Princes of the Outback: The Rugged Loner / The Rich Stranger / The Ruthless Groom. Bronwyn Jameson

Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Epilogue

       Copyright

The Rugged Loner

      Prologue

      Charles Carlisle knew he was dying. His family denied it. The herd of medical specialists they’d employed kept skirting around the flanks of the truth like a team of well-trained cattle dogs, but Chas knew his number had come up.

      If the tumor mushrooming inside his brain didn’t finish him off, the intense radiation therapy he was about to commence would. The only other soul willing to accept the truth was his good mate Jack Konrads. Not surprising since as an estate lawyer Jack dealt with human mortality every day of his working life.

      Chas supposed his lawyer friend got to deal with plenty of unusual will clauses, too, because his face remained impressively deadpan as he digested the changes just requested by Chas. Carefully he set the single sheet of paper aside. “I assume you’ve discussed this with your sons?”

      “So they can make my last months a living hell?” Chas snorted. “They’ll find out once I’m six feet under!”

      “You don’t think they deserve some forewarning? Twelve months is precious little time to produce a baby from scratch—even if any one of them was already married and planning to start a family.”

      “You suggest I should give them time to wiggle out of this?” They were clever enough, his sons. Too clever at times for their own good. “Alex and Rafe are past thirty. They need a decent shove or they’ll never settle down.”

      Brow furrowed with a deep frown, Jack perused his written instructions again. “This wording doesn’t seem to exclude Tomas…”

      “No exclusions. It’s the same for all of them.”

      “You don’t have to prove anything to those boys,” Jack said slowly, still frowning. “They know you don’t play favorites. You’ve always treated them as if they’re all your sons by birth. They’ve grown into fine men, Chas.”

      Yes, they were sons to make any father proud, but in recent years they’d grown apart, each wrapped up in his own world, too busy, too self-involved. This clause would fix that. It would rekindle the spirit of kinship he’d watched grow with the boys as they raced their ponies over the flat grasslands of their outback station. Later they’d roped cleanskin bulls and corporate competitors with the same ruthless determination. He was counting on that get-it-done attribute when it came time to execute this will clause.

      “It has to be the same for all three,” he repeated resolutely. He couldn’t exclude Tomas—didn’t want to exclude Tomas.

      “It’s been barely two years since Brooke was killed.”

      “And the longer he stays buried in grief, the harder the task of digging his way out.” Jaw set, Chas leaned forward and met his friend’s eyes. “That, I know.”

      If his father hadn’t forced his hand—tough love, he’d called it—Chas would have buried himself in the outback after his first wife’s death. He wouldn’t have been forced overseas to manage his father’s British interests and he wouldn’t have met a wild Irish-born beauty named Maura Keane and her two young sons.

      He wouldn’t have fallen completely and utterly in love.

      He wouldn’t have married her and completed his family with their own son, Tomas. Their son whose grief over his young wife’s death was turning him as hard and remote as his outback home. Tomas needed some mighty tough love before it was too late.

      “Does Maura know about this?” Jack asked carefully.

      “No, and that’s the way I want it to stay. You know she won’t approve.”

      For a long moment Jack regarded him over the top of his glasses. “Hell of a way to take all their minds off grieving for you.”

      Chas scowled. “That’s not what this is about. It’ll get them working together to find the best solution. My family needs a shake-up, Tomas most of all.”

      “And what if your plan backfires? What if the boys reject this clause and walk away from their inheritance? Do you want the Carlisle assets split up and sold off?”

      “That won’t happen.”

      “They won’t like this—”

      “They don’t have to like it. I suspect I’ll hear their objections from beyond the pearly gates, but they’ll do it. Not for the inheritance—” Chas fixed his friend with his trademark gaze, steel-hard and unwavering. “They’ll do it for their mother.”

      And that was the biggest, strongest motivation for this added clause to the last will and testament of Charles Tomas McLachlan Carlisle. He wanted more than his sons working together. He didn’t only want to see them take a chance at settled, family happiness. This was for Maura. A grandchild, born within twelve months of his death, to bring a smile to her sad eyes, to break her growing isolation.

      He wanted, in death, to achieve what he’d never been able to do in life: to make his adored wife happy.

      “This is my legacy to Maura, Jack.”

      And the only thing out of a multibillion-dollar empire that would be worth an Irish damn to her.

      One

       Six months later

      Angelina Mori didn’t mean to eavesdrop. If, at the last minute, she hadn’t remembered the solemnity of the occasion she would have charged into the room in her usual forthright fashion and she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

      But she did remember the occasion—this morning’s burial, this afternoon’s reading of the will, the ensuing meeting between Charles Carlisle’s heirs—and she paused and steadied herself to make a decorous entrance into the Kameruka Downs library.

      Which is how she came to overhear the three deep, male voices. Three voices as familiar to Angie’s ear as those of her own two brothers.

      “You heard what Konrads said. We don’t all have to do this.” Alex, the eldest, sounded as calm and composed as ever. “It’s my responsibility.”

      “News flash.” Rafe’s mocking drawl hadn’t changed a bit in the time she’d been gone. “Your advanced age doesn’t make you the expert or the one in charge of this. How about we toss a coin. Heads, you—”

      “The hell you say. We’re in this together. One in, all in.” Tomas’s face, she knew, would be as hard and expressionless as his voice. Heartbreakingly different to the man she remembered from…Was it only five years ago? It seemed so much longer, almost another lifetime.

      “A nice sentiment, little bro’, but aren’t you forgetting something?” Rafe asked. “It takes two to make a baby.”

      Angie didn’t drop the tray of sandwiches she held, but it was a near thing. Heart hammering, she pulled the tray tight against her waist and steadied it with a white-knuckled grip. The rattling plates quieted; the pounding of her heart didn’t.

      And despite what she’d overheard—or maybe because of it—she didn’t slink away.

      With both hands occupied, she couldn’t knock on the half-closed door. Instead