Princes of the Outback Bundle

by Bronwyn Jameson

  Alex paced another round of a room not designed for pacing. He’d tried sitting, on the bright red sofa that dominated the tiny room, but he’d sunk so deep that the cushions heaped all over the thing had spilled into his lap. And then he’d heard the sound of running water upstairs and he’d sprung to his feet in an instant.

  She hadn’t appeared then. She hadn’t appeared since.

  What the hell was he doing here anyway?

  Yes, Tim had called. But when he answered the door this morning, he’d looked sheepish and ill at ease. “Look, man, I might have overstepped, y’know.”

  “You did call about Zara?”

  Tim had scratched at his chin and winced. “Sort of. I didn’t expect you’d call in person.”

  “Is she home?”

  “Yeah, but she’s still in bed.”

  “Is she sick?” he’d bit out instantly, remembering the morning at the cabin. Remembering her languid stretch and her guilty grin when she admitted she never slept in. “Is that why you called?”

  “She’s, um, a bit off color. Look, why don’t you come in and I’ll see if she’s up yet.”

  Running water and every screaming instinct told Alex she was up, but avoiding him. His pride suggested he take the hint and leave. But then he heard footsteps in the hall outside and he whipped around just as the door opened.

  He saw her and didn’t see her; felt too much, too swiftly, to take in anything except the fact that she was here, and he still wanted her more than his next breath.

  Then she flipped back her hair, loose, no ponytail, and that simple action steadied his first rush of response, focused his gaze on the woman who stood in the doorway looking gaunt and pale and still.

  Realization hit him like a tidal wave, knocking the breath from his lungs, sucking the sand from under his feet. Slowly his gaze dipped to her waist and he heard the intake of her breath and saw the flutter of nerves in her hand the second before she pressed it to her flat stomach.

  Reflexive, protective, and more revealing than any words.

  “When were you going to tell me?” His gaze rolled back to her face. “Or weren’t you going to bother?”

  Her eyes widened slightly, hurt, shocked. “Of course I was—”

  “When?”

  “Today. I was going to call you today.”

  Right. “And that’s why your housemate felt he should intercede?”

  Her lips tightened visibly. “Tim thought he was doing me a favor.”

  “Yes. He was.”

  For a second he just stared at her, battling a barrage of conflicting emotions. At the moment anger was ahead on points and she must have read that on his face and in his body language because she sucked in a breath and lifted her chin a little. “Please, Alex, can we not do this now? I can’t—”

  “You want me to come back later? You want me to walk away and go about my business after finding out you’re pregnant?”

  “No,” she said in cool, clear contrast to the rising heat in his voice. “I want you to understand that I’m not up for a fight. Sorry, but if that’s what you want then you will have to come back another time.”

  Their eyes met, clashed and he felt a gut-punch of remorse. “You look like hell.”

  “You noticed?”

  And that one wry question wiped away his anger, wiped away everything but a powerful wave of protective concern. “How long have you been sick? Have you seen a doctor? Isn’t there something they can give—”

  “Slow down. Just…sit down.” She waved a hand toward the sofa. “I’ll make some tea.”

  Alex set his jaw. “I don’t want tea. I want answers.”

  “Well, I do want tea, as it happens.” She pressed a hand to her stomach again and he was struck again by how thin she was. “And another breakfast.”

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  “I dare say.”

  How could she be so blasé? This was her health, the baby’s health. His baby’s health! “Dammit, Zara, sit down. I’ll make you tea and…what can you eat?”

  Too wrung out to object, Zara let him feed her. Sitting at the kitchen table, she gave him directions on what to make, where to find things, and tried to focus on how small and shabby he made her kitchen look, with his elegant navy suit and red silk tie and perfect grooming. Focusing on the superficial and reassuring him about her health—several times—helped keep her trepidation down to a dull roar.

  But then, while she ate, he leaned against the counter and watched. He was so quiet, so cool, that for a second she wished back the dark slice of anger he’d displayed earlier. At least that was an emotion she understood.

  This Alex was infinitely more dangerous because she didn’t know how he’d strike and therefore she couldn’t prepare to defend. And if he kept watching her like that, if her stomach kept churning with her rising anxiety, then she wouldn’t have to worry about anything except making the bathroom in time.

  “How did this happen?”

  Zara looked up from spreading a second slice of toast. She didn’t know that she wanted to eat a second slice, but she liked having something to do. She liked the cool and solid strength of the knife in her hand, too. Not so much a defense as a prop.

  “The pregnancy?” she asked, meeting his eyes. Resisting the smart-mouth answer that sprang to mind. “Well, you were there.”

  “We used protection. Every time.”

  Oh, yes. So many times, so many ways. All of them completely mind-blowing.

  Zara looked back at her toast, away from the heat of that thought reflected in his darkening eyes. Away from the flare of color along his cheekbones. The look she’d seen so many times when he came to her after donning protection. Or while she’d rolled it on, slowly, carefully, tormenting and teasing.

  The knife clattered from her hand, breaking that dangerous thread of thought.

