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

Three

Angie pressed the palm of one hand flat against her chest. “Steady up there,” she cautioned her heart which had taken off at a wild gallop. Even if it is Tomas, he’s likely just coming to see us off or to deliver a last minute message to his brothers.

Or something.

Rafe called out to her from inside the plane, hurrying her along. Alex, she knew, was already in the pilot’s seat. She waved a stalling hand, her eyes fixed on the approaching rider. No one sat a horse quite like Tomas. The familiarity of that sight and the knowledge that she would get to say goodbye, soothed the ragged rawness of her emotions. Her pulse, however, continued to race as she watched him dismount and start toward her, not in any hurry yet still eating up the ground with his easy, long-legged stride.

No one wore a pair of Wranglers quite like Tomas.

Those work-worn jeans and the dusty roper boots beneath came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. Two steps up, Angie held a height advantage for the first time in her life and she felt a renewed surge of emotion.

This time it was good emotion, as strong and dazzling as the northern sun. Leaning down, she tipped back the tan Akubra that shadowed his face from the bright rays of that morning sun.

“You almost missed us,” she said.

“Damn straight he did.” Rafe, curse his timing, leaned out the aircraft door and broke their second of eye-meet connection. “Nice of you to drop by and see us off, bro’.”

“Wanted to make sure you were leaving, bro’.”

Rafe chuckled and Angie couldn’t suppress a grin at the dry banter. It was so typical, so familiar, so brotherly. Then Tomas’s serious gaze shifted back to hers and froze the amusement on her lips. “And I wanted to see Angie.”

“Don’t keep her too long,” Rafe warned. “Alex is itching to get back to work.”

He left them alone then, she and Tomas and the memory of their last conversation stretching tense and awkward in the ensuing silence. Angie’s nerves twitched impatiently.

“If this is about what I said last night—”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said—”

They both spoke at the same time; both stopped at the same time. Their eyes met and locked and Angie felt a curious breathlessness. “You first,” she managed to murmur. “Go ahead.”

“When 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 maybe half a second he went completely still—as if she’d really shocked him—and then he shoved his hat low on his forehead and took a slow step backward. Then another. “This is business, Angie, not fun.”

“And business can’t be fun?”

“Not anymore,” he said tightly. And he turned and strode away.

“Nice work, Ange,” Rafe drawled from behind her.

She didn’t turn around, she was too focused on Tomas’s retreat. His broad shoulders were bunched with tension, his long legs moving as if he couldn’t get far enough away from her quickly enough.

Nice work?

“Only if my job description was ‘lose a good friend,’” she said softly.

Rafe’s hand squeezed her shoulder, but the gesture of support and reassurance didn’t do much to ease the thickness in her chest and throat. “You gave him plenty to think about for the next week, don’t you think?”

She frowned back over her shoulder. “What about next week?”

“We’re meeting in Sydney.”

“We?”

“Alex, myself, Tomas. We’re meeting with Konrads again. About the will.”

Angie’s gaze slid, helplessly, back to the man who now sat still and watchful on his horse. Making sure she did leave? “Are you suggesting he might change his mind?”

“With a little help.”

“What kind of help?” she asked suspiciously.

“Last night I mentioned asking you to help me out. My little brother objected rather strenuously.”

“I object rather strenuously!”

Rafe winked. “Yeah, but he doesn’t need to know that.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“A little competition wouldn’t harm your cause, babe.”

Yes, the Carlisles hated to be outdone, especially by each other. Hadn’t Tomas’s first words this morning been about her offering herself to the wider Carlisle cause? Angie’s gaze shifted back to the motionless rider and her heart skipped a half-beat.

“Between that and what you’ve given him to think about…”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Close your eyes, lie back, and think of Kameruka.” Rafe grinned and shook his head. “Nice work, Ange.”

“Have either of you considered other methods?” Tomas felt the impact of his brothers’ undivided attention before he looked up from his plate and found them both staring at him, obviously baffled by his out-of-the-blue question.

