Cherish the Land (8 page)

“Seth?” he called as he neared the tractor shed. “Are you in there?”

No one answered, but Jason could hear the sound of muffled cursing and of tools clanging against metal. His dad didn’t usually curse that way when he worked, so either the problem was worse than usual or Seth was still there.

“Chris never did manage to break you of that habit, did he?” Jason asked as he stepped into the tractor shed.

Seth spun around, wrench in hand, then slumped against the tire of the tractor. “Bloody hell, Jase, don’t scare me that way.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Jason said. “Did something break?”

“No, just regular maintenance.” Seth’s voice sounded odd. “I figured I’d better get familiar with the machines again if I was going to be partially in charge of them.”

“Oh.” Jason tried to keep his disappointment from showing. “I was hoping we could spend the day together since we haven’t seen each other in so long. E-mails aren’t the same.”

“I wish I could,” Seth said, “but I won’t have a day off until next week. Unless you want to hang out in here with me while I finish this up? Then I have to head out to the drover’s huts.”

The hopeful tone of Seth’s voice decided Jason. “Of course I’ll hang out with you. I don’t know if I’ll be any help, but I’ll keep you company. I can hand you tools like I did for my dad when I was a kid.”

“I thought he knew where every tool was in his toolbox blindfolded,” Seth said with a smirk. Jason shouldn’t have been so susceptible to that expression, given they were talking about his father, but the subject matter didn’t change the way his gut lurched in reaction to Seth’s teasing. He had no defenses where Seth was concerned.

“He does, but he still managed to make me feel absolutely essential to the smooth running of the shed until I was about ten and started wondering what he did when I wasn’t around to help him.” Jason came deeper into the tractor shed and took a seat on one of the bales of hay, much like he had always done with Patrick.

“You’re lucky to have a dad like that.”

“And I know it,” Jason replied. “I’ve listened to too many stories from the other jackaroos not to know it. Sometimes I think Caine and I are the only two with normal childhoods, and Caine had the stutter to contend with. Everyone else had one issue or another growing up.”

“Not all of us had the chance to grow up here,” Seth said. “Those of us with sense just got here as soon as we could.”

Jason smiled, as Seth had intended, even as he remembered the sullen, defensive teenager who’d arrived on Lang Downs in his brother’s wake. The only things Seth had cared about when he first came to the station were his brother and machines. Jason liked to think he had a part in making the years Seth spent here before going off to uni better than the years before he arrived. If only he hadn’t fallen in love with his straight best friend in the process.

“So what are you working on?” Jason asked. “I might not have your fancy degree, but I learnt a few things growing up with my dad.”

“M
R
. T
AYLOR
?”

Jeremy looked up to see a different doctor standing at the door to the waiting room.

“Yes?”

“Walk with me.”

Sam squeezed his hand. “Want me to come with you?”

“Both of you,” Jeremy said, looking at Neil. “If it’s good news, we’ll celebrate together, and if it isn’t, I’ll need your support.”

They followed the doctor back to Devlin’s room. The bed stood empty, the machines silent. “Is Devlin still in recovery?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Taylor. He went into cardiac arrest during the procedure. We couldn’t get his heart started again. The bleeding in his brain put too much pressure on his brain stem.”

Jeremy stared at the doctor blankly, trying to make his brain process the words. Sam and Neil flanked him in an instant, an arm around him from each side. His knees trembled as he struggled to make sense of this new reality. He couldn’t force his mind to work. Devlin couldn’t be gone. He’d always been there, even when Jeremy wished he wasn’t. Everything else in Jeremy’s life had changed—for better or worse—but not Devlin. And now he was gone.

He bent double beneath the pain, only Sam’s and Neil’s arms keeping him from falling. “I can’t…,” he gasped. “He can’t be gone.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the doctor repeated.

Jeremy forced himself upright. “Can I see him?”

“In a few minutes,” the doctor said. “They’re cleaning him up. You can wait here. An orderly will come get you when they’re ready for you.”

Jeremy nodded and the doctor withdrew.

“I’m so sorry,” Sam whispered as he pulled Jeremy into his arms.

