Conquer the Flames (Langs Down) (20 page)

“Good. Come play.” Dani dragged Laura off before Thorne could say anything else.

“Thanks for that,” Thorne said to Molly after the girls had left. “I was holding Dani, so I think the need to protect her outweighed the instinct to lash out, but it was still better for someone else to talk to her about what she did.”

“There’s nothing wrong with protecting a child,” Molly said. “Just make sure she needs protecting first.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Thorne admitted. “That hair-trigger reaction saved my life more than once. It’s hard to unlearn that lesson.”

“So don’t unlearn it. Just learn to temper it,” Molly said. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it has to be better than living in fear of how you’ll react if someone startles you.”

“How did you get so wise?”

Molly laughed. “Years of dealing with Neil.”

Thorne laughed at Molly’s reply and tried to imagine still being on Lang Downs five or ten years from now. It was remarkably easy to think about, provided he didn’t do something to screw up his standing with Caine and Macklin. More than the ease of imagining it was how powerfully he desired it. He’d had a roof over his head in the Commandos, but he’d been homeless in all the ways that really mattered for a long, long time. Now he had a chance at a place of his own. He just had to keep it together so he wouldn’t lose this one too.

“You okay there?” Molly asked.

“Yes, sorry, I was just thinking.”

“Thinking is good. Neil should do it more often, but sometimes you have to ignore your brain and go with whatever your gut is telling you,” she said. “I know you’re new here, but we’re a family. You never have to deal with things alone unless you want to.”

“Several people have mentioned that,” Thorne said.

Molly smiled ruefully. “You aren’t a stockman, but it looks like the military did the same number on you that the outback did on most of them.”

“And what number is that?”

“Hard as granite, convinced emotions are worse than a mulga, and determined to keep everything inside if it kills you.” She laid a gentle hand on his forearm. “It won’t kill you to let people help you. We won’t abuse your trust.”

Thorne wanted to believe her, but he wouldn’t even know where to start talking about all the crap in his head. More than that, these people didn’t deserve the crap in his head. They didn’t deserve the death and misery that lived in his soul. That chapter of his life might have ended, but the effects lingered on.

“Do I need to bap you the way I do Neil?” Molly asked.

Thorne summoned a smile for her. “No, I heard you. I just don’t know where to start.”

“Wherever you hurt the most. You don’t have to talk to me, but talk to someone, Thorne. Ian or Macklin or Kami, if you want. He’s a surprisingly good listener, and he won’t judge you or tell anyone what you said. Sometimes I think he’s the station’s confessor.”

Thorne couldn’t help smiling at that image. He didn’t know the station cook beyond seeing him at dinner and sometimes at breakfast, although Sarah served breakfast most days. He didn’t seem particularly approachable, but maybe that was his appeal. If he really wasn’t one to talk, any secrets confided in him would be safe from idle gossip.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he promised. “I should shower before dinner.”

She let him go then, so he hurried back to Ian’s house. He didn’t know if Ian would be there yet, and even if he was, Thorne didn’t expect anything different than the kisses they’d shared in the previous evenings since Ian had come home from the hospital. He didn’t like to think about the possible reasons why Ian was so skittish, but he’d resolved not to do anything to make it worse, and he intended to keep that promise.

He stopped in the mudroom to take off his boots, noticing as he did that Ian’s were already there, along with the long-sleeved shirt Ian had been wearing that morning. He wondered if that meant Ian was walking around with no shirt on. Probably not. He was probably wearing an undershirt. Thorne had already learned that Ian veered toward the modest side of the scale when it came to his body. Years in the military had cured Thorne of any such issues, but he respected Ian’s choice. He’d even taken to carrying his own clothes into the bathroom with him when he showered so he wouldn’t distress Ian.

“I’m home, Ian,” he called as he walked into the living room to get his clean clothes, so he’d be ready when Ian finished his shower.

“Oh, you’re back sooner than I expected.”

