Princes of the Outback Bundle (21 page)

“The cold compress helped.”

“I guess.” Her gaze softened a little, relenting, relaxing. “What about the rest of you? You’re not stiff or sore anywhere else?”

Oh, yeah, she realized how
that
could be taken about a second after the words left her lips. And it wasn’t in Rafe’s nature to let such a choice opportunity slide. He cocked a brow. “Would you like to check?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Rafe shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

She gave him a look that said she could. “It was a godawful line. You should be ashamed.”

“Harsh.”

“But honest.”

Conceding her point, he tapped two fingers against his temple. “Can we blame it on damage to my head?”

She smiled, but there was a worried edge to the gaze that followed his gesture. A knowledge that while he joked about head damage, it had been a very real concern to her in those long hours of the night.

“I haven’t thanked you,” he said, watching her turn to pick up his bag. She set it on top of the bed.

“For bringing your bag? I think you did that earlier. I’ll leave you to get dressed, then.” She started to turn, preparing to leave, but Rafe caught her by the arm and waited for her surprised gaze to swing back to his.

“Not only the bag,” he said quietly. “Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you for bringing me into your home and continuing with the observations even after I begged you to give it up. Thank you, Catriona.”

She shrugged and shifted uneasily within his grip. “Anyone would have done the same.”

“I know a lot of women—” she rolled her eyes in an I-bet-you-do way that Rafe ignored “—and most of them wouldn’t have known how to get into that plane, let alone thought to get me out.” With his thumb he traced a jagged white scar across the back of her hand. Then he smiled to ease the new note of gravity in the mood. “Most of them would have been afraid they’d break a nail.”

“I dare say I’m nothing like most of those women you know.”

That went without saying. No fawning, no flirting, not even the hint of a come-on. Most of the women he knew would have taken immediate, unsubtle advantage of his state of undress, but not Catriona McConnell. She was, indeed, a novelty. “When I picked your airstrip, I chose well.”

She made a scoffing sound and tugged at her hand until he released her. “Any one of my neighbors would have helped you. And
their
strips wouldn’t have wrecked your plane!”

“The landing gear malfunctioned. I was never going to land smoothly.”

Eyes wide and appalled, she stared up at him. Her face seemed to have paled a shade, so the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out starkly. “Your landing gear malfunctioned? You could have crashed?
Badly?
”

“Hey,” Rafe said softly, reaching for her. But she was already backing away, hands held up in classic don’t-touch mode. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was never going to crash-land.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m too good a pilot.”

She huffed out an incredulous breath. “Well, at least we know your ego wasn’t damaged.”

“Why do I have the feeling it will suffer if I stick around here much longer?”

From the doorway she paused long enough to cut him a look that perfectly illustrated his point. “Lucky for your ego, you won’t be.”

“W
hat is it with you guys and that whole macho ‘I’m too good a pilot’ business?”

Cat paused in ratting through her pantry for ingredients—anything!—to add to her breakfast hodgepodge and glared at the only male present and therefore answerable. Bach, however, had nothing to say in his gender’s defense. He merely tilted his broad canine head and looked curious. Or puzzled. Or possibly both.

“Have you any idea how that cavalier attitude bothers other people?”
How it robs their breath and turns their stomachs sick with dread? Even when they’re virtual strangers?

Halfway across her kitchen, hands filled with cans and condiments, she stopped and frowned, disturbed by the extremity of her reaction to the idea that Rafe Carlisle could have crash-landed.

Must have been the timing, she justified. The surprise element. Plus after seeing him in all his glory he just seemed
too vital, too larger than life, to imagine damaged and scarred. Or cold and lifeless.

“Too good a pilot?” With an unladylike snort, she dumped her ingredients on the bench top. “Lucky is more like it!”

Up until that disclosure about his landing-gear malfunction, she’d been handling herself so well, too. Hardly turning a hair when she’d caught him in the buff. Holding her own in the ensuing exchange. Then he’d gone and turned all serious with the thank-you speech, as if she’d done something special.

Well, it was no news flash that Cat McConnell didn’t do special. She did capable, she did practical, and some people said she could do stubborn better than anyone. But she sure did not do up-close, skin-tingling, hand-holding seriousness with seminude strangers.

No wonder she’d reacted so intensely to the landing-gear shocker. No wonder the breath had caught in her lungs while her stomach roiled with—

The microwave timer pinged, startling her out of her unsettling memories.

Wake up, Cat, you have breakfast to finish. A guest to get on his way. Normalcy to be returned.

But as she crossed the kitchen to check on the concoction of minced beef and sundries she was nuking, her gaze caught on the photo on the fridge. Drew Samuels with his lopsided grin and black Resistol and laidback cowboy charm.

No, not normalcy. She doubted her life would ever feel normal again. Not if her best friend, her only lover, had let her down as badly as she feared.

“Lucky I’ve got you,” she told Bach, “to keep my faith in males from going completely down the gurgler.”

