Men In Uniform: Taken By The Soldier

Mounted to the right of the badge was a red ribbon with a gold star embedded in flames. Her breath died. Not Australia’s highest military honour, but it was one of its rarest.

‘It’s a Commendation for Gallantry.’

At the deep voice right behind her, she spun around, embarrassed to be caught snooping. But Clint’s attention was on the flaming star, not on her.

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘For acts of conspicuous gallantry in action, in circumstances of great peril.’ Her mumbled words won his attention back. Instead of times tables, the Colonel had forced her to learn all of Australia’s medals, awards and commendations by rote.

He spoke just as she did. ‘How do you know this stuff?’

‘What did you do to earn this?’

Neither wanted to answer. They stared at each other in silence. Clint finally broke it, opening his mouth with a terse, ‘Spaghetti’s ready.’

She let herself be led out and down the stairs until her feet floated on the heavenly fragrance of real Italian sauce. She drifted towards the set table and searched around for something to say as they tucked into the pasta. Something to end the awkward silence.

‘So what’s Justin Long’s story?’

Clint eyed her over an enormous forkful of pasta, paused halfway to his mouth. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s young, to be managing a place like this.’

‘This coming from you?’ It wasn’t unfriendly. In fact, there was something decidedly warming about being gently teased. It created a charged kind of friction. It felt good.

‘I have good instincts about people. He doesn’t seem entirely…comfortable…in his role. Like a suit that doesn’t fit.’

Clint stared at her. ‘Interesting. What else?’

Romy shrugged. ‘He doesn’t like me.’

It was only a mouthful of food that prevented him bursting into laughter. After a moment he mumbled, ‘Half the staff don’t like you, according to you.’

‘He genuinely doesn’t. Since day one. It practically oozes from his pores.’

Clint shrugged. ‘It’s because I hired you. His nose is out of joint.’

‘You’re the boss. You can hire whoever you want, can’t you?’

Dark eyes studied her. ‘It’s complicated.’

Romy sighed. ‘If I’m going to be able to do my job well I need to know where the skeletons are. You know that.’

He placed his fork down with meticulous care. Took an age, he dabbed his napkin to his lips. ‘Justin is my brother.’

It was Romy’s turn to splutter. Heat roared up her cheeks. ‘What? Since when?’

‘Pretty much since birth.’

‘Ha-ha. Were you planning on telling me or were you just going to let me keep talking about him.’

‘I’m telling you now.’

There was no way a man with his training could possibly miss her simmering expression. Which mean she was being managed again. Romy took a deep breath. ‘Why have you not mentioned this before?’

‘It’s not pertinent.’

‘It most certainly is. Familial relationships in workplaces increase the likelihood of crime statistically, did you know that? Second only to romantic ones.’

He looked unimpressed. ‘Thanks for the intel. But this is a family business. He’s the last person I’d be concerned about ripping me off.’

‘How long has he worked for you?’

‘Is this a social question or a professional one?’ His careless tone screamed a warning. He kept his eyes artificially lowered.

Romy took a breath. Backed down. ‘Social.’ Gut instinct or not. ‘I’m interested.’

His grunt wasn’t convinced. ‘Mum took Justin to the US when she left. He lived there until he was nineteen. Then he…wanted to come home.’

Romy frowned. ‘He left your mum?’

‘We grow up, Romy. We all move away from our mothers eventually. Even Leighton will.’

He was changing the subject. Romy’s sensed it instantly.

‘Back to Justin…So he came home to WildSprings and you made him business manager?’

‘He’d been an assistant concierge in a big hotel in Chicago. He had the right skills and I wasn’t interested in running the place then. I’d just got back. I asked him to stay on.’

The word then struck her hard. She filed it away. ‘What hotel?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t care. Something French. Something big.’

‘You must trust him a lot. To give him the job on face value.’

Dark eyes burned into hers. ‘You don’t?’

No-one messes with my family. The warning echoed in her mind. She shrugged and made her expression nonchalant. ‘I’m just making conversation.’

