Читать книгу Men In Uniform: Taken By The Soldier - Jo Leigh - Страница 11

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 fact it had never occurred to him to ask instantly highlighted the truth that he’d never brought a 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.’

Clint’s eyes hadn’t left hers. Romy was critically aware of their intense focus, of the expectation live in them. She was his security coordinator. She had to manage her son.

‘I won’t ask again…’ Her heart thudded painfully. Her father’s words spilling out of her mouth. She felt the rising anger of a parent being challenged in the same breath as she relived the memories of a child sick to death of battles. Her gut tightened.

His little body didn’t so much as move.

‘Leighton Carvell…get your butt back up to the house.’

This time he moved, but only to turn his head back over his shoulder and glare at her. That expression was so familiar. It was her own from twelve years ago.

‘Or what?’ He frowned.

She saw Clint’s eyebrows lift, just slightly. Crap! She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to threaten Leighton. Or mess with his mind. Or, God forbid, get physical. But Clint was measuring every move she made.

She went for threat.

‘Or I call Carolyn Lawson and say the sleepover is off.’ Her voice shook enough that nobody could miss it. Clint’s narrowed eyes certainly hadn’t.

Leighton scrambled around and up onto angry feet and screamed at her. ‘Hangout!’

Deep breaths, Romy. ‘Whatever. It’s off if you don’t get back up to the house and start your science homework.’

Stupid. Why were they fighting? He was probably learning more here in the boggy gully than fourth-grade science would ever teach. Still those green eyes watched. Assessed.

Leighton finally weighed his options and turned petulant eyes to the man lying still as a stone next to him. He turned the tantrum off in an eye blink. Strategically. ‘’Bye, Clint.’

Clint’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘See ya, buddy. We’ll do this again.’

Leighton nodded silently and then huffed past Romy, not meeting her eyes. A tight fist clenched around her lungs, but she forced words out as he passed. ‘Watch out for that pout, mate. You might trip on it.’

She turned to watch him go. When she trusted that he was genuinely heading for the house she turned back to her boss, humiliated that he’d witnessed the family altercation. He was on his feet, brushing off the loose, damp dirt. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said on a puff.

‘You asked again.’ His gaze was steady, half veiled.

‘What?’

‘Leighton. After telling him you wouldn’t ask him again to do his homework, you asked.’

‘So? He wasn’t getting me.’

‘Oh, he was getting you all right. He was ignoring you.’

‘Thank you, I’m well aware of that. Am I about to get a parenting lecture?’

‘Depends. Do you need one?’

Romy let her mouth drop open. Attractiveness be damned. ‘You knowing so much about parenting, of course.’

His eyebrows lifted. ‘I know something about little boys. Young men. I’ve trained enough of them. And it looks like I know a hell of a lot more than you about maintaining discipline.’

Romy settled both fists onto her hips. ‘Am I getting paid for this?’

It was Clint’s turn to look confused. He blinked at her.

‘If you’re about to give me some skills-development training? Is this on the clock?’

‘Romy…’

‘Don’t tell me how to raise my son!’ Her voice echoed through the little gully. Frogs and birds flew for cover in all directions.

Clint kept his cool. ‘When you say you’re not going to ask again and then you ask, Leighton wins. He’ll remember. And he’ll use it in his next combat.’

‘This is not a war. This is a family. My family.’ At least, she was working damn hard to keep it that way.

‘Sometimes there’s no difference. It’s the same psychology.’

‘I prefer a different kind of psychology. One based on love and compassion rather than threats and punishments.’

His laugh was genuine. ‘Let me know how that works out for you.’

‘He’s an eight-year-old child, Clint. Not a soldier.’ Just like she’d been.

‘Last time I checked, only one of us has been an eight-year-old boy. Trust me on what works for them.’

‘Trust me on what works for my son.’

He held her gaze, breathing in and out calmly. ‘Love and compassion has made Leighton the boy he is. He’s a great kid. But he’s going to start pushing your buttons more and more. Stretching you. Testing you. Trying to dominate you. I recognise the signs.’

