Men In Uniform: Taken By The Soldier: The Soldier's Untamed Heart / Closer... / Groom Under Fire

‘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.’

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.