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And now this. Letting herself get involved with the most inappropriate man possible. Damaged, reclusive, military goods. The third stupid thing she’d done in her life. But at least this she had a hope of walking away from.
‘Ugh!’
Agony shot through her left foot as two inches of her three-inch Manolo sank to the side in the soft turf of the football field while the rest of her dropped like a stun-gun victim the other way. The delicate tangle of tendons and muscles in her ankle wrenched violently.
As if her night wasn’t ruined as it was—now her beautiful dress would have grass stains. And not from anything worth getting grass stains for! She rolled onto her side to slip her foot out of the trapped stiletto, and then pulled herself up against the bumper of a nearby 4WD, drawing her foot to her body and pressing her hands around her damaged ankle. Shocked tears welled dangerously.
You’re not seriously thinking about crying?
The Colonel’s voice again. Romy sucked in a series of deep breaths and looked around urgently for something to focus on. Studying the minute details of objects—anything—had always helped her head off the tears her father wouldn’t tolerate.
Light from the fireworks bounced in a beautiful spectrum off the broken headlight of the vehicle she was half hanging onto. Her arm looped around the roo bar and she pulled herself into a more upright position, ignoring the sharp stab in her leg. Any second now it would be a nasty throb and then a horrible ache.
She stared at the way the light fragmented and bounced off the many facets of the shattered headlight, depending on where she moved her head. Amazing how light worked. It really was very pretty. The wash in her eyes trebled the effect. She swiped at them with her free arm while hoisting herself further up into a sitting position on using the heavy 4WD for ballast. Sure enough, the tears eventually subsided.
Thanks for something, Colonel.
Romy reached down and slipped her remaining shoe off and tossed it over to its offending partner. Her ankle didn’t so much scream as moan.
Twisted, then, not broken.
As she prepared to pull herself up onto her good foot, the final fireworks of the evening went off with a loud crack. Thousands of bright embers showered earthwards like a supersize sparkling jellyfish, falling harmlessly to the ground and throwing a daylight-bright glow onto everything around her. One tire of the 4WD was right next to her face and the fireworks lit it perfectly. Romy stared, knowing exactly where she’d seen that distinctive tread before.
On a seldom-used track at WildSprings.
She shoved away from the roo bar in disgust and scrambled over to her shoes, ignoring the sharp protest of her injured ankle and knowing this was the same view that kangaroo would have taken to its grave. From below, the vehicle was all wheels, chrome and bug-encrusted grille. The tread marks at the scene had been so distinctive. There couldn’t possibly be two of them in the same district.
She scrabbled for her clutch purse, pulled out her mobile phone and called up the photo from the roo-strike site. It matched these tyres perfectly. She snapped a new one, this time of the tire itself, a second and third of the vehicle emblem and the broken headlight and finally the registration plate on the 4WD.
How she’d love to get her hands on whoever was driving roughshod through her park.
Her park? Ooh, that felt way too good on the lips.
She shoved her phone back into her clutch and started to push herself up, trying to right her legs from their awkward, splayed position. Like an obscene Barbie doll someone had tossed to the ground with its glamorous outfit all hiked high.
‘Romy, what the hell have you done?’ Clint appeared from nowhere and scooped her into a standing position, taking most of her weight. She tugged at her dress, desperate to restore some dignity. But, really, what was the point?
She opened her mouth, about to tell him about the 4WD and its tyres.
‘Seriously, can I not leave you alone for five minutes?’ he muttered, shaking his head.
She stiffened in his hold and her chest tightened up. Now that was classic Colonel. Would Clint never see her as anything other than an amusement to be humoured, comforted or rescued? Even after running his hands all over her in the alley?
He bent to lift her into his arms. All thought of the 4WD fled. ‘What are you doing?’ she cried, lurching away from him, balancing on one leg and counterbalancing with her clutch and her shoes in the other hand.
His handsome face frowned. ‘I’m going to carry you to the car.’
