Against All Odds (Outback Hearts) Read online

  She’d been so caught up in his stories she’d completely forgotten to figure out how she was taking his mind off her bucket list. A few things popped into her head as her eyes darted between him and the porno hieroglyphics concealed in her seat pocket but they’d only get her arrested. “Don’t you want to know about my family?”

  “I want to know everything about you.” His words rumbled through her like a threat, but before she could decide if that was a good or bad thing, he lunged for her notebook. “But first the book.”

  She knocked over her empty Coke can and almost upended her plate in her desperation to stop him. “It’s just…”

  He paused with his fingers tracing the cover, but her relief was short-lived when he interrogated her with those damned eyes of his.

  “It’s just a list of things I wanted to try while on holiday, nothing special.” She eased her death grip on his wrist. “The Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, the outback, you know, all the usual boring touristy things. Nothing exciting.”

  He continued reading her mind for a long moment before slowly leaning back in his seat. He must have felt sorry for her because there was no way in hell he’d bought her act. While he ripped off a wad of flatbread and used it to clean his tagine, she picked up her Coke and tidied her tray table while silently cursing herself for not hiding her bucket list in her backpack.

  “I could help you with that list, you know.”

  She flinched, and her Coke once again clattered across the tray table as Olivia’s porno sketches humped through her mind. Damn right he could help her. She clenched her fingers into fists to prevent them from knocking anything else over. “It’s okay. I’ve already done some research, and I can google anything else I need to know after I check in or drop into a visitor’s center.”

  He casually picked up her can and gently placed it on her empty plate before returning to his own meal. He studied her with eyes that once again gave her the feeling he was seeing inside her head. “I could show you around.” He shrugged. “You know, until you get the lay of the land and figure out what you want to do.”

  One night with this guy would be life-threatening enough. A few days with him would surely end her. But there were worse ways to go. Euphoria, lust, and panic fought for control of her mind before cowardice masquerading as politeness bypassed her brain completely and poured out of her mouth. “Thank you, but I couldn’t keep you from your family. They must be going crazy waiting for you.”

  “Too late, they’re already nuts.” She couldn’t imagine many women turning him down, but she couldn’t pick up even the slightest hint of surprise or disappointment in his voice as he methodically arranged the cutlery on his tray table. “I think it’d be a real shame to pass up a completely innocent and totally platonic offer to have a genuine ridgy-didge true-blue Aussie bloke show you around his backyard for a few days.”

  She didn’t need Olivia to confirm there was nothing innocent or platonic about the way he looked at her. If good old Doc Martinez checked her heart rate and blood pressure right now, her surgeon would strap her to a gurney and wheel her straight into the operating room.

  The polite, sophisticated chuckle she’d been going for came out like a hysterical cackle as she rummaged through her brain for something witty to come back with. “And what are you going to tell your family?” She laid her hand flat against her ear. “Hi, Mom. Look, I’m really sorry. I know you’ve been waiting a decade to welcome me home for good, but I met a stunningly beautiful and incredibly intelligent woman who I’ve fallen madly in love with and won’t be able to make it home. Yeah, that’s right, just met her on the plane, it’s the damnedest thing. I’m just going to show her around for a few days. We’ll catch up later.”

  The words spluttered out before she’d had a chance to double-check them inside her head. She’d been going for cute and hilarious, but that whole love thing had gotten caught up in the torrent of words pouring from her mouth. She dropped her gaze to her tray and busied herself with tidying up her cutlery. Oh God, if he wasn’t worried about what was going on beneath her scarf up until then, he sure as hell was now because only someone who’d had a frontal lobotomy could’ve been that stupid.

  “You could come home with me.”

  His words hung in the air like someone had hit pause. It wasn’t even his offer that freaked her out the most, it was the calm, almost matter-of-fact way he’d reacted to her blabbering. Was this just another act of chivalry, or was he as nuts as her? Maybe the cabin had depressurized and everyone was going loopy.

