very nearly…
‘I’m asking, Romy…’ His words were mostly a whisper against her lips. ‘I’m looking for permission to proceed.’
It was pure instinct. The language that was such a part of him tumbled off his lips unconsciously. Romy’s eyes flew open and stark desperation frosted them over. She suddenly found strength and pushed hard against him, staggering away from the kiss he still burned to seal against her lush lips.
‘Oh, God…’ she choked, backing off. ‘What am I…? What are we doing?’
Easy, McLeish. She was like a live grenade. Sans pin. He took a step towards her, trying to lessen the distance she’d forced between them. If she bolted out of here now she was just as likely to hurt herself. And possibly never return.
‘I think we were about to test the definition of colleagues,’ he said.
She latched onto that. ‘You’re my boss! I can’t do this!’
He held her eye. ‘If you can’t, that’s okay. But don’t hide behind the boss thing. The two of us were never going to have a conventional employee-employer relationship. And you know it.’
‘No!’ Her breasts heaved up and down, hypnotically distracting in his periphery. Clint forced himself to keep his eyes on hers. Her fear was signposted in them.
‘I’m a different man, Romy. I’m not him,’ he said.
She backed hard into the kitchen bench. He raised his hands carefully to his side to try and lessen the impact of him standing between her and the door. That wasn’t going to improve matters.
‘You’re military!’
‘That’s what I did. Not who I am.’
She shook her head, her senses returning with a vengeance. ‘No. You are every bit military, regardless of how long you’ve been out of it.’
‘That still doesn’t make me like him.’ Although in his gut he knew it did. In part.
She took a deep breath. ‘Take me home.’
He stepped towards her. Her hands came up. ‘Romy…’
‘Then I’ll drive myself, give me the keys.’
‘Don’t do this…’
‘Fine, I’ll walk.’
She pushed away from the bench and straight past him, more than ready for a fight. He stepped clear and let her pass, but dogged her heels to the exit and down the outside stairs. He’d led enough men to know when a strategic retreat was required.
Time to regroup and reassess.
‘I’ll drive you, Romy. And I’ll leave you at your door. And I won’t so much as touch you again.’
Tonight.
She turned and stared at him through enormous, bright eyes. Great…this is how they got into this mess. He was a sucker for waterworks.
The mile drive was brutal. Neither of them spoke—no surprise, but he’d never considered his old friend silence an adversary before. It ate at his nerves as he pulled up in front of her cottage. He no longer thought of it as his parents’ place, only Romy’s.
The moment he yanked on the handbrake, she was out the door. His father’s manners made him step out of the driver’s seat. She turned when she hit the front verandah.
‘This is not about you, Clint,’ she disarmed him by saying, not quite able to meet his eyes. ‘But this is about what you do. Did. I cannot be with a man who has any part of my father in him. I can’t have Leighton exposed to that. If you can honestly tell me there’s no part of you that’s like him, then I’ll listen. I swear I will.’
Her eyes were like dinner plates in her pale face. Clint thought about his time as an operative. The good men he’d pushed just short of breaking point. The things he’d seen…done. And the things he’d been unable to reconcile himself to. The military was deeply embedded in his soul and, even now, he struggled to remember he wasn’t about unit, corps, God, country, any more.
He was nothing like Leighton’s grandfather…yet everything like him.
And so he stayed silent. Even though every part of him wanted to fight to get back the moment they’d so very nearly shared. The moment when something fundamental had shifted in his universe. In his soul.
Instead, he stared silently at her.
She nodded sadly and turned for the house. ‘Goodnight, Clint.’
Then she was gone. He slumped in the ute and slammed his hand against the aging dash. He’d spent a lifetime controlling his emotions but it took him more than a minute to get them under command now.
ANOTHER damaged fence kept Romy busy. As fast as she patched them up, more breaches appeared. Not that being thoroughly occupied was a bad thing, but her already filthy mood wasn’t improved any by spending a second afternoon in the Australian sun straining wire.
Stop your whining, girl, and get on with it. She heard the Colonel’s hard voice barking at her as though he were right there on the hill. Instinctively she sucked in her breath and straightened her spine. She yanked the final wire tight and stood back to examine her work.
It was getting harder to imagine this was only kids sneaking onto the property for an unauthorised swim or a farmer helping himself to fruit. Simone told her they’d not had breaches like this before so why the difference now? Because she’d sealed up a regular access point when she first arrived? Maybe activity was on the rise? Or could someone be making life intentionally difficult for her? She glanced around. Whichever, she was determined to solve it. To prove herself to all the knockers who were waiting for her to mess up.
She tossed her tools into the boot of her car.
Who was she kidding; most of the WildSprings staff had already accepted her, even if one or two had taken a while to warm to her. There was only one person she was trying to prove herself to and he remained entirely oblivious to her strengths.
She shook her head. Not surprising, really. It seemed as if all she’d done in Clint’s presence was confront him, disagree or wail like a banshee, all of which hardly engendered confidence. And then there was the kissing…
Romy flushed anew remembering how she’d practically climbed inside his skin back in the tree house. On all of one week’s acquaintance. It had felt so right for those blessed moments before she’d come to her senses. The fact he’d responded wholeheartedly did not lessen her embarrassment. Maybe he just hadn’t been to the city for a while?
She knew for certain he went the very next day.
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
