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

delicate friend. And eighteen months later he hadn’t wanted to hear Angie’s opinion on Brooke’s suitability to life in the outback. He loved Brooke. He married Brooke.

      And that had been one tough challenge Angie couldn’t face.

      Instead of accepting the bridesmaid’s gig, she’d taken off on a backpacking jaunt to Europe. Her grand adventure had started as an impulsive escape from pain and envy, from her fear that she wouldn’t make it through “does anyone have just cause” without jumping to her feet and yelling, “You bet I do! He’s supposed to be mine!”

      She’d missed the wedding and, worse, she’d missed Brooke’s funeral. But now she was back, needing to make peace with her conscience. She doubted she could make peace with the flint-hard stranger Tomas had become, but she had to try.

      “Moment of truth,” she muttered, out loud this time, as she ducked under a branch into the clearing beside the waterhole.

      Slowly she scanned the darkness and the empty shadows, before hauling herself up onto a rock overhang. On sure feet she climbed higher to the secret cave. Peered inside.

      Backed-up breath huffed from her lungs.

      Nothing. Damn.

      Disappointment expanded, tightening her chest as she slowly descended to the ground. She’d made a deal with herself, a deal about finding him and getting this over with tonight. How could she do that when he wasn’t here?

      Swearing softly, she turned to leave.

       Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to be found…

      Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps Tomas hadn’t changed completely. Perhaps now, as in the past, he wasn’t completely alone down here.

      Angie allowed herself a small smile before she lifted both pinkies to her pursed lips and whistled.

      Tomas figured someone—most likely Angie—would come looking for him. He’d counted on the night hiding his secluded location. He hadn’t counted on her whistling his dog.

      Ajay responded with a high-pitched whine of suspicion. Rough translation: You can whistle—point in your favor—but I’m no pushover. I’m a red heeler; I protect my boss. You better proceed with caution.

      Angie didn’t.

      The quick tread of her approach was as incisive and uninhibited as her personality. Loose gravel dislodged by her climbing feet splished into the water below, and Tomas saw the hair rise along Ajay’s spine. Under his restraining hand he felt a warning growl vibrate through the dog’s tense body. It was a measure of his own snarled mood that he actually considered letting the heeler loose.

      He didn’t.

      His muttered “Stay” was probably for the dog—God knows Angie wouldn’t take a lick of notice!

      As if to prove his point, she appeared out of the darkness and used his shoulder to steady herself as she dropped down at his side. The floaty skirt of her dress settled around her legs where they dangled over the rock ledge, a flutter of feminine contrast to the rugged setting and the worn denim stretched over his thighs alongside.

      “Did you consider I might want to be alone?” he asked, surprising himself with the even tone of his voice. Ever since Jack Konrads read out that newly added will clause, tension had snarled through his blood and his flesh. An anger that had whipped the hollow numbness of grief and loss into something hot and taut and hazardous.

      “Yes,” she said simply, with a quick flash of smile.

      Although that could have been for Ajay, because on the heels of the smile came a softly crooned note of surprise. Her hand slid from his shoulder down his arm—from rolled-up shirtsleeve to skin—as she leaned around him to take a better look. “While I was clambering up here, I kinda thought you mightn’t have Sergeant anymore.”

      “He died.”

      For the tiniest hint of time, she stilled. Then the pressure of her hand on his forearm changed, a tactile expression of her next words. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

      “He got old.”

      “As we all do.” She leaned forward. “Well, aren’t you handsome.” And started to reach—“Best you don’t do that.”

      “I’m only saying hello.”

      And wouldn’t you know it? His wary-natured heeler didn’t take a piece out of her hand. Tomas breathed a tad easier…but only a tad. He was still struggling to reconcile the Angie he knew—the annoying, exasperating, teenage tomboy—with this exotic, alien creature who’d returned from Europe.

      She wore dresses, for pity’s sake. She’d straightened her unruly curls into one of those city-girl do’s, all sleek and dark and glossy. And every time she moved he heard the delicate tinkle of the jewelry she wore on her wrists and ankle.

      Hell, she even had some kind of rings on her toes. And as for the perfume…

      “What’s with the perfume?”

      “Excuse me?”

      Yeah, excuse him. He hadn’t meant to say it, the question that blared in his brain every time he breathed around her. Ever since that first day he saw her again—hell, was that only last week?—when she’d rushed down the hallway of the hospital to throw her arms around him, to hug him and hold him and leak tears and words and more tears into his shirt.

      Except instead of feeling comforted, he’d dragged in air rich with this perfume and he’d felt her curves against his body and he’d tensed. His hands had set her aside, this woman who no longer felt anything like Angie should.

      She’d changed when all he wanted was someone—something—to stay the same. To anchor him to the past that fate kept wrenching away.

      “You smell…different,” he accused now. She smelled different, she looked different, and right now in the dark he swore she was looking at him different, too. “You’ve changed, Dash.”

      His use of her childhood nickname surprised a laugh from her full lips. With a clink of bracelets, her hand slid away from his arm, thank God, and into her lap. “Wow. There’s a blast from the past. No one’s called me Dash in…forever.”

      Yeah, forever about summed it up.

      Forever since the last time she’d followed him down here, bent on telling him how the outback and Brooke would never see eye to eye. Like he hadn’t known. And like he’d not been young enough and cocky enough to think it wouldn’t make a difference.

      “It’s only been five years, but you’re right. I’ve changed, you’ve changed, everything’s changed,” she said softly, and suddenly the darkness seemed more intense. Suffocatingly so. “I’m sorry about your father, that he got so sick and had to suffer and that the last weeks were so hard on you all. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, and I hope—”

      “You didn’t have to come down here to tell me that. I’ve heard it more than enough times this last week.”

      “Yeah, well, you haven’t heard it from me. At least not without cutting me off midsentence and walking away.” She angled her chin in that determined way she had. “I have more to say, actually, and this time I want you to stay put until I finish.”

      Something about her tone and the sympathetic darkness of her eyes alerted him to what might be on her mind, and he started to move, to get the hell out of the conversation. But she put her hand on his knee, stopping him. It was the Angie-of-old, exasperating and annoying and not letting him get away without first saying her piece.

      “Did you get my letter?” she asked.

      Yeah, he’d gotten the letter she’d written after Brooke was killed. What did she expect him to say? Thank you for your kind thoughts? They really helped me cope when my heart had been ripped bleeding from my chest.

      “I