Bare for You: Outback Skies, Book 3

Not all cowboys ride horses.

Jeremy Craig is on the cusp of being named the deputy prime minister of Australia. Which means he’s got to play his cards right and stay deep in the closet. Australia is a lot of things, but there’s no way the country is ready for a gay prime minister. So far, it’s been an easy ruse to maintain. Until he meets Ryan Taylor. Then all bets are off.

Ryan is sick of the Brokeback Mountain jokes. For starters, he’s an Australian stockman, not an American cowboy. For another, he spends most of his working days alone in a helicopter, not on the back of a horse. As Wallaby Ridge’s only contract heli-musterer, he gets to escape any small-town scorn high in the sky. He’s happy up there. Lonely, but happy. Who needs passion and wild sexual pleasure in their life when they have the boundless skies of the Outback, right?

Then Jeremy Craig climbs into his chopper…

Warning: This book may change your opinion of politicians. It also contains scorching, no-holds-barred passion between two alpha men, one with a Ryan Gosling fetish and the other with a secret deeper than the ocean. Yes, it’s
that
complicated.

Bare for You

Lexxie Couper

Dedication

For Jenna. My naughtier “sister” on the other side of the world.

Chapter One

“You ready to be a taxi service for a week, mate?”

Ryan Taylor looked up from his contemplation of his beer just in time to see Wallaby Ridge’s senior constable drop into the seat opposite him.

Shoving aside the not-so-cheery thoughts that had been plaguing him for the day, he gave Charlie Baynard a wild grin. “Hell yeah. Who wouldn’t want to fly a pollie from the big smoke around for five days?”

Charlie waved a hand at Lacky, letting the owner of the Outback Skies pub know he wanted his usual without actually saying a word. Instead, he laughed at Ryan. “That pollie is the federal minister of the arts and culture, Mr. Taylor. And as one of our duly elected representatives, deserves your respect.”

Ryan chuckled. “Well, given that that duly elected representative is paying me three times what I’d normally make during a week-long mustering job, and I’m likely only going to be in the chopper three out of the five days, I’m going to give him all the respect I can.”

Charlie let out his own chuckle. “And by respect, I assume you mean…?”

With a grin, Ryan raised his eyes to the slightly beaten dark brown Akubra on his head. “Bring out my best hat, of course.”

Taking his beer from Lacky, Charlie shook his head. “I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall inside that chopper of yours this week.”

“You think the city boy’s going to have a cultural awakening?”

“If you call a gay heli-musterer cowboy who looks like Hugh Jackman flying him around the Outback for a week a cultural awakening, yep.”

Ryan adjusted the hat on his head and winked. “Hey, I’m just your typical Aussie bloke.”

Charlie raised his beer, his lips twitching with a smirk. “To typical Aussie blokes.”

Raising his own beer, Ryan tapped the edge of his sweating glass to Charlie’s. “To typical Aussie blokes.”

Both men drank deeply for a silent moment. Around them, the sounds of the Outback Skies’ patrons—only a handful this early on a Friday afternoon—danced on the hot air.

“Speaking of typical Aussie men—” Charlie leant back in his seat, the handcuffs hanging on his hip chinking against each other, “—how’s your love life?”

Ryan snorted. “One of these days, I’m going to get used to you and your blunt approach to conversation.”

Charlie raised an expectant eyebrow and waited for an answer.

With a shake of his head, Ryan settled back in his own chair, adjusted his hat again and took another slow pull from his beer.

“That good, eh?”

Swiping at his lips with the back of his hand, Ryan laughed. “Better than good. Last night I went to bed with Ryan Gosling. It was incredible.”

Charlie burst out laughing. “Ryan Gosling? That’s who floats your boat? I always had you pegged for a Brad Pitt man.”

Ryan shook his head with a grin. “Nope. Ryan Gosling. With glasses. Preferably the geeky kind. It’s the whole preppy, clean look that does it for me. It just makes me want to scruff ’em up. Get ’em real dirty and—”

“Okay, okay.” Charlie raised his hand, laughing. “You win. I’ll never ask about your love life again.”

Ryan smirked at his friend over the rim of his glass. “Chicken.”

“Who’s a chicken?”

Turning his attention to the man joining them at the table, Ryan threw a sideways nod at Charlie. “The senior constable here asked me about my love life.”

Across the other side of the table, Dr. Matt Corvin paused mid-descent into the chair to shoot Charlie a look of melodramatic shock. “I know you’re brave, Baynard, but that brave?”

Charlie snorted. “I bailed on the answer.”

