Unconditional (28 page)

I was both excited and curious to meet the Pattersons’ only son. They didn’t talk much about their absent children, probably because they didn’t talk much at all. I got the sense Mr. Patterson wasn’t altogether pleased with who their daughter had married. “Bunch of uptight, toffee-nosed snobs who think they’re too good for us,” was all he said when I asked about his in-laws on the first night, and something told me his relationship with his son wasn’t smooth. “Forgets he has parents, with how little he calls home.”

I was just about to cross the Kangaroo Creek property boundary when the walkie-talkie burst into life again. “Maci.” Mrs. Patterson’s voice scratched at the speaker, the device almost out of range. “I forgot. Can you remind my son if he doesn’t have a peace offering for his father, to get him a bottle of Chivas from the bottle-o? Over.”

“A peace offering? Over,” I asked.

“Yes. Raph was away for Wayne’s birthday. If he walks into the house today without something, there’ll be blood. Over.”

My
blood drained from my face. Raph?

Did she say
Raph
?

Surely she didn’t say Raph? Did she?

Lips tingling, heart thumping, I raised the walkie-talkie to my lips, depressed the com button and said, “Did you say Raph? Over.”

I released the button.

Waited.

All I got was silence.

“Mrs. P? Over.”

Silence. Still.

Damn it, I was out of range.

Head roaring, I placed the walkie-talkie back on the passenger seat, fixed my stare on the rain-soaked world outside the ute, gripped the steering wheel to keep my hands from shaking off my goddamn arms and drove.

I had to have heard wrong.

For starters, Raph’s last name was Jones.

Secondly, surely they would have mentioned that their son was at the same university I had been. Right? Hell, living in the same student dorm even.

Right?

But then, had I ever told them where I’d been living while in Sydney? No, I hadn’t. And Sydney uni was a huge place. The biggest university in Australia. What were the odds of getting to know someone there who didn’t study the same thing as you? And as I may have already pointed out, the Pattersons weren’t ones for wasting words on idle chitchat.

I drove for over an hour, adamant I was
not
going to find Raph at the bus stop. Sixty minutes of convincing myself Mrs. P had said Jase, or Chase, and I’d heard Raph because I was way too hung up on the guy for my own sanity.

Sixty minutes navigating the wild weather and trying to steady my wild heart.

Just as I was approaching the
Welcome to Gunnedah
sign, with its larger-than-life billboard featuring Miranda Kerr, who was born and bred in Gunnedah, hugging a koala, a terrifying thought struck me.

What if I
had
heard correctly and was about to find Raph at the bus stop?

What did I do then?

I lost control of the ute for a second.

Thankfully, I was alone on the road.

I gripped the wheel tighter, my knuckles turning to a hideous white as I did so. I sucked in a ragged breath.

If Raph was Mr. and Mrs. P’s son…if he was coming back to Kangaroo Creek station…if I had to see him…be in the ute with him…breathe the same air as him…

A wave of dizziness washed over me.

I yanked the ute to the side of the road, killed the engine and pressed my forehead to the steering wheel. My heart was attempting to prison break its way out of my chest. My tummy was revolting against my brain’s orders to stay unchurned and calm.

My pulse was mimicking Plenty’s college marching band’s drum line.

All in all, I was a mess. Because I knew the truth.

I was going to see Raph. It wasn’t a mistake. I hadn’t misheard Mrs. P. All the clues pointed toward the obvious. Mr. P’s chuckle that sounded like Raph’s, his similar body type—tall and lean with broad shoulders. Mrs. P’s eyes that were the same as Raph’s, the dimples, the aloof manner that hid a deep passion. The daughter overseas with her husband, whose family was
snobby
. If my interaction with the Delvanian royal family via Horn was anything to go by,
snobby
was an understatement.

The fact I was out on a working cattle ranch in the country, the very place Raph had told me he’d grown up, and was going to return to when he finished his studies…

All the clues pointed to one thing—I was going to be picking up Raphael Jones from the bus stop. Raph. The guy I’d fallen in love with. The guy who’d declared he’d fallen in love with me, only to screw Shelly White a few hours later.

