and high in her chest. S
he had to swallow before she could attempt to speak. “What if I don’t want you to touch me?”

  “Let’s make a deal.” His voice was low, lazy, lethal. “Just so there are no mixed messages.”

  Cat swallowed again.

  “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.” He extended his hand. “Do we have a deal?”

  Did they? Mouth dry, heart thumping, she stared at his hand a second, two, three, while she mulled over his terms. It sounded too good to be true.

  “Well, Catriona?”

  “My call? You’ll back off whenever I say?”

  “Promise.”

  They shook on that, just as Shauna appeared with the promised champagne. Cat settled back into her cushy seat and rubbed her fingers over the warmth lingering from his handshake while her trepidation remained, unallayed, unrelenting.

  After all, hadn’t a handshake deal with another charmer gotten her into this mess?

  The investigator Rafe employed had found Drew Samuels easily enough, shacked up with a woman named Cherrie. He’d told Catriona about the injury but not about the woman. That’s why he’d hung around outside the apartment complex after Catriona disappeared inside. That’s why he was waiting when she came out half an hour later, ready to take her back to their hotel for some intensive play time.

  Yes, he’d promised not to toy with her, but this wasn’t that kind of play. This was about making her laugh and forget the ex and everything he’d done to hurt her. This was about treating her and indulging her and reminding her that she was a desirable woman.

  Then he would get serious.

  As for their deal…well, like all contracts, the devil was in the detail. As he’d told her on the plane, he couldn’t agree to not touching but he could shake on not trying anything she didn’t want. And Catriona did want him. He felt the spark when their gazes connected, the heat when their fingers meshed, the soft sexy tension when he brushed his mouth with her knuckles.

  She might not have realized it yet, but she would.

  Slowing with the traffic as they approached the Strip, he cut her a sideways look and felt the same gut kick of reaction as five minutes before, when she slid into the passenger seat of the rental sports car without a word. At worst he’d expected a short dose of cynicism on men in general; at best a fiery diatribe on the specific worm who’d sold her out without a breath of warning.

  He hadn’t counted on her looking so pale. So lost. So damn beaten.

  He hadn’t counted on his own savage response, either. If the bastard had had the common courtesy to walk her outside—hell, she hadn’t known he was waiting, she’d told him to go and attend to his business, she’d catch a cab—Rafe would likely have given in to the violent need to grind his face in the dirt. That rocked him almost as much as Cat’s silence. He wasn’t a violent man. And he didn’t even have the full story on Drew Samuels…although he intended to get it once they arrived back at their hotel and he could concentrate only on her, instead of the car and the traffic and the tourists who wandered around in a bright-lights-induced coma. Even though it was only midmorning.

  They were half a block from their hotel when he changed his mind and kept on driving. It was a whim, but the kind that sat right in his gut and even righter in his mind the farther he drove without her taking any notice. When he pulled over to dispense with the convertible’s roof, she finally sat up straighter and looked about. Behind her dark glasses he couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew they roamed the red desert vista with dawning realization.

  “Where are we? Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere in particular. Just driving.”

  “For how long?” she asked after a moment.

  “As long as it takes,” Rafe answered easily as he steered the Jaguar back onto the single-lane road. Divergent currents of warm and cool air eddied through the car, whipping several long tresses around her face. “You might want to tie your hair back.”

  The powerful engine pleaded for release in a low rumbling purr he couldn’t deny. He opened her up for the time it took to hit the speed limit—and a bit more—and she thanked him with a blood rush of sheer speed-induced pleasure. Not as good as sex, not as good as flying or outwitting a sharp opponent at the poker table, but the next best thing.

  He glanced at Catriona. She’d given up holding her hair, and it sailed beyond the car’s confines in wild cinnamon streamers that obscured her face. He hoped the rush of speed had chased away some of her anxiety, that the sparse landscape with its rich ochre shades and wild, rough edges would feel enough like home to ease her tight expression.

  That’s what he’d meant by “as long as it takes.”

  He turned up a dirt trail leading nowhere in particular and eased off the speed. He aimed to find somewhere to pull over, somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed. He hoped she was ready to let all that heartache pour out.

  “Don’t you need to get back? To your business?”

  They’d been stopped out here—wherever that was—for a while. Cat didn’t know how long. She’d walked until her sandals started to rub through her numbness and register as imminent blisters. Then she’d returned to the sleek silvery blue sports car and climbed back into her seat.