Around them the late-lunch activity continued in the restaurant of the Sydney Carlisle Grande Hotel. Patrons ate. Waiters waited. Tomas didn’t notice.

He didn’t recall eating his meal. Didn’t recall what they’d discussed while they ate. His attention had been fixed solely on the outcome of their prelunch meeting with Jack Konrads, a week to the day after they’d last met in the Kameruka Downs library.

Long story short: they could fight their father’s will. But then they would have to live with the knowledge that they’d disrespected his last wish.

They had to do this. They had to try.

“Other methods—” Rafe rocked back in his chair “—of eating? Meeting?”

“The baby,” Tomas elucidated. “Artificial conception. I’m thinking of going to a—” Center? Service? Frowning, he searched for the right term. “What do you call those places?”

“A breeding farm?” Rafe suggested.

“A clinic.” Alex put his cutlery down and fixed Tomas with a steely look. The kind he used often in the boardroom to show he meant business. “You don’t have to do this—either of you. That message I got before…”

Vaguely Tomas recalled Alex’s phone blipping just as their meals arrived.

“Susannah has agreed to marry me.”

There was a moment of shocked silence, broken when a waiter arrived to remove their plates. Rafe recovered first and gestured toward the phone. “Are you saying Susannah agreed to marry you by text message?”

“She knows we’re on a short timeline. I told her I wanted to know as soon as she reached a decision.”

Rafe shook his head sadly. “And they say romance is dead.”

For once Tomas was in complete agreement with Rafe. Sure, his eldest brother kept a brutal work schedule. Susannah, too, ran her own business. But, still…

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” Alex asked.

“Only if you can manage to look slightly happy about it,” Rafe replied at the same time as Tomas said, “You’re only marrying because of the will.”

And in his opinion, that just sucked cane toads. A marriage wasn’t a business transaction. It was about love and partnership and commitment.

Till death us do part.

“Ah, hell.” He didn’t realize he’d been screwing up his napkin until he threw the tightly wadded missile onto the table and rolled the crystal salt shaker. “You don’t have to marry her, Alex.”

“Yes. I do.” Alex folded his napkin in half and half again. Placed it neatly on the table. “That’s the only way I’ll do this.”

“When’s the wedding?” Rafe asked.

“There’s the mandatory thirty-day wait, but as soon as possible. We haven’t decided where.”

“Not at home?” Rafe asked “Mau will want to be there.” By home he meant Kameruka Downs, where they’d all grown up and where Tomas still lived. Their mother, too, in her own place built after his marriage. She rarely left her remote outback home these days. Since intense media scrutiny had led to a breakdown after she’d lost her fourth child to SIDS, she despised the city, crowds, photographers.

“We’re negotiating,” Alex said. “Susannah has family interstate.”

“Not wanting to get personal,” Rafe said carefully. “But does Susannah know she’s expected to, um, produce an heir right off the bat?”

“She knows.” Alex checked his watch, frowned. “I have a meeting to get to, but I wanted you both to know I’ve got this covered.”

Rafe and Tomas exchanged a look.

“You’ve got your part of the deal covered,” Rafe corrected.

“We’ll look after ours,” Tomas added. “One in, all in.” He got to his feet at the same time as his brothers, and of-

fered his hand. “Congratulations, Alex. I hope it works out for you.”

There was a moment, a connection that extended far beyond the firm handshake, the quick slap on the back, even the strong meeting of sky-blue eyes. It was the bond of brothers, the knowledge that a pact made would never be broken. They were all in this together, and, come hell or high water, they would make it work.

Then Alex was striding off between the tables with his trademark sense of purpose. Standing side by side, his brothers watched him out the door before Rafe shook his head. “Do you suppose he proposed by text or e-mail or intercompany memo?”

“Wondered the same thing myself.” Tomas scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s not that I don’t like Susannah, it’s just that she’s…Susannah.”

