Cherish the Land (17 page)

His whole body trembled at the thought of Seth fucking him. He’d come apart at the seams the minute Seth touched him, the way he felt right now. The thought of fucking Seth… no, he wasn’t going there even in his mind. That could wait until Seth was more comfortable. And if he never got that comfortable, Jason could live with that too. As long as Seth loved him.

Seth’s hands on his chest startled him, but he arched into the touch immediately. Seth moved hesitantly, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with Jason now that he had him. That was ridiculous. Jason leaned back a bit and stripped his shirt off. There, that would give Seth something to explore.

“Jase,” Seth groaned.

Jason grinned as he moved forward to kiss Seth again. He’d never get tired of Seth’s mouth. Although he hoped Seth would eventually want to put it elsewhere too.

Seth returned the kiss a lot more aggressively this time, like he’d finally gotten over the shock of everything. Jason parted his lips, offering his mouth for Seth’s taking. Seth took him up on it immediately, holding Jason’s head in place with a firm hand to his neck as he claimed Jason’s mouth with his tongue. Damn, he could kiss when he set his mind to it.

Jason twined his tongue around Seth’s, giving back as good as he got. His body hummed with need, every nerve firing at the slightest contact. Seth kept one hand on Jason’s neck, holding him into the kiss—like Jason was going anywhere—but he let the other wander over Jason’s bare torso. Every touch went straight to Jason’s cock, and he moaned into the kiss. Much more of this and he’d embarrass himself.

Voices outside the tractor shed shattered the stillness. Seth tensed beneath Jason’s hands, so Jason broke the kiss and rocked back on his heels. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to be doing this.”

Seth chuckled. “Like we’ll have much privacy anywhere on the station.” His voice was gratifyingly husky to Jason’s ears. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business. I don’t know how Macklin kept being gay a secret for as long as he did.”

“By not getting involved with anyone on the station,” Jason replied. He reached blindly for his shirt, hoping he hadn’t tossed it too far away in his haste. He found it by touch and checked to make sure it was right side out before he pulled it back on. His stomach rumbled unhappily as he stood up and offered Seth a hand.

“You didn’t eat,” Seth said.

“No, I didn’t get a chance,” Jason said. “Although I’ll take kissing you over eating any day.”

“You don’t have to choose,” Seth replied. “This isn’t an either-or proposition. Let’s go see if Kami has anything left. Then we can find someplace actually private and pick up where we left off.”

“I like the sound of that.”

They walked out of the tractor shed, pausing long enough for Seth to secure the door. Jason started to reach for Seth’s hand as they walked toward the canteen, but despite Seth’s comment about the lack of privacy on the station, he didn’t know if Seth was ready to tell everyone else. Seth answered that by twining his fingers in Jason’s.

“Okay?”

“Absolutely,” Jason said.

He really should have expected the canteen to still be full of the year-rounders. He and Seth had made enough of a spectacle of themselves that everyone would want to know they’d worked things out. It didn’t stop his cheeks from burning at the round of applause or the teasing catcalls when he and Seth walked in together. Seth’s cheeks were as red as Jason’s felt, but he didn’t let go of Jason’s hand, and that made any amount of embarrassment worth it.

“About bloody time,” Chris said when the noise died down. “I was starting to think you two would never get your act together.”

Macklin clapped them on the shoulders, making Jason jump. “Year-rounder or seasonal jackaroo, the same rules apply. I don’t care what you do on your own time, but when it’s my time, I expect the work to be done.” He squeezed a little tighter. “I also expect you to make each other happy.”

“We’ll do our jobs like always,” Seth said.

“Probably better because we won’t be distracted,” Jason said with a laugh.

Caine joined them with a smirk on his face for Macklin. “I’ll talk to Sam and Jeremy this week, but if they’re still planning on the move to Taylor Peak being permanent, there will be an empty house for you when you’re ready for it. And my record is still perfect.”

Jason felt Seth tense next to him. “Give us a few days to get used to the idea, yeah?”

