Page 18 of Higher Ground
As he stared at the book in his lap, Byron found all the words were beginning to blur. He was certain he’d read the same paragraph three times now, and he still wasn’t sure it had sunk in. With a huff, he gave up. He took the flap of the dust jacket and tucked it between the pages to hold his place. From down the hall, the rest of the house had turned still. No distant sounds of nursery rhymes on the TV, no muffled voices as Emory read Clayton a book, no giggling as they played. Tapping his phone to check the time, Byron realised the young boy was probably napping by now. He’d skipped lunch. No wonder his eyes were dry.
Standing and rolling his neck out, Byron dropped the book onto the couch. He was still thinking about what he could whip up for a quick meal when a gentle tapping caught his attention.
Emory was standing in the doorway to the den, one foot still in the hall and the other hanging over the step down into the room. She’d gotten changed at some point. The accidentally revealing dressing gown had been replaced by another oversized jumper. This one was a faded blue, with writing on the front that Byron couldn’t make out in the dull light of the lamp beside the couch. It was so big he couldn’t tell if she was wearing anything underneath—which he tried his utmost best to ignore—and she’d rolled up the sleeves, the folded cuff sitting tight across her wrist. She held her hand at shoulder height, resting her knuckles against the old door frame. Byron couldn’t remember there ever being one.
“Am I interrupting?” she whispered, although Byron wasn’t sure if it was because the room was so silent or because Clayton was asleep.
He shook his head. “Nah.” At first he whispered back, but he hated the way it made his voice so unintentionally seductive, so he cleared his throat and started again. “I was just reading. You know you can take any you like, if you need.”
He waved his hand at the book he’d left on the couch, then up over the wall. Emory’s gaze followed the path of his arm, her mouth falling open a fraction when they reached the overflowing bookshelves. She seemed to hesitate a little but stepped down into the room and towards Byron’s personal library.
Although it wasn’t his. Not really.
It had been his mother’s first. Then his teenage books had begun to fill out the shelves. When Josie had moved in, she brought with her the rest of the collection that now sat on the shelves. Being down here, reading books that were years old, made Byron feel a little closer to the women he’d loved and lost.
Emory squeezed herself behind the couch to inspect the books and reached high above her head to pull one down. It made her jumper pull up, revealing a pair of tight black bikeshorts. At least she had something on, Byron figured. Although knowing they were so tight didn’t help his imagination much.
She snickered, and at first, Byron thought maybe he’d made some embarrassing comment or sound out loud. But she was enthralled by the book she’d pulled down. Byron couldn’t blame her.
The book would have been one of his mother’s. If the well-worn edges and faded corners weren’t a giveaway, the cover surely was. It showed a couple, which sounded innocent enough, except that the man was shirtless. The woman was leaning into him with a look of longing and awe. Deep red writing swirled across the bottom half.
“This one of yours?” Emory laughed. And there it was. That sweet-as-honey melody that warmed his insides.
Byron wanted to laugh back, but he couldn’t. Not when he’d read the book. And it wasn’t half as funny as Emory was making out. Actually, it wasn’t half bad.
“Technically,” he said as he stepped forward to grab it from her, “it was my mother’s. Although this one is pretty good.”
He flicked through the pages, soaking in the way the paper smelt like home. Emory stepped one foot over the back of the couch, climbing across it until she was standing on the cushion. The book he’d dropped—a thriller, he read widely—teetered towards her feet. From up there, Emory was at least a head taller than Byron, and she leant over him to pluck the book from between his fingers.
“You know, in all these years, I never imagined you as a reader,” she said with a smirk. “But if you say this one’s good, I’m reading it.”
For the second morning in a row, an eerie silence woke Byron from his slumber. On any regular day, he would wake to the cows mooing from their paddocks, and Miff barking to be let outside to contain them. Spread across the higher paddocks on the other side of the farm, the cows were too far away to be heard, and Miff had disappeared somewhere in the house, no doubt enjoying her lazy morning off. Even so, Byron woke just as the sun was rising.
