The Last McAdam

by Holly Ford

  Tess started raising her eyebrows in disbelief, but suddenly he was laughing, and Tess found she was too.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, getting up and holding out his hand to her. ‘Let’s dance.’

  Tess shook her head. ‘I really don’t …’

  ‘Please,’ he grinned. ‘Give a guy a break. It’s been a rough week.’ Somehow, her hand had found its way into his. ‘Dance with me once. Then I’ll stop hassling you, I promise.’

  As Nate led her onto the floor, the DJ, tiring of ABBA at last, switched to Louis Armstrong. Tess felt a stab of panic. Quite apart from anything – everything – else, she was a terrible dancer. There was no way she could dance to this.

  She flushed as Nate’s thumb travelled over the ball of hers, settling briefly in the well of her wrist as he positioned her right hand in his, the fingers of his other hand spreading over the small of her back, bracing her in his arms. Left with little choice, Tess laid her free hand on the rock-hard curve of his broad shoulder as he began to move.

  Oh! He was actually good at this. All she had to do was relax and let him … Let him take her wherever he wanted … As, distracted by that thought, she failed to keep up, their hips met. Jesus. A slow, warm current flooded up through her body as his thigh moved between hers. Nate stopped, his arms tightening around her, helping her keep her balance. Breasts pressed to his shirt, Tess raised her gaze to his face. God, those eyes. Looking into them was leaving her with about as much sense as a hare in the headlights. With no conscious will of her own, she felt her lips part.

  Wordlessly, Nate led her out into the darkness. Behind the marquee, still half in his arms, Tess looked into his face again. Then, somehow, recklessness sparking from his body to hers, her arms were around his neck and his mouth was on hers. Oh, it was longer than she cared to remember since she’d felt something this … Tess dug her fingers into the muscles of his neck as his kiss hardened … this intense.

  His hand was in the loose hair above her plait, his lips finding her neck, the hollow of her throat as she raised it to him. Tess gasped. She had a feeling that if he let go of her now she’d probably fall over. Suddenly Nate stopped, still holding her close. Tess opened her eyes.

  The kid with the champagne tray was staring at them from the door of the catering van.

  ‘Come on,’ Nate grinned, his voice low as he took her hand once more and set out across the grass.

  Eyes adjusting to the starlight, Tess followed as best she could, hampered as much by the weakness in her knees as the height of her heels. God, this was crazy. Crazy …

  ‘Hang on.’ Tugging back on his hand, she bent to take off her shoes.

  Sinking to his knees in the grass, Nate slipped the straps from her feet, his lips moving up her leg, brushing the inside of her thigh as he rose.

  Oh … Tess closed her eyes briefly. Crazy good …

  Her shoes dangling from his hand, Nate led the way on into the trees. High above, a warm breeze fluttered the dry leaves. Leaning back against the smooth bark of a gum, Tess raised her face to his, arching her body to meet him as he kissed her. Gently this time, his hand sliding through the long slit in her skirt, rising beneath the satin, moving slowly over her outer thigh, skimming the slender strap of her G-string and on to her waist, his braced fingertips digging with sudden power into her ribs before, feather-soft again, they met the skin of her breast, easing down the lace of her bra, his touch on her nipple electric. Tess groaned.

  Drawing back, Nate slipped the straps of her dress from her shoulders, his own breath catching as the satin fell to the ground. He took her by the hips again, his fingers caressing her stomach as his eyes moved over her body.

  Raising her hands to his neck, Tess unbuttoned his shirt, peeling the cotton back from his shoulders. God. No wonder he felt so good. She ran her hands down his chest and over the ripples of his abs.

  The night air hit her breasts as he unhooked her bra. He caught her hands, holding her against the tree, his grip circling her wrists very gently. Experimentally, Tess tested it. Nate let go.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked softly, his hand grazing her breast.

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ Winding her arms around his neck, she pushed her fingers up the long muscles and into his silky curls, pressing her body into his hands as she kissed him hard. A long shiver ran through her as he parted her thighs.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No,’ she breathed, as he fingered the lace edge of her briefs. God, no …

  Nate’s left hand wandered to his back pocket. Tess felt his attention shift. Letting out a long sigh, he rested his forehead on hers.

