Ruby Creek Races.”
Angie frowned. The Ruby Creek weekend was an outback institution, more about socializing than horse-racing, but what did it have to do with her situation? “You want to go? You think I should go? Do you think Tomas will be going?”
“Unlikely. He doesn’t get out much these days. No, what I’m thinking is all the staff will be going and he’ll be home alone.”
Until she arrived. Angie’s pulse fluttered. “He won’t like it.”
“Does that matter?”
She smiled slowly and the glow of hope spread strong and rosy through her whole body. “No. I don’t suppose that it does.”
Tomas recognized the sound of the Carlisle Company plane coming in low over the Barakoolie ridge without lifting his gaze from the weaners he was tailing. He figured it was Alex or Rafe dropping in to visit with their mother. A wasted trip, since Maura had flown down to another of their stations to supervise the muster after the manager broke his leg. Tomas would have gone himself except…
His chest tightened as he recalled the plea in his mother’s pained eyes—a look that had cow-kicked him right where he lived. He knew what she couldn’t say. I’m lost and I’m hurting. I need to be busy, occupied, working as hard as my body can take. It’s the only way to live through this grief.
Oh, yeah, he knew better than anyone the benefits of physical exhaustion. Not a cure, but a salve to deaden the acute pain and a bandage dressing for the soul-deep loneliness. A means to fill the days and a way to find the salvation of sleep in a marriage bed suddenly left half-empty. So, yeah, he’d let Mau go with his blessing, and if either of his brothers gave him grief over it…After several weeks of fourteen- and fifteen-hour days he felt brutal enough to knock them both on their Armani-clad asses.
Thinking about that outcome gave him a grim satisfaction as he watched the King Air bank and turn before coming in low on its final approach to the airstrip. The young colt he was training jigged and danced beneath him. And if his pulse skipped in time with his fractious mount, that wasn’t because some rogue part of him remembered the last time one of company planes had sat on the Kameruka airstrip.
The way she’d tried to kiss him. The day she’d sowed the idea of only-sex in his brain.
“Easy boy,” he soothed. “It’s just a big old noisy bird.” With a big old noisy pilot.
He identified Rafe as the pilot by the way he approached his landing. Not sure and steady like Alex, but in a flamboyant rush.
The colt tossed his head, and with knees and thighs Tomas directed his attention back to the cattle. “We have a job to do, Ace,” he murmured. “Keep your eye on the prize.”
He didn’t turn back toward the strip. He would see his brother soon enough, whether he wanted to or not. And even though this was officially a holiday weekend on Kameruka, with all his staff away at the races or visiting friends or simply sitting it out at the local bar, his time off was this: training a young colt to tail cattle. Later he’d fly a bore check in the station Cessna. And there was a gate hinge to weld on the Boolah round-yard. All the stock horses and dogs to be fed.
Only when he was good and ready, would he return home to his visitor.
The sun had started its descent behind the rugged western cliffs of Killarney Gorge before Tomas returned to the homestead. His narrowed gaze scanned the deepening shadows of the veranda and, sure enough, found Rafe. He didn’t care. He was resigned to enduring his brother’s smart-ass company this evening. In fact, he was looking forward to crossing words if not swords—either would suit his mood. But first, he was looking forward to a long cold beer and a longer hot shower.
“Rafe,” he said in greeting, as he hit the veranda and kept moving.
“Pleased to see you, too. I was getting bored with my own company.”
“No kidding.” He paused with the door half-open. “I’d have saved you the tedium if you’d rung first.”
“You’d have laid on hot and cold running housemaids?”
“I’d have told you Ruby Creek was on.”
Rafe chuckled softly. “I knew that. I’m heading out there in the morning, but I thought I’d spend the night with Mau first. I’m surprised she’s not home yet.”
“She’s over at Killarney, mustering.”
“Better that she’s keeping busy.” No surprise, no censure, barely a pause to digest the news. “I’ll fly down tomorrow and see her.”
“Only if you’ve got a couple of days free. She’ll be out in the back country by now.” And they both knew that no one—not even Rafe—could land a twin-engine there.
“How’s she doing?”
Tomas let the door swing shut and tipped his hat back. “She’s coping.”
For a quiet minute they were in accord, everything else forgotten in shared concern for their mother. Worry that she may sink back into the same depression as after she lost her baby daughter—their sister—so many years ago. Rafe made a scoffing noise and shook his head. “Why didn’t he just leave her one of the stations to run? That would have made more sense than this grandchild thing.”
“Is that why you think he did it? For Mau?”
“Don’t you?”
Tomas let his breath go in a long sigh. “Yup, I do.”
“Do you reckon it’ll make any difference? That she’ll buy we’re doing this because we want to?”
“Does it matter in the end? If she gets the grandchild to dote on?”
“Point.” Rafe expelled a long, audible breath. “I’ll fly out next weekend to see her.”
Tomas nodded, but he could see there was more going on in Rafe’s head than the fact he’d wasted a trip. He looked almost…pained.
“What are you doing about the baby?” Tomas asked, taking a stab at what bothered his brother’s usual carefree attitude. “Have you decided on a mother yet?”
“There’s someone I’m hoping to bump into at Ruby Creek tomorrow.”
Hence the look of a man headed for the gallows. If he didn’t feel a barrowload of empathy, Tomas would have found his brother’s situation funny—the last of the great playboys forced to choose one woman. He didn’t ask for the lucky lady’s name because the look on his brother’s face reminded him of his own circumstances. Of Angie, who Rafe would have seen as recently as yesterday. It had been over two weeks. She’d said she’d call as soon as she knew. She should have called.
He scowled down at his boots, tried to find the words he needed down there. How’s Angie? Two simple words, one question. How hard was that? Instead he found himself asking, “How’s the hotel business?”
“Booming.” Rafe stared at him a moment. “Can’t say you’ve ever expressed an interest before. Is there a reason? Anything specific you wanted to know?”
