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.’