Not Susie, like Angelina was Angie, but always the whole three syllables. Always so formal and cool and dispassionate. So absolutely unlike Angie.

“The whole deal’s too cold-blooded and impersonal,” he said, and he felt Rafe’s gaze switch and focus on his face.

“As cold-blooded and impersonal as artificial conception?”

“That’s different.”

“I won’t dignify that with a response.” Rafe shook his head and indicated the door. “You ready to go?”

Nothing more was said—and that surprised the hell out of Tomas—until they were out in the lobby and about to part ways. “Did you know Ange is working here?” Rafe asked conversationally.

Tomas tensed, then covered quickly by casting a casual glance back at the restaurant. “Waitressing?”

“I meant here as in the Carlisle Grande, in my office. She asked if I had any jobs going last week, flying home from your place, after—”

Rafe made an expansive gesture and Tomas thought, Yeah, after. That about summed it up.

“I gather you’re not even considering her offer?”

No longer casual, Tomas’s gaze cut back to his brother’s face. “She told you about that?”

“We talked some. I’ve seen a fair bit of Ange this last week.”

What the hell did “talked some” mean? And “seen a fair bit of”? Was that in the office or out of hours?

Tomas forced his fingers to unfurl out of fists. Forced himself to ask some other question, any other question. “What are you going to do about the baby?”

“I have some prospects.”

“Angie?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“She’s one.” Lips pursed, Rafe studied him narrowly. “That won’t be a problem, now you’ve decided to go elsewhere?”

“If it’s a problem,” Tomas said shortly, “it’s not mine.”

What else could he say? How could he object? He shook hands and watched Rafe walk away. His own decision was made and it involved a clinic and a nameless faceless woman he had to somehow find. It didn’t involve any kind of passion or emotion or commitment. It sure as hell didn’t involve Angie’s boldly stated way of doing things!

Close your eyes, lie back, and think of Kameruka.

How many times had he closed his eyes this last week, lying back in the restless tangle of his sheets, and thought about Angie? Her soft lips grazing his skin, her exotic perfume adrift in his blood, her dark eyes filled with the wild promise of passion as she came to him in the dark.

It’s only sex.

If only he could believe that. If only he could get past the disturbing notion of the action and cut straight to the result. Because he could imagine Angie with a baby, in a wildly sensuous earth-mother way.

But Rafe’s baby?

The notion burned his gut like battery acid, the wrongness and the certainty that if his brother asked, Angie would say yes. Women didn’t say no to Rafe. Ever.

Ah, hell.

Instead of heading out to the street on a quest for cold and impersonal, he found himself in an elevator going up to the executive floor of the Carlisle Grande Hotel. And his gut burned worse than ever.

Four

He found her office empty, yet Tomas had no doubt that this was Angie’s workspace. Less than two days on the job—not enough time to even change the name-plate on the door—and already she’d stamped her personality all over the place. Some—Alex came to mind—would call her desk a disaster. She would shrug and call it work in progress.

Knowing Angie, that would mean at least a dozen pieces of work in simultaneous progress.

Amid all the open folders and scattered paperwork sat a bright blue coffee mug which he knew wouldn’t be empty. Angie rarely finished anything in one sitting. Relaxing a notch, he strolled over to the desk and checked. Yup, the mug was still half full.

Wry amusement twitched at the corners of his mouth as he straightened. His nose twitched at the scent of her per-

fume…or perhaps that was the bunch flowers shoved higgledy-piggledy into a red glass jar. She had a framed collage of pictures, too. One of her parents smiling into each other’s eyes on their wedding day, a more recent picture of her father gaunt with the illness that took his life, and a candid shot of the three Mori kids goofing off at the Kameruka Downs waterhole.

He’d probably been there that day—for all he knew, he could have taken the picture. There’d been so many days like that back then.

But what about now?

