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

you said you would—hypothetically—have this baby, was the offer…exclusive?”

       What?

      Angie felt her spine snap straight with the implication.

      “I hope you’re not insinuating I would go around offering to have babies for every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

      His disconcerted gaze flicked toward the plane and understanding dawned, startling a cough of laughter from Angie’s mouth. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry, just every…

       “Rafe and Alex?”

      He shifted his weight from one boot to the other. “Rafe seems to think you’d do this because you owe the family.”

      “You discussed me with Rafe?” she asked on a rising note of disbelief.

      “He brought it up. He seems to think you’re the perfect choice.”

      “And what about you, Tomas? Have you given any thought to your choice?”

      “I’ve been thinking about it all night.” His eyes narrowed, deepening the creases at their corners. Making those clear blue irises glint like cool water under a summer sky. Making her heart stutter and restart low in her belly. “Will you help me, Angie?”

      And there it was, a simple request spoken so quietly and sincerely that it turned her inside out and upside down. Knowing how much fulfilling this will clause meant to Tomas, how could she refuse? “If I can,” she said, just as softly. “Yes.”

      His nostrils flared a fraction. His eyes sparked with…something. “Why?”

      Because you need me. Because I love you. “Because I can.”

      He looked away, huffed out a breath, said something low and indecipherable and probably not meant for her ears. Slowly his gaze came back to hers. “Still as impetuous as ever?”

      Angie shrugged. “Apparently.”

      For a long moment they stood in silence, gazes locked, while Angie’s heart screamed at roughly the same decibels as the plane’s engines.

      What are you doing? it wailed. What are you saying?

      “What now?” she asked, knowing even as she asked what she wanted. Some sign that this was more real than it felt. That she really had just offered to have his baby. “Do you want me to stay?”

      “No,” he said quickly. Adamantly. Then he lifted a hand to the brim of his hat, tipping it lower on his brow so his eyes were in shadow. “I’m coming to Sydney next week. I’ll make an appointment with a doctor.”

      “You don’t need to…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered what she’d talked about, so glibly, the night before. Then it had been about some hypothetical partner with an unknown sexual history. Now it was about her and Tomas and…She drew a swift breath and lifted her chin. “Yes, we should have the tests, to make sure we’re both healthy.”

      He stared at her a moment. “I meant a fertility center.”

      “Surely there’s no need for that.”

      “There is. For insemination.”

      Angie’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding, right?”

      He wasn’t. She could see that in the rigid set of his jaw, in the muscle that flexed and released in his cheek. “It’s got to be artificial.”

      “Got to be?” Angie asked calmly, as if she weren’t flailing around trying to get a grasp of something solid. “Because when you asked for my help, when I said yes, I was thinking about doing this the way nature intended.”

      “No,” he said tightly. “That’s not going to happen.”

      Angie fought an irrational urge to laugh or cry or scream—or perhaps not so irrational. The situation, this conversation, the stilted way they kept tiptoeing around straight language, was all too unreal. She couldn’t believe how calmly she’d offered to sleep with Tomas, to make love, to try to conceive a baby.

      And she couldn’t have imagined how much it would hurt, seeing how fiercely he objected.

      “Is the idea of sleeping with me so distasteful that you’d prefer doing it on your own? Because most men—”

      “Leave it be, Angie!” He muttered a rough word, one that was fairly pertinent to the topic, Angie thought. “It won’t work.”

      “Functionally?” She came down a step so she was right on a level with his face. So she could see the heightened color that traced his cheekbones. See the rigid line of his lips.

      Hear the breath he sucked through his teeth. “I meant you and me, any way other than artificial.”

      “It’s only sex,” she fired back, her patience so close to snapping she could feel the twitch in her nerves. “Surely you could lie back, close your eyes and think of Kameruka!”

      Their gazes clashed, so hot and hostile that neither noticed Rafe’s reemergence from the plane until he cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, folks, but we’ve really got to get moving.”

      “Two minutes.” Angie didn’t turn around but she held up a hand. “Just give me two minutes.”

      She had no clue what she would do with those precious minutes, whether she would sock Tomas one for his stubbornness or take his face between her hands and kiss him one. Just to prove that she was a woman and he was wrong and that this could work if he’d only give her a chance.

      Still simmering she leaned a fraction closer, until she could see into the shadow cast by his broad-brimmed hat and beyond the hostility of his stance to the man beneath. And what she saw there sucker-punched her heart.

      He looked so torn, so trapped, so tormented.

       Ahh, Tomas…

      Like butter under the outback sun, her own animosity melted. “I so wish you hadn’t been forced into this.”

      She lifted a hand to touch his face, and for a whisper of time he allowed it. She felt the bristly texture of his unshaven cheek, the warmth of an exhaled breath, the tension that held his whole body straight and erect, and she ached to hold him, to bury her face in that hollow between shoulder and neck, to nuzzle his skin.

      And she wanted to kiss him so badly that her lips stung with the wanting, but already she could feel him preparing to pull away. She didn’t give him a chance to get any further. Taking his face firmly between both hands, she ducked beneath that broad-brimmed hat and planted her lips on his.

       There, Tomas Carlisle, take that.

      With her eyes wide-open she saw the shock in his narrowed blue ones, felt the resistance in his stiff lips and the jolt of reaction—in him, in herself—as her mouth opened softly. Then he wrenched her hands away, turning his face so her lips grazed the corner of his mouth and across his whiskery cheek.

      She was left kissing nothing but the morning air, left staring into eyes that blazed with blue fire. “You can’t stand even a kiss?” she asked.

      He thumbed the hat back up his forehead, aggravation etched all over his face. “Dammit, Angie, why are you forcing this? If you’re willing to help, then why not my way?”

      Because this was her chance—probably her only chance—to have him, and if she could have him and love him and give him the family he needed, then maybe she could also heal his wounded heart. She didn’t know if that was possible, but she had to take a chance. One thing she did know for sure and certain—if she told him how she felt, she wouldn’t see his Wrangler-wrapped backside for swirling black bulldust.

      So she rocked back on her heels, folded her arms across her chest, and shrugged. “If I’m going to sacrifice myself to have this baby, I’m not going to be dudded out of all the fun.”

      For