The Breaker (Erotic Country #1.) (6 page)

Too soon, Brett looked
at his watch again. She rose without him having to say anything and pulled her
clothes over her wet body. She would dry soon enough.

The rest of the day
passed in blissful tranquillity. They rode to every water point and gate and
got back to the homestead before dark on tired horses. The cattle trucks were
loaded with pregnant cows to be taken back to the main station. Last to leave
were the horses. Brett and Sophie loaded them one by one and raised the ramp.

‘Better let me drive,’
said Brett. ‘You might get us lost.’

‘Don’t be a smart arse
or I’ll make you ride in the back with the horses,’ she replied, swinging
herself up into the driver’s seat and taking hold of the keys. He rolled his
eyes and walked to the passenger side.

The sun set low over
the horizon as they drove back to Stoneleigh.

‘You’re a brat,’ said
Brett, his boot on the dashboard again.

‘You’re an arsehole,’
she replied, without taking her eyes off the road.

‘Spend the night with
me.’

‘Okay.’

It was dark when they arrived at the
main station. Sophie was weary as she unloaded the last horse. Jim called Brett
to the office to sign paperwork and she was left to feed the horses alone.

When she got back to
her small flat she showered until Liz knocked on the door and reminded her that
they were on tank water. She plucked and preened and waxed and clipped.

‘What are you
doing
in there?’ Liz yelled.

Sophie opened the door
and grinned through the narrow opening. ‘Waxing.’

‘What for?’

She closed the door
without answering and got back to the job. Should she do a heart shape? Or just
a little Mohawk? She winced with every pull of cloth and began to get off on
the pain. Man, she was becoming as sick as him. She took off the lot, and was almost
disappointed when she ran out of hair. She gave it a thorough loofa job and
rubbed some cool cream over the silky smooth, now glowing pink skin. It felt
nice, very nice, so she took her time.

When she pulled on her
knickers and took two steps to the bathroom cupboard the whole area tingled
against the small strip of lace. She found the
Excitamax Pleasure Box
, an
industrial sized box of mixed novelty condoms. The only supply of condoms in
the entire region was from the local hotel, and this was the only product the
publican stocked. He either had a warped sense of humour or a pathetic sense of
kink.

She took one, shoved it
down her knickers and wrapped her robe around her. Then she went back, grabbed
another couple and pushed them down her bra before joining Liz in the kitchen
for a beer.

‘Where are you off
to?’ her flatmate asked, planting herself on the couch and aiming the remote at
the telly. An ad for John Deer tractors blared into the room.

Sophie took a swig on
her beer. Somehow she knew Liz would disapprove. She was 35 years old and so
dowdy already, it was frightening. Sophie was still a good decade off that.

‘You’re going to see
the new guy, aren’t you?’

Sophie took another
swig of her beer, swallowed and then answered. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Oh come on, Soph. The
tension between the pair of you is putting the whole station on edge.’

Sophie was quiet. What
was wrong with it? They were both consenting adults. It was no one else’s business.

‘You be really careful
messing around with that guy.’ Liz’s voice was soft and concerned. ‘He’s
dangerous.’

Sophie snorted. ‘What
do you mean,
dangerous
?’ But she knew what Liz meant. She had no doubt
Brett could hurt someone.

‘You do know why he
was in jail, don’t you?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘Nup.’

Liz groaned. ‘
Oh,
Sophie!
’

‘What? What was he in
for?’ Something told her it would be something violent.

Liz sat on the couch
and stared up at her. ‘He killed a guy, Sophie. With his bare hands.’

Sophie went cold.
Okay, she wasn’t expecting that. Assault maybe. Robbing the local servo. That
sort of thing she could handle. But murder? Whoa!

She sat next to Liz, her
head spinning with all sorts of gruesome images.

Her friend ran a hand
over her wet hair. ‘I don’t want you to go over there, babe.’

‘Thanks for telling
me.’ It took a while for Sophie to collect her thoughts. Bloody hell. Why
hadn’t anyone else said something? Jim, or Nancy? They must have known. And yet
they both treated him like royalty. Maybe they didn’t know. They
had
to
know. Sophie’s head spun.

‘Who did he kill?’ The
words were hard to get out. Man, she hoped he wasn’t a wife basher.

‘A man on one of the
properties around here,’ Liz answered. ‘A lot of locals aren’t happy to see him
back, I know that much.’

Sophie reeled. ‘Why?’
she asked. ‘How did it happen?’

Liz shook her head. ‘I
don’t know what the truth is. You know how many wild stories get told around
here. But he is known for being violent.’

Sophie nodded.

‘Please don’t go over
there,’ said Liz. ‘He’s a unit.’

Sophie pulled herself
off the couch and went to her room. She sat in the dark, tucked her knees under
her chin and stared out the window. The small lamp in Brett’s lounge room was
on, and she could see him on the couch, waiting. She sat watching him turn
pages over one by one, magazine after magazine. She didn’t know why, but she
felt completely and utterly bereft. Maybe she was just so tired from being in
the sun all day.

But she couldn’t sleep.
She pulled the condoms out of her undies and tossed them on the bed in front of
her, watching them glow ridiculously in the dark.

It was two in the
morning when she watched him stand and turn the light out. She collapsed on her
bed in a ball and cried until the sun rose.

* * * * *

Brett was foul the next day. A
shimmering hatred radiated from him and no one in the kitchen seemed game to
speak to him at breakfast.

Sophie walked into the
harness shed and startled when she found Brett in there. His eyes met hers and
instantly she knew that he knew that she knew. She backed out slowly and he
watched her until she dropped her eyes and left.

He didn’t speak all
day; not a nod or a shrug. It was as though she wasn’t there.