Tomas put the frame back, next to the coffee mug, amid the chaos that was Angie’s workspace. She’d taken a convenient job here with Rafe, but how long did she intend staying? Was she ready to settle down? Enough to raise a baby?

His mood had turned grim long before his thumb brushed over the rim of the mug, smudging the glossy imprint of her lipstick.

This was the Angie of now, the woman he didn’t know.

The one who stained her lips the color of mocha, whose lips had imprinted his with the fleeting taste of temptation. The one whose velvet-brown eyes spoke of another wildness, a different type of passion to the laughing girl in the waterhole picture. This was the woman who’d stood on the steps of the plane and calmly suggested that sex between them could be fun.

With a silent oath he jerked away from the desk, his action so abrupt he almost upset the mug. He righted it quickly, pushing aside papers to make some space. And that’s when he found the book.

Babies Made Easy.

He was still staring at the cover, bemused by her choice of reading material and the irony of that title, when Angie returned.

He heard the quick approach of footsteps in the corridor and sensed her hesitation in the doorway, her presence licking through him like the memory of her kiss—a sweet suggestion of heat and anticipation, chased away by instant hostility. Not toward Angie herself, but toward the unwanted response of his body. He didn’t know how to handle this new awareness, the strange tug in his gut, the tight dryness in his throat.

Because she was standing there watching him, eating him up with those big brown eyes.

“I didn’t expect to find you here.” She came into the room then, smiling with a warmth that made him think she didn’t mind the surprise. “How did the meeting go?”

Of course she knew they’d been meeting with the lawyer. Rafe would have told her. They talked a lot, after all. “A waste of everyone’s time,” he said curtly, irritated that the thought of her and Rafe doing anything together completely wiped away the effect of her smile.

“There’s no way out of the clause?”

“None we’re prepared to take.”

“So, you have to make a baby.” Not a question but a matter-of-fact statement as she leaned her hips against the desk at his side. She looked like a candidate for Ms. Hotel Management, in her crisp white shirt and knee-length black skirt, her hair sleek and neat, her only jewelry a fine gold neck-chain bearing the letter A.

At least she was smiling her usual Angie smile, warm and relaxed and spiced with a dash of wryness.

Then she noticed the book in his hand and her smile faltered. His appreciation of that smile nosedived right alongside. He tapped a finger against the book’s cover, right under the title. “Interesting choice of reading, Angie.”

“I thought I’d research the topic, in case I needed to help any friends out.”

“Friends like Rafe?”

“Like Rafe or Alex or Tomas,” she corrected without hesitation. “It’s fascinating reading…although I have to say the title is very misleading.”

No kidding.

“Did you know there’s only a seventeen percent chance of conceiving each month? With odds like that, you need to get started. You all do!”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Their eyes met and held for a second, and he sensed a stillness in her, a new intensity beneath her aura of casual confidence, as if he’d surprised the breath right out of her. Hell, he’d surprised himself even though the words had come out of his mouth!

“Have you changed your mind?” she asked.

“Have you?” he countered.

“About making a baby in some sterile clinic?” With a glancing brush of fingers, she took the book from him and tossed it onto the desk. “Absolutely not.”

“I meant about helping me.”

“Does it matter? Since we don’t see eye to eye on the method, my offer of help is moot.”

“Maybe we can compromise. About the method.”

“Really?” Eyebrows arched, she regarded him steadily for a drawn-out second. “How would that work, do you suppose?”

Tomas shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t have an answer. Until this last minute he hadn’t fixed on what he’d hoped to achieve by coming up here. Making sure she didn’t get tangled with his hound of a brother, yeah, but as for how—

“Yeesh, Tomas.” She interrupted his thoughts with obvious irritation. “You don’t know why you’re here, do you? Nothing’s changed from last week.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that you couldn’t even stand me kissing you, so why chance anything more intimate?” She blew out a short, impatient breath, and when she started to turn away Tomas reacted instinctively, stopping her retreat with a hand on her arm. For a long moment she just stood there gazing up at him, her eyes widened with surprise.

