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

Henry Moses.

      Angie cleared her throat a third time, and three pairs of intensely irritated, blue eyes turned her way. The Carlisle brothers. “Princes of the Outback” according to this week’s headlines, but only because some hack had once dubbed their father’s extensive holdings in the Australian outback “Carlisle’s Kingdom.”

      Angie had grown up by their rough-and-tumble side. They might look like the tabloid press’s idea of Australian royalty, but they didn’t fool her for a second.

      Princes? Ha!

      “What?” at least two princes barked now.

      “Sorry to intrude, but you’ve been holed up in here for yonks. I thought you might need some sustenance.” She deposited her tray in the center of the big oak desk and her hip on its edge. Then she reached for the bottle of forty-year-old Glenfiddich—pilfered from their father’s secret stash—and swirled the rich, amber contents in the light. More than half-full. Amazing. “I thought you’d have made a bigger dent in this.”

      Alex squinted at the glass in his hand as if he’d forgotten its existence. Rafe winked and held his out for a refill. Broad back to the room, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black dress trousers, Tomas acknowledged neither the whisky nor her arrival.

      And no one so much as glanced at the sandwiches. They didn’t want sustenance. They wanted her to leave so they could continue their discussion.

      Tough.

      She slid her backside further onto the desk, took her time selecting a corn beef and pickle triangle, then arched a brow at the room in general. “So, what’s this about a baby?”

      Tomas’s shoulders tensed. Alex and Rafe exchanged a look.

      “It’s no use pretending nothing’s going on,” she said around her first bite. “I overheard you talking.”

      For a long moment she thought they’d pull the old boys’ club number, buttoning up in front of the girl. Except this girl had spent her whole childhood tearing around Kameruka Downs in the dust of these three males and her two brothers. Sadly outnumbered, she’d learned to chase hard and to never give up. She glanced sideways at Tomas’s back. At least not until she was completely beaten.

      “Well?” she prompted.

      Rafe, bless his heart, relented. “What do you think, Ange? Would you—”

      “This is supposed to be private,” Alex said pointedly.

      “You don’t think Ange’s opinion is valuable? She’s a woman.”

      “Thank you for noticing,” Angie murmured. From the corner of her eye she watched Tomas who had never noticed, while she fought two equally strong, conflicting urges. One part of her ached to slide off the desk and wrap him and his tightly held pain in a big old-fashioned hug. The other wanted to slug him one for ignoring her.

      “Would you have somebody’s baby…for money?”

      What? Her attention swung from the still and silent figure by the window and back to Rafe. She swallowed. “Somebody’s?”

      “Yeah.” Rafe cocked a brow. “Take our little brother, the hermit, for example. He says he’d pay and since that’s—”

      “Enough,” Alex cut in.

      Unnecessarily, as it happened, because a second later—so quick, Angie didn’t see it coming—Tomas held Rafe by the shirtfront. The two harsh flat syllables he uttered would never have emanated from any prince’s mouth.

      Alex separated them, but Tomas only stayed long enough for a final curt directive to his brothers. “You do this your way, I’ll do it mine. I don’t need your approval.”

      He didn’t slam the door on his way out, and it occurred to Angie that that would have shown too much passion, too much heat, for the cold, remote stranger the youngest Carlisle had become.

      “I guess my opinion is beside the point now,” she said carefully.

      Rafe coughed out a laugh. “Only if you think Mr. Congeniality can find himself a woman.”

      Angie’s heart thumped against her ribs. Oh, he could. She had no doubts about that. Tomas Carlisle might have forgotten how to smile, but he could take his big, hard body and I’ve-been-hurt-bad attitude into any bar and choose from the top shelf. Without any mention of the Carlisle billions.

      A chill shivered through her skin as she put down the remains of her sandwich. “He won’t do anything stupid, will he?”

      “Not if we stop him.”

      Alex shook his head. “Leave him be, Rafe.”

      “Do you really think he’s in any mood to make a discriminating choice?” Rafe made an impatient sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a snort. “What the hell was Dad thinking anyway? He should have left Tomas right out of this!”

      “Maybe he wanted to give him a shake-up,” Alex said slowly.

      “The kind that sends him out looking to cut a deal with the first bar-bunny he happens upon?”

      Angie stood so swiftly, her head spun. Whoa. Breathing deeply, she leaned against the desk. It was okay. Kameruka Downs was two hours of black dust and corrugated roads from the nearest bar. Even if Tomas did decide to hightail it into Koomah Crossing, he wouldn’t make closing time.

      She exhaled slowly and settled back on the desk. “Confession time, guys. I really only overheard one slice of your earlier discussion, so who’d like to fill me in on the whole story?”

      Once, on a bet, Angie had raced Tomas and her brother Carlo from the homestead to the waterhole, blindfolded. Remembering that experience fifteen years ago made tonight’s steep descent a veritable walk in the park. A threequarter moon rode high in the sky, casting enough light for Angie to pick a surefooted path through the scrub. Behind a bandanna blindfold there’d been nothing but intense black, yet she’d closed her eyes and run.

      Anything to prove herself less of a girl.

      You’re part feral goat, the boys had spat in disgust as they handed over her winnings, and it had taken Angie years to realize that comparison wasn’t exactly flattering.

      Her smile, wry and reminiscent, faded as she neared her destination. Moment of truth, sister. She rubbed warming hands up and down her goose-bumped arms. She would bet the vintage silk-georgette dress she’d vainly not changed out of—despite the chill night and a setting more suited to jeans—that Tomas had retreated to his usual lair.

       And when you find him, you say your piece and you make sure he listens. You don’t let him turn his back.

      She’d seen Tomas several times since her return from Italy a week earlier. At the hospital before his father passed away, at the memorial service held largely for his city business associates, at Alex’s Sydney home afterward. Yet he’d managed to evade anything beyond a quick consoling hug and a few token words of sympathy.

      So she’d stayed on at Kameruka Downs after the private funeral, begging a lift back to Sydney on the corporate jet with Alex and Rafe, instead of returning on the afternoon charter arranged for other mourners. She had to talk to Tomas, one on one. She had to set things straight between them.

      This had nothing to do with the disturbing clause in Charles’s will that she’d just learned about in the library. This was about guilt and regret and failing to be the kind of friend she wanted to be. It was about closure, too, and moving on with her life.

      And it promised to be damn-near the toughest thing she’d ever done. Tougher even than the night she’d confronted Tomas with her opinion on his upcoming marriage…and that had been Tough with a capital T!

      It wasn’t that she hadn’t liked Brooke. They’d been close friends at school. Tomas had met his future wife at Angie’s eighteenth birthday party, on a night