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combination was twelve, twenty-nine, three.”
    “I’ll tell Molly,” Neil said. “Do you need anything from home? She can pick it up before she goes to Taylor Peak.”
    And wasn’t that the kicker? His home was the house he and Sam had helped build and had lived in for years, but Taylor Peak was his family legacy. Unless Devlin had written Jeremy completely out of his will—they did have a distant cousin Devlin might have given it to out of spite—Taylor Peak, with all the associated responsibilities, would be his now.
    He was going to be sick.
    “Jeremy?”
    “No, I don’t need anything from home,” Jeremy said as he struggled to swallow down the bile that rose in his throat. “Tell Molly I’m sorry she has to come all the way here.”
    “Don’t be daft. Under the circumstances, she’ll be glad to do it,” Neil said. “I’ll go call now. Twelve, twenty-nine, three, right?”
    Jeremy nodded, and Neil left.
    “I can’t do this,” Jeremy said to Sam when they were alone.
    “Do what?” Sam scooted closer to Jeremy.
    “Give up the life we built together, take the station, step into Devlin’s shoes—any of it. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know where to start.”
    “At the beginning,” Sam said, “and going to Taylor Peak doesn’t mean giving up our life together. I can work remotely part of the time and drive to Lang Downs the rest of the time. Caine will find a way to make it work for us. You know that.”
    “That assumes I want it to work,” Jeremy said. “What if I want to say forget the whole bloody thing and just go home?”
    “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Sam said, “but you still have to figure out what to do with Taylor Peak. If nothing else, Devlin hired men to work the station for a season and you have livestock you can’t abandon. If you want to get through the season, sell off the whole mob and let the land go unused, you can, but then you’ll continue to have the yearly taxes and everything to deal with without any income.”
    “I could sell it,” Jeremy said. “Hell, I’ll give it away. Or maybe I got lucky and Devlin left it to someone else. Then I won’t have to worry about it.”
    “We’ll worry about that when Molly gets here,” Sam said. “But whatever you decide, we’re in it together. Nothing can change that.”
     
     
    C AINE LOOKED up when Molly walked into the office. The look on her face told him all he needed to know. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
    Molly nodded. “Taylor died this morning. Neil asked me to go to Taylor Peak to see if I could find the will and then to take it to them in Canberra. Linda said she’d watch the kids for the day, but I don’t know if I’ll make it back tonight.”
    “Macklin and I can keep an eye on them tonight if Linda can’t,” Caine said. Kyle’s wife Linda frequently exchanged child-care services with Molly and Neil, although Linda’s daughter was old enough now to be the one watching Molly’s young children. “Give Jeremy our condolences and let me know if there’s anything we can do. In Canberra or on the station.”
    “I will,” Molly said. “I’ll call when I get to Canberra or if I hear anything else from them before then.”
    She left the office, and Caine leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. He’d barely known Devlin Taylor and hadn’t particularly liked what little he knew, but his death still left Caine shaken. For better or worse, he’d been a fixture in the local landscape.
    He’d been an experienced grazier and a competent horseman, and he’d still been thrown and hurt so badly the fall killed him. Caine shuddered. How easy it would be for the same thing to happen to any of the jackaroos on Lang Downs.
    To Macklin.
    Rationally he knew Macklin was fine. He was spending the day working around the main buildings of the station, repairing tack, checking fences, and any other regular maintenance that he could find to do. He’d chosen those tasks specifically so he would be nearby