Rugged Loner Read online

  “Women Aren’t About To Line Up To Have My Baby.”

  “You are so without a clue. Look at you!” And she did. She leaned back and looked at him with a thoroughness that reminded him how much she’d changed. “Women find that whole rugged loner thing a complete turn-on.”

  “What a load of bull!”

  She made an impatient tsking sound with her tongue. “You get to the city occasionally…or at least you used to. You have to feel women looking you over. You can’t not know you’re like their living, breathing, outback fantasy.”

  Fantasy? Big deal. What he needed was reality, female and available.

  “Name one who’d have my baby,” he said roughly.

  She blinked slowly and edged back another inch. Which was when he noticed that he’d gotten right in her face. Close enough that he heard her indrawn breath. The only sound in the intense silence, until she spoke.

  “I would.”

  Dear Reader,

  July is a month known for its heat and fireworks, as well as the perfect time to take that vacation. Well, why not take a break and enjoy some hot sparks with a Silhouette Desire? We’ve got six extraordinary romances to share with you this month, starting with Betrayed Birthright by Sheri WhiteFeather. This seventh title in our outstanding DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS series is sure to reveal some unbelievable facts about this scandalous family.

  USA TODAY bestselling author Maureen Child wraps up her fabulous THREE-WAY WAGER series with The Last Reilly Standing. Or is he getting down on bended knee? And while some series are coming to a close, new ones are just beginning, such as our latest installment of the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE SECRET DIARY. Cindy Gerard kicks off this six-book continuity with Black-Tie Seduction. Also starting this month is Bronwyn Jameson’s PRINCES OF THE OUTBACK. These Australian hunks really need to be tamed, beginning with The Rugged Loner.

  A desert beauty in love with a tempting beast. That’s the theme of Nalini Singh’s newest release, Craving Beauty—a story not to be missed. And the need to break a long-standing family curse leads to an attraction that’s just Like Lightning, an outstanding romance by Charlene Sands.

  Here’s hoping you enjoy all the fireworks Silhouette Desire has to offer you…this month and all year long!

  Best,

  Melissa Jeglinski

  Senior Editor

  Silhouette Desire

  THE RUGGED LONER

  BRONWYN JAMESON

  Books by Bronwyn Jameson

  Silhouette Desire

  In Bed with the Boss’s Daughter #1380

  Addicted to Nick #1410

  Zane: The Wild One #1452

  Quade: The Irresistible One #1487

  A Tempting Engagement #1571

  Beyond Control #1596

  Just a Taste #1645

  *The Rugged Loner #1666

  BRONWYN JAMESON

  spent much of her childhood with her head buried in a book. As a teenager, she discovered romance novels, and it was only a matter of time before she turned her love of reading them into a love of writing them. Bronwyn shares an idyllic piece of the Australian farming heartland with her husband and three sons, a thousand sheep, a dozen horses, assorted wildlife and one kelpie dog. She still chooses to spend her limited downtime with a good book. Bronwyn loves to hear from readers. Write to her at [email protected].

  OUTBACK GLOSSARY

  Akubra—famous brand of Australian outback/cattlemen’s hat

  Barakoolie Ridge—a landmark on Kameruka Downs

  Boolah—location of a set of cattle yards on Kameruka Downs

  cleanskin—an unbranded beast (cattle)

  hoon—wild, fast driver

  Kameruka Downs—the Carlisle family’s outback station

  Killarney—another Carlisle-owned station

  King Air—one of the Carlisle company planes

  Koomah Crossing—the nearest settlement to Kameruka Downs

  muster—roundup

  ringer—an experienced musterer (cowboy, stockman)

  Ruby Creek—a nearby station, famed for its race meeting

  station—large grazing property

  stock camp—group of stockmen out on a muster (on big stations they can be away from home, camping out for weeks)

  swag—bedroll, used when camping

  Territory—the Northern Territory, an Australian “state”

  ute—utility; pickup truck

  weaners—young cattle, recently weaned from their mothers

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Prologue

  Charles Carlisle knew he was dying. His family denied it. The herd of medical specialists they’d employed kept skirting around the flanks of the truth like a team of well-trained cattle dogs, but Chas knew his number had come up.

  If the tumor mushrooming inside his brain didn’t finish him off, the intense radiation therapy he was about to commence would. The only other soul willing to accept the truth was his good mate Jack Konrads. Not surprising since as an estate lawyer Jack dealt with human mortality every day of his working life.

  Chas supposed his lawyer friend got to deal with plenty of unusual will clauses, too, because his face remained impressively deadpan as he digested the changes just requested by Chas. Carefully he set the single sheet of paper aside. “I assume you’ve discussed this with your sons?”

  “So they can make my last months a living hell?” Chas snorted. “They’ll find out once I’m six feet under!”

  “You don’t think they deserve some forewarning? Twelve months is precious little time to produce a baby from scratch—even if any one of them was already married and planning to start a family.”

