by Ariel Tachna
“Nice to officially meet you all,” Sam said. “I’m Sam, Neil’s brother, and I guess Caine’s office manager, at least until we can get everything straightened out with the inheritance taxes and everything. I don’t know if he’ll need me after that.”
“He’d rather be out with Macklin on the station,” Jesse said. “As long as you’re willing to put up with the station and the job, he’ll keep you around.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Sam asked.
“Because a lot of people think life on a station is all romantic, like you see in the movies,” Jeremy answered before Jesse could, “when really it’s a lot of isolation and hard work, extremes of temperature, and the weather trying to beat the shit out of you. There’s nothing romantic about life on a station.”
Chris and Jesse snickered.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t have a romance on a station,” Jeremy said, rolling his eyes, “because that obviously happens. We’ve got three couples on this station right now who met here, and that’s just the ones I know about. That’s not what I mean. I mean the way it’s portrayed in movies. We saw it every year at Taylor Peak. We’d hire on these young guys, all fresh-faced and convinced they were setting off on some grand adventure. Half of them didn’t even make it through a single season, much less come back.”
“I’m not working under any illusions,” Sam said, “but I have a roof over my head, food to eat, and a job that uses my skills. That’s a little hard to complain about.”
“We’ll see what you say in the middle of July, when it’s freezing cold, or in the middle of December when it’s so hot you can barely breathe,” Jeremy said.
“That sounds like a challenge to me,” Sam said, not quite believing his own temerity. “What do I get if I make it? If I last a year?”
“All the beer you want for a year,” Jeremy replied without batting an eyelash. “If you make it through April of next year, I’ll buy you beer for a year.”
“Deal,” Sam said, holding out his hand to shake on it.
Jeremy sealed the deal, and if Sam didn’t pull his hand back as quickly as he might once have done, no one seemed at all bothered by it.
“I asked Macklin if I could take the supply run tomorrow,” Jeremy said, changing the subject completely. “Anybody need anything while I’m in town?”
“I could use a couple of things,” Chris said. “I’ll make you a list.”
“No, I’m good,” Jesse said.
“Do you think I could come with you?” Sam asked. “I don’t have much of anything I’ll need for the winter up here, but boots and coats aren’t something I can ask someone else to buy for me.”
“There’s an extra seat in the ute,” Jeremy said with a shrug. “The drive’ll go faster with someone to talk to.”
It wasn’t as enthusiastic a response as Sam might have hoped, but it was better than a refusal. Sam reminded himself Jeremy had a history with Neil, even if Sam didn’t know the details, and that of course Jeremy would be cautious since he didn’t know if Sam would share Neil’s opinions. “Thanks. What time are you planning on leaving?”
“As soon as we’re done with breakfast,” Jeremy replied. “It’s a four-hour drive to Boorowa.”
“I’ll be ready.”
Caine stood up at the front of the room and whistled for everyone’s attention before they could say anything else.
“I want to thank everyone for their hard work this season,” he began. “None of you had to take a chance on Lang Downs when we hired you in the spring, whether this was your first season on the station or another of many. None of you had to take a chance on me. This year could have been a disaster for us. New owner, a lot of new men, but it wasn’t, and that’s due to your hard work, particularly Neil, Kyle, and Ian, who worked harder than I would have asked of anyone. We had a good summer, and you’ll all find a little something extra in your final paycheck in the morning. I wish you all the best this winter and look forward to seeing you again next spring.”
The jackaroos all applauded at the news of a bonus.
“He’s too generous,” Jesse muttered. “Half of them barely even earned their actual paycheck, much less a bonus.”
“He can afford to be generous,” Sam said. “Whether they deserve it or not, the station is in the black.”
“That’s good news,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know if this was truth or Devlin being a bastard, but I heard rumors the station had a rough year before Lang died, maybe even a rough couple of years.”
