With each kilometre the propellers of the copter ate up, the more tension eased from my shoulders. The closer to home I got, the more easily I breathed.
“Want me to take the other route, sir?” the pilot asked through the aircraft’s coms.
“You need to ask?” I clipped, my eyebrows rising into my hairline. It was an unwritten rule with all the pilots that they add the longer route to their flight plan. Waterford from the air was just as unpleasant as from the road. No matter that she wasn’t even there, I didn’t need a reminder of the most humiliating and painful day in my life.
“Sorry, sir, just that the weather is closing in, thought we’d cut through and beat it.”
I looked out the small window and saw the dark looming clouds threatening to spill a deluge of rain.
“Fuck!” I clipped pissed off, rolling my shoulders. Yep, the tension back just at the thought of flying over her family’s farm.
“Do it, but do it as quickly as possible,” I ordered unreasonably, receiving a ‘what the fuck does that mean’ look from the pilot. They had their orders, but I never gave them an explanation for the hard no to fly that way back to Cattle Ridge.
The less people who knew, the better. Going back without my bride caused a good deal of attention for many months, I fielded all of them in the same way.
Mind your own fucking business.
It worked most of the time, and when it didn’t, my fist in some guy’s face who lost the bet with his mates and taunted me at the local pub did the trick. I soon got a reputation, another one. Don’t ask Lenoxx Hott where his wife was, if you did, you would most likely find yourself with an impression of my fist in your face.
It worked though, no one asked me to my face. No one dared asked my brothers, and no one even considered asking my mother. My business was just that, mine. The gossips of Cattle Ridge weren’t going to use my heartache as conversation material on Friday night at the pub or Saturday morning at CWA meetings.
Staring down the pilot with my icy-blue eyes, he eventually caved and gave me a curt nod.
“Okay, fly quick as possible, you got it, boss.”
Ignoring the dripping sarcastic reply, I took off my headset and settled back in my seat. The cockpit was small but comfy. Being able to afford such a luxury like a helicopter was a testament to how far my brothers and I had come with the farm. Once, a decent success as a local beef supplier, thanks to my parents, now, global thanks to herculean efforts from my brothers and I. Our father passed away twelve months ago, he saw the growth of the family business, I just wished he was still here to bask in all the glory that came with a multi-million dollar contract, with prospects of growth further into Asia. For him to see the brand, he and Mum sat down together and drew on a piece of loose-leaf paper with a biro, and it’s success; it hurt that he wasn’t able to hang on longer.
My relationship with my dad suffered through the years. He lived life hard and treated the people around him the same way. Growing up under the parentage of Will Hott, my brothers and I learnt to be tough from a very young age. Mum did her best to infuse a softer side, kissing our boo-boos, cuddling us when she tucked us in at night. Dad insisted on a more tough-love approach to raising his three sons, and by Christ, he had been tough.
The only time I disobeyed and turned my back on him completely blew up in my face. My moment of independence lasting for seven months and three weeks.
All but the three weeks perfect.
Sticking my hand in my blazer pocket, my fingers sought the small keyring I carried around with me every day. Why I kept the front door key to the shitty flat I shared with Makena four long years ago was a mystery. The bigger question was why hanging next to that key was a USB with the conversation that apparently convicted me of the crime of cheating on my wife. To this day, I refused to listen to it; instead, I tucked it away in a drawer for a year and went about purging Makena from my life and building the Hott empire, a very good distraction, a four year long distraction.
The next step to finally rid her from my mind was a big one.
Getting a divorce.
You would think a man such as myself, a CEO at the age of only twenty-eight, world businessman, fuck I even spoke Japanese for Christ’s sakes would have done this organised by now. But could I dial my legal department and order the process of divorce papers? Fuck no.
