Chase the Stars (Lang Downs 2 ) (23 page)

The vulnerability in Macklin’s voice tore at Caine. He had heard many tones from his lover in the nine months they had known each other. Doubt was rarely one of them.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Caine said. “My mother hugged you before they went up to bed. She wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t. And my father made a point of shaking your hand. He didn’t have to come over to you that way. He could simply have said good night. I know it’s subtle, but they’re my parents, remember. I know the way they do things. I know the way they were with John, and they were never as warm to him as they were to you tonight.”

“My point exactly,” Caine replied, kissing Macklin tenderly. “They’ve only just met you and they already see the difference between you and him. Imagine how they’ll feel after they’ve been here a couple of weeks.”

Silence was Macklin’s only reply, but he returned Caine’s kiss and pulled him down into bed, which was answer enough for now.

C
AINE
spent most of the next day with his mother. His father had decided to go out with Macklin and see the barns, but Caine’s mother had no real interest in the sheep. “You’re happy here.”

“It’s… different here,” Caine said, struggling to put into words the reality of his new life and all the changes it had wrought in him. “This isn’t what I imagined when I dreamed of my life in high school or college. I always pictured myself in a city like Philadelphia or New York, working in a big accounting or advertising firm, doing something important, but that couldn’t have happened. I might have had the education, but I didn’t have the confidence to make that life a reality. As much as I thought it was what I wanted, I didn’t have the drive to make it happen. This isn’t what I ever expected, but it’s what I want. I have such plans, Mom. We’ve started the process of going organic. In another six to twelve months, we’ll have the first stage of the certification complete and can start marketing our wool and meat as Stage 1 organic. It’ll be another two years before it can be labeled Grade A organic, but even in the interim, we’ll be able to start charging more for it. We’ll take Uncle Michael’s dream and make it a sustainable one for the future.”

“I have no doubt you will,” Caine’s mother said, hugging him tightly. “You’ve always been capable of so much more than your life let you do. I’m glad you’ve finally found a place that pushes you ahead instead of holding you back.”

“You know it’s not the place as much as it is the man,” Caine said, honesty compelling him to point out Macklin’s role in his transformation.

“Sweetheart, you wouldn’t have ever caught the eye of a man like that if you hadn’t had it within you to begin with. I may be old, but I remember men like your Macklin. He wouldn’t have given you the time of day if you hadn’t had all this success and confidence in you just waiting to come out.”

“Of course I mind,” she scolded. “You’re much too far away for me to come visit you regularly, but I also approve, and I know Uncle Michael would have felt the same way. I’m glad you talked me out of selling the station. You belong here.”

“When your father and Macklin come back, we should discuss business for a few minutes.”
“I didn’t prepare any reports,” Caine joked. “You didn’t tell me you wanted an accounting.”
“I don’t,” his mother said. “I’ll explain when they get here.”
Caine wasn’t entirely sure he liked the sound of that, but his mother didn’t seem tense or upset, so whatever she wanted to discuss, it wasn’t bad news, or she didn’t perceive it that way.
“Macklin doesn’t really like surprises.”
“Everyone likes surprises,” Caine’s mother insisted. “Especially this kind.”

“T
HIS
is an impressive spread you have here,” Mr. Neiheisel—
Len,
Macklin corrected himself silently—said as Macklin showed him around the shearing barns, empty now that all the lambs had grown large enough to move to the upper paddocks with their dams. “I won’t pretend to know anything about raising sheep, but even I can see you run a tight ship.”