She turned to follow her son up the hill. ‘That may be what you were like but it’s not Leighton.’

‘It’s all boys, Romy,’ he called after her. ‘It’s imprinted on us. We’re built to try to take charge.’

She spun around. ‘If you are so fired up about parenthood why don’t you sire a brood of your own? Go bully your own kids.’

He sprinted up the steep slope in three easy steps and swung around in front of her, halting her with a hand on her shoulder. ‘Managing your son does not make you a bully.’

She shrugged her shoulder away and glared. ‘Well, badgering me makes you one. And I think there’s a bunch of workplace laws that protect me from that.’

He dropped his hand and ran it through his thick hair. ‘Romy. I’m not trying to get under your skin—’

She stalked off, around him. ‘You do not get under my skin.’

Liar.

‘I just want to help you,’ he called after her. ‘Use some of what I’ve learned over the years.’

She turned back around and glared at him from the actual—and moral—high ground. ‘Well, Sensei, this little grasshopper is not interested in your wax-on-wax-off wisdom. Thanks all the same.’

He swore as she carried on up the gully, and then shouted an order after her. ‘We’re still on for tomorrow afternoon.’

She just held up an angry hand and scrambled, shaking, up the path to safety.

‘Ready to go?’

After a night of angry stewing and then a day of having to force her mind to stay on the job, Romy was more than ready. The faster they got started, the faster she’d be back home. She turned to where Clint stood in her doorway. ‘I’m not sure this qualifies as afternoon any more. It’s closer to evening.’

‘I thought I’d stay out of your way while you were working. You looked busy. Besides, you need to see this near dusk to appreciate it.’

He’d watched her working? How, when all her senses were finely tuned to any sign of his arrival? Then again, he was trained in stealth.

‘Do I need anything?’ She glanced around her spotless kitchen.

‘Nope. Just yourself.’

Out of habit, she grabbed her rucksack and locked the house behind them. Country or not, she would hand in her security licence before she’d leave it open to anyone passing, even with Leighton out for the night at Cameron’s. Clint waited patiently by his ute until she was done securing her home.

Her plan to remain detached and disinterested lasted about twenty-five seconds. The sight of all six foot four of him leaning casually against his vehicle waiting for her excited her pulse.

Relax, it’s only a drive. Not looking at him would make this much easier. She climbed in and fixed her focus out the front windscreen. ‘Where are we going?’

‘We’ve had reports about trafficking activity in the area. Cockatoos and reptiles. I wanted you to see WildSprings’s roosting sites so you know what to be watching for.’

‘This is about the Customs memo?’ She had received a copy as well. ‘I didn’t realise it affected us here.’

‘It might not. But it’s about cockatoo theft and we have one of the best feeding sites of red-tails in the region. And some nests. That makes us a target.’

Romy snapped straight into work mode. ‘So this is precautionary?’ She glanced at him from the passenger seat and noticed a dark bruise twisting around his throat. It looked nasty. Her muscles tensed. ‘What happened to you?’

His hand automatically rose to the mark, then waved it off. ‘Sporting injury.’

Oh, really? ‘What kind of sport does that to you?’

His attention flicked from the road to her, then back again. ‘Deep caving.’

Romy stared. Exploring the abundant natural pores of the earth in the south-west of Australia was a particularly dangerous pastime. Every now and again the caves took payment in the form of human lives. Her stomach fluttered. ‘You can’t watch the footy like the rest of Australia?’

Clint smiled. ‘I like football. But I love caving. There’s something about the silence. The darkness. Going somewhere virtually no-one else has been.’

The heart-stopping danger. ‘You can stand in the bush and get dark silence.’

‘Not quite the same.’

‘What other questionable pastimes do you have?’

‘I own a good movie collection and I’m learning to love paperback mysteries.’

‘Hmm…and when you’re not escaping into popular culture?’

He stared at the road ahead, holding out.

