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‘Friday, then. There’s something I’d like to show you on the estate.’ And there was. But mostly it was an excuse to spend some more time with her, to sit close to those crisp, new khakis and think about how good it would feel to be clean again. ‘Can you meet me in the afternoon?’
‘Where?’
‘I’ll find you.’
She nodded and he turned down the hill, towards the twinkling green water he swam in daily, trying to baptise himself for a new beginning.
Chapter Four (#ulink_72ca743e-c148-5a4b-896a-7442de19cca2)
I’ll find you.
The words kept pinging around in Romy’s head. It was only her favourite quote in her favourite movie of all time. Except now, whenever she heard it, she’d think of a jade-eyed, square-jawed giant instead of Daniel Day-Lewis in a loincloth.
Okay, so not the worst trade-off…
She tipped her head back and let the cool water from the showerhead tumble over her.
I’ll find you. When a man like Clint McLeish promised that, you knew he wasn’t kidding. He would find a polar bear in a blizzard in the Arctic Circle. He was just that kind of…doer.
Nothing quite as sexy as a capable man.
She twisted the cold-water tap off hard, warning herself away from those thoughts. There was a very hazy line between capable and overbearing and she’d lived half her life with the latter.
She glanced at her watch and gasped. Leighton’s school bus would be dropping him at the gates to WildSprings in about four minutes. If his day was anything like hers, he’d be hot, bothered and ready for the air conditioning.
It took her two minutes to throw on some clothes and get to the car. As she reached for the doorhandle, a growing plume of dust through the trees caught her eye. A blue Nissan cruised into her drive and pulled up nearby. A rosy-cheeked, blonde gnome popped her head out of the driver’s side window and then pushed the door open.
‘Hi! You must be Leighton’s mum? I’m Carolyn Lawson, Cameron’s mum.’
Cameron? Romy bent to glance in the rear of the Nissan. Her son seemed absorbed in discussion with a blond boy about the same age. A ratty blue heeler with a lolling tongue was squished in there with them. Carolyn Lawson was five foot nothing and nearly as round as she was tall. But her smile was instant and her confidence infectious. Romy’s people metre blinked happily in the green. She held out her hand and accepted Carolyn’s firm shake.
‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping Leighton home,’ she said. ‘I wanted to introduce myself so you’d know who we were when he came to stay.’
‘To stay?’ Her Leighton?
Both boys scrabbled out of the car and the blue heeler exploded out the door to snuffle in the nearby long grass. Carolyn scolded the dog as he christened the verandah with a well-aimed stream of urine.
Romy looked at her son, her socially awkward, struggles-to-make-friends son. ‘Like a sleepover?’
Cameron groaned. ‘Girls sleep over. Boys hang out,’ he said, pointedly.
She laughed. ‘My mistake. Does that make it a hangover?’
The children frowned at each other in confusion but a cackle burst from Carolyn Lawson. ‘No, that’s what I’m likely to have after having two young boys in the house all night!’ she said. ‘Steve and I will both be home to keep things civil and you’re welcome to call if you want to check in.’
Romy was unprepared for this eventuality. Her baby had never been on a sleepover and it hadn’t occurred to her his very first one might be with a family she didn’t know. Her uncertainty must have shown. Carolyn shoved a business card in her hands.
‘This is our address and my mobile’s on the reverse. Does it help to know Cameron’s my fourth? And my husband is Quendanup’s copper?’
Romy looked at her son, at the blind hope and trepidation in a face that was a miniversion of her own. The realisation he was expecting her to say no struck her like a snake. How often had she stared hopefully at her father like that? How often had he let her down? She dropped her voice and her focus to the little boy at her feet.
‘You’d like to go to a sleepover, L?’
‘Hangout, Mum!’
She took that as a yes. Hard to say what was more moving; the fact Leighton had made a hangout friend already or that he was trying so hard to look cool in front of him. And with a policeman in the house…
She turned to Carolyn Lawson. ‘Thank you for the offer. Yes, I’m happy for—’
She got no further. Both boys started whooping it up in the driveway and an excited dog got in on the act, dashing around and barking.
It took ten minutes to get the Lawsons and their mad dog back in the Nissan and her overexcited son into the comparative cool of the house. Romy tried to imagine what kinds of things might happen at a kids’ sleepover. Yet another experience missing from her childhood. She frowned. Had she never been asked to someone else’s house, or had she said no so often the girls in her class simply stopped asking? It went without saying she’d never hosted one. Not only would the Colonel not have tolerated a gaggle of children in the house but she wouldn’t have foisted him on them either.