  ‘Look, I just have to zip back to the table.’

  Oh, bloody hell.

  ‘I won’t be a minute.’ He kissed her lips softly. ‘Don’t move, okay?’ he smiled, shrugging his shirt back on.

  Smothering another groan, Tess watched him head back towards the tent. Without the warmth of his body, it was a little cold. She pulled her dress back up. As the seconds passed, she looked around guiltily. Was she really going to go through with this? With a guy she had no intention of ever seeing again? A total stranger? Here, in Ash Fergusson’s shelterbelt? She wasn’t even drunk.

  And that smile he’d given her … As if he was so utterly confident she’d stay there, half-naked and pressed to a tree, just waiting for him to come back. Tess supposed girls generally did. But – did she want to be one of them? Sinking to her heels, she scouted the undergrowth for her bra. And her shoes. Maybe if she looked hard she’d find her self-esteem down there as well.

  Having composed herself as well as she could, she slunk out of the trees and, taking a roundabout route, made her way back to her HiLux. Crazy bad, she told herself. That’s what that would have been.

  Driving out, Tess felt a pang of guilt at the thought of Nate, condom in hand, returning to find her gone. Then again, the night was still young. He could always save it for the bridesmaid.

  Two

  Five weeks later, all her worldly goods in the back of the HiLux yet again, Tess left a leaner, meaner, flourishing Southdowns Farm behind her and headed north to her next assignment. The climb in the road was almost imperceptible, but it wasn’t long before the lush green of the lowland farms gave way to harder country. Within a few hours she was turning off the main highway, the wheels of the ute rumbling over the old wooden boards of the one-lane bridge as she crossed the river and took the narrow, well-patched road that hugged the flanks of the Main Divide.

  Broken Creek Station would be Tess’s first New Zealand high country run, just about the only type of farm her stint this side of the Ditch had left to throw at her. Her employer, Carnarvon Holdings, had picked the property up at mortgagee auction for a song. Which, in Tess’s opinion, was all it was worth. Understocked, overstaffed and only just emerging from the mire of tenure review, it was hard to see, on paper at least, how it could be turned around. For the first time in her career, Tess wasn’t sure she could solve Carnarvon’s problems.

  She’d said as much to Mark, Carnarvon’s New Zealand CEO, when he’d sent her the file.

  ‘You’ll think of something,’ he’d told her, his confidence rolling down the line from the Auckland office. ‘You always do.’

  Tess hoped to god he was right. She’d never forgive herself if she let him down. Since he’d picked her out of a paddock in Gippsland seven years ago, Mark had been more than a mentor to her. In a strictly professional sense, of course. Despite being alone in the cab, Tess blushed. Her more private feelings for Mark were nobody’s business. Especially his.

  As he’d moved up through Carnarvon Australia’s ranks, Mark had taken her along with him. The low-level job on the company’s Gippsland property had been the best Tess could get when she finally made it home after four years of uni and one working on a dairy support unit in New Zealand. Thanks to Mark, within eighteen months she was managing her first farm.

  When he was sent to take charge of Carnarvon’s New Zealand expansion, it had seem
ed only natural that Tess would go too. But in all the time they’d spent together, all the travelling they’d done, the nights in dodgy pubs and country motels, Tess hoped and believed she’d never given Mark – or his wife – any reason to suspect that she thought of him as more than a friend and colleague.

  She eyed the unknown country ahead. To her right, the broken piles of an old railway bridge jutted out of the riverbed, high and dry except for the narrow brown rush of its central channel. The main road north had moved to the other side of the valley decades before, and the small towns that still clung to this side of the river seemed to do so by the skin of their teeth, sustained by willpower and – judging by the cafes and B&Bs – some more adventurous tourists.

  At a school sign, Tess slowed. A few metres on from the single prefab classroom in its wide, neat grounds, the rural delivery van waited on the verge to let her pass, and she raised her hand to the driver. He didn’t know her yet, of course. But he would soon.