He spider-hobbled his
breakers, chaining all four feet to one central ring, and worked them over
without speaking. He ran a hand over their ears and faces, around their bellies
and under their tails until they stood and accepted everything he did without
question. He worked them relentlessly, without a break, until they stood like
zombies, completely desensitised. He saddled them, then mounted and dismounted
until they stood submissively in their chains.

Then he let them go.
No pat. No rub. He was cold and mechanical.

She spent the morning
with a black colt, Iceman’s brother, who had the same itchy skin and heavy-set
shoulders. He bucked as much as his brother, and she worked slowly and
persistently with him, putting pressure on and taking it off until he responded
to her touch. She drove him forward when he bucked under the saddle and took
the pressure off when he levelled out.

When he was trotting
kindly, she rested him and hosed him off, and then spent hours brushing and
stroking and scratching his shoulders until his top lip waggled with
appreciation. Finally, she found a reason in this crappy, shitty day to smile.
He was cute. She wrapped her arms around his thick-set neck and rested her face
against him.

Brett sat alone at
lunch. It was awful. And hurtful.

That night he didn’t
come to the main house for dinner. When she went to bed and stared miserably
out of her window, she saw that all the shutters in his house were closed. No
lights were on.

The next morning, the
engine of his ute started before daybreak and she felt panic course through
her. Was he leaving?

She ran out to the
driveway, wrapping a belt around her bathrobe, but by the time she got to the
front of his house, he was talking out the window to Jim, who handed him a
wallet of papers. He rolled out the driveway before she could reach him.

‘Where’s he going?’
she asked Jim, stricken. She didn’t even have his number. That’s if he had a
phone. Nor did she know his last name.

‘Parole office,’ Jim
replied. ‘In Brisbane.’

‘Is he coming back?’

‘Yeah, then he just
has to check in locally once a week.’ Jim looked her over as if she was
strange, shook his head and walked away.

She stood with bare
feet on the stony driveway, tightening the belt around her gown while Brett’s
ute glided along the front of the property and then disappeared from sight.

‘You’ve got it bad,’
said Liz when she walked back into the flat. Liz was sipping coffee – her hair was
sticking up and she was wearing something Sophie’s Nan would wear to bed.

Sophie sat down and
ran her hands through her hair. ‘Real bad,’ she agreed.

‘He’s hot.’

‘You don’t know how
hot,’ she groaned.

Liz lifted an eyebrow
at her.

She put her face in
her hands.

‘Is he coming back?’
Liz asked.

‘Yes.’ Sophie looked
up. ‘Then what do I do?’

‘Forget him. Get
tarted up and come to the rodeo next weekend.’ Her friend lifted one arse cheek
and farted and Sophie wondered why the hell she was taking relationship advice
from such a bush pig. Because she was a nice bush pig, she remembered.

‘Do you do that in
front of the children?’ she asked.

‘Never,’ Liz replied
with a solemn face. ‘Coming to the rodeo?’

‘Only if you promise
not to do that in the car.’

‘Deal.’ Liz stood and
left the room.

* * * * *

The station seemed twice as big and
empty without Brett. She worked with the horses by herself, just as she’d done
for the past three years, but now she wondered how she’d handled it without a
co-worker for so long. She had enjoyed it mostly, but she preferred working
alongside a competent horseman.

As she handled her
charges one by one she thought of him, caught in the traffic in Brisbane. Then
she started calculating. It was a five-hour drive. He left at around five, so
if he had to wait around a while, he would be back before sunset tonight.
That’s if he didn’t have any other business to take care of down there. Did he
have people to visit? What else would a guy who had been locked up for four
years need to do? She felt a strange new kind of anger when one obvious answer
hit her.

Jealousy, raw and
unreasonable, coursed through her. She didn’t like this feeling. She tried to
shake it off. She scolded herself for working out how long it would be until he
got back. It was none of her business. Especially as she had given him no reason
to return immediately.

But the questions
wouldn’t go away. If he’d had a daughter, where was the mother? Did he still
see her? Was she beautiful? Smart? Funny? A total hornbag? Or a bitch? She hoped
it was the latter.

The day dragged out
into one long stretch of hot, boring, hard labour, made slower by constantly
looking at her watch and counting down to four o’clock, which she’d calculated
as the earliest possible time she could reasonably expect his ute to roll back
down the driveway. Once the small hand ticked past that, she became
increasingly irritable.

She threw dipper loads
of chaff into buckets without caring if it all landed in its intended place and
slammed the lids down on the feed bin, sending dust and particles spiralling
into the shafts of light that beamed through the open feed room windows. Then
she kicked a pile of stacked up buckets, sending them rolling across the floor.
She shoved her way out the door with three buckets in each hand and cursed when
one of them slipped from her grasp and spilt over the floor. She kicked that
too, then went and got another one.

Young Pete came to ask
where Jim was and she grunted, ‘How would I know?’ She felt mean, seeing him quickly
remove himself from the shed. When all her jobs were done, she made excuses to
stay out in the shed, cleaning the saddles, organising the gear and grouping
ropes and straps and who knew what else into what was useable and what should
have been thrown out years ago. She sorted through miscellaneous nose bands and
broken cheek straps, all stiff and green with mould. She gave the leather
surcingles a good clean and oil, and then started on an old set of harness from
many moons ago. Over the next three hours she organised the entire lot, cleaned
it and hung it up neatly on hooks.

And then it was seven
o’ clock and he still wasn’t back.

Stop being such a
cling-on
, she told
herself.

She resolved not to
think about him anymore, and she didn’t, until she hit the shower and noticed a
tiny yellow bruise on her nipple. She dried off, turned to inspect her back in
the mirror and found tiny red marks where he had rolled his spurs over her.
He’d marked her, laid claim to her. And she had to admit, she’d loved it.