‘Mum. Can I take the frogs with me to Cameron’s?’ Leighton burst into the room.
Romy laughed. ‘No. They’re happy where they are. They’d hate being dragged to school. If you want Cameron to see them you can invite him here sometime.’
‘Oh, cool!’
The fact it had never occurred to him to ask instantly highlighted the truth that he’d never brought a friend home in his life. Sorrow soaked through her. She added that to her list of things she was convinced she’d robbed him of. Like grandparents and the father-figure he so desperately craved. Only this one she could do something about.
‘Leighton?’ She fixed him a sandwich while he settled from his excitement. ‘Would you feel okay about that? Bringing Cameron here?’
‘Yeah! He can see my room. And I can show him Frog Swamp.’ A muddy pocket at the base of the gully, teeming with life and riddled with wild frogs.
Boy heaven.
Romy’s tension eased. Even now, the ghost of her father still had her doubting herself. Her parenting. She shook her head to clear it and turned to her boy.
‘Okay. So let’s talk science project…’
‘Leighton?’ Romy called into the silence and then listened.
Nothing.
Ugh. It was so not the evening for this. As if she wasn’t already grumpy enough from continuously catching herself looking out for Clint. For a plume of dust approaching. Now Leighton had pulled another disappearing act after dinner, right when they were supposed to be preparing his science project for Friday science class.
Not the first time he’d done a runner. ‘Eight-year-olds,’ she muttered, turning to the house.
Fortunately, she had just the tool for this eventuality. Some mothers gave their kids phones to keep track of them; Romy gave hers a GPS transmitter. Not that he knew it. Telling him it was sewn into the hem of his backpack was the fastest way to ensure he never remembered to take the bag again.
She rustled in her work kit and pulled out her PDA. It was satellite phone, scanner and GPS tracker all in one. Swiss Army knife for the twenty-first century.
Please let him have it with him…
She got a reading almost immediately. It placed him within twenty metres of the kitchen. She frowned and looked at the timber ceiling above her. Damn…
A quick bolt to the top of the stairs confirmed her suspicion. The backpack lay tossed in the corner of his shambolic attic room. So much for technology; she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Romy pocketed the PDA and let herself out the screen door to the rear of the house. She glanced one way, up the long track leading past Clint’s to the park entry, and then the other way, down through the trees leading to the base of the gully.
Frog Swamp. It’s where she’d be if she was an eight-year-old amphibian fanatic trying to avoid homework. And if Leighton didn’t have his pack it meant he’d planned to stay close.
There wasn’t a child alive who knew more about snakes than her reptile-mad son so she didn’t worry on that score, but the Australian bush was full of holes to twist an ankle in, poisonous critters with fangs to sink in their self-defence and baffling thickets of trees that could swallow a young boy’s sense of direction in a heartbeat.
Turning left, she started picking her way along the old trail that led to the bottom of the gully where the wetlands were. It was increasingly beautiful as the earth dropped away at the foot of towering trees stretching to the heavens. Small lizards scurried across her path and butterflies flitted kamikazelike back and forth. She slowed her descent and glanced about, appreciating the beauty of the bush around her at dusk.
As she worked her way quietly to the gully floor she heard a hint of noise off to the left. She was tempted to call out but the utter silence around her restrained her. If Leighton was frog watching he’d scarcely appreciate her dulcet tones echoing through the valley and sending every living creature darting for cover. Besides, she was being calm, cool Mum today, not anxious, clingy Mum.
That mum wouldn’t kick in for at least another five minutes.
A flash of bright red caught her eye. Her shoulders sagged with relief and she started towards her son. Then suddenly a shift of blue right next to him. A sky-blue T-shirt stretched tight over a broad back. She stumbled to a halt.
Clint.
Leighton was smiling. Not a polite, adult-pleasing smile. A bright-eyed, face-splitting, genuine boy grin, as he looked back and forth from where Clint lay next to him in the dirt to the swampy soak in front of them. She stopped and watched. Neither of them spoke but they seemed to be communicating in a kind of sign language. Clint’s efficient hand symbols reeked of the military but Leighton’s overengineered, highly dramatic efforts did somehow manage to communicate.
Her heart gave a little lurch. They were dusk frog watching together. It was postcard perfect. Everything she’d never had with her father.
And her son would never have with his.
Leighton was laid out like a miniature version of Clint. He unconsciously mirrored the exact way the older man lay in the earth, short legs stretched out next to long ones, torso propped up onto his elbows like his adult shadow. The ultimate Hallmark moment.