He’d barely slept the past two nights, tossing and turning in his bed as he tried to figure out how in the blaming hell he was going to survive being stuck in the house with Emory. He’d come up with nothing, and even as he stretched his arms above his head with a yawn, the answer to all his worries still eluded him.
There was nothing to be done. There would be no hiding his attraction for the bright-as-day twenty-four-year-old. Because no matter how many times he told himself he had to stop, he just couldn’t help himself when it came to Emory.
From the day he met her, Byron had known she was special. She’d skipped into town on the arm of his son, and Byron had been reining in his burning attraction—well, trying to at least—ever since. It had been wrong, so wrong, to feel so strongly about a woman near half his age. Never mind the fact that she was dating his son. And it had been even more wrong when they announced she was pregnant, and worse still when Jaxon skipped town and Byron was hopeful, even if only a little.
From that day, he’d done everything in his power to be the rock she needed, the man she deserved to help her raise her son. He’d done everything he could to keep his thoughts to himself.He wasn’t naïve enough to think she might feel the same. Until now. Until he heard her two nights ago and until they spent all day yesterday sharing glances and intentionallynottalking about the fact they’d masturbated over each other.
Byron pushed himself to stand and peeled back the curtain. The sky was blood red as the sun rose through the stormy clouds. The rain had held off all day yesterday, and all night, but he doubted it would stay that way for long.
Pulling on a pair of jeans and a deep grey flannel, Byron planned out his morning. Tucker would be over after breakfast to help herd the cows into the high paddock, and the time had come to cart all the chooks into one coop. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to do. Nothing could be done to salvage any of the wheat crops. It was too early in the season to harvest, and the fields lay too low between the hills. If they weren’t already covered in water, they would be soon. The lack of current rain didn’t fool Byron. The creek would keep rising as more rain hit the north and west, feeding water into their basin faster than it could drain back out.
He supposed he should do a quick check of the water levels over the bridge, too. If they could, one last trip into town for extra supplies wouldn’t hurt. Nappies for Clayton, another candle for Emory because he saw the way her eyes lit up and her shoulders relaxed when she spotted the one he had been burning the past two nights. He didn’t like the thought of her leaving the safety of the farmhouse, but he couldn’t keep her hostage, and she deserved one last trip into town if they could make it happen.
Miff caught up with him as he walked out the back sliding door. She pounced around his feet until he bent over to scratch behind her ears.
“Come on then.” He whistled as he climbed onto the quad bike.
The dog chased after Byron as he took in the current state of the farm. As suspected, the lowest fields were already covered with a thin layer of water, so he didn’t risk running the bike through the valley for a closer look. From his vantage point halfway up one hill, he could see them huddled under the trees scattered along the hillside. He shot off a message to Tucker, asking for a hand rounding them up later in the morning, even though they’d both known all along that Byron was going to need Tucker’s help. The water would never get as far up as the high paddock, and that way, even if the gates did blow open, the cows wouldn’t be going anywhere once they were surrounded by water. Sure, they could swim, but they typically weren’t dumb enough to try it.
Byron steered the bike back towards the house, not stopping as he pulled onto the driveway and headed for the bridge. It was still clear, and from the looks of it, they had time to run into town if they needed to. The water hadn’t even hit the first marker yet, but Byron knew it was only a matter of time. He gulped, thinking again about being trapped in the house with Emory for a week or more. It wasn’t a terrible thought, and that was part of the problem.
Rolling his shoulders, Byron whistled to get Miff’s attention. “Oi, Miff, let’s go.”
The dog’s ear pricked up, but she kept her focus on the flowing water of the creek. She wanted to swim, most likely, and Byron didn’t blame her. The air was hot and sticky, but he knew how fast the undercurrent would be as the creek continued to rise.
