style="font-size:15px;"> ‘He’s okay, he’s in the car.’ She tightened her hold around his waist. He hugged her back, nearly crushing her in his intensity. Her eyes squeezed shut. Home didn’t smell like muffins or look like her cottage or sound like an eight-year-old boy giggling. It felt…just exactly…like this.
Romy never wanted to let go.
He pushed some distance between them. ‘Romy, what happened?’
She stumbled several times, telling the story of their wild escape as briefly as she could. He looked at the car with narrowed gaze and then surveyed the contents of the trunk himself, never letting go of Romy.
‘Clint, are you all right?’ Desperate relief shook her voice. Every independent moment she’d ever fought for faded into insignificance compared to her sudden surge in awareness that he’d protected her. Protected Leighton.
That everything would be okay as long as he was around.
It’s what she’d been feeling—and fighting—from the very beginning.
She wanted him to be in charge. Not because she wasn’t capable of solving her own problems. She wanted it because he was so incredibly competent and she felt so treasured when he took care of her. When had she ever in her life been treasured? How was she going to walk away from that feeling?
Darkness crossed Clint’s face as he turned in the direction the police had left. She touched his arm. ‘Justin?’
‘Tied to a tree. They’ll find him.’
The air squeezed out of her. Clint hadn’t helped his brother. Hadn’t let him go. After everything he’d tried to do for Justin, it must have been like gnawing off his own limb.
She touched him again. ‘Don’t you want to be there?’
He swung blazing, certain eyes to her, slid his hands up to frame her face and leaned in to kiss her parted lips. ‘No. I want to be here.’
His mouth was warm and strong and tasted like safety. Her body sagged against his, the terror of the past few hours finally catching up with her. He moved quickly to support her weight.
‘I’m so sorry about Justin,’ she whispered.
Clint brushed her sweaty hair back from her face. ‘Don’t be. Justin is not your fault.’
‘He’s not yours either.’ Clint’s eyes dropped away. Romy pursued him. ‘Can you let yourself believe that?’
His lips tightened with his hold on Romy. ‘No. I don’t think so. Look at what he’s turned into. Willing to exploit the birds we’ve given sanctuary to for generations. That’s not the boy I remember.’
Never mind that he’d used his brother and their family property to effect his crime.
‘I can’t begin to imagine how much it must have hurt to see your own flesh and blood standing in that clearing…’
Bleak eyes turned back to her. ‘I guess he hasn’t been my little brother for a long, long time.’
A wailing siren drifted towards them on the evening air.
The birds…Romy twisted to look at the trunk.
He pulled her back around. ‘There’s nothing we can do until the authorities get here. They’ll be comfortable enough there in the cool until the wildlife officers can check each one properly and recover them from the tranquilliser.’
‘Why would Justin steal them?’
Clint’s lips tightened into a straight line. ‘Wildlife smuggling is big business. Every one of those birds could potentially bring $15,000 from foreign collectors who don’t know or don’t care how they’ve been sourced. To help pay off Justin’s debts. It’s a filthy, disgusting trade.’
Romy frowned. ‘Justin’s in debt?’
He sighed and nodded. ‘I imagine I’m not the only person he doublecrossed in his life and I’m sure he was being chased by more than the authorities when he left the US over those drug charges.’
Romy swallowed, imagining Leighton living with the kind of fear his brother must be. ‘Poor Justin.’
Clint stared at her, incredulous. ‘Poor Justin? Now you have empathy for him? After everything he did. I saw him go for Leighton in the back of the car.’ Disgust leached from his pores.
She pressed her hand to his heart. It beat way too hard to be good for him. ‘No. Not Leighton. He tackled that other man. He helped us get away, Clint.’
A skirmish broke out in eyes dark with pain. His throat worked frantically. His chest heaved.
She touched him again, more because she wanted to feel him. ‘He couldn’t have known that Leighton would get involved. I think…I think he came good, Clint, when it mattered.’
Heavy lids hid his eyes and he kissed her temple, threading his fingers through her hair. ‘This is all my fault. I should have seen it, Romy. If I wasn’t so blinded by my own guilt…if I hadn’t buried myself away from every living thing, then I would have been more on top of what was going on in my own property. None of this would have happened.’
She pushed him away, looked him hard in the eye. ‘No. If Justin had made different choices, then none of this would have happened.’
‘I endangered you both with my blind loyalty. The two people that I—’ He stroked the hot skin of her shoulderblades under her sweater. Trembles butterflied down her spine. ‘That was a choice I made, Romy. I chose badly. Again.’
‘No. You saved Leighton. You saved me. I could never have done that without you. Justin may have been a thief but he wouldn’t have hurt Leighton. Or me. I believe that.’
And somehow she did believe it. He was Clint’s brother. Malice just couldn’t run through the veins of anyone who shared McLeish DNA.
Tears sparkled in green anguish-filled eyes. She took a breath. ‘Did you hurt him, Clint?’
After a silent moment filled only with the sound of ever-increasing sirens, he nodded.
Oh, my poor love…She swallowed. ‘Badly?’
He cleared his thick throat. ‘He didn’t fight back, Romy. He didn’t take his eyes off mine. He just stood there and took it until he couldn’t stand up any more. Like he thought he deserved it.’
How long would it take Clint to recover from that? As if he didn’t carry enough guilt.
Leighton suddenly shoved his flushed little body in between them, his feet unbound now and his glasses knocking sideways as he wedged himself, puppylike, between the two most important people in his world. Romy tucked him safely to her and held on.
Clint squatted next to the tearful boy. ‘Hey, buddy. You’ve had quite an adventure, huh?’
The shaggy, auburn head nodded and Leighton wiped his running nose on his sleeve. Clint smiled gently. ‘Why did you run