Sam didn’t say anything since he wasn’t sure how much Caine was comfortable sharing with his employees, but it hadn’t just been rumors. The numbers hadn’t been bad enough to put the station in danger, but Sam had seen a couple of years in the red as he’d looked back through the accounts to get a sense of trends. Weather and circumstances beyond the graziers’ control had played into that, Sam knew, but Caine had turned it around. He and Macklin were a formidable team.
Jeremy grinned. “Of course, knowing Devlin, he probably made it all up to deflect attention from the issues Taylor Peak was having at the same time.”
“Mismanagement aside, I would think weather conditions and that sort of thing would affect both stations fairly equally,” Sam said. “I mean, it’s not like they’re on opposite sides of the territory. They’re neighbors.”
“Yes, much to my brother’s dismay,” Jeremy said. “I, on the other hand, think it’s bloody brilliant.”
“Why’s that?” Sam asked.
“Because anything that annoys my brother is bloody brilliant in my book,” Jeremy replied. “He’s a misogynistic, racist, homophobic bigot, and I’m done defending him, no matter what your brother thinks. He didn’t like it when I told him that, but I’m done with him, so it doesn’t matter.”
Sam noticed the nearly faded bruise around Jeremy’s eye, the slight discoloration mostly hidden by his tanned skin. “That how you got the black eye?”
“I might have said a few things he didn’t like,” Jeremy said. “It was worth it, though, and he looked worse than I did when I was done with him.”
Sam took a moment to be grateful to Caine for changing Neil’s homophobic attitude before Sam arrived. Without that, Sam could all too easily imagine them coming to blows, only Sam wouldn’t have acquitted himself nearly as well as Jeremy seemed to have done. Sam’s strength had always been numbers, not fists.
SAM LAY in bed that night and replayed the conversation with Jeremy, and the easy way he accepted Jesse and Chris. Sam hadn’t noticed anything in their behavior right away, but it had become more obvious over the course of the evening. Jeremy hadn’t even blinked when Seth had made an obnoxious adolescent comment about how close they were sitting together and nobody wanting to see that. Jesse had casually smacked the teen on the back of the head, and everyone, Seth included, had laughed. If anything, Chris and Jesse had sat even closer after that.
Not being homophobic didn’t make Jeremy gay, though, and that was what Sam found himself wishing could be true. He had taken to observing the jackaroos in the canteen since he arrived, and already he could tell the difference between the year-rounders and the seasonal ones. They moved differently, looked different, carried themselves with a different kind of confidence, like somehow the land beneath their feet grounded them in a way it didn’t do for the seasonal employees.
Jeremy had arrived on Lang Downs the same day Sam had, but Jeremy moved the same way Neil and Macklin did, with the innate grace and confidence that came from knowing what they were doing and knowing they could handle anything the tablelands threw at them. Sam found it insanely attractive.
Of course even if Jeremy was gay, he’d never look twice at someone like Sam, who didn’t know the first thing about sheep and probably wouldn’t last an hour without doing something stupid.
It wouldn’t stop him from looking, though, or from fantasizing occasionally. He’d hooked up with some attractive men over the past year, but none of them held a candle to Jeremy’s ruggedness
. He had lines around his eyes from squinting against the sun and a scar on his cheek, long since healed. He wasn’t classically handsome by any stretch of the imagination, but Sam had seen the wicked sense of humor in his blue-green eyes, the way they came alive as he told tale after tale of growing up on a sheep station and all the antics of a teenaged boy. He’d run his fingers through his short blond hair at one point, leaving it in spiky disarray. Sam figured that would be enough to feed his dreams for weeks, because unlike the men he’d hooked up with or the ones he’d watched furtively on porn sites, Jeremy was for real.
It would be easy to beat off right now to the memory of laughing eyes, mussed hair, and a crooked smile, but the alarm would go off early, and when it did, Sam would get to spend the entire day with Jeremy. That was far better than an empty fantasy. With that thought in mind, he rolled onto his side and willed himself to sleep.