“When you’re ready,” Caine repeated.

Jason could have moved in there tonight, but he wouldn’t pressure Seth into anything he wasn’t ready for. They had time. They would figure it out.

J
EREMY
STARED
down at the numbers Sam had set in front of him in disbelief. Every station had a bad season now and then. The weather didn’t cooperate, they had fewer lambs born, the price of feed went up, a bad storm wiped out part of the mob or damaged property…. It was part of being a grazier, and Jeremy had grown up listening to his parents save up in the good years so they’d have what they needed to tide them through the lean ones. It wasn’t that Devlin had gone through a bad year, or even a couple of bad years. The problem was the cushion—specifically the lack of one. If Sam’s calculations were correct—and Jeremy had no doubt Sam had double- and triple-checked them before bringing them to Jeremy—the station was so far in debt Jeremy ran the risk of losing it to the bank if he couldn’t come up with a significant chunk of money by the end of the season.

“We’d have to sell off almost the whole mob to come up with that kind of money,” Jeremy said, looking up at Sam.

“And if we do that, we won’t have anything to earn money next season,” Sam finished for him. “I don’t know what Devlin intended to do, but he’s left you one hell of a mess.”

“Any suggestions?” Jeremy asked.

“You could throw yourself on the bank’s mercy,” Sam said. “We can put together a plan of how we’re going to pay off what Devlin owed over a couple of years, but there’s no guarantee they’ll accept it, and even if they do, we’re going to end up hurting because of it, because the only way I can see us coming up with that kind of cash even over a couple of years is to sell off stock. We could build the mob back up eventually, but it’s not going to be easy.”

“Can I just sell the place and go back to Lang Downs where we belong?” Jeremy asked. He hated it here. Hated the looks he got from most of the jackaroos. Hated the way everyone seemed to be comparing him to Devlin—and how he always came out looking worse. Three people on the entire station believed in him—Sam, Walker, and Charlie. And some days, Jeremy wasn’t even sure about Walker. “I’m a crew boss, Sam. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I’m not cut out to be a grazier.”

“Could you really sell it?” Sam asked. “If someone walked in here and offered to take it off your hands, could you really walk away?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Sam pressed. “Your childhood home? The plot where your parents and grandparents are buried? A hundred and fifty years of family legacy?”

Jeremy flinched at Sam’s words. He hated it when Sam played dirty. “What choice do I have? Even if the bank agreed to a plan of some kind, it will take us years to work our way out of this kind of a hole, and for what? We don’t have kids. There aren’t any Taylors left, other than some cousins who are all perfectly happy with their lives in the city. They aren’t going to want it, and their kids certainly aren’t. If it’s going to pass out of the family’s hands anyway, why should I kill myself trying to save it now? At least if I sell it, I walk away with something. If the bank forecloses, I lose everything.”

“All very valid points,” Sam agreed. “So answer me this: Who would you sell it to? It’s remote enough that I don’t see developers being interested. That means you’d have to find a grazier interested in expanding. You know anyone?”

“We could advertise,” Jeremy said. “There are trade journals, that kind of thing.”

“Before you do that, I have another idea,” Sam said. “If you want to hear it. But if you really want to just sell it and walk away, I won’t try to stop you.”

The last thing he wanted to do was walk away. He just didn’t see how he could stay. “I’m listening.”

“What we need is an investor,” Sam said. “Someone to give us an influx of capital in exchange for a percentage of future profits. If we scratch out the debt for a minute, if we look just at the figures for this year, both current and projected, we’re not in bad shape. We’d have to have a significant loss before we have to worry about not breaking even. The only reason we’re even having this conversation is because of the debt. And with everything we learnt watching Caine and Macklin run Lang Downs, next year has the potential to actually be profitable, debt aside. So if we have an investor who would pay off the debt, we could assure that person of a return fairly confidently. He wouldn’t make his money back in a season, but he would see a return on his investment.”

