His Brand of Beautiful (10 page)

Which left Christina more mystified than ever.

They found Tate and Shasta slouched on matching canvas deckchairs, long legs stretched out on the deep verandahs. Afternoon sun fired through the kelpies’ coats and only the flick of their ears as the men spoke betrayed the three dogs’ rapt attention. Tate rubbed the sole of his boot back and forth across the youngest dog’s ruff of red fur and when the women approached, all the dogs’ tails drummed in unison. Any tension over Jolie’s shirt seemed forgotten.

Christina looked out over a landscape that was dinner‐plate flat. It was green now, but it was easy to imagine summer’s heat searing off the sand, wind turning the air into sandpaper.

A chair scraped. “Get it all out of your systems now,” Bree said to the two men,

“’cause you’re not talking football again this evening.”

Christina ignored their jibes.

Taller trees marked the river’s path to her left. The road they’d driven in on divided the river from everything else: outbuildings of all sizes. Machinery and equipment sheds.

Stables. Stockyards. A cattle ramp and crush.

Out to the right, a black colt cantered on a lunge rein around a lone stockman. The snap of his training whip punctuated the sound of hooves, and every time it slapped the sand the kelpies’ ears twitched. A second man perched on the yard‐rail, watching. Both wore wide‐brimmed Akubras low over their eyes, long‐sleeved shirts, jeans and boots. Each had a face etched as if with the secrets of desert sands.

Away from the water, stunted grey‐green trees stood like bored outfielders in a far-flung baseball game, trunks blackening as the shadows lengthened.

It was beautiful. In a rugged, desolate way.

She took a sip of her wine. Her Acrylic nails shone on its stem. They looked ridiculous here. She looked sideways at Bree’s hands. Her nails were far more sensible. Neat. Blunt.

Christina tried to picture herself living out here year in year out—like Bree did—and shook her head. Could she live in a place where green was rarer than gold?

Shasta traced Bree’s hand with his finger and Christina had her answer. Anyone could thrive wrapped in that kind of love. But the responsibility that came with that need?

The weight of it? How did Bree bear it?

Another sip of wine slid down her throat. Her stomach growled, loud enough to make the nearest kelpie’s ears flick. It seemed like forever since she’d had a soggy salad sandwich at Coober Pedy airport.

“So you two met at Tate’s work?” Bree began, scraping a fourth deckchair across the concrete. The dog under Tate’s boot leapt away before the chair could squash its tail.

“Christina hired me to strip at her sister‐in‐law’s hen’s night.” Tate dropped the sentence like a grenade down a manhole.

Bree’s mouth fell open. Her hand clapped Shasta’s burly thigh. “See what you learn, Shas, when you stop talking sport?”

Christina sat in the vacant chair, nudged Tate’s boot with a borrowed sandal the same shade of blue as Jolie’s shirt. “
Technically
, I never hired you. I hired a blonde drummer called Nate. You were a complete imposter. And I never asked you to strip. I asked you to paint.”

“Marketing 101. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

“Marketing
102
. There’s
your
version. And there’s the truth.”

Three red‐brown heads snapped up at Tate’s laugh. Bree’s hand squeezed Shasta’s thigh and Christina caught Shasta’s near‐imperceptible nod to his wife.

“And I thought all you did all day was dick about with logos and charge a fortune for it,” Shasta drawled.

They talked and drank while the stockmen turned the colt out into a yard adjoining the stables and filled its trough with chaff, and those of Shasta’s station hands rostered on for Sunday work, returned vehicles and equipment to the many sheds.

The temperature cooled. A massive flock of white cockatoos wheeled and screeched as they settled for the night in the trees lining the river. In the end it was the mosquitos that drove the party inside.

****

“So what happens tomorrow?” Christina asked later, licking her fingers. She couldn’t fit another bite of garlic and rosemary‐flavoured sausage, salad or home‐made bread inside Jolie’s jeans and had started to wonder if anyone would notice if she popped the top button.

Tate’s hand stretched across the back of Christina’s chair and his thumb tapped the timber. If he stretched it two centimetres sideways he could touch her shoulder. She tried not to shiver.

