from experience that ignoring his sex drive only made his state of arousal more intense. Sometimes, when he’d been on a military assignment for a prolonged period, he’d become almost savage with lust. He’d never lost control, but when he found a willing bed partner he would stay on her the entire night, keeping her beneath him and having her until the hungry ache finally left him.
A bed partner was what he needed now, a woman who could provide him with regular, hard-driving sex when he needed it and who didn’t ask for anything more. Maybe it was a cold way to approach obtaining something as intimate as making love, but Ben had long since replaced romanticism with practicality. For him it was a simple physical equation, minus the hearts and flowers. When he was younger, he’d been wild, his judgement lousy. He’d let sex cloud his thinking, and the mistake had changed his life permanently. He couldn’t afford to make another mistake now; he had Bunny’s needs to consider. If he took a woman to bed, he was careful to lay down the ground rules first.
If, and when, he wanted a relationship of a permanent kind, it would be of his choosing. And this time he would choose his future wife with the contents of his head and not his pants.
He stopped for a set of lights. With the cessation of movement, the cooling breeze died and the cab instantly warmed. Roma leaned forward, the movement drawing his eye so that he watched as she reached into her holdall, extracted a bottle of water and took a swallow, before recapping and replacing the bottle. Her hands were slim, the nails short but nicely shaped, her movements graceful and completely feminine. Despite the heat and the heavier clothes she’d worn for the early-morning flight, she looked as cool as a cucumber and so composed it was hard to believe she’d saved a man’s life on a bloodied sidewalk two nights ago.
The lights changed. Ben shifted gear, accelerating smoothly.
If he decided he wanted Roma Lombard, he thought calmly, then he would have her, but it was either strictly business, or bed. He couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t keep his mind out of her pants.
Roma avoided looking at McCabe as he drove. Instead, she rested her head against the seat and watched the industrial areas and the housing estates flash by, letting the hum of the engine and the monotony of the view dull the throbbing in her head. Her lids drooped, the drag of sleep almost taking her under. Her eyes popped wide. She lifted her head off the headrest and forced herself to sit straighter and take an interest in the view. The thought of falling asleep in the presence of McCabe was subtly alarming; she was already vulnerable enough.
After a few minutes she noticed they were headed south into suburbia, rather than into the centre of town. Curiously she noted the signs. Gradually the houses thinned out into expensive rural lifestyle blocks, interspersed by tracts of pasture. The country was getting wilder by the second, and she wondered with a flicker of amusement if McCabe had consigned the whole idea of guarding her to the too-hard basket and was planning to knock her off and dump her body.
Eventually they turned down a gravel drive flanked by leafy jacaranda trees. There was open country on either side, where horses grazed contentedly, and in the distance, Roma caught tantalising glimpses of what must be the Waitemata Harbour.
They pulled up at a large cedar-and-brick home, which was comfortably nestled into mature gardens. A broad sweep of lawn was dominated by a large, gnarled oak. A simple rope swing hung from the oak, and a bright pink bike lay nearby, abandoned at a drunken angle next to a sandpit.
‘‘Won’t be a minute,’’ McCabe said, placing his sunglasses on the dash and climbing out of the truck.
The front door was flung open as he walked across the lawn. A small tornado of a girl erupted from the house, yelling, ‘‘Daddy, Daddy!’’
She ran full-tilt at McCabe and wrapped herself around his legs.
McCabe’s back muscles flexed and bunched, shifting smoothly beneath the damp cling of his T-shirt as he swung his daughter up into his arms. He twirled her around in a circle before wrapping her close. The little girl planted a kiss on his nose, and he grinned, white teeth flashing against his stubbled jaw as he returned the favour. She giggled and tugged at his hair.
Roma watched, still punchy with tiredness, but transfixed by the change in McCabe. She’d had him pegged as tough and rude and objectionable, but right now he looked like the poster boy for fatherhood.
The little girl demanded to be let down, commandeered his hand and tugged him over to the bike, then stood, hands on hips, as McCabe went down on his haunches to put the chain back on, his movements fluid and unhurried. He looked relaxed and content, completely at home in his role as a parent. A sharp little ache started in her chest as she watched McCabe and his child together. The happy scene, the way he was with his daughter, contrasted sharply with his abrasive manner with her—intensifying the cold sense of alienation she felt in his presence, so that she sniffed, the blues hitting her full force.
She loved family, and she was already missing hers, despite their fussing; and she loved children.
She’d even trained to work with children in professional child care, but six months ago she’d quietly given up her career after a newspaper had printed a story about her family’s vulnerability to terrorism. All it had taken was a couple of crank calls to her place of work and she’d been asked to leave. Roma could even understand and sympathise with her employer. If she were a parent, she wouldn’t want her child to be cared for by a woman who periodically needed an armed escort, either.
She’d considered opening her own business, but not for long. The fact had been brought home to her that she was a potential threat to anyone who got close to her, and children were especially vulnerable. When she’d planned her career and begun training, she hadn’t imagined that the situation with Harper would continue for so many years or that, as a family, they would continue to remain so vulnerable. Somehow, through it all, a part of her had held stubbornly to the idea of a fairytale ending—the elusive ideal of a normal life.
An older woman, casually dressed in jeans and an oversize shirt, strolled out of the house. Ben wiped his hands on the grass, straightened and walked toward her. The little girl didn’t follow him; instead she stared at Roma with the unabashed curiosity of childhood and wandered over, following an invisible zigzag path in the grass, hands shoved into her pockets.
‘‘Hi,’’ she said.
‘‘Hi yourself.’’ Roma climbed out of the truck and crouched down to the little girl’s level, relieved as the breeze tugged at her shirt and cooled her skin. McCabe’s daughter was maybe five or six years old, with dark hair cut into a shining bob, and eyes the same intense blue as her dad’s. She was wearing a T-shirt, overalls and sneakers, and still had an adorable baby softness to her cheeks. ‘‘My name’s Roma, what’s yours?’’
McCabe’s daughter looked back at her daddy, then at the truck, as if assessing whether or not she should answer. ‘‘Bunny.’’
She advanced a step and picked up a strand of Roma’s hair, watched it blow from her fingers. ‘‘I’d like my hair that long,’’ she announced. ‘‘Grandma says I can’t grow it yet. It’s too fine.’’
‘‘Your hair’s pretty like it is.’’
Bunny nodded. Her eyes dropped to Roma’s boots. She gave her own grubby sneakers a disparaging glance. ‘‘I’d like boots like that, too. But I s’pose I’ll have to wait. Grandma doesn’t know what little girls wear these days.’’
Roma glanced at the woman McCabe was talking to. She was tall, with imperious features and dark hair that had greyed in elegant streaks. The