Instead, I had my PA transfer the tape recording onto a USB; with strict instructions, she not listen to it and hang it next to a brass copper key as a constant reminder that my heart no longer existed. And if that wasn’t enough of a reminder, I still wore the platinum and onyx wedding band Makena slipped onto my ring finger. I just wasn’t ready to take it off, much like signing the papers that would remove her from my life completely. Running my forefinger and thumb over the tiny piece of plastic, my ritual whenever Makena wormed her way into my mind from nowhere.
“Here we go, boss,” the pilot warned me, not that he needed to. A built-in radar informed me that the helicopter was close to the place where Makena once lived. For all I knew, she could be in Timbuctoo, not somewhere down below on her family’s property. I didn’t care where she was; all that I cared about was she adhered to my request and stayed the hell out of my way and life.
So far, so good.
Waterford was far enough away that there was no danger of running into one another in Cattle Ridge when I came back on the weekends. In fact, all her family stayed away from Cattle Ridge, and that suited me just fine. No one talked about the goings-on between the Hott and Rogers families.
They knew better. A fair share of the population of my small home town experienced the Hott brother’s temper at least once in their lives, even more, when it came to my dad’s.
Looking out the window, I couldn’t help but look down as we passed over Waterford Views, the name of the Rogers’ olive and peanut farm and what I saw shocked me.
The land that once was lush and green was close to barren, the olive groves Makena and I snuck off to, where we made out amongst the olive trees—completely gone. Not one tree in sight. Even the area where rows and rows of peanuts plants covered acres of ground … gone.
“What the fuck are you doing, old man?” I mumbled to myself, stretching over the pilot as we flew over dilapidated sheds and age-old tractors and machinery that needed to be donated to a museum.
“Not interested, hey?” the smartarse pilot quipped, his smirk itching to be smacked off his face.
Giving him a scorching scowl, the satisfaction I would usually feel when a grown man was on the receiving end of my trademark, bring an executive to his knee scowl, did not have the same effect. Instead, the image below us the only thought—the only worry on my mind.
Did Makena have any idea what her father’s legacy had turned into?
Wherever the hell she was!
MAKENA
Looking up at the black clouds in the sky, I narrowed my eyes and cursed viciously, not at the heavy rain that had been threatening all day. It wasn’t the reason I was out here on horseback swearing instead of enjoying the warm, crackling fire that was sure to be going in the open fire back at the house. And while we needed the rain, the parched paddocks stood testament to that–no, it was the red and black helicopter zooming low in the sky that had my temper rising to a dangerous level.
“Mr Haughty Arrogant Hott is back surveying over his kingdom,” I muttered through clenched teeth, watching the helicopter until it was just a speck in the distance, on its way to Cattle Ridge.
Under me, my horse, Banjo, pranced nervously. He was better than a barometer when it came to predicting a thunderstorm. Forgetting the aircraft and the infuriating cheating bastard in it, I urged Banjo forward. We needed the rain, yes, but a wet leather saddle and mud splattering all over you was not my idea of fun.
“Come on bud, let’s get back before you and I get drowned. Then maybe I can figure out how to pay off this month’s bridging loan payment,” I muttered, again through clenched teeth. When I found out
that Dad took out another loan behind my back to pay for two more bulls, to say I went berserk was putting it mildly. What the hell had he been thinking paying seventy thousand for the Hereford bulls to add to the farm’s breeding program? Dad had it in his mind that our black Angus herd would be better if we let a Hereford Bull amongst the cows. Two years ago, we, or rather he, gave up on growing nuts and olives and instead embarked on a process to breed cows to create the ultimate beef cattle breed, Black Herefords. In addition to the food we once grew, Dad also had a decent number of cattle as an extra source of income. We sold them mainly for beef, but the lure to breed was too much for Dad to ignore, as was the need to compete with his old nemesis, Will Hott. Paying sixty thousand for one bull two years ago, and going into more debt, but a manageable debt. Or so I thought.
Three months ago, when Dad passed away from a stroke, and everything in my world turned upside down again, my sister and I buried him on the property next to our mother and went about picking up the pieces. That was until Dad’s secret borrowing hobby reared its ugly head.