“So this person gives us money now in exchange for some percentage of the profit later,” Jeremy said. “What if we don’t turn a profit one season? It happens. It happened to Devlin three seasons in a row. It hasn’t happened on Lang Downs recently, but I know there have been bad years there too. Running a station isn’t rocket science, but it’s also not predictable. Mother Nature can be a bitch.”

“We’d need someone who understood that,” Sam agreed. “Someone who would be in it for the long haul.”

“Like who?” Jeremy asked. “It’s a grand idea and all, but where are we going to find such a person?”

“I had a couple of ideas about that too,” Sam said. “Walker’s made a couple of comments about investing his pension from the army, and he understands how stations work. He’s already here and working. It would give him an added incentive to stay and to make the station as successful as possible.”

“I don’t know what kind of pension you think the army pays, but I don’t see it being enough to cover the full debt,” Jeremy said.

“It probably wouldn’t be,” Sam agreed, “although it might be enough to buy us time with the bank even if we didn’t get the station completely out of debt, but I said I had a couple of ideas. Walker was just the first one.”

“And the other one?”

“We talk to Caine and Macklin,” Sam said. “I did the books there long enough to know they could afford it, especially if Walker was also in. I also did the books long enough to know Lang Downs can’t grow any more without more land. They talked about adding to the mob a couple of years ago and decided they couldn’t support it on the land they have without sacrificing the organic certification. It would take three or four years, since Taylor Peak isn’t organic certified, but if we got it there and could run the two stations as one, we could cut down on a lot of overlap in expenses, allow both stations to grow, and increase profitability all around.”

Jeremy considered the suggestion. It wasn’t ideal, but ideal had flown out the window when he inherited Devlin’s debts along with his property. It would allow him to mostly keep his family home and it would take away some degree of the burden of running the station. He might still be the one nominally in charge, but he’d have Caine and Macklin to help him with the big decisions. He’d have Walker to help him run the place, not just temporarily but for good. As they got closer to running the stations as one, he’d have the support of his friends—his family—on a more permanent, planned basis instead of when they had time to come help on their days off. As far as plans went, it was far better than he’d hoped for. Devlin was probably spinning in his grave, but he’d gone and got himself killed. He didn’t get a say in the matter anymore.

“What do we need to do?”

“Give me a couple of days and I’ll put together a proposal,” Sam said. “We can invite Caine and Macklin to dinner, get Walker to join us, and pitch the idea to them then.”

“And if they say no?” Jeremy asked.

“Then we’ll throw ourselves on the bank’s mercy and hope for the best,” Sam replied with a shrug. “But they won’t say no.”

B
Y
THE
time Jason had finished his second attempt at dinner, everyone else had wandered off to their own homes for the night, leaving Seth and Jason alone in the canteen. “I don’t want to go back to the bunkhouse,” Jason admitted as he dealt with his dirty plate.

“So don’t,” Seth said.

“I have to eventually,” Jason replied. “I have to work tomorrow, and that means I have to sleep.”

“I do too, but you don’t have to sleep in the bunkhouse. You could stay over with me. We’ve done it before,” Seth offered.

Jason looked at him intently.

“Just to sleep,” Seth said. “That way you wouldn’t have to go back to the bunkhouse.”

“I’d like that,” Jason said. “As long as it won’t make you feel pressured.”

Seth couldn’t promise it wouldn’t, but he owed it to them both to try. They walked to Chris and Jesse’s house in silence, shoulders close enough to brush but not otherwise touching. Seth led Jason into his bedroom, the same as he had done a thousand times before. Jason kicked off the sandals he’d put on after he got rid of his boots after work, the same as he’d done a thousand times, and settled on the bed next to Seth… the same as he’d done a thousand times. It felt so incredibly familiar to be here with Jason like this. How many nights had they lain side by side in one room or the other, talking about their days and their dreams? They’d spent the better part of three years sleeping over with each other, and at least half the nights they were home on breaks from uni or just because.