LITMIR.BIZ

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in twenty-four hours that she could joke about such a thing, even if neither of them had laughed. Even if his eyes had darkened and flared with unnamed emotion as they fastened on hers across the breakfast table.

      Yes, they’d eaten breakfast together. The previous night they’d eaten dinner together, too, and he’d relaxed a tiny bit more, talking, smiling, even laughing at one of her anecdotes about Stink, the mechanic. For the second consecutive night he refused her offer to help with whatever office-work compelled his devotion, and she went to bed alone.

      Around midnight he came to her room and made love with the same fierce power as the night before. Just once, damn him, and again he’d left her in the cooling sheets of her bed, hoping and wishing and praying that the next night might be different.

       Well, Angie, the next night is about to begin.

      Angie held her face tilted up for a last cool rinse and switched off the taps. Last night, last chance. She’d joked about this dinner but underneath, deep inside where her stomach was knotted with trepidation, she’d fastened her determination to make it special. A lot had changed in twenty-four hours, but not her conviction.

      What had transpired between them in her bed the last two nights was too real, too huge, too intense, to cast aside as a purely physical joining. So many times she’d had to bite her tongue—or his shoulder—to stop herself blurting out what filled her heart. She’d curbed her natural inclination to tell it all, to lay it on the line, to charge ahead too fast.

      She’d reined herself in and she would continue to do so.

      Even when he asked her to go back to Sydney until she knew the result of this round of baby-sex—which she knew he would, probably tonight—she would keep it together. While preparing dinner, she’d also prepared her argument for staying and coached herself on delivering it with cool, direct logic.

      If she failed, if he wouldn’t listen to her reasoning, then at least she would get to experience something approximating a date. Tonight she wouldn’t allow him to retreat to his work. Tonight they would walk hand in hand to bed. Tonight the light stayed on.

      He owed her that much.

      The dress she’d decided on earlier lay waiting on her bed. She traced one of the bright pink flowers and fingered the silky georgette material in momentary indecision. Too much? Probably, but in that second she heard the solitary bark of Tomas’s heeler a second before the whole kennel joined in. A vehicle was coming.

      Swallowing her hesitancy whole, she pulled the dress over her head and wriggled until the satin lining shimmied its way over her hips and down to her knees.

      “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she muttered. And of course the zipper stuck. She left it half-undone to shove her feet into white mules, to grab her brush and drag it through her moisture-messed hair…a task made easier when she remembered to take out her ponytail scrunchie. She slapped on some tinted moisturizer, glossed her lips, traced her eyes with kohl and smudged the lines.

      Done!

      She sucked in a quick breath…and realized she should be wearing a bra. If this were a real restaurant date, with other people present, she would take the extra minute to find one, to make some effort to disguise the hard jut of her nipples. But there were no other people…just her and Tomas and the fact that she couldn’t think about him without this obvious result. Why hide that truth?

      As she rushed to the living end of the house, she struggled to free the stuck zipper and strained her ears for the sound of his vehicle pulling up outside. She wanted to greet him at the door, to smile and say, “Hi, I missed you.” To hand him his beer and, if she caught him really on the hop, surprise him with a kiss.

      The canine chorus rose to a second crescendo as she entered the kitchen, then quieted immediately as if in response to a slash of the conductor’s baton. Or a one-word command from their master. In the same instant—perhaps in response to the excited jump of her hand—the zipper released and glided effortlessly all the way to the top. That had to be a good omen, Angie decided.

      She collected his beer and walked calmly to the door. Her heart, naturally, raced at a thousand miles an hour. That, she hoped, didn’t show as clearly as her nipples.

      Then she heard a vehicle pull up outside and her skin flushed with heat. The ice-cold bottle in her hand was suddenly very enticing. If she rolled it over her forehead, her throat, her breasts…

      Tempting, but she didn’t. Instead she drew a deep breath and walked out onto the veranda, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the rays of the sinking sun. A car door slammed, then a second. Voices? The brief murmur was too far away to identify but it sounded like a brief exchange of words.

      Lord, but she hoped the second was one of the mechanics who’d bummed a lift back from the airstrip and not a visitor. She cast a nervous glance downward. Yep, there they were. Both the girls still at full hello-Tomas, boy-are-we-pleased-to-see-you attention.

      Okay, she was definitely going back to change. Except that decision had barely formed before the first figure walked into view—no strode into view—and it was not Tomas or any mechanic.

      “Maura,” she cried, nipples forgotten in a stunned blast of astonishment and joy. Back from the Killarney muster early and unexpected. And here at the homestead, not her own place.

      Maura stopped, luckily, because that gave her a chance to brace herself before Angie hit at full speed. She wrapped her arms around Maura’s reed-thin body and held on for all she was worth until her bubbles of surprised laughter turned to tears.

       How did that happen? And why? Angie didn’t burst into tears for no reason. She just…didn’t.

      A bit stunned, a lot embarrassed, she pulled back and attempted to gather herself.

      “What’s the matter, child?” Maura was frowning, her expression a mixture of confusion and concern. “Why are you crying?”

      “I don’t know.” She scrubbed harder at her face. “I think it’s just the surprise of seeing you.”

      “Do I look so bad?”

      Angie rolled watery eyes. In her youth Maura Carlisle had been a world-renowned model. In her mid-fifties, even her bad days couldn’t hide that beauty. But before Angie could voice that opinion she glimpsed movement beyond Maura and her body stiffened reflexively.

       Oh, no. She did not want to be caught crying. She was the strong, outback woman who would sail through the toughest days at his side.

      But it wasn’t Tomas who walked into her blurry wet-eyed field of vision, but Rafe. Her eyes widened…so did his, as they took in her dress, the bottle in her hand, the smudged kohl under her eyes.

      “You’re crying,” he pointed out.

      “I know that.”

      And if both Carlisles would stop looking at her so oddly she might be able to get some control over herself. Emotions and hormones and surprises and tears. Holy Henry Moses, she had to get a grip. She sucked in a breath, waved a hand in front of her face, and finally managed to halt the waterworks.

      Rafe and his mother were still looking at her oddly.

      “Nice dress,” Rafe said.

      “Is there a special occasion?” Maura asked. Then she turned on Rafe. “Did you know Angie was here?” Oh, dear. Angie inhaled and wet her lips. “I just—”

      “And when did you start drinking beer?”

      “It’s, um, not mine, actually.”

      “Speaking of which—” amusement, rich and redo-

      lent, colored Rafe’s voice “—where is the man of the house?”

      She flashed him a warning glance. “I wasn’t expecting you. Either of you.”

      “Obviously.”

      Maura

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