Lang Downs Read online

  Lang Downs

  By Ariel Tachna

  Welcome to Lang Downs, a safe haven for the lost and hurting. In Inherit the Sky, Caine Neiheisel comes to Lang Downs hoping for a fresh start, if foreman Macklin Armstrong is willing to help. Chris Simms is barely managing to keep himself and his brother safe in Chase the Stars, when the men of Lang Downs offer him the chance he’s needed… and maybe a chance at romance as well. In Outlast the Night, Sam Emery is out of a job and a marriage and looking for a refuge when he contacts his brother Neil at Lang Downs; Jeremy Taylor is looking for refuge, too, but can he find it at a rival station? In Conquer the Flames, firefighter Thorne Lachlan comes to Lang Downs to defend it against a raging grassfire and meets Ian Duncan, but their own flames might fizzle if they can’t find a way to trust each other. In Cherish the Land, Seth Simms and Jason Thompson have been best friends for years, but when Seth comes back to Lang Downs to stay, his dangerous secrets might drive them apart.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Lang Downs by Ariel Tachna includes

  Inherit the Sky

  Chase the Stars

  Outlast the Night

  Conquer the Flames

  Cherish the Land

  About the Author

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright Page

  Lang Downs by Ariel Tachna includes

  Lang Downs: Book One

  Caine Neiheisel is stuck in a dead-end job at the end of a dead-end relationship when the chance of a lifetime falls in his lap. His mother inherits her uncle’s sheep station in New South Wales, Australia, and Caine sees it as the opportunity to start over, out on the range where his stutter won’t hold him back and his willingness to work will surely make up for his lack of knowledge.

  Unfortunately, Macklin Armstrong, the foreman of Lang Downs who should be Caine’s biggest ally, alternates between being cool and downright dismissive, and the other hands are more amused by Caine’s American accent than they are moved by his plight… until they find out he’s gay and their amusement turns to scorn. It will take all of Caine’s determination—and an act of cruel sabotage by a hostile neighbor—to bring the men of Lang Downs together and give Caine and Macklin a chance at love.

  Sequel to Inherit the Sky

  Lang Downs: Book Two

  Twenty-year-old Chris Simms is barely keeping his head above water. After losing his mother and his home, he struggles to provide for himself and his brother. When homophobes attack him, he thinks his life is over, but then he’s rescued by jackaroos from a nearby sheep station. He’s as stunned to be offered a job there as he is to discover both the station owner and foreman are gay.

  For Chris, Lang Downs is a dream—one that only gets better when Chris realizes the jackaroo he’s crushing on, Jesse Harris, is gay and amenable to a fling. Everything goes well until Chris realizes he’s falling for Jesse a lot harder than allowed by their deal.

  Jesse is a drifter who moves from station to station, never looking for anything permanent. Convinced Chris is too young and fragile for a real relationship, he sets rules to keep things casual. Watching the station owner and his foreman together makes Jesse wonder if there are benefits to settling down, but when he realizes how Chris feels about him, he panics. He and Chris will have to decide if a try for happiness is worth the risk before the end of the season tears them apart.

  Sequel to Chase the Stars

  Lang Downs: Book Three

  Office manager Sam Emery is unemployed and out of luck. When his emotionally abusive wife demands a divorce, he contacts the one person he has left, his brother, Neil. He doesn’t expect Neil to reject him, but he also doesn’t expect the news of his divorce—and of his sexuality—to be met with such acceptance.

  Neil takes Sam to Lang Downs, the sheep station Neil calls home. There, Sam learns that life as a gay man isn’t impossible. Caine and Macklin, the station owners, certainly seem to be making it work. When Caine offers Sam a job, it’s a dream come true.

  Jeremy Taylor leaves the only home he’s ever known when his brother’s homophobia becomes more than he can bear. He goes to the one place he knows he will be accepted: Lang Downs. He clicks with Sam instantly—but the animosity between Lang Downs and Jeremy’s home station runs deep, and the jackaroos won’t accept Jeremy without a fight. Between Sam’s insecurity and Jeremy’s precarious position, their road will be a hard one—and that’s without having to wait for Sam’s divorce to be final before starting a new life together.