Ears pricked, her dog pattered to her side and growled deep in his chest. Not so much in understanding as in hunger, Cat noted, since she’d lifted the lid on the nuked breakfast dish. Steam spiraled to her nose, piquant, aromatic, and she
dipped in a spoon and lifted it, cautiously, to her lips. Tasted. Cocked her head in the dog’s direction.

“Not too bad, considering.” Considering the amount of scrambling she’d done to find anything substantial enough to feed a man who’d eaten nothing the previous night.

Whimpering, Bach touched a paw to her leg and gave her the big doggy-eyed look.

“Oh, please!” She rolled her eyes and saw him out the door. “I’ll get you something in a tick, mate. This is for the guest and I doubt there’ll be any leftovers.”

Since the guest looked like a man of appetite.

Cat expelled a breath, a swift wisp of air that matched the swing of the door closing behind her dog. She rested her shoulders against the door’s solid weight for a moment. Closed her eyes. Rafe Carlisle, she mused, looked like a man with all manner of appetites, food being but one of them.

And it struck her, standing there in the very real surrounds of her kitchen, her home, her niche, how surreal this all was. Everything from Gordon Samuels’s revelation about the origin of the money she’d borrowed from Drew, through to watching one of the princes of the outback drop out of the sky, and on to this morning when she’d unwittingly eyed his impressive, um, scepter.

To top it all off, here she was making breakfast for him. Rafe Carlisle. One of Australia’s highest-profile playboys, a former Bachelor of the Year, a socialite pin-up who dated actresses and swimsuit models. Oh, how she’d love to share
that
tasty tidbit with her stuck-up stepsisters!

Smiling—ruefully, given she tried to avoid seeing those witches whenever possible—she opened her eyes and pushed off the door.

And jolted to startled attention when she realized that she was no longer alone. The former Bachelor of the Year lazed against the doorjamb on the opposite side of the kitchen,
looking so languid and comfortable that she wondered how long he’d been there.

“Ready for breakfast?” she asked, refusing to be rankled. She had, after all, watched him sleep. And he was, after all, now fully dressed.

In a smooth unraveling of long limbs and relaxed muscles—Cat fought to suppress a strong visual of those muscles bare-skinned, as she’d seem them earlier, rippling into lazy motion—he straightened and came into the room. Right past the table, which she’d already set, to rest his hips against the bench. To watch her fill the toaster and turn on the kettle and stir the mystery mince.

He leaned close and drew a long, appreciative sniff.

Then—oh, crikey—he rubbed his belly and made the same sound she remembered from the night before, when he’d fallen into the soft folds of her nanna’s handmade quilt.

It was a sound that went with croissants or frittata or eggs benedict served on a sun-drenched terrace. The sound of a man who came to breakfast wearing designer jeans and a butter-colored knit that looked soft enough to melt under the strong outback sun. A sound too luxurious, too rich, too sensuous for her utilitarian kitchen and her tossed-together breakfast.

A sound too rich for Cat, which made it easy to dismiss.

“You cook, too?” he asked.

“Save the praise until after you’ve tasted,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve not been shopping in a while, so this is whatever I could find. It’s not gourmet cuisine.”

Not that she was apologizing. He was bloody lucky she’d found anything.

When he didn’t respond, she glanced sideways and found him looking at her—no, not so much looking as giving her the once-over. Lifting her chin, she met his examination head-on but he didn’t look the least chagrined. In fact a smile kicked at the corner of his mouth, not apologetic, just caught out and not caring.

The toast popped, distracting them both, but Cat shot him one last raised-eyebrow glance. “If you’re finished with the inspection, take a seat and I’ll bring you breakfast.”

“And if I’m not…?”

“Take a seat, anyway—” she marched past him and deposited the casserole dish in the center of the table “—you can finish while you eat.”

“Are you going to join me?”

“In a tick.”

He waited, watched, and only sat after Cat had finished making the tea and taking her own seat opposite. Nice manners, she admitted, a trifle grudgingly since that only indicated two things: he’d been brought up well, and he’d shared a lot of breakfasts with a lot of ladies. Most of whom wouldn’t have served him minced beef.

There was a moment when he pushed up his sleeves, and her gaze became riveted on the details. The dark hair on his forearms. The silver links of an expensive-looking watch. His long elegant fingers. The remembered warmth of his touch on her arm and stroking the back of her hand.

Then he caught
her
looking, and the moment stretched with a warm awareness that quickly morphed into awkwardness—on Cat’s side of the table, at least—as she poured tea and fussed with the food. A stranger sat at her table, long fingers folded around the handle of one of
her
mugs.
Her
cutlery was transporting the food she had prepared to his mouth, touching his lips, his tongue.

The intimacy of it all shivered through her like quicksilver. More intimate even than before, in the bedroom, although perhaps this disquieting sensation was just the whole twenty-four hours catching up with her.

Whatever the reason, she didn’t much like it. Whatever the reason, she had to get over it and start acting more like herself again.

“Relax, Catriona.” His mouth quirked, amused and reas
suring at the same time. “I know I’m starving, but I promise not to bite.”

“Easy for you to say.”

His fork paused, halfway to his mouth. “About biting?”