Thorne looked up from his duffel to see Ian standing in the hallway between his bedroom and bathroom in dirty jeans and nothing else, a clean pair of trousers draped over his arm. His mouth started to water as he stared. Ian wasn’t bulky, but Thorne could see the evidence of wiry muscles beneath the pale, freckled skin. From what he could see at this distance, there wasn’t an inch of fat on Ian anywhere. His stomach was flat and toned, bisected by a thin line of red hair arrowing down into his waistband. Covering his staring with a cough, Thorne looked up at Ian’s face and gave him a lopsided smile. “Captain Grant declared the fires all out. He pulled the Firies out, and I didn’t see any reason to stay when there wasn’t anything left to do. As of this afternoon, I’m officially done with the RFS.”

“So that means tomorrow I can show you the station?” Ian picked nervously at the waistband of the clean pants, but he had answered, so Thorne kept the conversation going.

“That’s what it means,” he agreed. “Be gentle with me, though. I’m as much a novice as your newest jackaroo.”

Ian grinned at that. “I’ve been teaching blowins how to survive for fifteen years. I think I can keep you from making too many mistakes, especially since all the other blowins know what they’re doing for the most part now. They’ve had three months to learn and don’t need constant supervision anymore.”

Thorne wanted to keep Ian talking just so he could keep staring at his bare chest, but they both needed to shower, and Kami didn’t hold dinner for anyone. “Get cleaned up. You can tell me what to expect over dinner.”

Ian flashed that grin again and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Thorne to sit on the couch and will away the erection he couldn’t do anything about, not when Ian still looked like a stunned mullet every time some new intimacy arose between them.

“
C
OME
on,” Ian said, tugging playfully on Thorne’s hand after breakfast the next morning. “I’ve got things to show you today!”

“Can’t a bloke even finish his coffee?” Thorne retorted, but he was smiling, so Ian ignored the protest as Thorne left his coffee cup—empty, Ian noticed—in the bin with the other dirty dishes.

“So what’s on the agenda today?” Thorne asked as they headed toward the utes parked near the shearing sheds.

“It should be getting the sheep back to the outer paddocks,” Ian said, “but you’re a blow-in and I’m still on light duty, so we won’t be riding out with the mob.”

“Good thing,” Thorne said. “I don’t know how to ride.”

Ian grinned. When they were in the ute, he said, “We can fix that. Titan doesn’t have a regular rider right now, so once all the sheep are back where they belong, we can use him and teach you enough to get you comfortable on a horse. For now we’re checking fences and drovers’ huts. Caine doesn’t think the fires did any damage, thanks to the Firies, but we’re going to make sure and also to check the drovers’ huts for supplies.”

“Sounds tedious,” Thorne said.

“A lot of what we do is,” Ian admitted as he drove them out of the valley, “but I try to look at the contributions each piece makes. Sure, it’s boring driving along klicks of fences, but if it keeps us from losing sheep, then I’ve contributed to the well-being of the station as a whole. Stocking the drovers’ huts is tedious work, but if it means someone has food and water when they need it, I’m making sure my friends are safe and cared for.”

“A lot of my work in the Commandos was the same,” Thorne said. “Months of legwork for the greater good, and then moments of excitement to break up the boredom.”

“I think my moments of excitement are safer,” Ian replied with a grin. “The occasional dingo or snake, a grassfire if I’m really unlucky. Nothing compared to bullets and guerrillas.”

“Be glad for it,” Thorne said, a shadow passing over his face.

“I am,” Ian said.

“Are we headed back toward the fire zone?” Thorne asked.

“Only to the property line,” Ian replied. “We’ll drive the fences and repair any damage we find, whether from the fires or other causes. There are a couple of huts out that way, so we’ll check them too.”

“So the huts are temporary shelter?” Thorne asked.

“Pretty much,” Ian said. “They’re little one-room cabins stocked with water and nonperishables. We use them if we’re out with the mob overnight or if there’s an emergency. I’ve waited out more than one storm in them. Everyone knows to bring replacements for what they use, but Caine still likes to check them systematically two or three times a year; switch out the blankets, make sure there’s plenty of water and food, restock the firewood, refill the first-aid kit, that sort of thing. In an emergency, it could make the difference between surviving and dying.”