  Sequel to Outlast the Night

  Lang Downs: Book Four

  Thorne Lachlan knows a thing or two about getting himself safely out of a blaze. For years he fought in the world’s hot spots, a Commando with the Australian Army. Now, retired, he fights flames for the Royal Fire Service. When a grassfire brings him to Lang Downs, the next sheep station in danger, Thorne meets Ian Duncan and sparks fly that neither man can put out. But both men have ghosts from the past that stand in the way of moving beyond mutual attraction.

  While Thorne longs for the home he could share with Ian at Lang Downs, he fears his own instability might make him a danger to others. And Ian’s always believed that the foster care nightmare he escaped before coming to Lang Downs would make any relationship impossible. Trust doesn’t come easily to Thorne or Ian until the fire’s aftermath forces them to see past the scars keeping them both from healing.

  Sequel to Conquer the Flames

  Lang Downs: Book Five

  Seth Simms never wanted to be a cowboy, although to listen to his best friend, Jason Thompson, tell it, he isn’t one. He just happens to have lucked out in coming to live on Lang Downs with his brother ten years ago. He found enough stability to finish high school and go off to university, but he never really believed Lang Downs would be the same haven for him that it had become for so many others. He’s too messed up in the head. No one would accept someone with his issues.

  All his life, Jason has had one goal: to come home to Lang Downs as resident veterinarian when they need his skills and jackaroo when they don’t. And it means he gets to spend time with Seth during his occasional visits, even though his dream of going from friends to lovers is hopeless since Seth is straight.

  When Seth unexpectedly comes home to stay, Jason takes it as the boon it is. But juggling a relationship with another jackaroo and his friendship with Seth isn’t easy, and that’s before Jason realizes how deep Seth’s issues run and how dangerously Seth chooses to cope with them.

  To Nicki, who always inspires my muses,

  and to Isabelle and Meredith for teaching me about Australia.

  One

  CAINE NEIHEISEL tossed his bag on his childhood bed and flopped down on the mattress next to it. Six years, down the drain. There hadn’t been any dramatic fight, any one moment when everything had gone south. It was more a slow, sinking realization that he and John simply weren’t going anywhere. They made fine friends, good roommates, but not great lovers. Not even halfway-decent lovers recently. Caine chose to say they’d grown apart rather than to think John didn’t desire him anymore. His self-esteem didn’t need another blow. It was bad enough being stuck in the mail room at Comcast for nearly ten years. He’d applied for promotions, of course, but he always seemed to get passed over. He didn’t think he could deal with losing John’s interest that way.

  He’d have to start looking for a roommate or another place to live. He couldn’t afford the rent on his own. That hadn’t been an issue when he’d moved into the condo. John had been more than willing to pay for half in exchange for living in the Gayborhood in Philadelphia. Caine would miss the convenience if he couldn’t find another roommate, but that was the way his life had been going recently.

  “Caine! Dinner’s ready.”

/>   Caine sighed and went to join his parents.

  “We’re having your favorite,” his mother Patricia said when he came into the kitchen. “Fried pork chops, Brussels sprouts, and mashed sweet potatoes.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Caine said, relieved he got the words out without stuttering. He knew why his mother had made his favorite meal from childhood, and it had nothing to do with being glad to have him home for Christmas. She was trying to cheer him up. While he appreciated the sentiment, he didn’t want to spend his entire vacation being pitied. He had enough problems with that on his own.

  “So what was in that letter from Australia?” his father, Len, asked, joining them in the kitchen.

  “I’ll tell you over dinner,” his mother said. “Let me get the food on the table first.”

  “Let m-me help,” Caine offered, wincing at the stutter. He apparently wasn’t as comfortable with being home as he’d thought he was. Chiding himself for dwelling on something he couldn’t change, he set the table and carried over the serving bowls as his mother filled them.