  “Sure thing.” She pretended to knock on a door. “Hi, Mom, missed you heaps. By the way, the crazy woman standing behind me with the pink scarf on her head is my fake fiancée. She’ll be staying with us for a few days. Hope you don’t mind.”

  He sat silently beside her as the hum from the plane’s engines consumed her words. She looked up from the napkin she’d twisted into a pretzel to find him staring straight ahead. He wasn’t looking at her, but she had no doubt the supersized brain hiding beneath his salon hair was aware of everything she did.

  The man had practically ripped open his chest and allowed her to poke, prod, and crawl into every private nook and cranny of his life. When they hadn’t been sparring and fighting over food, they’d been teasing each other and carrying on like a couple of… She froze and drew in a deep breath. Like a couple.

  Memories and sensations from the hours they’d shared flooded her mind, and for the longest of heartbeats even her anxiety and fear couldn’t distract her from what was happening between them. But was anything actually happening, or was her brain finally succumbing to twenty-eight years of sexual abstinence and concocting the entire thing? If he didn’t feel the same tingling sensation that was turning her insides to mush, why had he shared so much of himself with a complete stranger?

  He turned as if he’d heard the questions ricocheting inside her head. “She’d like you.”

  Whenever he spoke of his family and home his voice softened and his eyes glazed over. He’d shared memory after memory until visions of chaotic kitchens overflowing with people, laughter, teasing, and the aromas of home cooking flooded her mind. It’d been so long since she’d enjoyed any of those things she’d gladly sacrifice snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef or hiking around Uluru for just a few hours of real family life. But if his family was as amazing as she suspected, they’d have missed him almost as much as he’d missed them, and she had no right to intrude on their celebration.

  She untangled the tortured napkin and placed it on her empty plate. “I’m pretty sure I’d like her, too, but I’m not gate-crashing your homecoming.”

  He considered her words before shrugging. “I thought you wanted to see the real outback.”

  She nodded under the weight of his scrutiny and instantly regretted it as his lips curved into a grin. Under the barrage of questions he’d launched her way while they’d inhaled their entrees, she’d let slip how much she hated cities and crowded tourist attractions and how much she looked forward to losing herself in the real Australia. It’d been just another throwaway comment in the constant back-and-forth conversation. The fact he remembered shocked her, but she should’ve known better by now. The man didn’t miss a thing, and everything he did had a purpose.

  “You’re not going to find anything more real than my family’s station.” He grinned. “Plus, the rent’s really cheap.”

  If she knew him at all, there’d be no way in hell he’d take her money, but she’d end up paying with something far more precious. If she’d been a normal twenty-eight-year-old woman, she’d have taken him up on his offer without thinking twice. It wasn’t just the prospect of experiencing a real-life, working Aussie cattle station or spending time with a huge loving family, it was him. If her future stretched out to the horizon, she’d have jumped on his horse and ridden off wherever he wanted to take her. But one night with him was all she could hope for and all her inexperienced heart could cope with. “Thanks, but I choose my own path an
d pay my own way.”

  He dabbed at his mouth with his pristine white cotton napkin before neatly folding it onto his tray. Something in his overt casualness told her he wasn’t giving up, but the sight of such a rugged, masculine creature wiping his stubbled chin with a napkin broke the tension that had coiled around her chest.

  She jutted her chin toward the perfectly cleaned tagine. “I take it the chicken wasn’t that bad after all?”

  He shot her a glare with his predator’s eyes, but that only served to draw even more laughter from her. Now that she knew what a pushover he was, there was no going back, no matter how big and tough he tried to look.

  “The rent just doubled.”

  The words sounded more like a threat, but that didn’t stop her stomach from doing that flippy-floppy thing it did whenever he looked at her. His military life wouldn’t have left much room for romance, but she still couldn’t figure out how he was single. The fact he’d mercifully cut short her not-so-subtle and downright clumsy attempts to coerce his relationship status out of him and just blurted out that he was single hadn’t helped. Despite her best efforts to conceal her astonishment while clarifying her own solo status, his sly grin confirmed he’d seen right through her.