The family’s solicitor demanded a meeting with my sister and me, inviting the family bank manager and the family accountant. That had been a pleasant day—not.
The unpleasantness kept going when they laid out the amount of money Dad owed, hundreds of thousands of dollars borrowed against the land, the herd, every piece of machinery even if most of them were crap and outdated.
It also didn’t surprise me that skills I learned being a beautician when I was nineteen didn’t come in the least bit handy when under an old Massey Ferguson baler changing out a seized driveshaft.
I argued that the bank shouldn’t have allowed the loans to go through in the first place; the farm’s debt wasn’t a new thing. Dad barely operated the place in the black, ever. The blackest this farm saw were the cows in the paddocks and the storm clouds in the sky.
Thinking about my life sitting back in this old, worn saddle, my favourite from my childhood. It was old, it had a tear at the stirrup, and so many scratches on the seat from years of being tossed on the ground in the horse shed, but it remained the one I always went for first. It held some great memories of a time when I loved one person more than I loved anything.
Once, but no longer.
That love was ripped away from me one morning when I was expecting a life of love and all things wonderful with my husband. Instead, that love destroyed me, destroyed all my hopes and dreams.
A Mack truck couldn’t have done more damage to my heart than the photos and voice recording delivered to the front porch of the shabby love nest Lenoxx and I shared back in the inner suburb of Melbourne.
“Damn, I said the L-word,” I growled, angry at myself for saying his name. At least it was better than the N-word, to me, he had always been Noxx … my Noxx. Now, he was the arsehole who liked to fly his fancy arse helicopter home every weekend to his fancy arse cattle empire and count the acres and head of cattle he bought from under the poor cash-starved local farmers.
Not that I was keeping tabs on the king of cows, because I wasn’t. I couldn’t help that even forty kilometres away the news of the Hott brothers filtered through to little ole Waterford.
The ladies at the post office in town a helpful source of information about the goings-on of Noxx, Hendrixx and Fenixx Hott. All they knew about my relationship with Noxx was it ended four years ago, and I spent a year in Queensland with friends getting over him. No one, not even my father or sister, knew at the time Noxx and I got married months after we got in his grandfather’s ‘72 mint Ford Falcon XA and drove away from the only homes we ever knew to start our lives together away from our overbearing fathers.
And for a while, it was bliss. We found a flat, cheap enough so we could still afford to eat. We both got jobs pretty quickly, me at a beauty salon and Noxx in a foundry, and went about life and love. Three months into our new adventure, Noxx proposed, I said yes, and his brothers came to Melbourne to witness the best day of my life.
And it had been the absolute best day. We married in the small back garden of a friend who moved to the city from Cattle Ridge a few years earlier; we actually stayed with her and her boyfriend when we first arrived there while we looked for a place. Nell offered to let us have one of her spare rooms and go on her lease, but Noxx and I were keen to be alone, Noxx especially wanted our own space, something to call ours and ours alone. He insisted, rather romantically I thought, at the time that he wanted to make love to me in any room at any time he wanted. He wanted to hear me scream his name loudly, not have to squelch my reactions to our lovemaking into a pillow.
Living back at home he and I had to be very clever with the places we found to grab some time alone together. His dad and mine always watched us whenever we were together at one another’s houses. Both dad’s for very different reasons, mine thought Will Hott was a rich prick that thought his son was too good for a poor country farm girl, her parents struggling from one day to the next.
Will? Well, he did, in fact, think that Noxx was too good for me, he wanted his sons to match up with girls equal to their standing. And I did not fit the bill.
Noxx didn’t think so, however. Back then, he had been a freight train when it came to pursuing me; there had been no stopping him, not that I would have. Nothing, not even my dad, our relationship could never be described as close, but for a long time I tried to make him proud of me. I rode horses better than any girl in the district, I worked the farm after school, but nothing ever pleased him so I gave up trying. . So when Noxx I started to see each other, not even my father’s pleas could have talked me out of seeing Lenoxx Hott. At sixteen, no one could tell me otherwise; I wanted Noxx, and I didn’t stop until he caught me.