  Another ten kilometres up the road, a lone pub, a severe-looking concrete block number, sported optimistic signs for coffee and campervan parking. Just over the next one-lane bridge, Tess found, as promised, the turn-off to Broken Creek Station. Above the course of the busy, boulder-strewn side creek she’d just crossed, a single lane of heavy shingle climbed into the hills – seventeen kilometres into them, according to the road sign. Nailed to the post beneath it, a homemade placard read ‘No Exit’.

  Hoping there were no stock trucks coming the other way, Tess ground cautiously up the track, juddering over its patches of exposed rock. At the top of the first gradient, the tussock opened out and the track widened, looking more like the road its sign had so boldly proclaimed it to be. A little wind began to sing in the HiLux’s radiator. Nostrils filling with dust and the clean smell of dry grass, Tess put her foot down. To her left, the creek kept her company, a silver ribbon cutting the tussock.

  Eventually the road climbed again, leaving the creek behind. At the top of the saddle, Tess pulled over, cutting the engine, and looked down over the valley of Broken Creek Station. There was some solid grazing down there on the river flats. Or at least there could be, with a decent irrigation plan.

  The surrounding hills showed little evidence of the fire that had swept them four years ago, destroying the property’s summer grazing and – Tess shuddered – much of its stock. Fanned by atrocious winds, the blaze had burned for over a week, sweeping into the government reserve to the north, and even threatening the Fergussons over the ridge at Glencairn. When it emerged that a Broken Creek employee had started the fire, the station was faced with the bill for putting it out. The final straw, Tess suspected, that had forced Broken Creek into liquidation.

  There’d been an insurance payout, of course. But whatever Broken Creek’s former owners had spent the money on, it hadn’t been restocking. These days the property didn’t winter over much except lawyers.

  God, it was majestic, though. Tess wound her window down, revelling in the eerie, windswept silence. She could see nothing moving over the hills but the shadows of the cumulous towers above. The previous owners had run this place for nearly a hundred years, a little kingdom. She could understand how a family might think themselves immune to the modern world living here. Get stuck in tradition. Set in their ways. But the twenty-first century would always find a way in.

  Sometimes it came by HiLux. Tess turned the ignition back on.

  Her first job, when she got down there, was to clear out the dead wood. Two permanent stockmen, a stock manager, plus a full-time handyman – who ran with that, these days? It was thirty years since a property this size had needed a headcount that high. With the exception of the stock manager, they all had to go, and soon. They’d be gone already but, as it turned out, they had surprisingly robust contracts.

  Still – Tess sighed – a way would have to be found. Not that she liked firing people. Who the hell did? It was just the way things were, that was all. At least she could keep the stock manager on. In fact, she was counting on him to help her find her feet and get them through the autumn muster. Of course, once Carnarvon appointed a permanent farm manager, he’d probably have to go too. But at least he’d have the winter to look for a job.

  In the rear-view mirror, above the long dust cloud she was raising, Tess eyed the hills now cutting her off from the outside world. It was going to be a lonely few months. Reaching the flats at last, she accelerated towards the homestead.

  From the road, all that could be seen of it was a thick macrocarpa hedge in need of a trim. Sheltering behind it from the valley winds was the 1920s weatherboard villa she’d seen in the photographs. In person, its charms were a little more faded. Sweeping up the wide gravel drive, she could see that the roofing iron between the villa’s high-gabled twin bays was grey with age, the wooden frames surrounding the wavy glass of the sash windows cracked and peeling. At the back of the house, a rectangle of weather-darkened concrete, its fissures sporting a crop of daisies, abutted the glassed-in porch. On a bench against the wall, an elderly man was asleep in the sun, a greying huntaway across his feet.

  At the slam of Tess’s ute door, the dog leapt up at last, baying furiously in the wrong direction. It was clearly blind as a bat. And so, she realised with some shock, as the man raised his head, was its owner.

  ‘That’ll do, Peg. She’s over here.’

  On his feet, he was tall and straight, his forearms wiry as a boundary fence. As he walked across the patio to meet her, Tess tried not to stare at the smooth, shiny skin around his eyes. Old grafts? Whatever had taken his sight, it must have been horribly painful.

  ‘You’ll be Miss Drummond.’ He held out his hand. ‘Stan Solomon.’

  ‘Tess,’ she said quickly, ‘please.’