Nodding a thanks at Lacky as the pub owner deposited his normal beer in front of him, Matt settled himself into his seat. “Not ready for the details? Chicken.”

Charlie laughed. “I’m not really sure how this conversation became about me and my lack of courage, but I think it’s time to steer it back to the subject at hand.”

Raising his beer to his lips, Matt cocked an eyebrow. “Which is?”

“The federal minister for the arts and culture,” Charlie answered.

“Ah, that’s right, the minister’s arriving this afternoon, isn’t he?” Matt turned a cheeky grin on Ryan. “And you’re flying him around for the week. Looking forward to that?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “What is it with you blokes thinking the pollie and I are going to clash? I know how to behave myself, ya know.” He flicked a quick glance to the brim of his hat hanging low over his forehead. “Look? I even put my best hat on for the joker.”

Charlie snorted. Matt laughed.

Grinning at them all, Ryan shifted his butt on the chair. “If Evan was here, he’d tell you all to shut up. Fine time he picked to head off to the Big Smoke.”

“If Evan was here,” Matt said, reaching for the peanuts sitting in a small bowl in the middle of the table, “he’d be the ringleader. Consider yourself lucky he’s not. Just out of interest, how is your love life? Are you seeing that guy from Dubbo again? The one who spelt out
Ryan Taylor is hot
with hay bales on his property?”

Charlie’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at Matt. “How do you know about this bloke and I don’t?”

Matt tossed a peanut into his mouth. “I’m Ryan’s doctor,” he said around the legume. “I know everything.”

With a chuckle, Ryan rose to his feet. “And on that rather disturbing note, I’m outta here. The minister is touching down in about an hour, and I have to get the chopper ready to fly him out to Broken Downs. See you next week.”

Before his mates could harass him further about Lyle, the Casanova from Dubbo, Ryan drained what was left of his beer and exited the pub.

The smile on his face faded as he crossed to where his pickup—as beaten and worn as the hat on his head and just as beloved—sat on the other side of the dusty main road.

Lyle had turned out to be a lying bastard who was just trying out the gay thing while his fiancée was overseas visiting her sick grandmother.

Ryan hadn’t under any circumstances thought the guy was
the one
, but for the three weeks they’d been seeing each other, he’d felt…happy.

Not that he wasn’t happy. His life was pretty damn good. He loved his job, he loved living in the Outback, and his mates—Charlie, Evan and Matt—were the best bunch of blokes a guy could know.

But mates, no matter how open and relaxed they were about his sexual preference, couldn’t always fill the emptiness he occasionally felt, and Lyle had had a way of tracing his tongue up the line of Ryan’s spine that had flooded that emptiness with a deep, hot sense of—

Lust. Just lust. And now it’s done, so move on. Get your head straight and move on.

Letting out a wry chuckle, Ryan pulled open the driver’s side door of his pickup and climbed behind the wheel.

Five days of playing taxi to an uptight politician would, at least, keep his mind out of the bedroom. Hard to mope about licking your bruised ego when you were flying a member of Federal Parliament all over the Outback.

An hour later, his Bell 250 now free of empty Coke cans, dirt and his dog-eared copy of Isherwood’s
A Single Man
, Ryan stood on the side of the red-dust-covered asphalt that was Wallaby Ridge’s runway and watched the Cessna Citation that carried Jeremy Craig come in for landing.

He adjusted the brim of his hat and let out a slow breath.

Jeremy Craig. The minister for the arts and culture. Arts and bloody culture.

Oh boy, this was going to be painful.

“The PM sends you his best, Minister,” Jeremy Craig’s assistant offered into the phone, a soft crackling of the connection the only hint of the vast distance between them. “And tells you not to forget you have a breakfast meeting with him when you return Thursday.”

From his seat in the Cessna Citation, Jeremy studied the arid landscape below. This high in the sky, one could be forgiven for thinking the Australian Outback was just the product of a painter denied anything but a palette of ochers and reds. The red dirt stretched beyond the horizon, marred only by clumps of grass trees, yellow spinifex and tenacious eucalyptus trees.

It was a breathtaking sight to behold, one a city boy like Jeremy recognized as both culturally significant and strangely stirring.

He thought of attempting to describe the view to his fellow politicians when he returned from his visit—public servants who had never stepped foot outside of Australia’s capital cities for fear of exposure to substandard cappuccinos, or those who sniffed at the very notion there was existence beyond the country’s coastal borders.