‘Like hell you are! I can get there myself.’
‘Really?’ He straightened and glared at her, all hints of desire gone. He glanced down where she held her damaged foot carefully off the ground. ‘Fine, knock yourself out.’
With my luck I probably will.
She braced her shoe hand on the bonnet of the 4WD and used it as a crutch, pitching away a metre. She regained her balance and then pushed herself forwards until she hit the front of the next car in line.
‘Romy, let me help. Please.’ He growled right behind her. ‘I’ll just pick you up.’
‘No.’ Her concentration frown was so intense it almost marred her view and she braced herself on the bonnet and then pushed off on her good foot.
This might actually work.
‘Then let me be your crutch…’
‘You’re too tall.’ She lunged towards the next car in the row and nearly missed, catching herself on the bad ankle. She wasn’t quick enough to swallow the cry.
‘For God’s sake, let me carry you.’ He was right there, hovering.
She couldn’t touch him again. Not without crying. ‘Clint, no! I need to do this by myself.’
Need to? Where had that come from? Damn.
He backed off—just a little—and let her go, shadowing close behind. It was excruciating in pain and speed but she would have dragged herself home with her fingernails to get her point across.
She was a capable woman. He needed to see her as one.
About halfway to her car she remembered the 4WD, and roughly three-quarters of the way there she decided not to tell him about it. She wanted to solve it first. Come to him with a resolution, not a problem. She had contacts in the police department who could run those plates on the quiet. Give her an idea of who was yahooing in the park.
She lurched onwards.
Finally, she reached her Honda, practically gasping with exhaustion. Clint stepped around in front of her, took one look at the unshed tears in her eyes and his lips thinned impossibly further. But his voice dropped down a measure.
‘Have you quite finished with the Xena: Warrior Princess act?’
She dashed at her lashes. ‘If you hadn’t been here I would have had to get myself to the car. Why would I do any different just because you are?’ Just because I’m dying for you to hold me.
His frown doubled. ‘If I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have been aerating the pitch with your heels in the first place.’
True enough. Romy collapsed onto the passenger seat and swung her good leg in, then carefully lifted her damaged one beside it. ‘Do you mind driving?’
His expression answered for him. He crossed around to the front of the car and then slid in behind the wheel. The interior light faded as soon as his door closed and he turned the key she passed him too hard, double-jacking the motor.
She stiffened in her seat. She and anger didn’t play well. She’d spent a lifetime trying to avoid conflict with her father; she didn’t need it in her new life in the country. Sitting right beside her.
But it looked like conflict had found her.
They drove out of town in complete silence, not even the radio to provide some light relief. Simply breathing felt like wading through congealed molasses. She fixed her stare out into the inky darkness, trying to ignore Clint’s tangible simmer.
Failing.
Angry-Romy was all tuckered out. Being mad was too much work. Reasonable-Romy hopped from foot to foot in the wings, waiting for her chance to get a word in.
It came.
Running away from him without a word had been rude. She’d kissed him willingly. He hadn’t forced her to spear her hands through his hair or press her mouth to his throat. Those were her decisions. And she’d run because of the whole military thing—
Liar.
The little voice shocked a gasp out of her. Clint glanced sideways at her briefly through the darkened cabin, then tracked his attention back onto the road ahead.
Tell the truth, girl.
The Colonel. Relentless about honesty and personal responsibility. She frowned into the night. It was the truth! Wasn’t it? She took herself back to that darkened doorway, relived the feelings. Clint’s power, his confidence. The broad, hard contours of his shoulders. The short, sexy spikes of his newly cut hair. The way he’d shielded her with his body from prying eyes. She’d responded to all the parts of him that were classic military.
Her eyes rounded in the reflection of the side window as she realised. She hadn’t run from that part of him, she’d run towards it. Even in heels. The capable, military part of him was attractive to her on a primeval, fundamental level.
She blew out a confused breath. ‘The last time I had sex I got pregnant.’