‘He really bothers you, doesn’t he?’ He pushed his half-empty plate away. ‘He’s my brother, Romy. Of course I trust him. And I owe him—’

If he hadn’t cut himself off so sharply, Romy might have let it go. ‘Owe him how?’

His face closed down right in front of her. Starting with his eyes and ending with the tightening of his mouth. ‘I can’t see how that has any bearing on park security.’

Romy’s heart banged painfully on her chest wall. She sat back. Dark eyes glared at her and he tipped his head. Subject closed.

For the next ten minutes they ate in silence, a thousand uncomfortable miles apart. So much for a civilised meal between colleagues. Romy’s mind worked overtime. Brothers. Oh, joy, that wasn’t going to be any fun to get in the middle of. She had no personal experience with siblings but she’d seen them at school, swinging between fiercely fighting and fiercely defending one another. Obviously a complicated relationship, growing up with someone.

How long would it take for the family issue to raise its head? The vibes she was getting off Justin Long guaranteed it would be coming up sooner or later. And she’d be square in the middle of it.

Romy caught Clint’s gaze on her a number of times but she dropped hers quickly to mask her thoughts. He was as efficient an eater as he was in everything else and he wiped his plate clean long before Romy did. She realised the error almost immediately. He’d finished and had nothing to do but stare. She was still eating and could hardly hint at going home while food sat on her plate.

Steady eyes considered her. ‘Who was he?’

She lifted her eyes, swallowing carefully. ‘Who?’

‘The man in your life who taught you to—’ he changed tack ‘—who taught you so much about the Defence Force.’

Romy stiffened. ‘Why does there have to be a man? Perhaps I’m really interested in Australia’s military history.’

‘Are you?’

She sighed. She couldn’t lie to those eyes. ‘No.’

‘How long were you together?’

It would be so easy to let him go on thinking it was some other man who had been in the military. It would probably be smart. But those eyes, again…

‘It was my father.’

For the first time since she met him, he looked genuinely surprised. ‘Your father? I thought…You seemed so…’

‘You thought I was running from a failed relationship?’ He didn’t need to nod. ‘I guess in a way I am. But not a romantic one.’

She hadn’t been with anyone since the night Leighton was conceived. But she was hardly going to tell him that.

‘What branch was he?’

Here came the inevitable. Romy sighed. ‘He’s a colonel in the army.’

She saw the very moment Clint made the connection. His eyebrows shot up. ‘Colonel Martin Carvell is your father?’

Under his inquisitive gaze Romy felt all of sixteen again.

Clint whistled. ‘He’s a legend in the Defence Force.’

He was capable of being impressed, then. Just not by her. Her smile tightened and she pushed the remainder of her food away. ‘I’m sure he is. He lived and breathed the army.’

Those sharp green eyes missed nothing. ‘But you’re running from him?’

‘He wasn’t much of a legend as a father. I had no interest in raising my son around his influence.’ She saw no understanding in his expression. On any other day she would have let it go. Changed the subject. But not with this man. Not tonight. She wanted him to understand.

She nailed him with her eyes. ‘Do you remember your basic training?’

His scoff was immediate. ‘How could I forget? It was hell.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen.’

Romy nodded. Paused. ‘Imagine being five.’

She stood, collected both their plates and took them to the kitchen where they clattered as she dropped them into the sink. She cursed. His focus was on her the whole way. Clint’s spaghetti was the best she’d ever had but it congealed like concrete in her suddenly churning stomach. She busied herself with scraping off the scraps into his compost tub and rinsing the bowls, blinking furiously.

Out of nowhere, his large hands slid over hers, stilling their fevered activity. His body pressed against her and he spoke behind her ear. ‘Leave it, Romy.’

She froze immediately and let him pull the dishes out of her wet, trembling hands. He took one into his own large one and pulled her towards the deck. She stumbled along behind him, sick with the grief of her childhood memories. Recalling vividly what that harsh discipline had felt like to someone not old enough to understand the words, let alone the reason.

Outside, he dropped her hand and she clung to the balustrade for support, breathing deeply. She’d never let herself even think about those days, never mind talk about them. It hurt too much. She started suturing up the bursts in her protective layer. Double-reinforcing the leaks.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

She glanced at him warily. ‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t shove it all down again. Don’t try and hide it from me. Or from yourself.’