  “You suggest I should give them time to wiggle out of this?” They were clever enough, his sons. Too clever at times for their own good. “Alex and Rafe are past thirty. They need a decent shove or they’ll never settle down.”

  Brow furrowed with a deep frown, Jack perused his written instructions again. “This wording doesn’t seem to exclude Tomas….”

  “No exclusions. It’s the same for all of them.”

  “You don’t have to prove anything to those boys,” Jack said slowly, still frowning. “They know you don’t play favorites. You’ve always treated them as if they’re all your sons by birth. They’ve grown into fine men, Chas.”

  Yes, they were sons to make any father proud, but in recent years they’d grown apart, each wrapped up in his own world, too busy, too self-involved. This clause would fix that. It would rekindle the spirit of kinship he’d watched grow with the boys as they raced their ponies over the flat grasslands of their outback station. Later they’d roped cleanskin bulls and corporate competitors with the same ruthless determination. He was counting on that get-it-done attribute when it came time to execute this will clause.

  “It has to be the same for all three,” he repeated resolutely. He couldn’t exclude Tomas—didn’t want to exclude Tomas.

  “It’s been barely two years since Brooke was killed.”

  “And the longer he stays buried in grief, the harder the task of digging his way out.” Jaw set, Chas leaned forward and met his friend’s eyes. “That, I know.”

  If his father hadn’t forced his hand—tough love, he’d called it—Chas would have buried himself in the outback after his first wife’s death. He wouldn’t have been forced
overseas to manage his father’s British interests and he wouldn’t have met a wild Irish-born beauty named Maura Keane and her two young sons.

  He wouldn’t have fallen completely and utterly in love.

  He wouldn’t have married her and completed his family with their own son, Tomas. Their son whose grief over his young wife’s death was turning him as hard and remote as his outback home. Tomas needed some mighty tough love before it was too late.

  “Does Maura know about this?” Jack asked carefully.

  “No, and that’s the way I want it to stay. You know she won’t approve.”

  For a long moment Jack regarded him over the top of his glasses. “Hell of a way to take all their minds off grieving for you.”

  Chas scowled. “That’s not what this is about. It’ll get them working together to find the best solution. My family needs a shake-up, Tomas most of all.”

  “And what if your plan backfires? What if the boys reject this clause and walk away from their inheritance? Do you want the Carlisle assets split up and sold off?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “They won’t like this—”

  “They don’t have to like it. I suspect I’ll hear their objections from beyond the pearly gates, but they’ll do it. Not for the inheritance—” Chas fixed his friend with his trademark gaze, steel-hard and unwavering. “They’ll do it for their mother.”

  And that was the biggest, strongest motivation for this added clause to the last will and testament of Charles Tomas McLachlan Carlisle. He wanted more than his sons working together. He didn’t only want to see them take a chance at settled, family happiness. This was for Maura. A grandchild, born within twelve months of his death, to bring a smile to her sad eyes, to break her growing isolation.

  He wanted, in death, to achieve what he’d never been able to do in life: to make his adored wife happy.

  “This is my legacy to Maura, Jack.”

  And the only thing out of a multibillion-dollar empire that would be worth an Irish damn to her.

  One

  Six months later

  Angelina Mori didn’t mean to eavesdrop. If, at the last minute, she hadn’t remembered the solemnity of the occasion she would have charged into the room in her usual forthright fashion and she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

  But she did remember the occasion—this morning’s burial, this afternoon’s reading of the will, the ensuing meeting between Charles Carlisle’s heirs—and she paused and steadied herself to make a decorous entrance into the Kameruka Downs library.

  Which is how she came to overhear the three deep, male voices. Three voices as familiar to Angie’s ear as those of her own two brothers.

  “You heard what Konrads said. We don’t all have to do this.” Alex, the eldest, sounded as calm and composed as ever. “It’s my responsibility.”

  “News flash.” Rafe’s mocking drawl hadn’t changed a bit in the time she’d been gone. “Your advanced age doesn’t make you the expert or the one in charge of this. How about we toss a coin. Heads, you—”

  “The hell you say. We’re in this together. One in, all in.” Tomas’s face, she knew, would be as hard and expressionless as his voice. Heartbreakingly different to the man she remembered from… Was it only five years ago? It seemed so much longer, almost another lifetime.

  “A nice sentiment, little bro’, but aren’t you forgetting something?” Rafe asked. “It takes two to make a baby.”

  Angie didn’t drop the tray of sandwiches she held, but it was a near thing. Heart hammering, she pulled the tray tight against her waist and steadied it with a white-knuckled grip. The rattling plates quieted; the pounding of her heart didn’t.

  And despite what she’d overheard—or maybe because of it—she didn’t slink away.

  With both hands occupied, she couldn’t knock on the half-closed door. Instead she nudged it open with one knee and cleared her throat. Loudly. Twice. Because now the voices were raised in strident debate on who was going to do this—get married? have a baby? in order to inherit?—and how.

  Holy 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 n
o 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 three-quarter 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.