‘Come on, McLeish. ‘Fess up.’

‘I kite-surf,’ he said finally.

Romy nodded, straight-faced. ‘Challenging.’

‘And I abseil.’

‘Oh, now you’re just showing off. So that’s below ground, terrestrial and marine sports covered. Surely you must base-jump off mountains or something. Bungee?’

His smile broke free. ‘I’ve been known to jump out of helos.’ At her frown he clarified. ‘Military choppers.’

‘Of course you have.’ She shook her head.

‘What?’

‘You’re an adrenaline junkie. I’m struggling to fit the man who likes silence and privacy and classic movies with the man who surfs whales and wrangles wild boar with his bare hands.’

That sinful mouth twitched. ‘Well, not bare hands…’

She laughed but it was hollow, even to her own ears. Clint McLeish missed the rush that came with doing his duty. The risk. Living with death daily. She could only imagine how a body would become accustomed to being hyper-aroused for survival, how hard it must be to kick the habit. ‘How much combat have you seen?’

The relaxed smile died and his hands tightened around the steering wheel. ‘Even if I wanted to talk about it, which I don’t—’ he glanced at her ‘—most everything I saw during my service is confidential. I couldn’t discuss it with you.’

With me. The implication twisted in her gut. The line in the sand got more defined. Clint, boss. Romy, staff. It was just a little too close to a childhood full of alienation in the name of military confidence. ‘Do you jump out of aircrafts and climb into the sphincters of the earth as a way of re-creating your time in the military? Or forgetting it?’

His face grew hard. ‘It’s a hobby, Romy. People have them.’

Her eyebrows lifted. ‘I have hobbies, but they’re not quite as extreme as yours. Isn’t there anything more…ordinary…that interests you?’

The shadowed bruise on his throat shifted as his Adam’s apple lurched upwards. She’d pushed him too far…

‘I like to cook. Since I came here.’

If he’d said he liked to make candles from earwax, she couldn’t have been more surprised. She gaped at him. ‘Really? What kinds of things?’

He shrugged. ‘Whatever. Cordon bleu. Cajun. Armenian. Anything new.’

Romy looked out the side window, reining in a chuckle she knew would get her in trouble.

‘What? Why stop sharing your thoughts now?’ His sarcasm was barely contained.

‘That’s extreme cooking.’ Her laugh bubbled out. ‘You really suck the marrow out of life, don’t you, McLeish?’

He looked annoyed. ‘I don’t do it to be adventurous.’

‘Why do you do it?’

The silence fell between them like autumn leaves. His eyes blazed. The ute’s old dash clock ticked.

‘Just to feel something.’

She stared at him. A moment ago she’d been envious of the man who lived a no-fear life. Imagining how good that would feel. Now, suddenly, she was responding to the raw awkwardness in his eyes. Clint McLeish and his emotions didn’t spend a lot of time communing, it seemed. She opened her mouth to ask him more.

‘We’re here.’ He pulled the ute off the track near a stand of banksia and marri trees.

The silence of the bush after the conversation in the car was striking. But then Romy heard the raucous, happy grumbling high above. She tilted her head and scanned the thick branches. Once she saw one, more and more came into focus. Enormous black cockatoos with a flame of red on their long sweeping tails, settling in for the night, high in the treetops.

‘Is this where they nest?’

He shook his head. ‘This is where they roost each night. They have nesting sites scattered all over the region, but Far Reach is a favoured site and generations of red-tails will teach their young to return to this gully to feed and roost as soon as they leave the nest.’

She stared all around, thinking about how deep in the property they were, considering how high in the trees the birds were roosting. Anyone who came here with theft on their mind would have some hurdles to overcome. That made her job easier.

‘Thank you for bringing me. This is important for me to see.’

‘These guys are one of the reasons I returned to WildSprings. I consider them my surrogate family. No-one messes with my family.’

She looked at him and believed it. Even removed from his military context there was still something inherently dangerous about the way he moved, the way he assessed everything around him. The way he missed nothing. She wouldn’t want to cross him.