“You don’t have to sell me on what we’re doing,” Thorne said. “I was a soldier, remember? Give me an order and I’ll follow it. Especially when I see the logic in it like I do this one.”

“But I’m not an officer,” Ian said, feeling vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of giving Thorne orders. He’d been thrilled when Macklin asked Neil, not him, to take the foreman’s job. Ian would have done it if asked, but he was far more comfortable as a crew boss or even simply a jackaroo who didn’t need to be told what to do. “And this isn’t the military.”

“No, but there is order and routine and discipline to it,” Thorne said. “Neil or Macklin or someone gives orders, and everyone else carries them out. When you’re out with a crew, you have a job to do and you get it done. That’s very much like in the military. The only difference is that it’s not always a matter of life and death.”

Ian hadn’t thought of it like that, although it made sense when Thorne said it. “I know I started feeling more comfortable here when I understood why I was being asked to do different things. I try to extend the same courtesy to others.”

“You mean you didn’t know this was home the minute you stepped foot on the station?” Thorne teased. “It seems like everyone else did.”

Memories of his early days on the station washed through Ian. He’d been on his own for two years by that time and had learned not to trust anyone, not that he’d been terribly trusting already after what his foster father had done. He’d been sullen and hard to work with. Macklin wasn’t foreman yet, just a crew boss, but he’d rubbed Ian the wrong way from the very beginning, every order raising Ian’s hackles until he nearly snapped. He’d been ready to quit when Michael had summoned him to the station house.

“No, it wasn’t an easy adjustment for me,” Ian admitted. “When I lived with my mum, we moved around a lot, mostly hiding from her exes or from creditors, and once I ended up in DoCS custody, they had a hard time placing me with a foster family. I wasn’t young and cute. I was an angry teenager with an attitude the size of Uluru. By the time I got here, I was an angry twenty-year-old with an attitude. I didn’t know what it meant to have a home, so of course I didn’t recognize Lang Downs for what it was.”

They reached the gate for the upper paddock. Without waiting to be told, Thorne jumped out of the ute and opened the gate. Ian drove through and waited for him to climb back in before turning the ute along the fence line and continuing the conversation. “Michael finally got sick of it. I was sure he was going to fire me, but instead he sat my butt down and told me I had a choice in life. I laughed in his face. I hadn’t had a single choice in my entire life up until that point, as far as I was concerned.”

“He obviously changed your mind about that,” Thorne observed.

“He said he couldn’t change what had happened before I got to Lang Downs, and neither could I, but that it was up to me what happened now that I was here,” Ian explained. “He said I could hold onto my bad attitude and leave at the end of the season with everyone else, or I could accept that life had dealt me a shit hand up until then, let it go, and make a place for myself here. I didn’t believe him, to be honest. Nobody else had ever wanted me. Why would he? He was an old man already, and he was still too in love with his partner to be interested in me. I wasn’t a particularly good jackaroo because I’d been too busy being a pain to actually learn much. It didn’t make sense.”

“How did he convince you?”

“He didn’t, really,” Ian said. “I mean, not by anything he said. I didn’t believe him, but he got me thinking, and so I started looking around at the other year-rounders and listening to the other jackaroos talk, the ones who came back year after year even if they left in the winter. That’s when I started hearing things. They called the year-rounders Michael’s Lost Boys. I scoffed at that. Peter Pan was only a fairy tale and this wasn’t Neverland, but I kept listening, and before long I realized maybe it was, and if it was, if Michael’s offer really was genuine, I’d be a fool to pass it up. When the season ended, Michael called me to the station house again and asked me what I’d decided. I asked him if I could stay.”

“He obviously said yes.”

Michael had said yes, on one condition. He needed to know exactly what had brought Ian to him, but Ian didn’t tell Thorne that part. He’d acceded to Michael’s request and poured out the whole sordid story, but he didn’t want to go through it again. Fortunately for Ian, a break in the fence drew his attention.

“Yes, he did,” Ian said, putting the ute in park. “Let’s go. We’ve got a fence to fix.”

Fifteen