squinted. ‘You know the code?’
‘I lived with the code.’
Her simple grimace was telling. He knew only too well the personal price soldiers paid for honouring that ideal. Family came in a poor fifth right behind your unit. The men who kept you alive, who had your back.
Or were supposed to.
For all those big, beautiful eyes seemed to know about loss, he doubted they knew squat about betrayal. The things he’d seen, things he’d done. The things others had done that he’d never been able to reconcile. She didn’t have a clue. Romy Carvell was like a fresh set of combat camos: unsullied, crisp at the seams. The sort of thing you could slip into and feel clean, just for a moment until the sand leached in.
‘I’m asking you, Romy. If you or Leighton swim, please make it here. Okay?’
She considered him long and hard. Then she shrugged. ‘It’s your property.’
Something deep inside him staggered with relief. ‘What are you doing this evening?’
She blinked at his rapid change of direction. ‘Uh…Helping Leighton with a science project.’
‘Friday, then. There’s something I’d like to show you on the estate.’ And there was. But mostly it was an excuse to spend some more time with her, to sit close to those crisp, new khakis and think about how good it would feel to be clean again. ‘Can you meet me in the afternoon?’
‘Where?’
‘I’ll find you.’
She nodded and he turned down the hill, towards the twinkling green water he swam in daily, trying to baptise himself for a new beginning.
I’ll find you.
The words kept pinging around in Romy’s head. It was only her favourite quote in her favourite movie of all time. Except now, whenever she heard it, she’d think of a jade-eyed, square-jawed giant instead of Daniel Day-Lewis in a loincloth.
Okay, so not the worst trade-off…
She tipped her head back and let the cool water from the showerhead tumble over her.
I’ll find you. When a man like Clint McLeish promised that, you knew he wasn’t kidding. He would find a polar bear in a blizzard in the Arctic Circle. He was just that kind of…doer.
Nothing quite as sexy as a capable man.
She twisted the cold-water tap off hard, warning herself away from those thoughts. There was a very hazy line between capable and overbearing and she’d lived half her life with the latter.
She glanced at her watch and gasped. Leighton’s school bus would be dropping him at the gates to WildSprings in about four minutes. If his day was anything like hers, he’d be hot, bothered and ready for the air conditioning.
It took her two minutes to throw on some clothes and get to the car. As she reached for the doorhandle, a growing plume of dust through the trees caught her eye. A blue Nissan cruised into her drive and pulled up nearby. A rosy-cheeked, blonde gnome popped her head out of the driver’s side window and then pushed the door open.
‘Hi! You must be Leighton’s mum? I’m Carolyn Lawson, Cameron’s mum.’
Cameron? Romy bent to glance in the rear of the Nissan. Her son seemed absorbed in discussion with a blond boy about the same age. A ratty blue heeler with a lolling tongue was squished in there with them. Carolyn Lawson was five foot nothing and nearly as round as she was tall. But her smile was instant and her confidence infectious. Romy’s people metre blinked happily in the green. She held out her hand and accepted Carolyn’s firm shake.
‘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