“Caine does a good job,” Macklin said.
“Let’s be honest, Macklin. I love my son, but I know him too. He’s a good man, but he isn’t a cowboy. If he’s making something of the station, it’s because you’ve taught him what he needs to know to do so.”
“That’s not true,” Macklin insisted. “The idea for the organic certification was his. He’s done all the research, made all the arrangements, and filled out all the documentation for it. All I did was explain to him what we were already doing so he knew where we had to start. The improvements have all been his idea.”
Len shook his head. “Then you’ve done an even better job than you realized. Caine’s stutter has been the millstone around his neck his entire life. I haven’t heard him stutter once since we got here.”
Macklin had, but he wasn’t about to tell Caine’s father that Caine stuttered when Macklin was making love to him, especially when it was long and slow and… Macklin cleared his throat to dispel the image of Caine writhing beneath him. He didn’t want to explain his reaction to
that
to Caine’s father either.
“He rarely stutters anymore. Only when something has really upset him, and the men here like him well enough to avoid that when they can, but that’s his confidence in himself and his place here, not anything I did.”
Len looked at Macklin piercingly, reminding the foreman that his lover’s father wasn’t just a portly, jovial old man. He had been a sharp businessman before he retired, used to seeing into people with a quick glance. “You loved him. That’s all it took.”
Macklin almost demurred again. He knew Caine’s transformation had been an internal one, but Macklin had grown tired of the years of hiding who he was. The past six months with Caine had shown him how good life could be, and owning up to his emotions was part of that. “Then I’m glad it worked.”
Len nodded once, then turned back to the station. “So show me the rest of the valley. I’m not riding out on horseback, but Caine said we could see most of the production without going out into the mountains.”

“S
O YOU
said something about talking business?” Caine said to his mother after they had finished eating lunch. Next to him, Macklin tensed, but Caine ignored it. His mother had been in far too jovial a mood when she brought it up for it to be bad news, whatever it was.

“We’ve talked with our accountant, and having the station’s value and earnings on our taxes is disadvantageous for us at the age and stage of our lives that we’re at,” Len explained. “It makes our total net high enough to devalue our planned retirement income and outflow with taxes.”