‘Why don’t you have a family of your own?’ The question slipped out before she’d really thought about the ramifications.

He glanced at her. ‘Women and children are a bit thin on the ground around here in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘I’m sure there’d be a few bold contenders in town prepared to put up with your surly stares.’ Was that a smile? Hard to tell—it morphed into a determined frown way too quickly.

‘I guess I’m not family material.’ He shrugged.

Her snort was critically unladylike. ‘Are you serious? You’re a born provider, you’re practically the kid whisperer and you’d look good at any parent-and-teacher night fighting them off with a stick.’ She blushed furiously at what she’d just admitted. She cleared her throat. ‘So…shall we head back?’

He watched her for a moment, followed her glance out to the darkening skies, then turned for the ute. Romy threw one final look into treetops littered with black-feathered shapes. To the wrong sort of mind, they would look like plump wads of cash growing on trees.

Her planned perimeter checks mentally doubled.

‘The kid whisperer, huh?’ He started the ute.

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I’m not very…comfortable with children. Haven’t had a lot of positive experiences.’

‘Well, they like you. Leighton does, anyway. He’s practically got a crush.’

There. That twist of full lips was unquestionably a smile.

She slid into the passenger seat and risked a glance at Clint’s unreadable profile. Stirring him was a little bit like poking a lion with a stick. Really not advised. But he was smiling, not snarling. Despite his closed-off concentration on the road, she’d never felt safer.

The novelty of the thought brought her head up. Since Leighton came, her job was to make sure he was okay. To work hard to create a haven for them both. But it had been a long time since she’d felt like this. Safe. As though she could simply let go of all the responsibility, just for a moment, and someone else would take it on.

Her brows came together. Had she ever felt safe? Before giving birth, her childhood was one big shadow, with the dominant, angry figure of the Colonel front and centre. Colonel Martin Carvell specialised in order, discipline and results. Three things most young children instinctively repelled. He found it impossible to hide his dissatisfaction with every aspect of her performance as his only offspring, so he embraced it, taking her on as his personal project. Which, of course, she was. He fathered her. In the absence of her mother who died so young, who else’s responsibility would she be?

Unfortunately for her, the Colonel was as zealous with her improvement as he had been over a lifetime of whipping raw recruits into good military material. His favoured tools of the trade were a firm hand and harsh tongue. Romy still carried the emotional scars both had left her with. Above all was the lingering sense that she was insufficient. No matter what she did it would never be quite good enough.

And now it looked as if Clint McLeish was harbouring similar thoughts. That somehow—though he didn’t yet know how—she was going to stuff up. Like the failure her father always told her she was.

She let her gaze drift to the road in front of them. They narrowed.

What the…?

‘Stop!’ Romy flung out her hands to brace herself on the windscreen as the word exploded from her lips. In the same moment, Clint slid the ute sideways as his foot slammed the brake hard to the floor. The engine stalled. The only sound was the blood rushing furiously past her ears. Then breath returned and she burst into action.

Across the middle of the track, a large western grey kangaroo lay mortally wounded. Its head jerked uselessly in the gravel and Romy’s heart lurched painfully. She reached for the first-aid kit, unclipped her seatbelt and pushed the door open all in the same manoeuvre.

She was on her feet and rushing towards the injured animal before Clint had fully registered what was going on, but he still managed to be there ahead of her. The moment she got to its side, strong arms wrapped around her and dragged her back from the injured creature.

‘Romy, no. Just wait!’

‘For what? It needs help.’

‘She could kill you with those legs. Look at her feet.’

She’d never noticed how savage the claws on the end of a kangaroo’s huge feet were. But the rest of the animal…

‘I don’t think she can even move.’

He stared at the critical animal and released her. She found her feet and moved towards the kangaroo more cautiously. He was right beside her. Blood trickled from the poor creature’s nose and its eyes rolled at the approach of humans. But its injuries were extensive and the stillness of the rest of the lean, grey body was ominously telling.

