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Romy settled both fists onto her hips. ‘Am I getting paid for this?’
It was Clint’s turn to look confused. He blinked at her.
‘If you’re about to give me some skills-development training? Is this on the clock?’
‘Romy…’
‘Don’t tell me how to raise my son!’ Her voice echoed through the little gully. Frogs and birds flew for cover in all directions.
Clint kept his cool. ‘When you say you’re not going to ask again and then you ask, Leighton wins. He’ll remember. And he’ll use it in his next combat.’
‘This is not a war. This is a family. My family.’ At least, she was working damn hard to keep it that way.
‘Sometimes there’s no difference. It’s the same psychology.’
‘I prefer a different kind of psychology. One based on love and compassion rather than threats and punishments.’
His laugh was genuine. ‘Let me know how that works out for you.’
‘He’s an eight-year-old child, Clint. Not a soldier.’ Just like she’d been.
‘Last time I checked, only one of us has been an eight-year-old boy. Trust me on what works for them.’
‘Trust me on what works for my son.’
He held her gaze, breathing in and out calmly. ‘Love and compassion has made Leighton the boy he is. He’s a great kid. But he’s going to start pushing your buttons more and more. Stretching you. Testing you. Trying to dominate you. I recognise the signs.’
She turned to follow her son up the hill. ‘That may be what you were like but it’s not Leighton.’
‘It’s all boys, Romy,’ he called after her. ‘It’s imprinted on us. We’re built to try to take charge.’
She spun around. ‘If you are so fired up about parenthood why don’t you sire a brood of your own? Go bully your own kids.’
He sprinted up the steep slope in three easy steps and swung around in front of her, halting her with a hand on her shoulder. ‘Managing your son does not make you a bully.’
She shrugged her shoulder away and glared. ‘Well, badgering me makes you one. And I think there’s a bunch of workplace laws that protect me from that.’
He dropped his hand and ran it through his thick hair. ‘Romy. I’m not trying to get under your skin—’
She stalked off, around him. ‘You do not get under my skin.’
Liar.
‘I just want to help you,’ he called after her. ‘Use some of what I’ve learned over the years.’
She turned back around and glared at him from the actual—and moral—high ground. ‘Well, Sensei, this little grasshopper is not interested in your wax-on-wax-off wisdom. Thanks all the same.’
He swore as she carried on up the gully, and then shouted an order after her. ‘We’re still on for tomorrow afternoon.’
She just held up an angry hand and scrambled, shaking, up the path to safety.
‘Ready to go?’
After a night of angry stewing and then a day of having to force her mind to stay on the job, Romy was more than ready. The faster they got started, the faster she’d be back home. She turned to where Clint stood in her doorway. ‘I’m not sure this qualifies as afternoon any more. It’s closer to evening.’
‘I thought I’d stay out of your way while you were working. You looked busy. Besides, you need to see this near dusk to appreciate it.’
He’d watched her working? How, when all her senses were finely tuned to any sign of his arrival? Then again, he was trained in stealth.
‘Do I need anything?’ She glanced around her spotless kitchen.
‘Nope. Just yourself.’
Out of habit, she grabbed her rucksack and locked the house behind them. Country or not, she would hand in her security licence before she’d leave it open to anyone passing, even with Leighton out for the night at Cameron’s. Clint waited patiently by his ute until she was done securing her home.
Her plan to remain detached and disinterested lasted about twenty-five seconds. The sight of all six foot four of him leaning casually against his vehicle waiting for her excited her pulse.
Relax, it’s only a drive. Not looking at him would make this much easier. She climbed in and fixed her focus out the front windscreen. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We’ve had reports about trafficking activity in the area. Cockatoos and reptiles. I wanted you to see WildSprings’s roosting sites so you know what to be watching for.’
‘This is about the Customs memo?’ She had received a copy as well. ‘I didn’t realise it affected us here.’
‘It might not. But it’s about cockatoo theft and we have one of the best feeding sites of red-tails in the region. And some nests. That makes us a target.’
Romy snapped straight into work mode. ‘So this is precautionary?’ She glanced at him from the passenger seat and noticed a dark bruise twisting around his throat. It looked nasty. Her muscles tensed. ‘What happened to you?’
His hand automatically rose to the mark, then waved it off. ‘Sporting injury.’
Oh, really? ‘What kind of sport does that to you?’
His attention flicked from the road to her, then back again. ‘Deep caving.’
Romy stared. Exploring the abundant natural pores of the earth in the south-west of Australia was a particularly dangerous pastime. Every now and again the caves took payment in the form of human lives. Her stomach fluttered. ‘You can’t watch the footy like the rest of Australia?’
Clint smiled. ‘I like football. But I love caving. There’s something about the silence. The darkness. Going somewhere virtually no-one else has been.’
The heart-stopping danger. ‘You can stand in the bush and get dark silence.’
‘Not quite the same.’
‘What other questionable pastimes do you have?’
‘I own a good movie collection and I’m learning to love paperback mysteries.’
‘Hmm…and when you’re not escaping into popular culture?’
He stared at the road ahead, holding out.
‘Come on, McLeish. ‘Fess up.’
‘I kite-surf,’ he said finally.
Romy nodded, straight-faced. ‘Challenging.’
‘And I abseil.’
‘Oh, now you’re just showing off. So that’s below ground, terrestrial and marine sports covered. Surely you must base-jump off mountains or something. Bungee?’
His smile broke free. ‘I’ve been known to jump out of helos.’ At her frown he clarified. ‘Military choppers.’
‘Of course you have.’ She shook her head.
‘What?’