JEREMY WAS actually surprised to see Sam at breakfast the next morning. The seasonal jackaroos, the ones who had worked their last day the day before, had all taken the excuse to sleep in, and even some of the year-rounders hadn’t made it up. If Lang Downs was anything like Taylor Peak, things were a little more relaxed in the winter, with less to do during the shorter days, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Sam, though, was in the same seat he’d been in every morning since his arrival at Lang Downs. Jeremy pretended he hadn’t noticed, but he couldn’t help himself.
Sam Emery was everything Jeremy wasn’t: controlled, polished, slick in a way Jeremy could never hope to be. Jeremy figured Sam could blend in at any business anywhere in the country, just walk into the office and start running the place. Jeremy hadn’t seen him in a suit yet—not exactly the kind of thing one wore on a sheep station—but even his casual clothes had a look about them that said he was used to wearing good clothes.
He knew what Devlin would say about someone like Sam, calling him a blow-in or worse, making fun of him for his “city ways” and his inability to blend in on the station, but from what Jeremy could see, no one at Lang Downs had received Sam that way. It helped that he wasn’t pretending to be a jackaroo. He’d come for a visit and then stayed, working in the big house on the accounts for the station. Jeremy had learned a lot of things at uni, studying animal management, but accounting hadn’t been one of them. He had a head for animals, not numbers, so he had the utmost respect for anyone who could manage the complexities of a station’s financials.
It didn’t hurt either that Sam was good-looking. Unlike most of the men Jeremy was used to seeing on the station, Sam actually looked like he’d been inside a barbershop in the past ten years. His dark hair was parted neatly and combed straight without any pretension, but Jeremy thought it fit him, fit the whole put-together thing Sam had going on. He had a high forehead, but that worked with the square jaw and strong chin. The only thing that threw off the impression of strength was the self-effacing expression Sam had worn every time Jeremy had laid eyes on him, like he was used to people looking right past him without even a second glance. Jeremy didn’t know what the hell was wrong with people if that was the treatment Sam had gotten used to, because Jeremy had a hard time looking away. With his luck, though, Sam was straight. Jeremy didn’t claim to have the most developed gaydar, but he wasn’t getting any vibes off Sam at all.
Of course he’d barely talked to the man, which might have something to do with it. He hadn’t approached, despite his attraction, when Sam was with Emery. He’d told Macklin he wouldn’t start anything with his right-hand man, and he’d meant it. Unfortunately that had made talking to Sam difficult because Sam was almost always with his brother. He’d practically sent Jason to get Sam last night when he’d realized Emery and his fiancée were gone for a few days, and the conversation had been light and easy, with Sam displaying none of the intolerance toward Chris and Jesse that Emery had reputedly shown toward Caine when he’d first found out Caine was gay. Jeremy took that as a good sign, but it didn’t mean anything more than Sam being more open-minded than his brother. Personally, Jeremy didn’t think that would be hard to do.
“Jeremy?”
Jeremy looked up at the sound of his name to see Sam standing on the other side of the table from where Jeremy sat. “Hi, g’morning. Let me just finish my coffee and we can go.”
“No rush,” Sam said. “I just wanted to let you know I was ready whenever you were. You did say you wanted to get an early start.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m done eating. I was just enjoying my coffee for a minute. It’s not many mornings we get to do that.”
“No, I’m getting that impression,” Sam said, taking the seat across from Jeremy. “I can always get another cup for us both if you want one. We can enjoy the quiet.”
“Why don’t you get us both a cup to go?” Jeremy suggested. “There will be plenty of quiet in the ute, and it’s getting cold too. The coffee will keep us warm until the heater kicks in.”
Sam smiled and walked toward the kitchen for more coffee. “Smooth, Taylor,” Jeremy muttered. “Real bloody smooth.”
He gulped the last few mouthfuls of his cooling coffee and pushed back from the table as Sam reappeared from the kitchen, a thermos and two tin cups in hand. “All set.”
“Me too,” Jeremy said. “Macklin gave me the keys last night, and Paul in Boorowa has the station’s order already.”