Good.

He’d caught her on the back foot for a change, and with subtle emphasis he shifted his grip on her arm, not exactly tightening but…adjusting. Just so she knew he meant to keep her there until he was done. Whatever he had to say, whyever he’d changed his mind and come upstairs, he had to put into words. Now. “You caught me by surprise last week.”

“So—” she lifted her chin “—if I’d given you more notice you wouldn’t have minded me kissing you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” she repeated softly, her gaze narrowing and darkening. “Do you want to find out? Or do you want to let go of my arm so I can get back to work?”

The challenge gleamed hot in her eyes, daring him to make that choice. It’s only a kiss, he told himself, but that phrasing didn’t help. Not when her words from last week twined sinuously through his consciousness.

It’s only sex.

And this was a test. If he could kiss her, if he could just bend his head to hers and go through the motions, then maybe he could do the sex part, too. Maybe.

He heard the huff of her exasperated breath, felt her start to pull away and blocked her escape with his body. Their eyes met and held. An awareness of what they were about to do charged the air between them, but a breath away from her lips, he paused, too charged with tension to breach that final inch of space.

“Go ahead,” she said softly. “I won’t bite…unless you want me to.”

His head reared back, dumbfounded when he should have expected no less. This was Angie, after all. Angie who was shaking her head with renewed exasperation.

“I was kidding. A joke, you know. Humor.”

Yeah, he knew, he just wasn’t in a kidding mood, not by a long shot.

And that she must had read on his face because she sighed, a soft relenting whisper, as she leaned forward and touched her thumb to his chin. Then she shocked the hell out of him by reaching up and kissing him there. He felt the softness of her lips, the moist warmth of her tongue and then her retreat.

A small smile hovered on her lips as she whispered, “Sorry.”

Sorry for the joke? Or for striking him dumb with that one swift touch of her tongue. Tomas tried to wrap his astonishment into words, to ask what she meant, but she took his face between her hands—the same as she’d done at the plane—and looked right into his eyes, her gaze dark and steady and serious.

“That was your notice.” She stretched to kiss one corner of his mouth and then the other. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

Before he could begin to recover his equilibrium, she moved her lips against his with soft restraint, as if she was expecting his withdrawal…or waiting for him to take a more active role. A raw, male part of him itched to take over, but a stronger, harsher voice hammered away in resistance. It wouldn’t let him forget that this was Angie, and he had no business wanting to close his eyes and immerse himself in the lush temptation of her lips.

“Relax,” she whispered, her breath a shiver of sensation on his skin and in his blood. Her thumbs stroked his cheeks, down to the corners of his mouth. “It’s only a kiss.”

And then she kissed him the same way she tackled everything—with the same energy and heat and wholehearted passion. She kissed and she willed him to open up, to unwind, to let go. She made a sound low in her throat, a kind of smoky humming that rolled through him in one long, hot wave of desire that caught him totally unprepared, completely at a loss. All he could do was close his eyes and thread his hands into the thick softness of her hair and kiss her back.

Lord, how he kissed her back. With a hunger he couldn’t control, with a thoroughness he no longer wanted to control, with a yearning for all the intimacies he’d missed in the last years.

Since Brooke died.

That thought stalled his senses, slammed at his conscience, dragged him out of the drugging depths of that hot, wet contact. Intimacy was not what he wanted. No way. This was only a trial, proof that he could close his eyes and forget himself for long enough to do what had to be done. A means to an end and that was all.

He hauled himself back into his own space and switched his expression to deadpan. Not difficult—he’d had a lot of practice in recent years. Angie had slumped back against the desk. She shook her head as if to clear it and her eyes looked a little dazed. Her hair was a wild tumble, her lips kissed naked and pliant, and when she crossed her arms under her breasts, he couldn’t help but notice the outline of her nipples right through her respectable white shirt.