  When they were all seated and eating, Len turned to Patricia. “So what was in the letter?”

  “You remember my mother talking about her younger brother Michael who left England about the same time she married my father and came here?” Patricia asked.

  Len and Caine both nodded. Caine had corresponded regularly with Uncle Michael as he was growing up, although their letters had become less frequent once Caine went away to college.

  “He had a heart attack last week,” Patricia continued.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Len said immediately. “Had he been ill?”

  “I don’t know,” Patricia admitted. “After Mom died, we lost touch somewhat. We should have taken that trip to Australia we always talked about, but other things always seemed to be more important. That’s not all the letter said, though. It’s from the executor of his will. It seems he left everything to me.”

  “To you?” Caine asked. “But why?”

  “He never married or had children of his own,” Patricia explained. “I’m the only living relative he has. The executor wrote to explain the situation and to ask what I wanted to do with the sheep ranch he owned. Apparently it’s a huge chunk of land, several thousand square kilometers. Obviously I’ll have to sell it. I don’t know anything about sheep, and my life is here. I have no idea what selling it will entail, but hopefully the executor can handle it and transfer the money once it’s done and all the taxes are paid.”

  Len chuckled. “I can just see us arriving on that old ranch. I’m pushing seventy and you’re not that much younger. They’d laugh us right back home if we tried to run it.”

  Caine had to admit the image of his parents on a sheep farm in Australia would be funny to see. “It seems a shame to sell it,” he said. “Could you hire someone to run it and have them t-transfer the profits to you? If it’s profitable.”

  “According to the executor, it’s quite profitable,” Patricia replied, “but I’m not sure how well it would work to have us over here and a foreman over there. We’d have no way of knowing if he was managing the ranch well.”

  “I could go,” Caine said softly, the words out before he realized he had thought them. He’d always wanted to visit his great-uncle, but the trip they’d planned in such detail in all their letters had never come to fruition. Like so much else in his life.

  “That’s sweet of you,” his mother said, patting his hand, “but you have a job, a life in Philadelphia. I couldn’t ask you to give that up for this.”

  There wasn’t much to give up as far as Caine was concerned. “Let’s think about it for a d-day or two at least,” he said, his mind racing with sudden possibility. “Don’t rush into a decision.”

  “Oh, Caine, I know you always wanted to visit the ranch, but there’s a difference between a teenager going for the summer and you moving there permanently,” Patricia said. “You can’t go chasing pipe dreams.”

  Caine sighed and let the matter drop for now, but after dinner, when he’d returned to his room to sleep, his mother’s words echoed in his head. Pipe dreams.

  He was thirty-two years old, damn it. He’d tried being responsible and doing all the adult things that were expected of him, and that had gotten him exactly nowhere. In a dead-end job with a lover who didn’t love him anymore, and no prospects of anything better anywhere on the horizon. He had a “life” in Philadelphia that was killing all his passion, all his enthusiasm, all his drive. The sheep ranch in Australia could change all that. He’d have a lot to learn, but intelligence had never been his problem. He stuttered. There wasn’t a cause for it or a single thing he could do about it. Speech therapy had helped, but when he got nervous, it came back. He’d never get promoted because he’d never manage the interview well enough, and his bosses wouldn’t put someone with a speech impediment in a situation of working with customers. He got that, but it left him nowhere to go at Comcast and no real way of going anywhere else either.

  In Australia, he’d run the ranch. Technically his mother would own it still, but he’d be the one in charge. He’d have to throw himself on the mercy of his employees and his neighbors until he learned how to manage it, but he wouldn’t be passed over for a promotion or a salary increase or anything like that. He’d have a job, a living, and maybe the change of scenery would be good for him. And if it was an absolute disaster, well, so was his life in Philadelphia.

  He had no idea what it would take to immigrate to Australia, but he could find out. He might not be the best speaker in the world, but he knew how to research. Pulling out his laptop, he fired it up and started searching.