“About relaxing. You aren’t the one with a strange man sitting at your breakfast table!”

“I should hope not,” he drawled. “Strange women are much more my taste.”

“I thought you didn’t bite.”

He laughed at that, the same rich sound of appreciation as earlier in his bedroom. Cat wasn’t sure which affected her more—the warm-honey tone of his laughter or the fact that he appreciated her quick retort. Whichever, the man was lethal.

Lethal and obviously as hungry as he’d intimated, given the way he tucked back into his breakfast. And since the short exchange of banter—plus his rather gratifying appetite—had settled her uneasiness, Cat joined him in several minutes of almost companionable eating. She, too, was starving.

“Glad you’ve gotten over the strange-man thing.”

Cat stopped chewing.

“I wondered about that before,” he continued, piling his plate with seconds. “When you were in my bedroom.”

“Wondered about…what?” she asked slowly, suspiciously.

“If you lived here alone. And if so, why you weren’t more concerned about having a strange man in your house.”

“I can look after myself.”

“Yeah?”

She met his eyes with unflinching directness. “I’ve lived here on my own for the last four years. So, yeah, I can look after myself.”

“You don’t find it lonely here, on your own?”

“Sometimes.” Her shrug was a bit tight, a bit not so casual, but her direct gaze turned rueful. “Then my stepmother comes to visit and I get over it real quick.”

“You have a wicked stepmother?”

“Good guess.”

“Any evil stepsisters?”

“Just the two.”

Rafe ate in silence for a minute, digesting all she’d said. “And you run this place single-handedly?”

“What,” she said, bristling, “you don’t think I’m capable?”

Rafe held up his hands—with knife and fork—in mock defensiveness. “Hey, keep your panties on. That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, well, if I had a dollar…”

“For every man who didn’t think you capable?”

“Every
body
,” she growled. “No cause to be gender specific.”

“Well,” Rafe started slowly, carefully picking his way around what was obviously a sore spot. “You’ve got to admit it’s not the usual career choice for a young woman.”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, since I was a little girl.”

“You didn’t want to be a ballerina or a supermodel?”

“Oh, please!” She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but the gesture was implicit as she rocked back in her chair, a mug of tea cradled in her hands. “Do I look like the supermodel type?”

Trick question, Rafe decided. Wisely he let it slide right by. “You must have had some fantasy occupation, though. I was going to be a fighter pilot.”

“See
Top Gun
one too many times?”

“Is that possible?” Smiling, he met her eyes across the remains of their breakfast. “Come on, I’ve shared my boyhood fantasy. Your turn, Catriona.”

“Cat,” she corrected. “Everyone calls me Cat.”

“I’m not everyone.”

This time she did roll her eyes. Then she surprised him by admitting, “I did go through a rodeo stage once.”

“You wanted to be a cowgirl?” In jeans and check shirt, with her freckled nose and her hair tightly braided, that wasn’t a stretch. All she needed was the big hat and boots.

“A cowgirl? Are you kidding?”

“A rodeo clown?”

Over the rim of her mug she grinned at him, genuine amusement lighting her eyes. “A bull rider, actually.”

“I should have known.” Rafe shook his head, entertained by the notion but not surprised. His gaze drifted away, toward the kitchen and the picture he’d noticed earlier. “Don’t suppose that has anything to do with the cowboy on your fridge?”

“Not really.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

A stillness tightened her expression, and Rafe was surprised to feel an echoing tension in his body as he waited for her answer. As she lifted her mug and took a long deliberate sip before lowering it to answer. “He’s a…friend.”

Ahh. “A friend you’d like as more?”

She snorted. “A friend I thought
was
more!”

The front legs of her chair hit the floor with a sharp rap, and she was halfway to her feet, gathering cutlery and plates before Rafe stopped her with one hand over both of hers. “I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

Her eyes whipped to his. “You didn’t.”

Oh, yes, he had. “Where is he now, your cowboy?”

Beneath his hands he felt her tension, felt it gather then ease as if by force of will. She slumped back into her chair, exhaled on a relenting sigh. “Drew’s my neighbor—
was
my neighbor. We grew up together. We went out for a while. Then he went to America, on the rodeo circuit.”

Her flat, just-the-facts delivery didn’t fool Rafe. The neighbor, the ex, the cowboy with the big black hat had let her down. Badly.

“You want me to find this Drew, beat him up for you?” he asked, wanting to make her smile again, and rather liking the notion of playing her champion. “I do owe you.”

“For coming to your rescue?” She smiled, not the dazzler of before but a smile that held a sharp wry edge. She tugged her hands free and rocked back in her chair. “You want to hear
something funny? Yesterday, when I heard your plane, I thought you were Drew.”

“You were expecting him?”

She shrugged. “Not so much expecting as hoping.”

“Ah, so finding me must have been a huge disappointment.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” she said with that same wry smile. “At least you and your head gave me something else to worry about. I didn’t have much time to be disappointed.”

“Ouch,” he murmured, without a lot of conviction. “I knew you wouldn’t be good for my ego.”