The pain had to go somewhere. She rounded it back onto him, furiously. ‘Uh, pot…kettle…black!’

He kept the anger well contained, although she saw it flirting at the edges of his expression. ‘It’s because I know so much about it that I don’t want to see you do it to yourself.’

She fumed silently, recognising the truth.

‘How old were you when you left?’ he asked.

Facts were so much easier to deal with than feelings. ‘Nearly twenty.’

His face tipped towards hers. ‘So Leighton was…nearly two?’

‘He wouldn’t let me leave before that.’ She shoved those memories down deep, too. The misery of being trapped with a man she hated while a life grew in her frightened teen belly, then trying to protect herself and her infant son from the Colonel’s influence for two years. Her horror when, after barely acknowledging Leighton’s existence since his birth, her father had suddenly realised he had a boy-child in the house and began paying attention. The awful day he brought home a toy gun for the little soldier. Started making plans for his future. That same day, Romy looked up available support services online. It was the best thing the Colonel had ever done for her.

Even the darkness didn’t disguise Clint’s reaction. The flash of fury. ‘He hurt you?’

She dropped her eyes. ‘Define hurt?’

‘Did he touch you?’

‘Some things are more painful than a thrashing. And his precious code of honour meant he drew a line at beating a pregnant woman.’

Clint stared at her, assessing. ‘But before that?’

Pity mingled with compassion in his eyes and pain lanced through her. She was nobody’s charity case. She pushed away from the balustrade and turned for the door, blinking back tears. ‘Before that, I was a recruit to be broken by whatever means he saw fit.’

He moved quickly but she was quicker, fuelled by hurt and anger. She got halfway to the front door before he spun her back, into the wall of his chest. She resisted the bolt of pleasure that shot through her on feeling his arms around her.

‘Romy, I can’t let you go like this. So upset. Not to an empty house.’

‘I’m not your responsibility.’

He slid his hands over her shoulders and framed her face on both sides, forcing her to meet his eyes. ‘Stay and talk with me. Just until I know you’re okay.’

She tried to pull away but his easy hold was like a vice. ‘I’m fine. Please let me go. Please…’ She was holding the tears in check, but barely. Don’t let me cry in front of him.

Too late.

A fat tear leaked out the corner of one eye and raced down onto her cheek. His thumb caught it and wiped it away. She pressed her lids closed, unable to bear seeing disappointment in his. At her weakness.

Carvells don’t cry!

Clint pulled her into his shoulder, threading one hand through her hair and wrapping the other firmly around her waist. ‘Ah, Romy…’

She fit against his contours so perfectly he burned to feel the stiffness of her body turn into warm, relaxed flesh. This was his fault. He never should have quizzed her about her past. He’d only done it to get her off the uncomfortable topic of his brother.

‘Shh…’

Stroking her seemed to help, and he was masochist enough to appreciate how good it felt to hold her. Just once. He willed his body not to respond to hers, not to drive her any further away than he already had, but it wasn’t easy thinking when all he wanted to do was wrap her up in his arms and never let her out.

Bit by bit, her tension softened and almost seemed to shrink in his arms. He kept up the gentle rhythm of his hands, stroking her hair, her back, trailing over her skin. It was impossible to think of her as an employee when she was like this. She was a woman—someone he’d hurt—who needed comfort.

Just comfort.

‘Shh…’

His lips pressed against the top of her head briefly. What a jerk. Why had he pushed her about the man in her past? Because you wanted to know if she was available, a little voice accused. To find out if the field was clear.

At least be honest with yourself if you’re not going to be honest with her.

She tipped her face sideways, relaxing more into his hold, and rested her cheek against his shoulder on a half sigh, half sob. His lips found her temple, touched there briefly, then stayed longer than they should have.

She didn’t push away.

Her body changed shape slightly in his arms, curling towards him like a kitten drawn to warmth in its sleep. Sweet pleasure started to race through his veins and his breath heated in his lungs. He stroked her hair away from her face and bent towards her damp, flushed skin, placing a kiss on each closed eyelid. Her heartbeat fluttered against his chest like a tiny bird.