  Two hours later, he had what he needed. Now he just needed to convince his mother not to sell the ranch.

  “I’VE B-BEEN thinking, Mom,” Caine said when he came down for breakfast the next morning. “I want t-t-to go to Australia.”

  “Caine,” his mother chided. “We talked about this last night.”

  “No,” Caine said, taking a deep breath to calm the stutters. “You talked about it. I looked it up online last night. I can m-m-move there because of the inheritance if you write a letter saying I’ll be running the r-r-ranch for you.”

  “But what about your career?”

  “What career?” Caine asked bitterly. “I have a job. I probably won’t ever lose it because I do it well, but I’ll never advance at Comcast. I’ve been there for t-ten years without a promotion.”

  “You could change jobs.”

  “I could t-try,” Caine agreed, “but I probably won’t find one, not stuttering the way I do. Certainly not a job where I could advance. It would be trading one dead-end job for another.”

  “You don’t know anything about sheep.”

  “I can learn,” Caine insisted. “I could work outdoors instead of in an office. The sheep wouldn’t c-care if I stutter sometimes. Does it make that much of a difference if you sell it now or in a year if I’m wrong and I can’t make it work?”

  “Not to me, but if you pull up roots here, you won’t have even a dead-end job to come back to.”

  “Then I’ll just have to make things work in Australia,” Caine declared. He took his mother’s hands in his. “P-please, Mom. Give me this chance.”

  His mother sighed and hugged him. “All right, honey. If this is really what you want to do, I won’t sell the ranch. I’ll worry about you being so far from home, but you’re an adult, even if I still look at you and see my baby. After all, everything that’s mine will be yours someday, so I suppose this is your inheritance too.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

  THREE MONTHS later, visa and passport in hand, Caine waited nervously for his big adventure to begin. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to the twenty-eight-hour flight. He’d have to change planes in Dallas and then again in Los Angeles before flying on to Sydney, but he could deal with the airports. He’d deal with the long flight, too, because this was what he wanted. He’d been in touch wi
th Macklin Armstrong, the foreman at his uncle’s sheep station, as he’d learned it was called in Australia, via e-mail, so the man knew he was coming. He’d decided to stay in Sydney for a few days before heading out to Lang Downs, his uncle’s station. As excited as he was about getting there and getting started, he suspected he’d need a day or two to recover, not to mention he didn’t exactly have the right clothes for his new life. He wasn’t sure he could find them in Sydney either, but he’d look anyway. And if not, he’d throw himself on Macklin’s mercy and find the closest town to the station. Boorowa looked like the closest on the map, but he’d gotten lost in Eastern Kentucky in college and learned that maps could be deceiving, and what looked like a straight line wasn’t always the fastest route.

  First, though, he had to get to Australia.

  He’d broken the lease on his condo a month ago, selling most of his furniture and packing up the few things he couldn’t live without. Some of them were at his parents’ house, to be stored and shipped later. He’d shipped the rest to Australia, hoping they’d get there by the time he did. He had a suitcase with clothes and other necessities, but he wasn’t entirely willing to give up his books and CDs.

  It was sad to think his entire ten years in Philadelphia could be summed up in a box of books and CDs, but those were the only things he couldn’t live without. He’d said goodbye to his friends, and they’d all promised to keep in touch on Facebook or Twitter. Somehow Caine didn’t expect that to last terribly long. They were friends, but in the casual acquaintance sort of way. Certainly not a reason to stay in Philadelphia any longer.

  The call to board interrupted Caine’s musings. He joined the line to show his passport and ticket and take his seat. He’d splurged for the trip, flying business class rather than coach. He’d made enough money selling off his furniture to pay for it, and he wouldn’t need a lot of money once he got to Australia. From what he remembered from talking to his uncle as a child and what he understood from his more recent conversations with Macklin, other than his own personal supplies—clothing, toiletries, etc.—the station paid for the rest. He could move into his uncle’s house and eat with the men who worked for him, so he wouldn’t have rent to pay or groceries to buy.