“Yes, I saw the bill come in from last month,” Sam said. “It seems like there’s a standing order, at least for summer.”
“That’s the way we did it at Taylor Peak,” Jeremy confirmed as they climbed into the ute and started across Lang Downs. “Devlin had a regular order on file with Paul, and then he’d call the day before and update it if we needed anything extra or different than usual.”
“And if you needed less?”
“That never happened. Devlin always ordered just a little less than he thought we’d need so there wouldn’t be any waste. Everyone hated Fridays and almost all the jackaroos went to town on Saturdays. Devlin counted it as a win because then he didn’t have to feed them.”
“That’s….”
“You can say it,” Jeremy said. “He’s my brother, but we don’t have the same kind of relationship you have with your brother. He’s a tightwad and more than a bit of a bastard at the best of times.”
“Is that why you left?” Sam asked.
“That’s part of it,” Jeremy said. “I got tired of listening to him, of him thinking he could run my life. I figured I’d throw myself on Macklin’s mercy for a few days. I didn’t expect him to offer me a job.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, I know that feeling. I called Neil, needing a place to stay for a few days while I sorted things out with my ex-wife. I didn’t expect it to turn into a job offer.”
Ex-wife. Jeremy’s stomach clenched with disappointment. That was that, then. Sam wasn’t gay.
“Sorry to hear about the divorce,” he said automatically.
“Don’t be,” Sam replied. “Yeah, it hurts to admit the marriage failed, but honestly, we’re both better off this way. We weren’t right for each other. I’ll never be what she wanted, and she wasn’t ever what I wanted. I married her to appease my old man.”
“He gone now?” Jeremy understood the weight of familial expectation even if he’d always managed to resist it. He and Sam had more in common than it had first appeared.
“Yeah, he’s been gone for a couple of years. We were still bumping along then, but I lost my job a year and a half ago, and that was pretty much the end. It just took us a few months to realize it. When she asked for a separation and then a divorce, I didn’t fight it.”
Six
SAM WAS surprised how quickly the drive to Boorowa seemed to go. He had been a little nervous about all that time in the ute with Jeremy, since he barely knew the other man, but they’d chatted easily the entire time, mostly about the station and what to expect over the winter. Jeremy had been a font of information, taking the time to answer all Sam’s questions with more patience than Neil
had shown the few times Sam had tried to ask him about the coming months.
“Thanks for being so patient with all my questions,” Sam said as they reached the main road into Boorowa. “Neil forgets I don’t have his experience.”
“No offense to your brother, because he’s a fantastic jackaroo, but he’s got some things to learn about managing people if he’s going to work as Macklin’s foreman,” Jeremy said. “There’s a lot more to it than just giving orders.”
“He’s never had a lot of patience with what he considers stupid questions,” Sam admitted. “The problem is he’s never really figured out that they aren’t stupid questions to the person asking them. Besides, it’s not like Macklin is planning on retiring anytime soon, at least not from the impression Caine gave me.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s not,” Jeremy said. “He’s just like my father and Mr. Lang. He’ll die working that station rather than retire from it, but he’s not just the foreman now. He’s the boss, and sometimes it helps to have a layer between the boss and the jackaroos. It shouldn’t make any difference. The orders still come from the boss regardless of who gives them, but I’ve seen it year after year. It might take Macklin a season or two to get used to the idea, but he’ll see it before long. Your brother is the most logical candidate, but he’s not the only one, and if he wants the job, he’s going to have to figure out how to explain things to the blow-ins without making them reconsider their decision to work on the station.”
“I’ll mention it to him,” Sam said.
“Don’t tell him I gave you the advice,” Jeremy warned. “He’ll ignore it out of spite.”
“What’s that all about, anyway?” Sam asked.
Jeremy shrugged. “Blaming me for my brother’s idiocy. Devlin has made some enemies on Lang Downs, but I’m not my brother, something your brother doesn’t seem interested in acknowledging.”