“We’re going horse‐riding.” Tate said. “Shasta needs a couple spare horses taken out for two of his station hands checking the eastern boundary fence. I told him we could do it, unless you think you’ll be missed back in Adelaide. It’ll mean we’ll be camping out for the next two nights. Maybe three. That’s if you’re up for it. You can ride, can’t you?”

So that’s what they were betting about. Was she up to it?
Hell yeah
.

“Saffah made me take a semester of dressage when I was fourteen. She thought it would improve my posture,” she said innocently.

“Well, at least you’ll know which way is front.” Shasta tried—and failed—to hide a smirk.

Bree flipped the salt shaker in her slim fingers, over and back, over and back and looked grim.

“If you want customers to relate to a brand that turns everything they think they know about the Clay family on its head, Christina, you have to make it ring true.

Handcrafted by Clay is as refined as a brand gets. For Cracked Pots to gain traction, you need it to be believable. And if I’m going to design it for you, I need to know you’re up to that.”

Shasta stifled a yawn, then jumped like he’d been stung. Christina suspected Bree kicked him under the table.

She took her time to smooth cream cheese on a cracker she really didn’t need and turned first to Bree. “I’ll need to borrow a pair of boots if we’re going horse‐riding. And bug spray. Mosquitoes love me.”

Lily Malone

“No problem.”

Shasta yawned again.

“Good.” Tate pushed his chair back. “We should get to bed. It’ll be an early start tomorrow.”

“How early is early?”

“I’d like to be in the saddle by seven.”

She groaned. “This is boot‐camp hell.”

“Are you awake, Christina?” The bedroom door opened a crack and Bree poked her head through.

Christina was indeed awake, the motorbike revs and morning machinery growling outside the window had seen to that. She was comfortably curled on her side with a pillow between her knees, deciphering patterns in the wallpaper, planning. Most of her best ideas came like this, in the five minutes of peace before getting up for the day. Now she sat, folding the quilt back on itself.

“Sure. Come in.”

“Here’s some more hand‐me‐downs.” Bree stepped into the room. “And I’ve told both those boys if one of them dares say a t’ing about your clothes, I’ll tear him apart.” She perched the clothes in a tower on the foot of the bed and asked: “Did you sleep well?”

“I woke up dreaming I was back at the vineyard. Our neighbours had twin girls and their older brother was into quad bikes. Every weekend he’d thrash it around the paddock.

It spooked my horse.”

“You had a horse? I thought you said—” dimples flashed in Bree’s cheeks and she stabbed a finger at Christina’s chest. “Oh, you’re good. I
like
you. You are
exactly
what he needs.”

Funny how Bree’s words made her feel tight around the chest. “And what is it that you think Tate needs?”

Bree crossed to the sash window, opened the curtain then heaved the lower panel up. It was sticky with age. “Shas and I talked for a while last night. We haven’t heard Tate laugh like yesterday in… well it seems like forever. I thought he’d forgotten how. He’s been so angry for so long.”

The smell of burnt toast and bacon wisped through the window. Someone shouted a greeting across the yard.

“Angry?” Christina prompted.

“At himself. He thinks he’s responsible for what happened to Jolie. They both do in a way, Shasta too, but it hit Tate harder. You just have to look outside at what they were brought up in, I guess.” Bree gestured out the window. “Out here, if you don’t watch each other’s back, it can be life or death. They’re closer than a lot of siblings, because of that I think. They only had each other growing up. Since they were boys, their father was always on at them to look after Jolie. To make sure she didn’t get hurt in their escapades.” Bree shrugged, a little self‐conscious at the direction the conversation had turned. “Tate thinks he should have seen it coming.”

“Seen what coming?” Christina asked.

“Ian Callinan. The man Jolie went to Africa with.” Bree tied the curtain deftly to the side, and Christina sensed she wouldn’t say more.

Christina picked up a pair of fawn‐coloured jodhpurs on top of the pile and tried to judge the size. “Is there a sewing machine I can use? I’ll never get these done up.”

“There
is
,” Bree drew the second syllable out and frowned. “But I’m not sure it still qualifies as a sewing machine. It was Grandmother Newell’s. I think they should have buried it wit’ her.”

“All I need is for it to have needle, thread and pedal. I won’t take long.”

“Tate’s champing at the bit to get going.”

Lily Malone

“Let him champ.”