Never mind that L’s feet stopped a good metre higher than Clint’s. It put them dead parallel with a sinfully well-packed, denim-clad rear which was why it was so easy for Romy’s gaze to drift and linger there. She tore them back to her son. His wildly gesticulating hands were telling a silent story she couldn’t quite interpret. Clint seemed to be keeping up, though, and he gifted Leighton with his absolute, undivided interest.
Romy’s chest squeezed, watching how her son ate up the attention. How he blossomed. How the two of them were so very comfortable in each other’s muddy, mute presence.
Lord, what would it be like to feel comfortable around Clint McLeish? And what would that gentle gaze feel like if it was fluttering down on her instead of her son? It was a side of him she’d never seen.
It was a side of any man she’d never seen.
Instinctively she knew that he could be gentle. He would be gentle. In-between intimidating the heck out of her. The sudden fantasy of those enormous, mud-covered hands tracing over her skin took her by surprise. Her body physically jerked as though fingers really were sliding over her shoulders, or learning the lower curve of a breast. Her breath came out in short puffs.
Whoa—desperate much, Carvell?
Clint turned and his eyes found hers amongst the trees and locked on hard. He might as well have sensed her X-rated thoughts. Their burning regard held her frozen where she stood and her breath died mid-fill even as her heart thundered. The green depths were unfathomable but steady and sure, holding a promise. A question.
Romy wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
‘Leighton.’ His words were for the boy by his side but his eyes stayed glued to Romy’s. Leighton turned to where she stood in the trees. His cheeks coloured.
‘Mum…’
Uh-oh. That was not his happy voice. She cleared her throat. ‘Leighton, you didn’t ask to come down here. You have homework.’
‘Not now, Mum.’
Romy’s eyebrows shot up with her tension levels. Here we go…‘Leighton. Home. Now.’
He turned back to the frogs. ‘Later.’
Clint’s eyes hadn’t left hers. Romy was critically aware of their intense focus, of the expectation live in them. She was his security coordinator. She had to manage her son.
‘I won’t ask again…’ Her heart thudded painfully. Her father’s words spilling out of her mouth. She felt the rising anger of a parent being challenged in the same breath as she relived the memories of a child sick to death of battles. Her gut tightened.
His little body didn’t so much as move.
‘Leighton Carvell…get your butt back up to the house.’
This time he moved, but only to turn his head back over his shoulder and glare at her. That expression was so familiar. It was her own from twelve years ago.
‘Or what?’ He frowned.
She saw Clint’s eyebrows lift, just slightly. Crap! She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to threaten Leighton. Or mess with his mind. Or, God forbid, get physical. But Clint was measuring every move she made.
She went for threat.
‘Or I call Carolyn Lawson and say the sleepover is off.’ Her voice shook enough that nobody could miss it. Clint’s narrowed eyes certainly hadn’t.
Leighton scrambled around and up onto angry feet and screamed at her. ‘Hangout!’
Deep breaths, Romy. ‘Whatever. It’s off if you don’t get back up to the house and start your science homework.’
Stupid. Why were they fighting? He was probably learning more here in the boggy gully than fourth-grade science would ever teach. Still those green eyes watched. Assessed.
Leighton finally weighed his options and turned petulant eyes to the man lying still as a stone next to him. He turned the tantrum off in an eye blink. Strategically. ‘’Bye, Clint.’
Clint’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘See ya, buddy. We’ll do this again.’
Leighton nodded silently and then huffed past Romy, not meeting her eyes. A tight fist clenched around her lungs, but she forced words out as he passed. ‘Watch out for that pout, mate. You might trip on it.’
She turned to watch him go. When she trusted that he was genuinely heading for the house she turned back to her boss, humiliated that he’d witnessed the family altercation. He was on his feet, brushing off the loose, damp dirt. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said on a puff.
‘You asked again.’ His gaze was steady, half veiled.
‘What?’
‘Leighton. After telling him you wouldn’t ask him again to do his homework, you asked.’
‘So? He wasn’t getting me.’
‘Oh, he was getting you all right. He was ignoring you.’
‘Thank you, I’m well aware of that. Am I about to get a parenting lecture?’
‘Depends. Do you need one?’
Romy let her mouth drop open. Attractiveness be damned. ‘You knowing so much about parenting, of course.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘I know something about little boys. Young men. I’ve trained enough of them. And it looks like I know a hell of a lot more than you about maintaining discipline.’