  “Condoms don’t offer one hundred percent protection.” She adopted a practical, professional tone. “For various reasons, but mostly user error.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment but she felt his tension, felt it stretching between them like a physical entity. “Did you know the last time I was in Melbourne?”

  Zara shook her head. “I would have told you if I’d known. I know how important this is to you.”

  “You’re going to have the baby?”

  “Of course I am! What did you think?”

  “I don’t know. You haven’t given me the chance to think.”

  Oh, but that hurt. The words and the insinuation, the cool tone and the spark of accusation in his eyes. “You know, it came as something of a shock to me, too. I’ve had a lot to think about and to deal with—”

  “Dammit, Zara, I could have shared all that!” He rocked forward off the counter, as if he couldn’t maintain that fake-casual stance any longer. “I could have been looking after you, getting you medical care, making sure you were eating properly.”

  “I hope you’re not implying I’ve been neglectful.”

  “How can you look after yourself here?” He waved a hand around. “Alone? With your study and your work. You look like—”

  “Hell. I know. You have pointed that out.”

  And somehow they were back at glaring odds, except this time the anger simmered just as strongly in Zara. How dare he imply that her home—bought with her mother’s estate, her only asset, and perfectly adequate for her needs—wasn’t good enough?

  How dare he imply that she couldn’t look after herself and her baby?

  Instinctively, her hand dropped to her lap. “I have been looking after myself,” she said coolly, “since before I turned twenty. For four of those years I also nursed my mother through a debilitating illness. I’m a medical student and I know how to protect my health.”

  His look suggested otherwise but he didn’t say so. He didn’t say anything for a long, tense moment. Then he blew her right away. “I want to marry you, Zara. As soon as we can make arrangements.”

  Zara sucked in a br
eath but it wasn’t enough to stop the giddy whirl in her brain. “You want to marry me? Because I’m pregnant?”

  “Because we’re going to have a baby together. Yes.”

  “I…” Her voice trailed off. She licked her lips and tried again. “I don’t see how that would work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because you live in Sydney for a start. Your work is in Sydney and I have my degree to finish.”

  “You can transfer to Sydney,” he countered, cool and logical. “I know people. I can pull some strings—”

  “No.” Both her hands came down on the table hard enough to rattle her plate. “You absolutely cannot pull strings. I got where I am on my own and I will continue to do so.”

  “Because you’re too independent to accept help?”

  “Because I value what comes from effort. Everything I have and everything I am comes from hard work.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “Unlike me?”

  She met his eyes and knew, in her heart, she was doing him another injustice. But then she also recalled where this argument had started and how every argument ended with this kind of vehemence. “How can I marry you,” she asked, “when every debate ends in this kind of frustration?”

  “If we were married, perhaps we wouldn’t be frustrated. At the cabin we got along just fine. Remember?”

  “How can I forget?” she asked with a twisted smile. She remembered all the getting along just fine. “I also remember the first weekend at the cabin and our discussion about marrying for the right reason. Do you remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “Then you know that I don’t believe two parents are necessarily better than one.”

  He stiffened so perceptively Zara swore she heard a snap. “Are you saying you want to raise this baby—our baby—alone?”

  “I’d prefer if he or she—” she paused, overcome for an instant by the concept of this baby as a boy or a girl, as a real, living, breathing baby “—if our baby has two involved parents. But I don’t believe they need to be married.”

  “You’d rather live together?”

  “I’d rather we reach some agreement for shared custody—”

  “No. That’s not the best thing for a child, being tossed between two homes.”

  Zara lifted her hands, palms up, in a helpless gesture. “See? We can’t agree on anything. I told you the last time we talked why I couldn’t handle a relationship with you. None of that has changed just because I’m pregnant.”

  He looked away, and she could see the flick of a tensed muscle at the corner of his jaw for the second before he turned back. “Think about it, Zara. Think about how much easier it would be for everyone if we married. As my wife you won’t have to worry about what the papers say about you. Have you thought about that? About what happens if they latch on to the fact that you’re pregnant and I’m the father?”

  No, she hadn’t. Zara’s stomach churned. How could she have not realized that?

  “Marry me, Zara, and I’ll protect you from all that. You’ll have the best medical care and afterward we can hire a nanny. You can study, you can work, you can have whatever you want.”

  And that last phrase lodged in Zara’s chest, thick and unshakable. Yes, he could give her opportunities and care and everything money could buy. Yes, his name and his position might protect her on some level, once the tabloids had their initial fun dragging her through the mire.

  But sitting there at her little kitchen table listening to his deep voice and his fervent promises only made her realize the one thing he hadn’t mentioned. The only thing that mattered and the only thing that could make a marriage work.

  He hadn’t mentioned love.

  “I’m sorry, Alex, but I can’t marry you,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe you can give me what I want.”

  Thirteen

  Alex had thought he couldn’t marry a woman who didn’t want him. He recalled telling Zara those exact words the weekend he’d met her. Yet in the days after she turned him down—after she turned his world upside down—he discovered that he’d lied.

  He wanted to marry Zara Lovett, despite her rejection. He wanted to marry her even after she’d looked him in the eye and coolly told him he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He didn’t have to ask her to elucidate.