****

“You’ll hold him steady, won’t you, Tate?” Christina had one boot wedged in the near stirrup. The other hopped on the mounting block at the side of a honey‐coloured horse.

“
He’s
a ‘
her’
, a mare,” Tate said. She could hear the smile in his voice.

“You’ll be okay, Christina,” Shasta called from the verandah where he and Bree had stopped to see them off. “Sunshine is about as scary as a rocking‐chair and even more comfy.”

“I’ll remember you said that.” Grabbing a handful of white mane in her left hand, Christina got ready to impersonate a flying sack of potatoes.

Then adrenalin alone almost propelled her into the saddle.

Tate’s palm cushioned the plumpest part of her left thigh. She felt each finger outlined through the thin skin of the jodhpurs, five rods of warmth, the longest two trespassed onto the swell of her bottom.

“On three okay?” Tate said. “One. Two.” She felt his muscles bunch. “Three.”

Please God, don’t let the pants split.

The earth moved. There was a chestnut gelding tied on a lead rope to the back of Sunshine’s saddle and Christina narrowly avoided collecting its nose with her boot. She landed across the mare’s back, straightened then tugged at the teal‐coloured shirt that had got caught beneath her.

Her left boot slipped from the stirrup.

“This side has to go up too, mate,” Shasta called.

Tate tightened the stirrup leather on the near side, the broad brim of his hat floating near her hip. He cupped his hand around her calf and helped slot her boot into the stirrup to check its length. She hoped Shasta and Bree and anyone else watching would mark the pink stain in her cheeks to excitement over the ride ahead and nothing to do with the way Tate’s fingers made her pulse fly.

Sunshine shifted weight. Tate walked around the mare and Christina felt his fingers close around her right calf. He moved her leg out of his way, hauled the leathers higher then slid her foot back into the stirrup.

“How’s that feel?”

Fantastic
. “Fine.”

“Here.” He passed up a helmet. Their fingers touched. “Do you need help with it?”

The thought of his knuckles brushing her throat made her squeeze the saddle between her thighs. Sunshine’s ears twitched.

Christina cleared her throat. “Thanks. I’ll manage.” She clicked the catch into place and picked up the reins.

“Heels down, Christina,” Bree encouraged from the second step. “Hands down, too.

And keep your hands toget’er. Good. That’s better.”

“Hey. No coaching,” Shasta said.

A whisper of breeze made the horses’ tails flutter. Tate untied a rangy chestnut he called Bond,
James Bond
. A rolled‐up bundle—a tent or swag—lay across the animal’s rump and secured above it Christina saw the thin metal barrel of a rifle. Bond too led a second horse, a sturdy‐looking roan they called Rocket.

Tate sprang onto Bond’s back and settled in the saddle like he’d been born there.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He flicked the slack of reins against the chestnut’s neck, waved to Shasta and Bree, and led his four‐horse, two‐human procession out the rear homestead gate. Saddle leathers squeaked. Hoofs drummed the sand. The kelpies dashed all over the place until Bree whistled at them and they stopped, tracking back and forth on the sand, whining, as if held by some invisible line.

Christina adjusted her seat. The stirrups were too short, even for her, first chance she got she’d let them out. If she didn’t, she’d be sore within the hour and Tate would win his bet. Either way, she knew she’d ache all over tonight.

There was a time she’d lived on the back of her horse, but that was years ago—

before she and Lacy discovered boys and country football games and shopping malls and second‐hand clothes shops and all the things that relegated Black Jack to slow laps carting the neighbour’s twins around the paddock.

She watched Tate’s broad shoulders moving easily with Bond’s stride, tried to ignore the way those shoulders filled out his blue shirt, the way his hair waved into his collar, biscuit‐coloured and beautiful in the rising light.

When she looked back that first time, the homestead sat like a toy farmhouse on a child’s bedroom floor. Twenty minutes later it was gone, swallowed in the vast haze of grass and scrub. The tallest trees—and there weren’t many because Tate led them at a near right-angle to the river—struggled on spreading trunks to reach a few metres high.

She laid her hand on the mare’s neck. Sunshine was solid through chest and rump with a swing to her walk and ears that flicked towards any sound of a bird or lizard in the grass.

Lizard
. She didn’t want to think about snakes.

“How’s your backside holding up?” Tate called over his shoulder.