Raph.

Did he know I was here? Staying in his parents’ guesthouse? Was he coming to see his mom and dad for the weekend? Or for
me
?

Cold anger and exasperation shot through my disbelief. I raised my head from the steering wheel, restarted the engine and pulled out onto the road.

Too bad if it was the latter. We’d done our thing and our thing was over. Our thing was always going to have a limited shelf life, and the use-by date had expired over three and a half weeks ago. Just in the same way my life of normality would expire when my Parkinson’s became too much to handle.

Raph obviously hadn’t wasted time moving on and I was going to show him I hadn’t given him a second thought since leaving Sydney. I would treat him as if we were just passing acquaintances, barely look at him. Barely talk to him. Blasé.

Easy.

A perfect plan.

Bravo, me.

I kept ahold of that resolve for the remainder of the drive into Gunnedah. I clung to it with a fierce grip as I collected Mr. P’s arthritis medication from the drugstore. I damn near strangled it as I bought the nicest, sexiest bra and panties set I could find from the town’s one and only department store (a Target, and man, was it small). I felt it slipping away as I sat in the ute across from the empty bus shelter, the bra and panties in its plastic bag shoved in the space behind the driver’s seat.

Bra and panties? Why the fuck had I bought a brand new bra and panties set? What was I thinking?

A groan escaped me. My hand shook. A numb chill filled my lips. Ah, this was going to be bad.

Really bad.

I couldn’t do it. I had to get out of—

Before I could start the engine and speed away—to where, you ask? I have no freaking clue. Iceland?—a mud-covered Greyhound bus pulled to a halt at the bus stop, the squeal of its brakes slicing through the constant drumming of the rain.

Whoops. There went the blood in my face again. Damn it.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I was literally trapped by my own body and brain in the car. It had nothing to do with my Parkinson’s and everything to do with my fear of seeing Raph.

A thousand heartbeats later, the bus pulled away.

And there he was. Oh fuck, there he was.

Standing under the small shelter, as gorgeous and stunning and handsome and sexy as ever.

He was wearing a pair of black jeans and a blue polo shirt, his baseball cap and, despite the bleak weather, black sunglasses. Hanging from his right shoulder was a backpack. In his left hand was a bunch of wilted flowers. Roses.

I stared at him through the mud-and-water-streaked window and let out a wobbly whimper.

This was going to hurt. A lot.

He saw the ute before I opened the door.

A smile pulled at his lips, lips I remembered all too well, and without hesitation or care for the rain, he strode across the road.

Straight for me.

Well, straight for the ute. I suspect
he
suspected it was his mom behind the wheel. Not the American girl who broke his—

He yanked open the door and bent at the waist to lean inside a little, rain trickling from his shoulders. “Hey, Mu—”

His smile faded.

My heart exploded. “Hi, Raph,” I croaked.

Yeah, so much for being blasé.

Dark sunglasses regarded me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

My heart imploded this time. At least that cleared up any confusion he’d come to Gunndedah to see—

“I mean,” he went on, voice cut with frustrated annoyance, “I
was
expecting to see you. You’re why I’m here. I came here to see you. But I thought Mum would—” Shaking his head, he held up a finger on the hand holding the bunch of wilted roses, straightened and then slammed the door.

I sat frozen in my seat. He’d come here to see
me
? Had he really just said…

I felt the ute shift a little as he dumped his pack in the back. I strained to see him in the rearview mirror but the mud-splattered back window and increasing rain made it impossible. God, how long did it take to re-hook a cover over the back?

And while I was asking ridiculous questions, was I
seriously
anxious and impatient for him to climb into the car with me? Was I?

Was I?

The passenger door opened before I got a chance to ponder the answer.

Raph dumped himself—dripping wet—onto the seat, slammed the door and fixed me with a black-sunglasses stare. “Maci…” he murmured, a second before he captured my face in his damp hands and crushed my lips with his.

The kiss was greedy. Hungry. Crazy.

It took me completely by surprise. I stiffened, every fiber in my body on fire. He was kissing me. He’d come to Gunnedah to see me and he was kissing me.

