LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | ARe

BLURB:

Up until Travis arrived on his doorstep, Charlie had lived a very solitary life. He had surrounded himself with isolation; a couple million acres of red dirt, scorching sun and loneliness.

Six months on, winter has settled over the desert, and Charlie has the life he never dreamed possible. But living and working together, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for six months straight starts to take its toll.

Charlie is a stubborn, stubborn man, who tends to have more conversations in his head than what comes out his mouth, whereas Travis has no problem saying what’s on his mind. And even as they both struggle to communicate, struggle to make sense of need versus want, Charlie can see that he’s pushing Travis away – yet seems helpless to stop it.

When it all boils down to whether Travis should stay or go, maybe the decision won’t be theirs to make.

About RDH2

You can watch a pretty cool cattle mustering by chopper video here (link takes you to National Geographic site)

EXCERPT:

CHAPTER ONE
Four days. Four bloody long it-wasn’t-like-this-before-him days.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, I looked at my watch for the twentieth time and sipped my tea.

“He won’t be much longer,” Ma said.

I pretended not to know what she was talking about, and she pretended not to smile. Ma was trying to get dinner ready, and I was under her feet and in her way. I put my still-full cup in the sink and sighed. “It makes no sense,” I said. “I spent twenty-six perfectly capable years without him, how can four days be so fu—” I stopped short of swearing and tried again. “How can four days be so bloody long?”

Ma smiled her eye-crinkling, that’s-so-cute smile. “You miss him. It’s only natural,” she said. “Can you lift this tray for me?”

I carried the old heavy cooking tray of roast beef to the centre table where Ma usually cut it for serving. “But still. Four days. It’s pathetic,” I mumbled. “And they’re late! How long does it take for them to come in from the southern fence line? It shouldn’t take them this long.”

Ma ignored my whining and asked me to get the platters down from the shelf. Then she asked me to get the plates and set the table. I knew she was just keeping me busy and getting me out from under her feet. I’d annoyed her enough for the most of the afternoon. And possibly some of yesterday as well. Day three hadn’t been much fun either.

Travis had been gone for four days. Four freakin’ days. Four days when time stretched thin, draggin’ its sorry self forward. Four days of keepin’ myself busy, four days of being a miserable disgrace.

He was fixin’ fences on the southern line with Ernie, Bacon and Trudy. I wasn’t surprised the fencing needing doing; it was too many years of sun and rust in the making. There was a stretch of fencing a few kilometres long that needed restumping and rewiring. It was a big job and about a hundred kilometres from the homestead. It wasn’t worth coming in each night for. We kept in constant radio contact, and George flew fresh supplies down to them on the second day, similar to what we do when droving cattle.

When Travis said he’d join the others for the job, I’d said I could go too. We were in bed, and Travis rolled us over so he was on top of me and laughed at me. “Can’t you live without me for four days?” he’d asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” I’d shot back at him. “Of course I can.”

He’d grinned in the darkness, kissing me with smiling lips. “You totally can’t.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I’d replied.

“You’ll be useless without me,” he’d goaded, pinning my hands above my head and nudging his nose to mine. “You’ll see.”

And the smug bastard was right.

“You know,” I told Ma as I pulled out the tray of condiments from the dry store pantry. “You know what I hate the most? I hate that he has to be right all the time. It really pisses me off.”

“Hm mm,” Ma hummed in that sure-it-does-honey tone.

“And I hate that he thinks he’ll be the one to decide whether or not he goes fencing for four days, when I said the others were more than capable. I mean, I’m not his keeper, but I am his boss.”

Ma said nothing, just looked at me as she stirred the pot of gravy. She had one eyebrow raised in a ’course-you-are-honey kind of way.

“And he didn’t seem to think leaving me for four days was a problem. He volunteered to camp out for four days rather than be with me, for shit’s sake. So what does that say about me?”

“Charlie,” Ma chided.

“And you know what else I hate? He leaves his towels on the bed. I really hate that. How hard is it to hang it back up again? It’s not hard. At all. And he grinds his teeth when he sleeps. I really hate it when he does that. And what the bloody hell is that letter from my old uni addressed to him for—”

Then we heard the sound of motorbikes and the old ute pulling up at the gates near the shed.

And my chest got all tight and my stomach knotted with butterflies.

Ma burst out laughing. “Hm mm. I can tell by your smile just how much you hate all those things.”

 BUY LINKS: Amazon | All Romance eBooks | B&N

SOME INFO FIRST:

Sutton Station, while fictional, is based on a real working station  by the name of Lucy Creek Station, in the Northern Territory, Australia. 