  He remembered her exact words when they’d first discussed marriage, that same night at the cabin. She’d told him she would only marry a man she wanted to share her whole life with. Someone she couldn’t bear living without.

  Obviously he wasn’t that man and she was not prepared to take anything less.

  And, dammit, he wasn’t going to beg. Nor was he laying his pride out for her to stomp all over again.

  But that didn’t mean he was about to give up. He wanted her as his wife; he wanted his child’s parents together, preferably married, before the birth. He just had to work out a plan to make it so.

  For now he’d agreed to give her the time and space she’d requested to get through her end-of-year exams. After much pressing, she’d finally thrown her hands in the air and agreed to accept his financial help immediately, since she’d had to resign her job at Personal Best. But she refused his proposal to send his housekeeper/cook to look after her and his offer to buy her a car.

  The second was nonnegotiable. He would buy her a car. She just didn’t know it yet.

  She had, however, relented on a couple of key issues.

  At first she’d not wanted anyone else to know until she was further along in the pregnancy, since things could go wrong, but then she’d conceded that his mother and brothers should know because of the will.

  Secondly, she’d agreed to him accompanying her on her first prenatal visit, after she’d finished her exams. That had surprised him. Perhaps she’d seen the obdurate set of his jaw or perhaps he’d swayed her with his reminder that this was their baby.

  “I will let you know once I’ve made an appointment,” she’d told him, and Alex had dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I appreciate that. Thank you, Zara.”

  He knew that was the only way to make any ground with her. With polite, controlled, nonconfrontational exchanges. He knew and yet he’d struggled—each time he’d called her since—to keep the heat of frustration from his voice.

  He’d struggled, too, against the impulse to ask all kinds of incendiary questions. When he asked how she was feeling, he wanted to then ask if her body was changing. If she felt any different. Did she ever lie awake at night thinking that this was his baby inside her, a part of him that would forever bond them together, whether she wished it or not?

  He wanted to remind her of the other nights they’d talked on the phone, when they’d laughed and shared details of their days, when she’d sighed and told him she missed him in her bed.

  But these conversations were short and awkward, punctuated with fraught silences and always ending with her saying she needed to get back to work.

  Tonight Alex had called with a purpose beyond asking after her health. He’d invited her to Kameruka Downs to meet his family the weekend after her exams finished and, dammit, he’d felt as tongue-tied as a teenager asking a girl out for the first time.

  The silence after he finally got his tongue around the invitation felt damningly thick.

  “I want you to meet Mau,” he said stiffly. “My mother. And she will want to meet you.”

  “Have you told her yet?” she asked. “About the baby.”

  “This weekend. I’ll tell her then.”

  “Will the rest of your family be there?”

  “Yes. Tomas’s wife is throwing a small party for Cat. Rafe’s wife. This will be her first visit, too. I thought that might help. You won’t be the only new—” God, he almost said wife but stopped himself in time and pinched the bridge of his nose “—newcomer.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said after a brief pause. “This is your sister-in-law’s party.”

  Alex gripped his phone tighter. For
some reason, without even knowing it, he’d been banking on her accepting. Banking on getting her out into the country where they might recapture a glimpse of what they’d shared at the cabin. A place where she would be comfortable and relaxed, where he could show her how it could be between them. “It’s not like that,” he told her, pacing the room, trying to control his gathering frustration. “Angie throws a party at the drop of a hat. It’s no big deal. Just an excuse to dress up and invite a few neighbors over.”

  “I thought those outback neighbors were hundreds of miles away.”

  “They fly in.”

  He heard a sound that could have been laughter, but it was too short and sharp to tell. “Alex, I appreciate the invitation. And I do want to meet your family one day. But by this weekend I’m going to be exhausted. I’ll only want to sleep.”

  “We have beds at Kameruka Downs.”

  She sighed and he could actually picture her tired face, her worn-out eyes from that day in her kitchen, and he felt a pressure in his chest. A pain born of helplessness because he could do nothing for her. She wouldn’t let him. “Look, I have to go. I have studying—”

  “To do,” he finished over the top of her. “I know, Zara. I’ve heard it before.”

  And this time he didn’t even bother telling her not to work too hard, to look after herself, to get some sleep. He knew that was a waste of breath. And after they’d said their stilted goodbyes, after she’d reminded him of the time of her doctor’s appointment next week, he allowed himself to consider if he was also wasting his time and his hopes.

  She didn’t love him. She wouldn’t marry him. How the hell did he think he could change that?

  Alex didn’t tell anyone about the baby straight off. At the back of his mind he’d been wondering about his sisters-in-law. Waiting for some announcement, he supposed, but so far there’d been nothing. If either Angie or Cat was pregnant, they sure weren’t showing the same signs as Zara.

  He heard Angie’s distinctive laughter and turned to see her, the life of the party, surrounded by a group of neighbors. Mostly male. He smiled, but as always lately, the gesture felt tight and the smile didn’t stick. He did feel a degree of satisfaction, however, when he noticed that Tomas was one of the group. And that he—his formerly morose little brother—had a grin as wide as the north all over his face.