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.
Just like any mortally wounded animal.
Her heart reached out to that part of him. The part she’d glimpsed for barely a moment that night in his house. The part, she very much suspected, that was responsible for framing and mounting his service badge and commendation.
You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t care. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t hurt so much. And the flashes in his eyes when she’d asked about it were most definitely pain.
For the first time, she saw a glint of reason to the way the military trained its people. Especially in those kinds of units. You’d need a certain level of psychological shielding in order to strap on a weapon and take human lives. Otherwise, the enormity of the job you had to do might just eat you up.
She frowned. That was how her father had trained. How he lived his life. How he tried to make Romy live hers. What happened to the people who couldn’t handle the discipline, who rebelled against the absolutes? Did they go out at seventeen and brand their bodies with vivid symbols of wild, rebellious freedom across their backs? Then get so blisteringly drunk in misery they’d fall into bed with the first person who showed them a hint of compassion?
Maybe they did.
Maybe other people failed the military test with equally spectacular results. She’d gone on to grow into a tough, resilient, capable woman. But that was in spite of her upbringing, not because of it.
She crunched the gears on her vehicle. Family sure had a lot to answer for. And now she’d gone and got herself mixed up with a pair of brothers with territorial issues. Great.
Romy didn’t share Clint’s confidence about his brother. Justin was a little too self-interested for her comfort, and his appreciation of the achievements of his staff was more to do with how that reflected on him. Still, she’d worked with his personality type before. The best strategy was to keep a safe distance and an open mind.
Maybe he was just struggling with younger-brother syndrome. Trying to prove himself to a complicated and unreachable man.
Romy laughed. Who knew they would have something in common!
Still…a little judicious internet surfing wouldn’t go astray. A few subtle questions here and there. Just to put her niggling instincts to rest.
‘Does your mum know you’re here, Leighton?’
Unlikely, judging by the sheepish shrug of little shoulders. Clint groaned inwardly. As if he and Romy needed any more angst between them. It was going to be hard enough to work together without becoming an accomplice in her little boy’s frequent misdemeanours. ‘Come on, I’ll walk home with you.’
Curious grey eyes so like his mothers stared at the tree house. ‘Can’t I come in?’
With the ghost of Romy still haunting his sanctuary, having Leighton in there was only going to double the uncomfortable rightness of it all. As though the house he thought he’d finished building a year ago was still waiting for the delivery of two finishing touches.
A wife.
A child.
Crazy thoughts when he’d built the tree house specifically to be a refuge for one. But hadn’t he wondered as he built it what it would be like growing up here? The kind of person it would help make someone into? And hadn’t he allowed his eyes to drift shut more than once and imagine a woman’s arms snaking around his neck as he sat out on the balcony of an evening? A faceless, nameless woman, more of an essence than anything.
He had.
He swallowed. ‘Maybe some other time. With your mother.’
Leighton groaned.
‘Are you still mad at her from the other night?’ Clint asked.
‘She’s mad at me. She’s always mad at me.’
He was yet to see Romy angry at him in any way other than justified. He got the sense that this little kid was a minimaster in manipulation. And his mother was too frightened of losing him to take a risk. ‘How does that make you feel?’
Leighton frowned. ‘Mad.’
Clint’s laugh coaxed a small one out of Leighton. It was hard not to enjoy this kid, his raw honesty. So like his mother. If he had a son he’d like him to be—
Whoa. Not going there. That stuff was best kept locked up tight in a secure place.
They walked on in companionable silence. ‘How was your hangout the other night?’ He remembered at the very last second not to call it a sleepover.
‘Cool!’ Leighton launched into a blow-by-blow description of everything they did, activities and stories in which Steve Lawson featured quite highly. It got them three-quarters of the mile home. Finally, the story started to wind up.
‘Sounds like a real boys’ night,’ Clint broke in on one of the rare occasions Leighton stopped for a breath.
‘Cam’s dad is so cool. He’s a copper—I saw his gun.’
Clint frowned at the little eyes looking up at him so expectantly. ‘You saw his weapon? In the house?’
‘Uh-huh.’
There’d be no more hangouts at the Lawsons’ if that was true. He stopped in his tracks and narrowed his eyes, pinning the eight-year-old hard, giving him the interrogatory stare he reserved
