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?
Unfortunately for her, the Colonel was as zealous with her improvement as he had been over a lifetime of whipping raw recruits into good military material. His favoured tools of the trade were a firm hand and harsh tongue. Romy still carried the emotional scars both had left her with. Above all was the lingering sense that she was insufficient. No matter what she did it would never be quite good enough.
And now it looked as if Clint McLeish was harbouring similar thoughts. That somehow—though he didn’t yet know how—she was going to stuff up. Like the failure her father always told her she was.
She let her gaze drift to the road in front of them. They narrowed.
What the…?
‘Stop!’ Romy flung out her hands to brace herself on the windscreen as the word exploded from her lips. In the same moment, Clint slid the ute sideways as his foot slammed the brake hard to the floor. The engine stalled. The only sound was the blood rushing furiously past her ears. Then breath returned and she burst into action.
Across the middle of the track, a large western grey kangaroo lay mortally wounded. Its head jerked uselessly in the gravel and Romy’s heart lurched painfully. She reached for the first-aid kit, unclipped her seatbelt and pushed the door open all in the same manoeuvre.
She was on her feet and rushing towards the injured animal before Clint had fully registered what was going on, but he still managed to be there ahead of her. The moment she got to its side, strong arms wrapped around her and dragged her back from the injured creature.
‘Romy, no. Just wait!’
‘For what? It needs help.’
‘She could kill you with those legs. Look at her feet.’
She’d never noticed how savage the claws on the end of a kangaroo’s huge feet were. But the rest of the animal…
‘I don’t think she can even move.’
He stared at the critical animal and released her. She found her feet and moved towards the kangaroo more cautiously. He was right beside her. Blood trickled from the poor creature’s nose and its eyes rolled at the approach of humans. But its injuries were extensive and the stillness of the rest of the lean, grey body was ominously telling.
Clint saw it, too. ‘Her spine’s broken.’
She kneeled at the roo’s side and gently stroked its furred shoulder, tears biting. The kangaroo’s wide-eyed stare wheeled around to what she was doing but there was no sign it could feel a thing. Her heart ached for its suffering.
‘Go back to the car.’ Clint’s voice was firm.
She looked up at the bleak shadows turning his green eyes stormy. ‘No. There must be something we can—’
‘Leave her with me. It’s kinder this way.’
He was nearly as grey as the roo, now. It dawned on her what he was going to do. Her heart clenched. ‘No, you can’t…’
Dark eyes turned on her. ‘I’m trained to kill, Romy. It’s what I do best. Now will you please go back to the car?’
Torn between wanting to stay with him while he did the unthinkable and knowing she wouldn’t be able to watch, she shuffled to his side. Just being closer to him made things that tiny bit better.
‘Romy.’ His voice softened but his bleak gaze appealed. ‘Every second you’re stubborn is a second longer this animal is suffering.’
She dipped her head and turned away, shamed. As she did, a tragic hiss came from behind her. She and Clint both looked at the roo, where nature had finally taken care of its own.
In the pause between heartbeats, all signs of life vanished.
Her tears turned to relief. For the kangaroo and for Clint, who seemed so stoically resigned to killing it. She glanced down at the animal and watched the slight movements of its abdomen settling into death.
‘Romy—’ urgency filled Clint’s voice ‘—in the tray of the ute is my old training sweater. Can you grab it, please?’
He knelt in front of the dead roo and she hurried to find what he’d asked for. As she crossed to the vehicle, she noticed a set of tracks in the earth—disturbance where they’d skidded and then driven on again around the roo. She glanced at the ute’s tyres. Wrong profile. She grabbed her mobile phone as she reached into the ute for Clint’s old sweater.
He was hunched over the kangaroo’s corpse when she returned and she passed him the sweater, unable to look at the unseeing eyes. As soon as her hands were free, she turned back to the tire tracks, flipped open her phone and took a photograph of the distinctive tread marks,