  There were so many reasons why giving in to his offer to be her personal tour guide was a very, very bad idea. She tore her gaze away from the devilish grin he’d been eyeing her with and focused on the notebook hiding in her seat pocket.

  Decent…check. Gentle…check. Drop-dead gorgeous…oh hell yes. Olivia had ordered her to ignore her head and go with her gut. Which was just as well because her gut was tied up in knots and her head was chanting, he’s the one, he’s the one, he’s the one. She could let him punch her V-card, kiss him good-bye, and move on. He’d return to his family with a smile on his face and another notch on his saddle, and she could carry on with her holiday with numero uno on her bucket list well and truly crossed off. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to kick off her Down Under adventure.

  The only thing Olivia hadn’t covered in her orders was Abi’s heart, because only a freaking idiot would allow her heart to get involved in a purely physical and biological decision. But no matter how hard she tried denying it, her stupid, inexperienced, and traitorous heart had not only stuck it’s nose into the deal but had skipped off into a sea of wildflowers and was currently singing and dancing around like a naked hippie with a half-eaten bag of hash cookies. Falling for this man would be as easy as jumping out of a plane without a parachute, only twice as terrifying. The journey down would be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill ride, but the end would be painful and messy. There wasn’t going to be a happily ever after. Not only did they live on opposite shores of the Pacific, but the evil witch living inside her head was already cackling and rubbing her gnarled hands together, and there was no way in hell she was letting Doris sink her claws into anyone else.

  Chapter Seven

  Ryder stared down at the woman curled around his arm and fought the desperate craving to pull her into his lap and crush his lips to hers. With each gentle rise and fall of her chest, her scent permeated deeper into his soul. Abi had lost her battle with fatigue just as Richard Gere had snapped closed the jewelry box on Julia Roberts’s gloved fingers.

  In the space of eight hours and about seven thousand kilometers, this pushy, manipulative, gorgeously irritating woman had gotten him to share things that even some of his own brothers and sisters didn’t know. He’d traded one secret after another in order to figure out an angle he could use to convince her to spend more time with him, but somewhere over Hawaii he’d forgotten all about his plans of getting her into bed and lost himself in the conversation. The only thing he hadn’t shared was what he’d actually done in the army, and she hadn’t seemed the least bit worried that he’d only told her where he’d served and for how long. He guessed that like whatever was going on beneath her scarf, it didn’t matter. She was more interested in his family and what he planned on doing when he got back home. Which was funny, since he had no idea what he was going to do if she thanked him for the first-class food and told him to take a hike when they landed.

  He’d met a few women in his time, some had even felt sorry enough for him to sleep with him, but he’d never met anyone like her. The fact she couldn’t have cared less about his bionic leg was just one more item on the list of things that were special about her, a list that grew longer with each minute they shared. If anything, his impromptu game of show-and-tell had broken the ice far more effectively than any lame pick-up technique he’d used in the past. Maybe he was on to something. Perhaps whipping out his pirate’s leg and spilling his guts was the key to picking up women. Problem was, he didn’t want any other women.

  He wanted her.

  She stirred as if she’d overhead his thoughts before a contented sigh poured from her mouth, and she settled back against him. She snuggled closer as her breathing fell back into the hypnotic rhythm that had mesmerized him for the last hour. The left bud of the headphones she’d shared with him slid free of her ear and tumbled onto his thigh. He tugged its partner from his ear and gently laid the headphones onto the tray table supporting her TV-sized laptop. The headphones had been practically useless, but he couldn’t have cared less about the movie. His sisters had forced him and his brothers to watch the damned thing over and over again when it had been girls’ night at home. Plus, he had his very own pretty woman to admire.

  He’d wondered why she needed such a huge laptop but the moment she’d clicked on her movie database and asked him to choose it all fell into place. The woman was as serious about her movies as she was about her food. He still had no idea how they’d ended up watching Pretty Woman when he’d specifically chosen The Last Samurai, but just like his hat, his dinner, and the two spoonfuls of gelato she’d pillaged from his dessert, he couldn’t seem to stop her from stomping all over him.