And catch me, he did.
My god, the power Noxx had over my body. All he had to do was look at me with those penetrating green eyes and I became putty in his hands.
Oh, those hands.
Not soft computer hands, not rich boy never done a hard day’s work in his life hands.
Nope.
They had been rough, large and so very strong. His fingers long, his nails blunted at the end, perfect to find that sweet spot only Noxx could find.
And only Noxx had found it. Since the night he took my virginity in a machinery shed on the Triple H farm, it had only been him. Even now, four years since I walked out, my life in ruins, the thought of having another man put his hands on me, kiss me, or even talk to me made the bile rise in my throat.
Noxx ruined me in more ways than even I could have thought possible.
Bastard.
Suddenly, Banjo’s gait slowed from a canter to a trot. Pulling myself out of my head, I looked around and noticed that we were back at the stables.
“Huh, just as well you know your way home boy, and I can ride without taking any notice of my whereabouts or concentrating on the task at hand,” I laughed, taking the reins tighter in my hands and directing him through the large open door, clucking my tongue and not jabbing him with my heels. My horse was more than a farm animal necessary to get to far off fence lines. He was my mate, and I treated him accordingly. My old friend was my greatest confidant; he knew things that no one else did. Not even my sister or my father when he was still alive.
“Talking to Banjo again, girlie?” Charlie, the farms leading hand and my father’s trusted friend for sixty years, laughed coming out from the tack room. His back wasn’t as straight as it used to be; his dark hair now silver, but his smile was still the same. Wide and full of mirth.
“He listens and doesn’t talk back. He also doesn’t take huge loans out without discussing it with me plunging the farm into so much debt soon we will be dining with the farm animals in the paddocks,” I sassed back at him, the light-heartened delivery of my serious problems a gift I learned a long time ago.
Keeping things hidden a family trait, it seemed.
“Your dad was doing what he thought was right for the farm, girlie, He had a vision and there was no stopping him,�
� Charlie offered, taking the reins from me to hold Banjo while I dismounted like the expert horsewoman I was.
During my time away from my family property, the only thing I truly missed was riding. The freedom of being on the back of such a powerful beast, knowing with one kick of its hindquarters or the wrong flick of its head and you were on your arse or worse. The trust between rider and equine unbreakable if you respected the bond between you.
The only bond I could trust not to betray me and break my heart, along with the other special bond in my life.
“Your sister is in a mood, by the way,” Charlie called over his shoulder, walking towards the stables.
“Why this time?” my question punctuated with a tired sigh.
“The usual complaints, blah, blah, blah,” Charlie’s voice trailed off as he disappeared into the outbuilding. Doing my best not to notice that one of the huge double doors was missing another plank of rotting wood, just another thing to add to my list of things to do. Remembering one of the older unused sheds had some decent weatherboards, I made yet another mental note to get that job done later in the day. The weather was closing in and by the looks of the sky, we were in for a few days of rain. The horses needed the warmth of the stables; they spent enough time out in the weather; they deserved better while they slept and rested.
“Okay, well, I better head up to the house and see what is twisting her knickers,” I mused to no one at all. Charlie was the only full-time employee left on the farm, having to make the difficult decision to let go three farmhands last week. Keeping this place running meant being the bad guy and not my favourite part of being in charge, but as Charlie pointed out to me on a regular basis, bosses couldn’t be friends and the boss.
“They also can’t pay the bank with nothing to sell,” I muttered, pulling off my work gloves and heading to the homestead I had called home for practically my whole life. Deliberating not taking off the seven months when I lived with Lenoxx, five of those as his wife. I rarely allowed myself time to dream of those days, partly because I was too busy keeping my family and the farm from drowning in the debt my father put us in, and partly because those memories always brought the hurt.
Hott and Taken (The Hott Brothers Book 1) Page 2