It was drugged heaven. It was right for all the wrong reasons.

She stopped breathing and opened her eyes, fixing her smoky focus on his. A hunger he’d not allowed in years surged through him but he forced it back, made himself proceed with caution, assessing the risk before advancing. He bent his face slowly and found the place just south of her earlobe with his lips and then nibbled a trail forward along her jaw. Tasting. Experiencing.

Reconnaissance.

She whimpered but didn’t move away. His target was mere inches from him, two perfect lips that parted on a single word as she sagged in his arms.

‘Clint…’

That one syllable on her lips hit him in a place he’d forgotten he even had. Deep, deep inside. Did she even notice she’d finally said his name? God, he burned to see how the word tasted on her lips. But she had to want this, and not simply because it made her feel better.

‘Romy…’ His voice was thick with lust, his body screaming for things he hadn’t addressed in a long time. ‘I’m going to kiss you.’

That sexy mouth twisted in a satisfied smile and her thick voice was almost drowsy with desire. ‘You are kissing me, Clint…’

He moved in closer, his mouth scant millimetres from hers, hovering a hair’s-breadth from heaven. Her soft breath brushed warmly against his lips.

Just millimetres…

‘No. Really kiss you.’

He was aware, at once, of every place her body pushed against his. The softness of her belly where his hips pressed, the sensation of full breasts crushed low against his chest, the angle of her face as she tipped her mouth up to nearly touch his. His body jerked. So very nearly…

‘I’m asking, Romy…’ His words were mostly a whisper against her lips. ‘I’m looking for permission to proceed.’

It was pure instinct. The language that was such a part of him tumbled off his lips unconsciously. Romy’s eyes flew open and stark desperation frosted them over. She suddenly found strength and pushed hard against him, staggering away from the kiss he still burned to seal against her lush lips.

‘Oh, God…’ she choked, backing off. ‘What am I…? What are we doing?’

Easy, McLeish. She was like a live grenade. Sans pin. He took a step towards her, trying to lessen the distance she’d forced between them. If she bolted out of here now she was just as likely to hurt herself. And possibly never return.

‘I think we were about to test the definition of colleagues,’ he said.

She latched onto that. ‘You’re my boss! I can’t do this!’

He held her eye. ‘If you can’t, that’s okay. But don’t hide behind the boss thing. The two of us were never going to have a conventional employee-employer relationship. And you know it.’

‘No!’ Her breasts heaved up and down, hypnotically distracting in his periphery. Clint forced himself to keep his eyes on hers. Her fear was signposted in them.

‘I’m a different man, Romy. I’m not him,’ he said.

She backed hard into the kitchen bench. He raised his hands carefully to his side to try and lessen the impact of him standing between her and the door. That wasn’t going to improve matters.

‘You’re military!’

‘That’s what I did. Not who I am.’

She shook her head, her senses returning with a vengeance. ‘No. You are every bit military, regardless of how long you’ve been out of it.’

‘That still doesn’t make me like him.’ Although in his gut he knew it did. In part.

She took a deep breath. ‘Take me home.’

He stepped towards her. Her hands came up. ‘Romy…’

‘Then I’ll drive myself, give me the keys.’

‘Don’t do this…’

‘Fine, I’ll walk.’

She pushed away from the bench and straight past him, more than ready for a fight. He stepped clear and let her pass, but dogged her heels to the exit and down the outside stairs. He’d led enough men to know when a strategic retreat was required.

Time to regroup and reassess.

‘I’ll drive you, Romy. And I’ll leave you at your door. And I won’t so much as touch you again.’

Tonight.

She turned and stared at him through enormous, bright eyes. Great…this is how they got into this mess. He was a sucker for waterworks.

The mile drive was brutal. Neither of them spoke—no surprise, but he’d never considered his old friend silence an adversary before. It ate at his nerves as he pulled up in front of her cottage. He no longer thought of it as his parents’ place, only Romy’s.

The moment he yanked on the handbrake, she was out the door. His father’s manners made him step out of the driver’s seat. She turned when she hit the front verandah.