Clint saw it, too. ‘Her spine’s broken.’

She kneeled at the roo’s side and gently stroked its furred shoulder, tears biting. The kangaroo’s wide-eyed stare wheeled around to what she was doing but there was no sign it could feel a thing. Her heart ached for its suffering.

‘Go back to the car.’ Clint’s voice was firm.

She looked up at the bleak shadows turning his green eyes stormy. ‘No. There must be something we can—’

‘Leave her with me. It’s kinder this way.’

He was nearly as grey as the roo, now. It dawned on her what he was going to do. Her heart clenched. ‘No, you can’t…’

Dark eyes turned on her. ‘I’m trained to kill, Romy. It’s what I do best. Now will you please go back to the car?’

Torn between wanting to stay with him while he did the unthinkable and knowing she wouldn’t be able to watch, she shuffled to his side. Just being closer to him made things that tiny bit better.

‘Romy.’ His voice softened but his bleak gaze appealed. ‘Every second you’re stubborn is a second longer this animal is suffering.’

She dipped her head and turned away, shamed. As she did, a tragic hiss came from behind her. She and Clint both looked at the roo, where nature had finally taken care of its own.

In the pause between heartbeats, all signs of life vanished.

Her tears turned to relief. For the kangaroo and for Clint, who seemed so stoically resigned to killing it. She glanced down at the animal and watched the slight movements of its abdomen settling into death.

‘Romy—’ urgency filled Clint’s voice ‘—in the tray of the ute is my old training sweater. Can you grab it, please?’

He knelt in front of the dead roo and she hurried to find what he’d asked for. As she crossed to the vehicle, she noticed a set of tracks in the earth—disturbance where they’d skidded and then driven on again around the roo. She glanced at the ute’s tyres. Wrong profile. She grabbed her mobile phone as she reached into the ute for Clint’s old sweater.

He was hunched over the kangaroo’s corpse when she returned and she passed him the sweater, unable to look at the unseeing eyes. As soon as her hands were free, she turned back to the tire tracks, flipped open her phone and took a photograph of the distinctive tread marks, focusing determinedly on finding out who’d been here just before them. Somebody with expensive tires had been in the park this evening. At speed, judging by the distance from impact to where the roo lay.

Careless yahoos.

‘Romy, can you help me?’

She closed the notepad and turned carefully towards Clint, unsure exactly what he was asking for. What she saw nearly floored her. He extracted a tiny, damp, furred bundle from the pouch of the stricken kangaroo. A joey. That was what she’d seen moving so slightly in the mother’s body. He tucked it immediately into the warmth of the sweater and used the sleeves to tie around Romy’s neck like a sling.

She stood quietly, staring in amazement at the large, confused eyes which blinked at her from the deep folds of fabric. The joey immediately sought the warmth of her body, settling in the makeshift pouch and pressing harder against her heartbeat. Clint leaned in close, reaching behind to fashion a knot from the stretched sleeves. In moments it was done and she found herself a surrogate mother to the tiniest life she’d ever held.

Her gaze drifted up and found Clint’s. From death to life in a heartbeat. Her energy shifted from mourning the dead kangaroo to the survival of her tiny joey. His own eyes burned with focus, as though the opportunity to save a life consumed him.

‘Climb in. There’s a carer about an hour away. We’ll take her there.’

‘Her?’

‘Look at her eyes—they’re enormous like yours.’ His regard burned into her for the briefest of moments, the barest suggestion of the simmering, molten man behind the tough exterior. It was enough to make Romy’s mouth dry.

First feeling safe. Now going pasty mouthed. What the hell was coming over her?

As Clint dragged the dead roo’s carcass gently to the side of the track, she climbed in the front seat of the ute and secured the tiny life form more firmly against her body. She wasn’t too concerned about its ability to breathe. A woollen sweater would have to be easier than the thick damp cover of a flesh pouch.

She patted the mobile phone in her pocket to make sure it was still there and then turned to Clint.

‘Drive.’