Amazing, really, that he didn’t drive clear off the road. But his voice was tight when he finally spoke. ‘Excuse me?’
Romy took a deep breath. ‘It was also the first time I had sex. Which would pretty much make it the only time I’ve had sex.’ Oh, for crying out loud, she couldn’t even stop saying ‘sex’ around him.
He glanced over at her, confused. ‘You’ve had one sexual encounter in your life and you got pregnant out of it?’
She shrugged her shoulders, too casually. ‘I’m the reason young girls are warned about the first time, I guess.’
He glanced between the road and her. Twice. On a curse, he slammed the brakes and pulled off into a lay-by, cutting the motor and staring at her in the darkened car.
She returned the stare. Then she couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘For two years it was all about surviving my father, protecting my baby. After that I had a toddler to raise and food to scrounge together. By the time Leighton was at school I’d kind of…gone off the whole…romance thing.’
He shook his head. ‘Just once?’
Romy balled her fists. He really wasn’t getting her. ‘Can we move past the slack-jawed shock, do you think?’
‘You’re practically a virgin.’
Okay, so maybe he was on the same page. She cleared her throat. ‘I…really don’t count that first time at all. So…yes.’
‘Why doesn’t it count?’
‘I was—’ Half in shock? Violently drunk? Present-absent? ‘—not really involved.’
Clint’s eyes focused on her.
‘Were you forced?’
She shook her head, flushing. ‘I wanted to rebel against my father. The guy was just my weapon of choice. But I also chose not to actively…participate…in the end.’ She couldn’t. It was why she was twenty-six and had never been properly kissed. Let alone loved. ‘Obviously I didn’t plan to…didn’t realise I’d get pregnant.’
A high-pitched creaking sound filled the little Honda. Romy realised it was Clint’s hands squeezing the life out of her leather steering-wheel cover. He muttered an obscenity under his breath.
Her defences shot up instantly. ‘Don’t judge me, Clint.’
Wow. Thinking it and saying it were two very different things. There was a kind of power in actually verbalising the words.
Don’t. Judge. Me.
His eyes zeroed back in on hers. ‘Judging you? You’re practically a virgin, Romy, and I was about to take you up against a wall in an alleyway. How do you think that makes me feel?’
She lifted her voice to match his. ‘Don’t judge yourself either. I just wanted you to understand why I took off like that. It was rude and I’m sorry.’
Words failed him. Then he laughed, strained and thin. ‘You don’t sound sorry—you sound really ticked off.’
‘If you keep pushing me I will get ticked off.’ Lord, it was amazing to speak her mind! ‘I simply wanted you to know why I left.’
‘I assumed it was the military thing.’
She stared at him, breathing heavily. ‘So did I, at first.’
‘But not now?’
Her voice dropped to a bare whisper. ‘It still bothers me, Clint. I would be lying if I said it didn’t. But I recognise that it’s a big part of you.’
Wordless seconds ticked by. Romy studied her hands. Then he finally spoke, steady but low.
‘I go to the city. About four times a year…’
She lifted her eyes to his profile. Was he finally going to share something with her?
‘…to meet with a woman by the name of Adrienne Lucas.’
A vortex opened up deep in Romy’s belly.
‘Dr Adrienne Lucas of the medical corps. It’s a condition of my leave that I check in regularly with her.’
Romy looked up at him, her stomach settling. ‘Check in?’
‘She’s a shrink, Romy. She treats me.’
‘What are you on leave for?’
‘They call it medical leave. I call it leave of last resort. It was that or retire from the corps entirely. The corps wanted me to stay.’
‘But you didn’t want to?’
Silence.
‘What happened?’
Clint made a noise in the back of his throat. His fingers beat a steady rhythm on the steering wheel. ‘They called us the force of choice. One of Australia’s elite squadrons. It meant we were posted deep inside conflicts all over the world. Reconnaissance, retrieval, extractions. We saw things no one should have to look at. Eventually you get used to seeing those things. And to doing them.’