A link to “Sutton Station”  on  Google Maps (zoom in to have a proper look)

http://goo.gl/maps/Fpjle

Makes the RED DIRT part of the title pretty obvious, yes?  😉

Sutton Station is big. As in 2.58 million acres big. Roughly the size of a small country (Lebanon, for example)  and is approximately three times the size of the largest ranch in the US. 

THE LINGO:

There is a glossary for Australian terminology at the beginning of the book. Australians are renowned for nicknames and shortening of every day words.  As this book is based in Australia and has Australian characters, regional lingo is used.

 Australian Terminology Glossary:

Station: Farm, ranch.

Paddock: Large fenced area for cattle; a pasture.

Holding yard:  Corral.

Swag: A canvas bedroll.

Ute:  Utility pick-up truck.

Motorbike: Motorcycle, dirtbike.

Akubra: Australian cowboy hat.

Scone:  American sweet biscuit, usually eaten with cream and jam.

CHARACTER INFO:

Getting to know a little more about these boys…

ABOUT CHARLIE:  

Five foot ten inches tall, stocky build and brown eyes. Born and raised on Sutton Station, he spent three years in Sydney at college but came back to the family farm when his father died.

There are two songs that reflect Charlie:

http://youtu.be/gJEoxeW7JvQ

ABOUT TRAVIS:

Just over six foot, lean with blue eyes and a striking smile, he knows what he wants and isn’t shy to ask for it.  Studied Agronomy and when offered a place in a Diversification Exchange Program, something in his bones told him to choose Sutton Station. 

BLURB:

Welcome to Sutton Station: One of the world’s largest working farms in the middle of Australia – where if the animals and heat don’t kill you first, your heart just might.

Charlie Sutton runs Sutton Station the only way he knows how, the way his father did before him. Determined to keep his head down and his heart in check, Charlie swears the red dirt that surrounds him – isolates him – runs through his veins.

American agronomy student Travis Craig arrives at Sutton Station to see how farmers make a living from one of the harshest environments on earth. But it’s not the barren, brutal and totally beautiful landscapes that capture him so completely.

It’s the man with the red dirt heart.

EXCERPT:  

CHAPTER ONE – Where the American guy walks in, all blue eyes and disarming smiles, and my life goes to shit.

 ~

Just on sundown, I got off the motorbike, kicked the stand down so the bike stood upright without me and closed the gate. I’d been out all day in the South paddocks doing a final check of fences and water trough pumps before we bought the cattle down from the North. I’d seen the ute back at the homestead as I came in so I knew George was home.

George was my leading hand. He was in his fifties, with greying hair and sun-hardened skin. He’d worked here for as long I could remember, but he was more than a loyal employee. He was my friend, and in a lot of ways, more of a dad to me than my own old man ever was.

He’d been out all day.  Left before sun-up and headed into Alice Springs. We were a good three hours from the nearest town, and with a list as long as his arm from the Station cook, Ma – who also happened to be his wife – he needed a few hours in town before heading out to the airport to pick up the real reason for his trip.

 An American agronomy student by the name of Travis Craig.

When my father ran this farm, every year we’d have people from another country come and spend a couple of weeks as part of some Diversification exchange program. My old man always said it was a good way to source out what other countries were teaching, but really I think he just liked the extra pair of hands at the finish of the dry season.  And when we’d had a phone call back in July to ask if we’d be interested in hosting another student, and given it’d been a few years, I thought it seemed like a good idea. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if this Travis Craig would be a help or a liability.

I rode the bike into the yard and pulled up in the shed. I figured they’d know I’d arrived, having heard the bike, so I headed straight for the house. Like most homesteads built almost a hundred years ago, it was a weatherboard home, with an old iron roof and a veranda around four sides to try and keep it cool.

I kicked the red dust from my boots on the veranda steps and tried to brush the same from my jeans, took off my hat before I opened the door and walked inside. There was a suitcase and a duffel bag near the front door, and voices at the back of the house.

“In the kitchen,” George called out.

I followed the sound of chatter and the smell of something good to find a meeting of sorts in the old country-style kitchen. The worn, solid wooden table that graced the middle of the room was covered with plates of scones and trays of cups and tea, and three people were in chairs around it. My right-hand man, George, his wife the cook, Ma, and a stranger with short light-brown hair and pale blue eyes.

George was the first to his feet, and the man beside him soon followed. “Here’s the boss, Charles Sutton,” George said, introducing me formally. “Charlie, this is Travis Craig.”

Travis, who looked about twenty-two years old, held out his hand and smiled. “Mr Sutton. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” His accent was strange to hear at first, but his smile was warm and wide.

I wiped my hand on my shirt and held it out for him to shake. “Travis,” I said with a nod. “Please, call me Charlie.”