‘You’re an adrenaline junkie. I’m struggling to fit the man who likes silence and privacy and classic movies with the man who surfs whales and wrangles wild boar with his bare hands.’
That sinful mouth twitched. ‘Well, not bare hands…’
She laughed but it was hollow, even to her own ears. Clint McLeish missed the rush that came with doing his duty. The risk. Living with death daily. She could only imagine how a body would become accustomed to being hyper-aroused for survival, how hard it must be to kick the habit. ‘How much combat have you seen?’
The relaxed smile died and his hands tightened around the steering wheel. ‘Even if I wanted to talk about it, which I don’t—’ he glanced at her ‘—most everything I saw during my service is confidential. I couldn’t discuss it with you.’
With me. The implication twisted in her gut. The line in the sand got more defined. Clint, boss. Romy, staff. It was just a little too close to a childhood full of alienation in the name of military confidence. ‘Do you jump out of aircrafts and climb into the sphincters of the earth as a way of re-creating your time in the military? Or forgetting it?’
His face grew hard. ‘It’s a hobby, Romy. People have them.’
Her eyebrows lifted. ‘I have hobbies, but they’re not quite as extreme as yours. Isn’t there anything more…ordinary…that interests you?’
The shadowed bruise on his throat shifted as his Adam’s apple lurched upwards. She’d pushed him too far…
‘I like to cook. Since I came here.’
If he’d said he liked to make candles from earwax, she couldn’t have been more surprised. She gaped at him. ‘Really? What kinds of things?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever. Cordon bleu. Cajun. Armenian. Anything new.’
Romy looked out the side window, reining in a chuckle she knew would get her in trouble.
‘What? Why stop sharing your thoughts now?’ His sarcasm was barely contained.
‘That’s extreme cooking.’ Her laugh bubbled out. ‘You really suck the marrow out of life, don’t you, McLeish?’
He looked annoyed. ‘I don’t do it to be adventurous.’
‘Why do you do it?’
The silence fell between them like autumn leaves. His eyes blazed. The ute’s old dash clock ticked.
‘Just to feel something.’
She stared at him. A moment ago she’d been envious of the man who lived a no-fear life. Imagining how good that would feel. Now, suddenly, she was responding to the raw awkwardness in his eyes. Clint McLeish and his emotions didn’t spend a lot of time communing, it seemed. She opened her mouth to ask him more.
‘We’re here.’ He pulled the ute off the track near a stand of banksia and marri trees.
The silence of the bush after the conversation in the car was striking. But then Romy heard the raucous, happy grumbling high above. She tilted her head and scanned the thick branches. Once she saw one, more and more came into focus. Enormous black cockatoos with a flame of red on their long sweeping tails, settling in for the night, high in the treetops.
‘Is this where they nest?’
He shook his head. ‘This is where they roost each night. They have nesting sites scattered all over the region, but Far Reach is a favoured site and generations of red-tails will teach their young to return to this gully to feed and roost as soon as they leave the nest.’
She stared all around, thinking about how deep in the property they were, considering how high in the trees the birds were roosting. Anyone who came here with theft on their mind would have some hurdles to overcome. That made her job easier.
‘Thank you for bringing me. This is important for me to see.’
‘These guys are one of the reasons I returned to WildSprings. I consider them my surrogate family. No-one messes with my family.’
She looked at him and believed it. Even removed from his military context there was still something inherently dangerous about the way he moved, the way he assessed everything around him. The way he missed nothing. She wouldn’t want to cross him.
‘Why don’t you have a family of your own?’ The question slipped out before she’d really thought about the ramifications.
He glanced at her. ‘Women and children are a bit thin on the ground around here in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘I’m sure there’d be a few bold contenders in town prepared to put up with your surly stares.’ Was that a smile? Hard to tell—it morphed into a determined frown way too quickly.
‘I guess I’m not family material.’ He shrugged.
Her snort was critically unladylike. ‘Are you serious? You’re a born provider, you’re practically the kid whisperer and you’d look good at any parent-and-teacher night fighting them off with a stick.’ She blushed furiously at what she’d just admitted. She cleared her throat. ‘So…shall we head back?’
He watched her for a moment, followed her glance out to the darkening skies, then turned for the ute. Romy threw one final look into treetops littered with black-feathered shapes. To the wrong sort of mind, they would look like plump wads of cash growing on trees.
Her planned perimeter checks mentally doubled.
‘The kid whisperer, huh?’ He started the ute.
‘You don’t think so?’
‘I’m not very…comfortable with children. Haven’t had a lot of positive experiences.’
‘Well, they like you. Leighton does, anyway. He’s practically got a crush.’
There. That twist of full lips was unquestionably a smile.
She slid into the passenger seat and risked a glance at Clint’s unreadable profile. Stirring him was a little bit like poking a lion with a stick. Really not advised. But he was smiling, not snarling. Despite his closed-off concentration on the road, she’d never felt safer.
The novelty of the thought brought her head up. Since Leighton came, her job was to make sure he was okay. To work hard to create a haven for them both. But it had been a long time since she’d felt like this. Safe. As though she could simply let go of all the responsibility, just for a moment, and someone else would take it on.
Her brows came together. Had she ever felt safe? Before giving birth, her childhood was one big shadow, with the dominant, angry figure of the Colonel front and centre. Colonel Martin Carvell specialised in order, discipline and results. Three things most young children instinctively repelled. He found it impossible to hide his dissatisfaction with every aspect of her performance as his only offspring, so he embraced it, taking her on as his personal project. Which, of course, she was. He fathered her. In the absence of her mother who died so young, who else’s responsibility would she be?