‘This is not about you, Clint,’ she disarmed him by saying, not quite able to meet his eyes. ‘But this is about what you do. Did. I cannot be with a man who has any part of my father in him. I can’t have Leighton exposed to that. If you can honestly tell me there’s no part of you that’s like him, then I’ll listen. I swear I will.’

Her eyes were like dinner plates in her pale face. Clint thought about his time as an operative. The good men he’d pushed just short of breaking point. The things he’d seen…done. And the things he’d been unable to reconcile himself to. The military was deeply embedded in his soul and, even now, he struggled to remember he wasn’t about unit, corps, God, country, any more.

He was nothing like Leighton’s grandfather…yet everything like him.

And so he stayed silent. Even though every part of him wanted to fight to get back the moment they’d so very nearly shared. The moment when something fundamental had shifted in his universe. In his soul.

Instead, he stared silently at her.

She nodded sadly and turned for the house. ‘Goodnight, Clint.’

Then she was gone. He slumped in the ute and slammed his hand against the aging dash. He’d spent a lifetime controlling his emotions but it took him more than a minute to get them under command now.

Chapter Six

ANOTHER damaged fence kept Romy busy. As fast as she patched them up, more breaches appeared. Not that being thoroughly occupied was a bad thing, but her already filthy mood wasn’t improved any by spending a second afternoon in the Australian sun straining wire.

Stop your whining, girl, and get on with it. She heard the Colonel’s hard voice barking at her as though he were right there on the hill. Instinctively she sucked in her breath and straightened her spine. She yanked the final wire tight and stood back to examine her work.

It was getting harder to imagine this was only kids sneaking onto the property for an unauthorised swim or a farmer helping himself to fruit. Simone told her they’d not had breaches like this before so why the difference now? Because she’d sealed up a regular access point when she first arrived? Maybe activity was on the rise? Or could someone be making life intentionally difficult for her? She glanced around. Whichever, she was determined to solve it. To prove herself to all the knockers who were waiting for her to mess up.

She tossed her tools into the boot of her car.

Who was she kidding; most of the WildSprings staff had already accepted her, even if one or two had taken a while to warm to her. There was only one person she was trying to prove herself to and he remained entirely oblivious to her strengths.

She shook her head. Not surprising, really. It seemed as if all she’d done in Clint’s presence was confront him, disagree or wail like a banshee, all of which hardly engendered confidence. And then there was the kissing…

Romy flushed anew remembering how she’d practically climbed inside his skin back in the tree house. On all of one week’s acquaintance. It had felt so right for those blessed moments before she’d come to her senses. The fact he’d responded wholeheartedly did not lessen her embarrassment. Maybe he just hadn’t been to the city for a while?

She knew for certain he went the very next day.

That was ten days ago now and she hadn’t so much as caught a whiff of him since then. He certainly knew how to lay low. But she’d not had the same success getting him out of her head. Even now she could still feel how his body moved under her touch. The hard, living shelf of flesh over his strong heartbeat, the gentle scrape of stubble across her cheek, the feathery silk of his lips on her skin as he whispered comforting sounds in her ear. And that smell…Her lids fluttered shut.

Stop!

She braced her hands on the hood of her car and took six deep breaths. Nothing good could come from revisiting the incident over and over. Clint McLeish was officially out of bounds.

Despite what the hollow ache in her chest thought.

Did she need a flashing red light to go off every time he got too close? The man was a risk-taker, ex–special services and had closed himself off from the world. He had more baggage than a 747.

Takes one to know one, a tiny voice whispered.

She shot forwards on the track in a spray of dust and sent dirt scattering behind her car. What was his baggage all about? All she knew was he’d been a Taipan. And they were at the precision end of encounters in some of the world’s hottest war zones. He’d told her himself he’d killed people, but in the context of his regiment maybe that meant he’d killed people.

As in up close. Intensely personal. Impossible to forget.

He certainly had the haunted look of a man who’d seen too much. And he’d left that world behind and dug himself an existence here in the forest. He called it somewhere to heal but Romy looked at it as a hole to lie down and die in.