Читать книгу The Mighty Quinns: Callum - Kate Hoffmann, Kate Hoffmann - Страница 5

Queensland, Australia—January 1997

“YOU KISSED HER?” CAL QUINN stared at his younger brother Teague in disbelief. It was one thing to kiss just any girl, but quite another to kiss a Fraser. Harry Fraser and Cal’s dad were in the midst of a land feud, a fight that had gone on for years.

“I’m not spilling my guts to you boofheads,” Teague said. “You’ll tell Dad and then he’ll lock me in my room until it’s time for me to go to university.”

Cal turned his gaze to the horizon. He and his brothers had spent the day riding the fence line along the west boundary of Kerry Creek Station, looking for breaks. On their way back to the homestead, they’d decided to make a stop at the big rock, a landmark on the station and a favorite spot for him and his brothers. They’d discarded their shirts in the heat, their bodies already brown from the summer sun, and crawled up on top of the rock.

“Dad would be mad as a cut snake if he knew what you were doing,” Cal warned. “He hates Harry Fraser. All the Frasers.”

“There are only two. Hayley and her grandfather. And Hayley doesn’t care about the land.”

Cal scowled. “Still, you shouldn’t be talking to her. It’s—it’s disloyal.”

“Oh, nick off,” Teague muttered, growing impatient with the conversation. “You can’t tell me what I’m allowed to do. You’re not the boss cocky on this station.”

Cal’s temper flared. The hell he couldn’t. He was the oldest of the three Quinn brothers and if Teague or Brody were doing something that might hurt the family, then it was Cal’s duty to step in. “I will be someday. And when I am, you won’t be kissing Hayley Fraser.”

“If you tell Dad about—”

“I kissed a girl,” Brody confessed. “Twice.”

Cal leaned forward to glare at his youngest brother. Brody had always done his best to keep up, but he usually didn’t resort to lies. “Twice?”

“Yeah,” Brody said. “Once with tongue. It was kind of nasty, but she said we should try it. I thought I’d give it a fair go.”

Brody had been living in Sydney with their mum, attending a regular school filled with real girls. He’d been to a proper dance and played footy with his school team and went to the flicks almost every weekend. Maybe he was telling the truth. If he was, then at fourteen, Brody had already passed Cal in worldly experience.

“Tongue?” Teague asked. “What does that mean?”

“When you kiss her, you open your mouth and touch tongues,” Brody explained. “It’s called French kissing. I guess the French do it all the time.”

Teague considered the notion, his eyebrow raised in suspicion. “So who opens their mouth first, the guy or the girl?”

“Whoever wants to French kiss,” Brody said. “If you don’t want to do it, you just don’t open your mouth. It’s probably not so good to do if you’re sick. Or if you have food in your mouth. Or if you haven’t brushed your teeth.”

Cal listened as his brothers discussed their experiences with girls, unable to add anything to the conversation. Cal was seventeen, yet he’d never kissed a girl, or touched a girl, or even carried on a conversation with one his own age. He’d lived on the station his entire life, miles from any female worth talking about.

Sure, he’d been to Brisbane a bunch of times with his family and he’d seen lots of pretty girls there. And his cousins had visited Kerry Creek when he was younger, and some of them were girls. But he’d never gotten close enough to…

He knew what went on between men and women. He listened to the jackaroos after they’d come back from a weekend in town. And he’d discovered self-gratification and teenage fantasies years ago. But he wanted to know about the real thing. Sex. Something that Teague and Brody might end up experiencing long before he did.

Cal had considered going into Bilbarra the next time the jackaroos took a weekend off and find himself a willing girl. He was old enough. His mother might disapprove, but she was living in Sydney and would have no idea what he was up to.

As for his father, Jack Quinn had left his two eldest sons to their own devices since the separation. Brody was out of his control in Sydney, but Teague and Cal had only Mary, the housekeeper, to watch over them. Though she was strict about schoolwork, and their father firm about station chores, Cal and Teague were allowed to spend their free time in whatever way they chose.

“Mac and Smithy said they’d take me into town the next time they went,” Cal said, trying to maintain an air of cool. “They know a lot of women in Bilbarra.”

“Yeah, only they all live at the knock shop,” Teague said.

“Not all of them,” Cal said. Though the boys did frequent the local brothel, they also spent time at the pubs. From what the jackaroos had told him, the brothel in Bilbarra was still a well-kept secret, one almost everyone in the territory knew. But there were other places in Oz where that type of thing was perfectly legal.

Maybe that’s what he needed to do. Go find a place like that, pay his money and have done with it. He’d ask for a pretty girl, one with long hair and a nice body. And he wouldn’t need to be embarrassed by his lack of experience. He’d be paying for a tutor.

Something would have to change. Cal had always dreamed about running Kerry Creek someday. But if he never left the station, there wasn’t much chance of meeting females. Maybe he ought to do like Teague and make plans to attend university for a few years. He could study business, learn things that would make him a better station manager and at the same time, find a wife.

But the idea didn’t appeal to him at all. He felt comfortable where he was. He’d learned how to run the station from watching his father. And he loved the work, loved the animals and the people who populated Kerry Creek. There was nothing more beautiful to him than a sunrise over the outback and nothing more peaceful than the sounds of life all around him at day’s end.

Cal lay back on the rock and stared up at the sky, linking his hands behind his head. Though he wanted to believe the opposite sex might find him interesting, Cal knew life on an outback cattle station wasn’t all sunshine and roses. His mother had left Kerry Creek just six months ago, unable to stand the isolation any longer.

Still, there had to be girls who liked riding horses and mustering cattle and fixing fences. Girls like Hayley Fraser. It might take a while to find someone like that, but when he did, maybe he could convince her to visit him on Kerry Creek. If she liked it, he would ask her to stay.

“I’ve seen lots of knockers, too,” Brody said.

“Yeah, right,” Teague said. “In your dreams, maybe.”

“No, I’m not lying,” Brody said. “Me and my mates go down to Bondi Beach on the weekends and there are girls sunbaking without their tops all over the place. You just walk down the beach and look all you want. You don’t even have to pay.”

Cal cursed softly, then sat up. “Is that all you droobs can talk about? Girls? Who needs them? They’re all just a big pain in the arse anyway. If you two want to sit around sipping tea and knitting socks with the ladies for the rest of your life, then keep it up. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

He slid off the rock, dropping to the ground with a soft thud. Cal grabbed his gloves from his back pocket and put them on, then swung up into the saddle, shoving his hat down on his head. “Well, are you two coming? Or do you need help getting down?”

Teague and Brody glanced at each other, then slid to the ground, their boots causing a small cloud of dust to rise. “Come on, I’ll race you back,” Cal challenged.

“I’m in,” Teague said, hopping on his horse and weaving the reins through his fingers.

“Not fair,” Brody complained. “I haven’t ridden in four months.”

“Then you better hang on,” Cal said. He gave his horse a sharp kick and the gelding bolted forward. The sudden start surprised his brothers. They were just getting settled in the saddle while he was already fifty meters in front.

This was what he loved, the feeling of freedom he had, the wind whistling by his ears, the horse’s hooves pounding on the hard earth. He was part of this land and it was part of him. And if staying on Kerry Creek meant giving up on women altogether, then he’d made the choice already. This was home and he’d spend his life here.