Page 3 of Higher Ground
Even so, she’d have to try to get hold of Byron. She didn’t have anywhere else to turn.
After Jaxon left her, Byron was just about the only person in the whole town who didn’t somehow hold her to blame. Funny, too, how he was the other person in town who lost the most. His son. But instead of hating Emory for driving Jaxon away, Byron had pulled her under his wing. Hesomehowhad convinced Jaxon to let Emory stay in the small cottage. He watched Clayton while Emory worked and studied—even though he wasn’t aware of the whole study part. He brought them milk and fresh vegetables from the farm and invited them over for every family event.
At first, Emory had recoiled at every ounce of kindness he offered her. Because really, who would want to be so cosy with their ex-boyfriend’s family? Now, she held back as often as she could. Because, hello, who in their right mind would be attracted to their ex-boyfriend’s dad? Certainly not Emory. Nope. Her cheeks just burned, and her heart fluttered, and, okay, her insides throbbed a little every time she thought about him. But she wasn’tattractedto him. Just to the idea of him. Theforbiddenness of it all. And it was all superficial anyway. He was a hot, older man, that was all.
She’d learnt to shove it all aside. To ignore it. After all, she was only attracted to him because he was the only person in town who was nice to her. It had nothing to do with the hint of salt in his hair or the beard she ached to feel against her cheek or his broad shoulders and firm forearms. Definitely wasn’t those things.
Thunder clapped outside, louder this time. An ominous warning that the storm was about to hit. Clayton jumped in his chair, pressing his hands against his ears. Emory sat down next to him, coaxing his arms down.
“The thunder can’t hurt you,” she told him. “It’s just loud.”
It didn’t mean much to the young boy. He blinked up at Emory for a while, his wide eyes filled with fear, but when there was no follow-up rumble through the sky, he turned his attention to his dinner.
Bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz.
“Mummy phone!” Clayton flicked his spoon out to point at her phone. Tiny specks of red sauce splattered all over the table, a few reaching all the way over to where her phone danced beside her plate.
“Sorry, bud, it must be Papa. You keep eating, okay?”
Emory didn’t wait for the three-year-old to respond. She pushed her chair out to stand, grabbing her phone as she went and swiping to answer the call.
“Emory, is everything okay?” Byron’s gruff voice had a metallic ring to it through the phone. The reception was all sketchy thanks to the storm that was rumbling through outside.
Emory’s breath was shaky as she tried to form her words. “Jaxon is kicking me out of the cottage.”
It wasn’t what she’d meant to say. She’dmeantto say something about the flood and how she and Clayton needed aplace to evacuate to. But something deep in her subconscious had pushed out her bigger worries instead, as though she knew Byron would have the answer.
Chapter 2
Byron
Byron leant all his weight against the old windmill, urging it to return upright. The late afternoon sky was turning dark, and he’d been out fixing damn fence posts all day. Same ones he’d fixed last summer, and the year before that. The problem with farm fences was that they never seemed to stay up. Maybe because he always half-assed fixing them. He wasn’t ready to take the blame, though. He was ready to pack it in, but the farm wasn’t. He just needed to secure the supports for his late wife’s windmill, and then he and his adult son, Tucker, could finally call it a day.
He strained against the weight of the structure, muscles aching after the long day of hard labour, as Tucker poured a bag of concrete in the hole they had dug around the posts.
“You reckon it’ll set before the rain?”
Byron looked from Tucker to the deep grey clouds that hung low on the horizon. “If we’re lucky. It’s meant to hit worse up north today, down here tomorrow. But I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
Byron trusted the sky more than he did the weather forecast. The rain would come tonight, and then all he could do was hope the weatherman was wrong about how long it would last. And how widespread it would hit.
The bureau was forecasting weeks of endless rain from here in Gardner Creek right up to the New South Wales and Queensland border. With so much rain on such dry ground, along such a long stretch of the river, they were also expecting a flood higher than they’d seen in almost twenty years. And Byron remembered that flood. Back then, he’d been helping his old man with the farm, learning the ropes because they both knew he’d be taking over one day soon.
Even then, in his twenties, Byron knew this was the way of life for Gardner men. The town was named for them after all. He’d known then, even when his eldest son Jaxon had been no more than four years old, that he’d be the one to pass the farm down and carry on the family legacy. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do now, because at forty-five, he knew he didn’t have a great many years left of caring as much as he needed to, or working as hard as he did. And sure, he had plenty of men helping him out, and his youngest son, Tucker, helped when he could. But Tucker was only twenty-one and had only just moved out into his own place on the other side of the property. And Jaxon was … well, Jaxon was gone.
Turned out, that flood in the noughties was the final straw for Byron’s dad. Once the waters receded and the stench had cleared, they had fixed all the broken fences and repaired the barn, and then at fifty-one years old, he’d called it quits on farm life. Byron’s parents had moved into the small cottage in town, and he had taken over the farm.
Shit, the cottage. He’d have to call Emory when he got back to the farmhouse, make sure she knew about the flood and had somewhere safe to go. He scolded himself for being so rushedto get back to fixing damned fence posts that he hadn’t thought to check when she came to pick up Clayton. He’d have to make sure she knew that she and Clayton could stay at the farmhouse. The farm was full of rolling hills, spreading over the hectares Byron called home. The farmhouse took pride of place at the top elevation.
Byron turned to admire the heritage home, way in the distance, up on its hill. Even from here, it was a beauty. He could just make out the steep gabled roof and wrap-around patio against the dark clouds that continued to roll in. The place was huge. Full of empty bedrooms and unused spaces. Plenty of room for Emory and Clayton to come and stay, safe and dry.
The thought made Byron’s Adam’s apple bob, a firm lump forming in his throat. His heart raced. At his age, he shouldn’t feel this way about any woman in her twenties, let alone Emory.
“You right, Dad?”
Byron shook his head, pushing off the now upright windmill and rolling his shoulders out. “Thinking of the flood is all.” He didn’t need his son’s opinion when it came to Emory.
Byron knew what he would say, anyway.