Romy slid her hand over towards him until her little finger barely touched his thigh. She very much needed some part of her to be touching some part of him.
‘One day I saw something I couldn’t get used to. One of my patrol committed something so…’ He shook his head, took a deep breath. ‘A kid, no older than Leighton. It was unacceptable. We were supposed to be helping people. There was only the two of us on reconnaissance, the LT and me. I didn’t want to dog on a senior, a friend, but I didn’t know what else to do.
‘I talked to the LT about it. We were pretty tight. He seemed remorseful, said he appreciated me coming direct to him. Grateful enough that I’d handled it discreetly he granted me a weekend leave.’ He shook his head in the darkness. ‘I spent most of it drunk in the desert, trying to erase what I’d seen from my mind. When I got back to base, I got carpeted by my CO.’
‘What happened?’
‘LT cited me for bailing during the mission. He said I didn’t have what it took in close combat. It became my superior’s word against my own. I was forced to justify myself, forced to tell them what happened with the kid, that he was only defending his family with a rusty old AK with no ammo in it.’ His voice thickened.
Romy stared at him. ‘They didn’t believe you.’
‘There was a reason we all looked up to the LT. He was the best, a talented strategist.’ His laugh turned ugly. ‘He struck pre-emptively to undermine everything I said. He painted me as a coward, made sure the whole platoon heard about it.’
‘And they believed that? About a man who’d earned a commendation for valour?’ He fell to silence. Romy realised. ‘You wore it. You didn’t challenge him.’ As a woman who spent her life feeling judged, she knew exactly how to say that. Factual. Simple. Toneless. He’d find no judgement here.
‘I thought I could tough it out, watch the LT, try and prevent anything like it from happening again. But the other troopers in my unit, men who’d trusted me with their lives, suddenly didn’t want to know me.’ He clenched the steering wheel as if it was a weapon. ‘I was dropped to solo recon. And the LT kept on going out.’
He sounded like a man and a wounded animal all at once. Romy got a real sense of how important that trust relationship was to him. How badly his loyalty had been abused.
‘When did you leave?’ she asked.
‘He finally went too far. Command pulled him out and it all came to the surface. What I saw was just the tip of the iceberg. Even they were shocked, I think. My XO hustled to make good on the damage done, but nothing could undo it for me. I’d grown suspicious of everyone. I had no faith in the men I served with. I had no faith in myself. I started to believe…’
Whatever he’d been about to say, he couldn’t finish. He looked stricken. ‘I spent the best part of a year drunk whenever I wasn’t on mission. It was the only way I could sleep at night.’
‘So you went on leave?’
‘Command considers it some kind of compensation. Either that or they didn’t want a flaming star medallist cut loose and drawing attention. In any case I’m pensioned off on medical leave until my time is up, then they’ll discharge me honourably with no fuss. It’s all over.’
She picked her way through a minefield of possible responses and, as was her peculiar talent, selected the most painful one. ‘But not for you?’
His eyes blazed like emerald coals. ‘That unit was my family, Romy. I would have died for any one of them and I nearly did, several times. So to be turned on by the men who I would have taken a bullet for…To have the corps call my courage into question, my honour…’
Death before dishonour.
Romy shuddered. He’d watched his mother desert his father; then his lieutenant betrayed him, his brothers-in-arms turned on him, his corps abandoned him. The only person he had in the world was Justin. The already strong brotherly bond doubled.
Amazing he could still function, really. That spoke of enormous strength behind those fathomless eyes. She slid her hand onto his where it gripped the steering wheel desperately.
A road train thundered by, its long string of sidelights casting an eerie glow onto his face. He glanced down at her fingers on his and pulled them free. He returned his attention to the dark road and started the car.
She stared at his tortured profile. There was more. Something she was missing. This was about more than just Clint.
‘Is he still inside the system? Your lieutenant?’