  God. This was Broken Creek’s ‘handyman’? Quite apart from his lack of sight, he had to be all of eighty years old. As his hand enclosed hers in a strong, dry grip, Tess swallowed. She had to fire a blind octogenarian. How was she supposed to do that?

  ‘You’ll be wanting to get inside,’ he said. ‘Have a look around.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a word with the stock manager first.’ Tess looked the villa over. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘He might be up at the yards.’ Stan nodded. ‘Or the cottage. He’s been living there since his dad left.’

  Since his what? ‘His – his dad?’ Tess faltered, wondering if Stan might have a bit of dementia as well.

  ‘Bob Whittaker,’ he explained, in a tone that suggested he was having doubts about her faculties too.

  Oh, shit no. The newly bankrupted former owner? ‘He’s the Whittakers’ son?’

  ‘Well, he was Kate’s son, I suppose, really. That’s why he’s McAdam, not Whittaker. His dad died, oh, twenty-five years ago, now. Bob was Kate’s second husband.’

  McAdam. Of course. The name before Whittaker on Broken Creek Station’s lease. Why hadn’t she realised? For that matter, why hadn’t somebody told her? Carnarvon’s due diligence team must have missed it as well.

  Tess felt a sudden desire to sit down. The very last thing she needed, on top of everything else, was an embittered fourth-generation son of the family responsible for getting Broken Creek into this mess still running around the place.

  ‘Actually’ – Stan cocked an ear towards the back of the house – ‘that might be him over at the shed.’

  Tess couldn’t hear a thing. She peered towards the back hedge. ‘The shed?’

  ‘I’ll show you over.’

  He was kidding, right? As Stan set out confidently along the gravel path, Tess followed in his wake. The dog stayed where it was. As she rounded the corner of the house, she saw it tuck its white muzzle under its paw.

  Stan opened the weather-beaten wooden door that was serving as a gate in the hedge, letting in a gust of dust from the yard behind it. Across the shingle, a battered yellow flat deck was parked beside the six-bay implement shed. In the middle bay, a fit-looking guy in a singlet and jeans, his shirt dangling from
his waist, had his head buried in the innards of an ancient tractor.

  Tess stopped. Something about the spread of his well-muscled shoulders, the way they tapered down to his narrow hips, was making her very uneasy.

  ‘Mate,’ Stan said. It was mate, wasn’t it? ‘The new manager’s here.’

  He didn’t look up. ‘Tell her I’m busy. I’ll come by the house when I’m done.’

  Oh no. At the sound of his voice, Tess went cold. It couldn’t be …

  ‘No, Nate,’ Stan continued awkwardly, ‘I mean she’s here. Now. With me.’

  With the slowness of a nightmare, he straightened and turned. Oh, Jesus Christ. They stared at each other, a similar expression of horror spreading over Nate’s face to the one Tess imagined she must be wearing herself, as the seconds ticked away in excruciating silence.

  In an all-too-familiar gesture, Nate shrugged his shirt back on. Slowly, he wiped his oily hand on the back of his already dirty jeans and held it out to her. ‘I’m Nate McAdam,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Broken Creek.’

  Three

  Across the homestead’s kitchen table, Tess studied Nate McAdam as much as she dared, trying to reconcile the man in front of her now with the one she’d met five weeks before. His hair was fairer than she remembered, the light brown waves shot through with gold, and the only product in it today was a smear of engine oil. The shirt he was wearing was rather less tailored, and much less clean, but its missing button revealed a deep vee of stretched singlet that clung to the muscles she knew were below. His jaw was more heavily stubbled, his tan deeper. One thing hadn’t changed – his lean, lithe body still oozed confidence from every sun-kissed pore. But right now, Nate McAdam was thoughtful, his eyes serious, his broad forehead furrowed. Right now, he wasn’t having such a good time.

  Tess took a deep breath, then let it go. She still had no idea what she was going to say. She’d planned to begin her management of Broken Creek by sitting its stock manager down, one on one, softening him up with a couple of beers, and giving him a site-specific variation of her usual pep talk. Instead, she was squirming over a cup of tea in what had been her new employee’s family home, while Stan bustled around in the background, humming under his breath as he … He did what? Was he making dinner? Here, in her kitchen? What the hell for?