‘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