Jeremy shuddered, trying to hold back his sobs. He’d already cried once today. He could hear Devlin sneering at him for his tears.
Real men don’t cry
. Once had been bad enough. Twice in one day would be too much.

“Don’t hold it in,” Sam ordered. “He’s your brother. You’re allowed to cry for him.”

“He’d disown me,” Jeremy said around a hiccough.

“I’ll disown you if you don’t,” Neil muttered.

Jeremy tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t stop it. Tears streamed down his face as he cried and laughed and cried some more. “Bloody hell, Emery,” he said between sobs. “You can’t say shit like that. You’re the only brother I have left.”

“Pretty sure there’s a few more men on Lang Downs who would give you that title,” Neil replied, “but I’ll claim you.”

Jeremy’s laughter quieted, his grief getting the better of him again. Tears continued to leak from his eyes unhindered as he sat on the empty bed. Sam sat next to him, a bedrock of support.

“Did Devlin have a will?” Sam asked. “Or anything to tell us what kind of arrangements he wanted?”

“There’s a family plot on the station,” Jeremy said. “He’ll be buried there. Everyone in the family has been for a hundred fifty years.”

He and Devlin would be the last ones.

“That takes care of funeral arrangement, then,” Sam said, “but we’ll still need to find his will and insurance policies, if he had them.”

“If he did, they’d be in the safe in his office. I know what Dad’s combination was. I hope Devlin didn’t change it.”

“Can you tell me where the safe is?” Neil asked. “I can see if Molly will drive to Taylor Peak to look for it. She’s sort of family.”

“She’s family,” Jeremy said firmly.

“Not in a way most of them will recognize,” Neil reminded him, “but the jackaroos are still less likely to challenge her than they would be to challenge any of the men. And it’ll be faster than you driving all the way there and then having to come back to deal with everything here.”

“The station…. There’s no foreman.”

“So assign one,” Sam said. “Perkins or White or someone. Even if it’s just for a few days, until we can get there and see what’s what.”

“You can worry about that tomorrow,” Neil interrupted. “Tell me where Molly should look. Everything else can wait a day or two.”

Jeremy closed his eyes and tried to picture Devlin’s office. He hadn’t been in there since he moved to Lang Downs almost ten years ago. Even when he went to Taylor Peak to torture himself with Devlin’s continuing rejection, he never got past the living room—if he even got that far. Half the time Devlin ran him off before he reached the veranda.

“The office is in the back of the house, to the left off the living room,” Jeremy said. “If Devlin didn’t move anything around, the safe will be in the closet. If he moved it, it could be anywhere in the house. Dad’s combination was twelve, twenty-nine, three.”

“I’ll tell Molly,” Neil said. “Do you need anything from home? She can pick it up before she goes to Taylor Peak.”

And wasn’t that the kicker? His home was the house he and Sam had helped build and had lived in for years, but Taylor Peak was his family legacy. Unless Devlin had written Jeremy completely out of his will—they did have a distant cousin Devlin might have given it to out of spite—Taylor Peak, with all the associated responsibilities, would be his now.

He was going to be sick.

“Jeremy?”

“No, I don’t need anything from home,” Jeremy said as he struggled to swallow down the bile that rose in his throat. “Tell Molly I’m sorry she has to come all the way here.”

“Don’t be daft. Under the circumstances, she’ll be glad to do it,” Neil said. “I’ll go call now. Twelve, twenty-nine, three, right?”

Jeremy nodded, and Neil left.

“I can’t do this,” Jeremy said to Sam when they were alone.

“Do what?” Sam scooted closer to Jeremy.

“Give up the life we built together, take the station, step into Devlin’s shoes—any of it. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“At the beginning,” Sam said, “and going to Taylor Peak doesn’t mean giving up our life together. I can work remotely part of the time and drive to Lang Downs the rest of the time. Caine will find a way to make it work for us. You know that.”

“That assumes I want it to work,” Jeremy said. “What if I want to say forget the whole bloody thing and just go home?”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Sam said, “but you still have to figure out what to do with Taylor Peak. If nothing else, Devlin hired men to work the station for a season and you have livestock you can’t abandon. If you want to get through the season, sell off the whole mob and let the land go unused, you can, but then you’ll continue to have the yearly taxes and everything to deal with without any income.”