  Rafe didn’t move. “I don’t have to be anywhere.”

  But despite the peace of this place and his relaxed immobility in the driver’s seat—how could someone slouch so gracefully?—she couldn’t sit still. She felt edgy and restless, as if the short walk had freed all her simmering frustrations from their previous frozen numbness.

  She turned in her seat, better to face him. “Why did you bring me out here?”

  “To walk. To talk if you want. I’m a good listener.”

  “Talk.” She made a tight growling noise in her throat. “That won’t help me any!”

  “Would it help if you tossed rocks at something? There are some sturdy-looking cacti out here. If you feel so inclined.”

  No, she didn’t feel like throwing things any more than talking. She felt like…like…

  “Did you know about Cherrie?” Harsh, almost accusatory, the question exploded from deep inside, deep down where panic and anger and despair roiled in a churning cauldron of contained emotion.

  “The girlfriend?”

  “The pregnant girlfriend,” she corrected, and she could see by Rafe’s face that that much was news. And it struck her, randomly, inconsequentially, that he wouldn’t be the only one stunned by the news. Her laugh came out low and bitter, and she shook her head slowly. “Can you imagine his father’s face when he finds out?”

  “Samuels doesn’t want grandkids?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is Cherrie. Let’s just say Gordon would welcome even me with open arms in preference to a Vegas showgirl-slash-waitress!”

  She could feel him watching her, silent as the spread of desert landscape, intent as one of the hawks that circled over a distant canyon. “Was that ever an option? Samuels as your father-in-law?”

  “I thought so. We lived together for a while, when Drew was home from rodeos. He and his father had a falling out, and we’d always been friends. It became…more. I took his money thinking we’d end up running Corroboree together, that we’d be partners, and the silly handshake I’ll-pay-you-back deal was only about my pride.” Now she’d started talking, the words simply wouldn’t let up. It didn’t matter who she was telling or whether he wanted to know, she just had to let it all out. “Why couldn’t he have told me about Cherrie and the baby and his busted shoulder? I would have understood him needing the money. I could have done something without him selling me out to his father!”

  God knows what, but something! For a start she would have avoided this pointless trip, saved herself the discovery of Drew’s failure firsthand, of meeting the beaten flatness of his eyes. Of knowing he’d been too weak to return her calls and tell her the truth.

  “I take it his rodeo dream didn’t pan out?”

  �
��He says he was doing all right until he got laid up with injury, but who knows? As far as I know he didn’t even tell his father that much. Back home I kept hearing how well he was doing on the circuit.” She slapped a hand against the console. “I should have known better. I had my doubts when I stopped seeing his name in the results on the Internet.”

  “You were hoping you were wrong.”

  With a rueful sigh, she slumped back in her seat. “Yeah. I was hoping.”

  “Valid,” he suggested after a long beat of pause, “since you love him.”

  That statement, spoken quietly, evenly, stretched through the ensuing silence and wrapped around Cat’s conscience. She frowned. Did she love Drew? Present tense…no, she didn’t. Past tense…yes, she must have. Why else would she have trusted him? Why else would his betrayal have struck such an acute hurt in her heart?

  Because the result mattered so deeply. Because, now, she would have to find some way to repay Samuels and she feared that selling at least part of Corroboree was her only option. She feared that Samuels wouldn’t stop at part, that he would keep hammering away until he had the whole.

  “He’s always wanted Corroboree.” A simple statement, but her voice ached with all that meant. Failing her father and failing herself. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Rafe.”

  She’d turned toward him, her arms spread in unconscious appeal, and although he didn’t move a muscle, she sensed a change. A new alertness. As if he’d been sitting there waiting for her to get to this point. Waiting for his cue to take over.

  “You’re not going to do anything, Catriona. Not yet.”

  “But—”

  “You’re tired, you’re stressed, you’re emotional. That’s not the time to be making big decisions.”

  True, but…

  Rafe the listener, lounging back in his sports car seat, prompting her to toss her verbal rocks at the abandoned terrain…that Rafe she trusted. This intent, take-charge version disturbed her at some elemental level. Having to seek his advice on what to do next disturbed her even more, yet she couldn’t help herself. She felt so lost and fretful she might as well have been out there, wandering across the red-tinged vastness of the Nevada landscape, alone and without a compass.