Those politicians would find this trip to such an isolated area a hardship. They’d complain and moan and begrudge the forced time away from their metropolitan offices. They’d spend the three-and-a-half-hour flight working out how they could claim their upcoming overseas vacation as a tax expense rather than taking in the unique beauty of the Outback’s grandeur below.

A grandeur he was about to spend five days visiting, thanks to his position as the federal minister for the arts and culture.

When the PM had requested Jeremy officiate the opening of Wallaby Ridge’s first indigenous art gallery—a move the PM viewed as politically sound—Jeremy had jumped at the chance.

For one, it gave him a chance to get away from the backstabbing and power playing of Parliament House for a while.

For another, it would allow him a chance to absorb himself in something he genuinely loved—art and Australian culture

More than that, it allows you to escape the constant pressure of the persona you’ve chosen to wear, doesn’t it? You may not be able to completely relax out here but at least you don’t have to worry about the ever-present scrutiny of the media and your—

“Minister?”

Jeremy jerked himself from the reverie, bringing his attention back to his assistant on the other end of the telephone connection.

“Sorry, Linda.” He shifted his butt on the plush seat, noticing for the first time the hint of buildings away off in the far distance. “I was woolgathering.”

“Isn’t that the minister for agriculture and rural livestock’s job, sir?”

Jeremy laughed at the young woman’s joke even as he adjusted the glasses on his face. “It is, Linda. But he’s not the one about to land in Wallaby Ridge, is he?”

His assistant chuckled. “Enjoy your stay in the Outback, sir.”

Jeremy disconnected the call and returned his focus to the township the private plane was now approaching. Wallaby Ridge, a thriving Outback community of roughly seven hundred people and his home for the next five days.

Those five days were planned to the minute. There was the art gallery opening, along with various appearance and appointments acting as the prime minister’s representative. A visit to the Mutawintji National Park, where he would take in the ancient Aboriginal cave paintings, and a goodwill trip to the local Aboriginal community. The latter two would require transportation via helicopter and, according to the itinerary Linda had supplied him, his pilot was a man called Ryan Taylor.

Taylor was to meet him when he touched down. He would then fly Jeremy out to the deputy prime minister’s newly rebuilt Wallaby Ridge homestead—situated 242 kilometres away from the town proper—where Jeremy was setting up office for the week.

Jeremy let his thoughts linger on Australia’s deputy leader for a moment. There had been many backroom conversations and mutters about the man, most focusing on his dubious relationship with a multinational mining company. Rumour had it he was about to announce his exit from political life, a retirement touted as being forced by the PM.

According to Linda—who seemed to know the move of every politician in federal politics before they made them—Jeremy was but two party-room elections away from being named his replacement.

Was Jeremy ready to become Australia’s deputy prime minister?

He didn’t know. What he did know was he loved his country more than words could describe and would do anything required of him to make it an even better place to live.

Including denying that which would destroy his political career.

A soft tone filled the plane’s interior, followed a second later by the sole flight attendant’s arrival at his side.

“We’re landing in a few moments, Minister,” she said, leaning towards him. Her smile—and her eyes—suggested any invitation he extended would be accepted.

His political advisors would most likely encourage the dalliance. The last time Jeremy’s name was linked to a sexual
scandal
as such, his popularity with male voters had skyrocketed. Surprisingly, so had his popularity with female voters aged eighteen to twenty-five. Of course, that scandal had seen him pitted against a rock star for the affections of Natalie Thorton, the dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. It was very likely the approval may have had something to do with the celebrity status of his so-called rival.

“Thank you—” he flicked her nametag, strategically pinned just above her breast, a quick look, “—Tabatha.”

She straightened, trailing her fingertips across the back of his shoulder as she turned and walked back to the cockpit.

He smiled, his gut clenching.

If only she knew…

Tidying the papers in front of him, he closed the file and then placed it into his briefcase. If Linda had been here with him, she would have not only done it for him, but she’d have made certain his tie was straight and given him the name of Wallaby Ridge’s mayor before the plane touched down.

Of course, Jeremy was of the opinion the Australian taxpayer shouldn’t pay for his assistant to be in the Outback with him when he was capable of surviving the week without her. And Linda was of the opinion she would serve him better staying close to his political rivals and peers. He couldn’t argue with her. When it came to his career, his assistant knew the game and played it to perfection.

Like his assistant, he too played the game very well. He’d become a master at it.

He’d needed to. As much as he loved his country, Australia was not ready for the kind of prime minister he wanted to be. And Jeremy’s sights were very much set on that position.

“Keep playing the game, Jeremy.” He settled back in his seat, prepared for the upcoming jolt of landing. “Keep playing the game.”