Clint snorted. ‘Deep inside it. Brig-deep. He won’t be seeing the outside of a military prison for another decade.’
‘Good. He deserves it.’
‘Maybe we both do.’
She sucked in a quiet breath. ‘You blame yourself for the boy that died.’
The silence stretched for an eternity. ‘But for some geography, that could have been Leighton.’ His voice was thick and low. ‘Just a regular little kid before the conflict started. The only one left to defend his mother and sisters. Terrified.’
The image of Leighton bleeding to death into the desert sands trying to protect her roiled from her brain to her stomach. She cleared her throat. ‘You didn’t kill him.’
‘I didn’t save him.’
‘You can’t be responsible for every child. Every loss.’
Romy’s heart ached for the pain she saw etched there. Then he spoke again, as if he couldn’t seal off the floodgate now he’d opened it.
‘I nearly killed Justin once.’ Her shocked silence was question enough. ‘In the dam down from your cottage. I was supposed to be watching him. I was showing off for some local girls whose parents were visiting mine. Older girls. Pretty girls.’
Her whispered words were measured. ‘He got in trouble in the water?’
‘He was struggling in the water. I didn’t notice for nearly a minute.’
Romy’s hand slid up onto his leg. Entirely inadequate.
Sixty seconds without oxygen…
‘One of the girls was a pool attendant in the city in the summer holidays. She resuscitated him after I pulled him out. He was only five.’
Making Clint only thirteen. Still a child himself. Too young to take on that guilt. Too young not to. ‘You mentioned that you owed him.’
‘His development was slowed after that. For years it looked like he’d never be able to learn like everyone else.’ His bitter smile twisted. ‘The man Mum ran off to the States with was Justin’s developmental specialist.’
Charming.
‘He seems pretty normal now.’ Romy suppressed the memory of the nasty glint in Justin’s eyes at the dance. No wonder Clint was protective of his brother. He’d probably spent a lifetime being subtly reminded of what had nearly happened. Empathy welled up for the guilt-ridden young man Clint must have been. The damaged man he’d grown into. She cleared her throat. ‘If he got a front-of-house role in a major hotel, Justin can’t have had much lasting damage.’
He nodded, slow and thoughtful. ‘Pure luck. And skill on the part of Richard Long, my stepfather. It could have been very different.’
Romy took the opportunity. She lightened her words. Carefully, carefully…‘He doesn’t really talk about it much. His US job.’
Clint slid his glance sideways. ‘Leave it, Romy. Stop fishing for mystery you won’t find.’
‘I’m just curious.’ Because the Joliet Grovesnor had no record of a concierge called Justin Long. Or Justin McLeish. And that’s where Simone said he’d earned his management stripes. ‘I’d like to know more about how they run the big US hotels.’
‘Then ask him.’
The idea of having a reasonable conversation with Justin Long was laughable. Even before she’d half crippled him with her Vulcan death grip. But if he was lying to Clint, she wanted to know about it. It was her job. ‘I might just do that.’
The past fifteen minutes explained so much. Why wouldn’t you shut yourself away after an incident like he’d experienced in the military? Who would you trust?
She thought about her father and what sorts of things he must have seen in his time in active service, what that might do to a man. How it must take extra strength even to do the day-to-day things, never mind the horrendous things they were tasked with. Had her father done any of that? She thought about how there was no weapon on this earth strong enough to fight the infection which took her mother, and how a control freak like the Colonel must have felt about being powerless. About the baby whose birth caused the deadly, aggressive infection.
She frowned.
Clint had been ripped out of his unit, away from the men he was closest to, and look how it had affected him. The Colonel was recalled unexpectedly from active duty to come home and raise a motherless infant single-handed and assigned forever after to passive training and admin roles. It didn’t change one moment of the misery that was her childhood, but it did make her appreciate, a tiny bit, how it must have been for the Colonel twenty-six years ago.
And why he might have viewed her as the enemy her whole life.
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