He was kissing me.

So I kissed him back. It was insanity. It was lunacy. It was self-torture. But I kissed him back.

Holy crap, did I kiss him back.

There wasn’t any chance of me doing anything else but.

We made love to each other with our tongues. Raph sucked mine into his mouth for a tantalizing moment before nibbling on my bottom lip and plundering my mouth again. His hands buried in my hair. He moaned.

I scrambled for the collar of his shirt, needing to feel his flesh under my palms. I smoothed my hands up the strong column of his neck, fisting them in the damp strands of his hair at his nape. He moaned again, a raw, desperate sound I echoed.

When he moved his hands to the front of my shirt, when he popped my buttons, I surrendered completely to the moment. When he dragged his mouth down my throat, over my collarbone to claim my left nipple with his lips through the lace of my bra, I died in the pleasure he awoke in me.

I rolled my head back, tightened my fist in his hair and groaned his name, undone by the sheer urgency of his mouth worshipping my nipple.

Right there. In the ute. On the street. In Gunnedah.

It was perfect.

So perfect.

I never wanted it to end.

But it did. I don’t know how long later, but it did. Raph raised his head from my breasts, plundered my mouth again, whimpered my name against my lips and then pressed his forehead to mine.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “That was… Fuck, American girl, I’ve missed you.”

I gurgled out a weak laugh. “The feeling is mutual.”

We sat that way for another indeterminate length of time. It wasn’t until our breathing settled somewhat that I opened my eyes, flattened my palms to his chest and straightened in my seat.

At some point during the kiss his sunglasses had fallen off and he regarded me now, an unreadable emotion burning in his dark eyes.

The inside windows of the ute were fogged up. A little part of me, the part that still wanted to be a child, ached to lift my finger and draw something on the glass. Maybe a heart with an RJ and MR inside it.

Instead, I met Raph’s gaze, drew in a steadying breath and said, “How did you know I was here, Raph? Why are
you
here? And more to the point, why isn’t your last name Patterson?”

Shakes Be Damned

“I’m here for
you
, Maci,” he answered, tracing my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “I’m here because I love you, because the last three and a half weeks have been fucking hell and I can’t stand to be away from you.

“I’m here because when I was talking to Mum last night and she told me an American environmentalist was staying with them, I knew it was fate giving us a second chance.

“I’m here because Osmond told me I was being a stupid fuckwit letting you walk away from me, and for the first time since I’ve known the bastard, I had to agree with him.

“I’m here because no matter what you say, I don’t care you have Parkinson’s disease. I don’t care you don’t want anyone to look after you. I
want
to look after you. I want to be with you, Maci. I want to see where the road goes together and I want to hold your fucking hand, whether it’s shaking or not. Do you understand?”

I stared at him. Every word he’d just said, every syllable he’d uttered, stroked my senses.

What could I say? What could I do?

I opened my lips, willing my brain to come to the party.

“What about Shelly White?” I asked on a strangled breath.

Oh great. Way to go, Rowling. You idiot.

Disgust etched Raph’s face and he shook his head. “I didn’t do anything with her. When you saw her leaving my room, I swear I didn’t… God, I couldn’t. I love you, Maci. No matter how angry you’d made me, I wouldn’t just hop into bed with the first girl who threw herself at me.”

“But she did throw herself at you?” Why was I torturing myself?

“She did. And I told her to fuck off. When she tried to shove her hand down my jeans I told her to get out or I’d call Horn.”

My stomach knotted some more. I studied his face, aching for him to be telling me the truth. A mental image of Shelly sliding her expertly manicured fingers down Raph’s jeans, wrapping them around his dick, tormented me. “So Horn’s still around?” I asked. It was the least important thing to grab on to in his declaration, but it was also the least painful.

Raph nodded. “He is. And last night he told me about the bribe the royal family offered you.”

I blinked.

Raph traced my bottom lip again, his eyes following the slow path of his thumb. “And
also
told me I was being a moron for letting you get away. Apparently, he tendered his resignation two days ago after a request from the royal family he didn’t approve of. He’s got a week left with them, guarding the crown princess.”