“What does that mean?” Macklin asked tersely. “It means we have a Christmas present for Caine,” Mrs. Neiheisel said with a warm smile. “As soon as we can get Caine’s signature on the files notarized, or whatever the equivalent is here in Australia, the station is his, free and clear. It would have been his anyway when I died. This way you can both stop feeling like you have to answer to me for anything. Not that you ever did. This has been Caine’s project from the beginning.”
“Now it’s his in every sense of the word,” Len finished. “Everything I’ve seen today assures me this is the right choice for everyone involved.”
“Thank you, Mom,” Caine said, rising to embrace her tightly. “For giving me this chance a year ago and now for giving it to me forever. I won’t let you down.”
“You couldn’t let me down, honey,” she said, cradling his cheeks in her hands. “I look at you here, and I see it’s where you’re meant to be. Even more importantly, I see you know it too. You’ll fight harder for this place than I ever could. It was already yours in reality. Now it’s yours legally as well, and I can rest easy knowing you’re happy and settled in your life.”
She hugged Caine tightly one more time before reaching for her husband’s hand. “Let’s go for a walk, Len. I suspect our sons have a lot to talk about.”
Silence reigned until Caine’s parents had left the house. Caine turned to look at Macklin, still sitting on the couch. He didn’t look like he’d moved a muscle since Caine’s mother had made her announcement.
“You okay?” Caine asked, coming back to sit next to his lover.
“She said sons.”
“She did,” Caine said. “Is that a problem?”
“No! Of course not,” Macklin replied. “But she said sons. She just met me a few days ago.”
“That’s all the time she needed to see that I’m happy and that we love each other. Mom and I talked a long time ago when I first came out about getting married or not getting married and what that would look like, since there wouldn’t ever be a church wedding and a bride in a white dress. I remember feeling bad because she wouldn’t get that chance. You know what she told me?”
“What?” Macklin asked so softly Caine could barely hear him.
“She told me she didn’t need all that pomp to make someone a part of our family and that when I found the right person, all she’d have to do was look at him and she’d know. And when she did, he’d be her son as completely as I was, and nothing would change that, not even if something happened to me and she was left with just my partner to call her own,” Caine said. “She l-looked at you and she kn-n-new.”
“You’re stuttering.”
Caine shrugged. “K-kind of hard n-not to when I’m holding b-back t-tears.”
“Good ones?”
Caine nodded.
“Me too.”
The admission shattered what little control Caine had left and the tears welled up, tumbling down his face as he laughed and pulled Macklin into his arms. The kiss was wet and sloppy, sweet with joy and salty with tears, but neither of them cared. They kept kissing and laughing and kissing some more until the tears had passed and only the joy remained.
Finally Caine turned so he could snuggle up under Macklin’s arm. “So where do we have to go to get the deed notarized?”
“To Boorowa,” Macklin said. “There isn’t anyone closer unless Taylor’s hired someone I don’t know about.”
“We can do that in a few days,” Caine said. “Or even as we’re taking my parents back to Sydney. We’ll have to get them to make one more change before we sign it, though.”
“What’s that?” Macklin asked.
“It needs your name on it too.”
“Caine,” Macklin protested.
“Macklin,” Caine mimicked. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me you’re just the foreman or whatever other idiotic thing you’re thinking. You are the backbone of this station, and I know it. Everyone knows it, except you apparently. You loved Uncle Michael like a father. You’ve lived here more than half your life. If anyone deserved to inherit the station when Uncle Michael died, it was you. I would never have asked my mother for the deed, but she gave it to us.”
“She gave it to you.”
Caine snorted. “Were we listening to the same conversation? She specified that you needed to be here when she told me she wanted to talk business. She explained her decision to you. She called you her son. The deed might only have my name on it right now, but that’s because she didn’t know you yet when she had the paperwork drawn up. If she’d gotten here and you hadn’t been, well, you, she could have given it just to me, but she got here and you are you and they both see it. More than that, though, you’re my lover, my
partner
. If Australia allowed it, I’d marry you and then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. As it is, consider this your marriage proposal.”
“Just… just let me think for a minute,” Macklin said. “You get going and you’re so bloody persuasive and I forget all the reasons I had why whatever you’re saying is a bad idea.”
“This isn’t a bad idea,” Caine said.
Macklin glared at him so Caine shut his mouth, waiting in silence while Macklin gathered his thoughts.
“Did you mean it?” Macklin said finally. “That you’d want to get married if we could?”
Caine didn’t know whether to shake Macklin for zeroing in on the one piece of the conversation that should never have been in question or kiss him to assure him how deeply and truly Caine meant it. He settled for a simple “Yes.”
Macklin went silent again.
“I expected to spend the rest of my life alone. When Michael died, I expected to have the station if the new owner didn’t fire me and nothing else. I gave up my family when I ran away. My adopted father had died. Nobody would ever accept a gay stockman. I figured that was it. I’d have the respect of the jackaroos, hopefully the faith of my employer, and a week in Sydney in the winter, and that would have to be enough.”
“And now?” Caine asked softly, heart breaking at the thought of all the despair in those words.
“And now I don’t know what to think,” Macklin admitted. “I can’t think, because every time I do, I have to think about losing everything I have the same way I’ve always lost everything. You’re it for me. You know that. I… I can’t seem to go beyond that thought, though.”
“You’re it for me too,” Caine said, taking Macklin’s hand in his. “The rest, it’s all just a way to live that. Your name on the deed makes sense because there’s no one else I would want making decisions for the station if I couldn’t. If something happened to me, I’d want you to have the station. The fastest way to make sure that happens is to make you a partner in it, not just in reality, because we would have gone under without you—and don’t argue with me, I know that’s the truth—but legally as well so that no one can come in and take that away from us. Maybe we’ll lose a few more jackaroos if we do it. Maybe we’ll have to work a little harder to take up the slack as we train the new people who are willing to come work for us.”
Macklin’s expression suggested he’d hoped Caine had missed that little detail.
“Yes, I noticed,” Caine continued, “but that just proves my point. You’re already invested in the success of the station. Nothing changes except the legal side of things. Please say yes.”
Macklin swallowed visibly a couple of times, fighting some internal demon, but Caine let him wrestle with it on his own. He’d said everything he could say. The rest was up to Macklin. And if he said no, Caine would ask again in a year, and a year after that, and a year after that until Macklin finally relented.
“Yes.”

M
ACKLIN
had never allowed himself to imagine a moment like this, so he had no preconceived notion of how it would play out, only the sense of rightness as Caine tackled him to the couch, kissing him hard and fast with whispered “I love yous” interspersed. Macklin didn’t manage an answer because Caine never gave him time, but internally he answered every declaration as fears he’d thought laid to rest died a sudden and final death. Caine’s mother wouldn’t sell the station out from under them. Caine wouldn’t get bored and walk away. Caine knew about the worst of the issues with the station Macklin thought he’d hidden and wanted this anyway. Caine’s parents wanted him. Caine wanted him.