  On top of stealing, lying, and bullying him, she must have also brainwashed him sometime after their meal because as they’d argued about what to watch, she’d casually handed him one half of her headphones, folded back the armrest he’d fought so hard to secure, and hit play without so much as looking at him.

  He still couldn’t decide what pissed him off more, the satisfied grin on her moosh or the fact that even after everything she’d taken and forced him to do, she left him feeling like he’d come out on top of the deal. And that was exactly what made her so intoxicatingly dangerous. Abigail Marie Williams was as conniving and ruthless as she was playful and addictive, and he only had a few more hours to convince her to come home with him.

  Somewhere between nodding off and Richard Gere punching George Costanza in the face, she’d curled up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. If he hadn’t been such an idiot, he could’ve pulled the old Happy Days stretching routine as soon as she’d started yawning and she’d be tucked up beside him instead of cuddling his arm. Then again, having all those luscious curves pressed against him for the rest of the flight was a surefire way to drive him off the ledge he’d been clinging to for hours.

  Her warm breath seeped through his T-shirt and ignited his skin as her breasts spilled over his biceps and brushed his chest. His muscles had coiled so tightly around his spine that if the hands she’d unconsciously threaded around his forearm ten minutes ago so much as twitched, he’d snap clean in half and his cock would explode and pass out from standing to attention for so long. He wanted to cover her body with his and taste every hidden part of her before plunging deep inside her. Giving in to this insane need for her was the only way to purge the voodoo she’d cursed him with. But as she slept and hopefully dreamed of him, the thought of being free of her spell filled him with a dread that chilled him.

  He tore his gaze away from her before his fragile grip on self-control slipped. Even good old Master Sergeant Hardy’s naked hairy arse wasn’t helping curb his rabid lust. He sucked in a breath and focused on the end credits scrolling up the laptop.

  The monitor
faded to black and the screensaver kicked in. A selfie of two women locked in a loving embrace and sticking their tongues out at the camera drifted across the screen. What air remained in his lungs gushed out of him as he tracked the image. The blonde could only have been Olivia. Whenever Abi had spoken about her kid sister, she’d cursed almost as much as she’d smiled, but hidden beneath every insult was the same bone-deep love he shared with every member of his crazy, mixed-up family. Abi hadn’t been kidding, Olivia could have graced the cover of any beauty magazine, but it was the image of the woman Olivia hugged that speared straight through his chest.

  Silken auburn hair cascaded down either side of Abi’s face to pool about her shoulders as her image filled the screen. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the photo faded and another one materialized in the opposite corner of the screen. This one showed Abi flipping the bird to the camera with a canary-yellow scarf covering her head. The image must have been taken shortly after the previous one with Olivia, because Abi wore the same black X-Men T-shirt, only now she wore a scarf and a pissed-off expression that somehow made her even more unforgettable. With each photo floating across the monitor, the parts of her life she’d shared slowly clicked into place until he felt he’d known her a hell of a lot longer than the twelve and a bit hours they’d been in the air.

  In every photo capturing her parents, her mum and dad had been embracing, holding hands, sitting on each other’s laps, or kissing. Even through the faded, grainy, out-of-focus images, her parents’ love for each other and their daughters lit up the screen. Abi had gotten her attitude and gearhead from her mechanic dad, who looked capable of lifting engines out of cars with his bare hands, but her mind-numbing smile, unforgettable eyes, and playfulness were all her mum’s. Mary Williams reminded him of every perfect TV mum he’d watched growing up, only chubbier. Abi’s childhood had been filled with everything a kid should have—love, laughter, and security—and then it’d all been torn away by some drunk fucker in a pickup truck. Even the decade that had passed hadn’t hidden Abi’s grief when she’d shared the agony of the night the police knocked on her door and told Olivia and her their parents were dead.