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

      Angie listened to those two short, stunning syllables echoing inside her head. I would. Where had that come from? Was she insane?

      Definitely.

      Otherwise she would be laughing, right? Not loopy, they’re-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha laughter, but a smooth chuckle as she nudged Tomas and said, “Ha, ha. Got you a good one, didn’t I?” Or something similarly offhand and flippant.

      Anything to fill the awkward silence and the fact that her heart was thudding so hard it physically hurt, and that she really, really wanted to confess the truth.

       Well, here’s the thing, Tomas…

       I’ve loved you in some way pretty much all of my life. I’ve wanted to marry you ever since I was thirteen. Somewhere around fourteen I’d already named our babies—three of them, all boys, all with your baby blues.

      Except she couldn’t admit that. She wanted to shove the intensity of her teenage crush back in the past where it belonged. She’d come down here to try and save their friendship, not to send it on a headlong plummet into disaster.

      Angie swallowed, and wished that his gaze hadn’t dropped to her throat at that exact second. Her throat felt tight, her smile even tighter. “I’ve really weirded you out, haven’t I?”

      “Yup.” He shook his head, looked away, then back at her. “Was that your intention?”

      “No.”

      “Then…why?”

      She wished she could laugh it off, but she looked into his stunned blue eyes and she couldn’t laugh and she couldn’t lie. All she could find was some small version of the truth. “Damned if I know, but I have to tell you that your response is not very flattering. I mean, would it be so bad? You and me?”

      She felt him staring, felt the puzzlement in his sharp regard take on another flavor. Was he actually contemplating the reality? Him with her, skin to skin, doing what was necessary to make babies? Her heart skipped. The tightness in her throat and her skin took on a new dimension, a new heat.

      “You can’t have thought about it,” he said slowly, “at all!”

      Oh, how wrong could one person be. Angie had thought about it—specifically, about her and Tomas doing it—ever since her first sex education lesson. “Actually I have thought about it quite a bit,” she said slowly. “The sex part, I mean, not the having-a-baby part.”

      In the midnight quiet his expulsion of breath sounded almost explosive. Apparently the concept of Sex-with-Angie was so appalling that he couldn’t even look her in the eye when he told her so. He jumped to his feet and stalked to the sandstone wall at the back of the rock ledge.

      Turning on his boot heels, he stared at her, all hard, shocked, affronted male. “Hell, Angie, you can’t be serious. You’re like…you’re…”

      “So unappealing you couldn’t bring yourself to sleep with me? Even to keep Kameruka Downs?”

      “Don’t put words in my mouth. You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said tightly.

      No, she didn’t, and between the tricky dark and the distance he’d put between them, she couldn’t tell a thing from his expression. And, dammit, she wasn’t about to lose her oldest friend, her pride, and get a cricked neck out of this.

      She stood and brushed the gritty sand from the back of her dress as she closed the distance between them. Moment of truth, sister. “Why don’t you tell me then? Why has the idea of me offering to have your baby got you so wound up?”

      “Christ, Angie, we’re not doing some hypothetical here. We’re talking about a real situation. I need a baby.” Chin jutted, he started down at her, his whole expression carved as hard as the rock at this back. Possibly harder. “A baby the mother would have to raise on her own.”

      Hands on hips she narrowed her gaze and stared back at him. Surely she’d heard him wrong. “Are you saying you wouldn’t want any part in this child’s upbringing?”

      “You got it.”

      “But why?” She shook her head. Huffed out a breath and waved her hand at their surroundings. “You have this fabulous place for a child to grow up, and—”

      “Not everyone thinks it’s so fabulous.”

      “Well, I do! And your father obviously thought so, too, since he chose to bring you all up here. Do you think, when he drafted that clause, that he wanted you to just sire some anonymous—”

      “I don’t care what he thought.”

      “Really? Then you have changed.”

      “You’ve got that right, too!”

      For a moment they stood toe to toe glaring at each other, until Angie realized that his expression wasn’t so much tight and flat as schooled. To hide his frustration, his anger, his pain? Perhaps even his fear that if he and his brothers failed to satisfy the will stipulation, he would lose this home and career and life that he loved, right on top of losing his wife and his father.

      That knowledge caught in her chest, a thick ache of sympathy and shared pain and her own dawning realization: she wasn’t anywhere near to closing down this part of her past. Because for all that had changed in him, in her, in both their worlds during the last five years, one thing remained the same.

      She still loved this man enough to do just about anything to ease his hurt.

      Tears misted her eyes as she lifted a hand to touch the side of his face, blurring his features but not his rejection.

      Both hands raised in a stop-right-there gesture, he reared back. “Forget it, Angie. Forget the pity and forget this whole crazy conversation!”

      Angie’s hand dropped away. Okay. She could do this. She could shrug and pretend indifference while her face and her throat and her heart ached with the effort. Restraint—in words, in actions, in emotions—did not come easily or naturally, but she sensed that now was the time to exercise some self-control.

      “I care too much to forget about it,” she said, slowly backing away, giving him the space he demanded, “so let’s talk this through. What are your alternatives? Say you do find a woman willing to have your baby for money. Unprotected sex with a stranger is a big risk, don’t you think?

      “Unless you’re thinking of artificial insemination, which is worth consideration,” she continued, thinking on her feet, literally. “On the plus side, you get all the health checks and no awkward intimacy…I gather that is a plus, right?”

      A muscle in his cheek jumped. Which probably meant he neither wanted intimacy nor wanted to talk about it. Tough. He’d stopped her leaving earlier, when she’d been ready to walk away, and now she was going to talk this through.

      “But that all takes time, the checks and tests and the getting an appointment and such, when you don’t have much leeway. Three months to conceive, right?” Angie winced. “That is not a lot of time. Especially since the conception rate would be lower.”

      “Why lower? A.I. works fine in cattle.”

       Trust Tomas, the consummate cattleman, to equate this to livestock!

      Angie lifted her shoulders and let them drop in an exaggerated shrug. “How would I know? It’s not as if I’ve actually investigated the process. I just read about it somewhere. I was trying to help you work through the possibilities is all.”

      “You sure you don’t want to make the decision for me?”

      “You’ve never once taken my advice on anything, why would you start now?”

      “That’s never stopped you offering it.”

      Did he mean her previous advice? About not