“I could sell it,” Jeremy said. “Hell, I’ll give it away. Or maybe I got lucky and Devlin left it to someone else. Then I won’t have to worry about it.”

“We’ll worry about that when Molly gets here,” Sam said. “But whatever you decide, we’re in it together. Nothing can change that.”

C
AINE
LOOKED
up when Molly walked into the office. The look on her face told him all he needed to know. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Molly nodded. “Taylor died this morning. Neil asked me to go to Taylor Peak to see if I could find the will and then to take it to them in Canberra. Linda said she’d watch the kids for the day, but I don’t know if I’ll make it back tonight.”

“Macklin and I can keep an eye on them tonight if Linda can’t,” Caine said. Kyle’s wife Linda frequently exchanged child-care services with Molly and Neil, although Linda’s daughter was old enough now to be the one watching Molly’s young children. “Give Jeremy our condolences and let me know if there’s anything we can do. In Canberra or on the station.”

“I will,” Molly said. “I’ll call when I get to Canberra or if I hear anything else from them before then.”

She left the office, and Caine leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. He’d barely known Devlin Taylor and hadn’t particularly liked what little he knew, but his death still left Caine shaken. For better or worse, he’d been a fixture in the local landscape.

He’d been an experienced grazier and a competent horseman, and he’d still been thrown and hurt so badly the fall killed him. Caine shuddered. How easy it would be for the same thing to happen to any of the jackaroos on Lang Downs.

To Macklin.

Rationally he knew Macklin was fine. He was spending the day working around the main buildings of the station, repairing tack, checking fences, and any other regular maintenance that he could find to do. He’d chosen those tasks specifically so he would be nearby if they got news from Jeremy. The panic clawing at Caine’s throat wasn’t rational. He grabbed his hat and headed outside. He had to see for himself that Macklin was fine.

He found Macklin a few minutes later outside the shearing shed with a hammer in his hand and a handful of nails between his teeth. Relief flooded through him.

Macklin finished sinking the nail on the repair he was making, set the hammer down, and grabbed the nails. “Caine? What’s wrong?”

“Molly’s gone to Taylor Peak. Devlin died this morning. And I might have freaked out a little thinking how easily it could have been you or someone else on the station.”

Macklin pulled him into a hug—he always knew exactly what Caine needed—and held him tight. “We take precautions. We never ride out alone. We train the horses not to spook at unexpected noises or movement in the bush. We do everything we can to make sure everyone will come home at the end of the day. And sometimes accidents happen anyway.” He tipped Caine’s chin up so their gazes met. “But the same thing is true anywhere. Car accidents, house fires, you name it. Accidents happen no matter how careful people are. How’s Jeremy holding up?”

Caine swallowed hard. “I didn’t talk to him, and I don’t think Molly did either. I told her to let us know if we could help, but I don’t know what that would be.”

“It might be as simple as sending a couple of men to Taylor Peak to keep things running until Jeremy can get his feet under him,” Macklin said. “Devlin never asked for help, but I remember Michael sending people to help out when old man Taylor was still running the place and had a lot of damage from a tornado that hit Taylor Peak but missed us.”

“I’ll text Sam and offer,” Caine said. “I don’t even know if they’ve let the jackaroos at Taylor Peak know.”

“I know you want to help, but don’t overstep your bounds,” Macklin cautioned. “Jeremy will have to find his own footing with the Taylor Peak jackaroos, just like you did when you arrived. We can’t undermine that by stepping in too quickly or too often.”

“At least he knows what he’s doing,” Caine said. “I couldn’t have been any more of a blow-in if I’d tried when Uncle Michael died and I came to see if I could run a station.”

“True, but he’ll be fighting the same distrust you did, with the disadvantage of everyone knowing from the start that he’s gay. It wouldn’t surprise me if he lost people the same way we did the second summer. He’ll recover if he can stick it out, but he’s in for a rough road.”

“You tell me that, and then you tell me not to step in?” Caine said. “You don’t really expect me to sit by and do nothing, do you?”

“No, but I expect you to let Jeremy decide what kind of help we give and how often,” Macklin said. “We run as much of a risk of making things worse by helping too much as by not helping enough.”