Men In Uniform: Taken By The Soldier: The Soldier's Untamed Heart / Closer... / Groom Under Fire

His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘So now you’re familiar with my past and all? That’s a bit like me saying your high-and-mighty act is getting tired.’

A needle stabbed through Romy’s chest. High and mighty? Why that hurt particularly, after everything she’d been called in life…Yet her voice was tight when she responded.

‘You’ll have to do better than that, McLeish. I’ve had every name under the sun thrown at me and survived it. I’m resistant to sticks and stones, too. Too many calluses.’

He blinked slowly and considered her. ‘By who?’

Whoa. How did they get here? She only wanted to call him on the extracurricular night-school activity. She backed off, fists clenched tight. ‘I have to get on with the fence. Excuse me.’

‘You were out here working?’

She pointed to the fence line silhouetted against the glare at the top of the hill and he followed her gaze sceptically. ‘Relax, McLeish. I’m not stalking you. Why would I? I hardly know you.’

His own words flung back at him, he smiled. ‘You know how to string a fence?’

The doubt in his voice got her blood racing. ‘You think you’re the only one who gets to be capable? What is it with you military types?’

His rebuttal was soft. ‘The question is, what is it with you and military types?’

She glared at him. ‘That is none of your beeswax.’

Good one, Romy, you sound all of twelve years old.

Ignoring the amused sparkle in his eye, she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and powered on up the hill, swishing at the flies the whole way.

‘Let me give you a hand with that.’ Clint appeared behind her and held out a pair of gloves.

Having assured herself with a quick glance that he was fully dressed now, Romy focused on the wire in her hands. ‘I don’t need help, thanks.’

‘I know you don’t, but I’d like to…’

She squinted into the open sincerity on his face and made to thank him. Then he went and ruined it.

‘…and I’m the boss, so what I say goes.’

She tightened a smile around the retort she was dying to spit and turned back to the torturous fence. She saw Clint flick a glance at her broken wire strainers on the ground and the arrangement she’d rigged up by proxy with a screwdriver twisted into the wire. Thanks to her angry yanking, the ratchet had broken at the crucial moment, leaving her to tighten four strands manually in century-plus heat. Every turn of the screwdriver pulled the wire that bit tighter but it was a hellish way to do it.

One strand had taken her twenty minutes.

‘Go ahead,’ she relented, standing carefully and letting him into her place.

He squatted at the fence line and spoke from under his Akubra hat, getting a feel for the wire. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

Romy hesitated. Something told her it wasn’t going to be about work. ‘Sure…’

He twisted, once, twice, and then he retested the wire. The strength in the contoured triceps emerging from the sleeves of his T-shirt was distracting. He gave it two more twists until he was satisfied, then he levered the screwdriver free and turned to look up at her.

‘Where’s Leighton’s father?’

She stared at him. She preferred the direct approach to Simone’s whispered speculation but she wasn’t entirely ready for the question, despite dreading it half her life. Every clever answer she’d ever imagined abandoned her.

‘I don’t know.’ That was as honest as she could be.

The beat-up Akubra tilted curiously and the flash of green was disconcerting. ‘Doesn’t he see his son?’

‘No.’ Again, short but true.

‘You don’t want to talk about it?’ He balanced on his haunches as though he could sit there all day.

Not with you. ‘I’m not used to talking about it.’

‘No-one’s ever wanted to know? I find that hard to believe.’

Romy kicked the dust at her feet. ‘Most people would think it was a rude question to actually verbalise.’

His hat lifted slightly with his eyebrows. Was that a blush creeping up his throat? Her mouth curved at the realisation it simply hadn’t occurred to him not to ask. The hint of humanity made her more inclined to answer.

‘He and I…parted ways a long time ago,’ she said.

The understatement of all time. The spectre of the Colonel loomed. Whore. Worse.

Clint studied her, then spoke quietly. ‘Does he know he has a son?’

Bang, right on the money. Instincts like that would have been wasted anywhere other than a specialist role. Commandos, maybe? Or Tactical Assault. She struggled to keep her anger in check as old hurts oozed up.

‘I doubt he even knew he’d had sex,’ she muttered grimly.

Those sea-green eyes flicked away for the barest of moments, then locked onto hers again. ‘Right. Next topic?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, please.’

And just like that it was over. She’d shared her shame with someone. The absolute last someone she would have expected to be opening up to but he hadn’t sneered or even judged her. There was nothing but compassion in those twin depths.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ she risked.

‘Maybe.’

She perked up. ‘What branch of the military were you in?’

‘If I told you I’d have to kill you.’ His laugh was only half joking.

‘Seriously…’

He looked at her, his voice tighter than the wire he was straining. ‘Does it matter?’

She kept her gaze steady. ‘No. But I’m curious.’

‘Don’t be.’

A big part of her wanted to smack that hat right off his head. But she reined it in. ‘Hey, I’ve just stripped myself naked for you. The least you could do is drop one article.’

Those powerful hands stopped working entirely and a deep chuckle followed like a distant rumble of thunder. ‘You do have a gift for expression, Romy.’

Not deflected, she stared down into his broad shoulders until the silence grew tangible. He sighed and twisted up to her. ‘I was an operative with Strike Force Taipan. Tactical Assault and Extraction.’ His voice turned from grudging to irritated. ‘Why are you smiling?’

Taipans. It fit. She could see him slipping over the edge of a Zodiac all camouflaged at midnight. ‘Just revelling in the momentary pleasure of knowing everything. It happens very rarely.’

‘Is that right?’

‘I have an eight-year-old particularly gifted at pointing out when I’m wrong.’ He took after his grandfather.

He chuckled again, only this time she watched the grin spread over his face. It really transformed him, as if he wasn’t striking enough already.

In a kill-you-with-a-well-placed-thumb kind of way.

‘All done.’ He pulled off the gloves and wiped his hands on his jeans, then returned to his usual position, towering over her. Romy realised how accustomed she’d become to gazing up at him. Despite always being short, it was possibly the only time she’d felt…fragile. The thought had her scrambling away from him, her voice breathy.

‘Okay. Well, thanks. I guess I should be grateful nature endowed one of us with muscles.’

That smile again. ‘There’s more to life than brute strength. Besides, you virtually repaired this single-handed. I just got to swan in at the end and be the hero.’

At his own words, the light dimmed from his eyes. They clouded with something dark. He glanced towards his vehicle and then busied himself collecting the tools scattered across the ground. She joined him. When her toolkit was packed and there was no good reason to linger, she pulled her hat off and ran her fingers through sweat-dampened hair.

He hadn’t met her eyes for minutes now. ‘I guess I should get going. Thanks for the help…’

‘You’re welcome.’ Still no eye contact but critically polite. He collected up the broken strainer and turned towards his ute at the foot of the hill. Romy frowned. What had she said? Why did she even care? This man was nothing to her, only her employer.

But she did.

She sighed and turned away from him.

Clint felt the loss of her grey, almond-shaped eyes. It hadn’t been hurt simmering away in those smoky depths; she was too protected for that. It was caution. Confusion. And something else, something older that didn’t belong to him. But he felt like a heel, anyway.

‘I’m sorry, Romy. I’m not angry at you.’

‘Who are you angry at?’ Her whispered reply drifted to him on the warm breeze. Anxious. The playful spark in her expression completely absent. Yet another thing he’d killed in this world. It was a reasonable question but impossible to answer. Hadn’t he tried all these years to figure it out? Lord knows he’d had plenty of time. Somewhere along the line it got easier not to think about it any more.

He stared long and hard at her. ‘Do you swim?’

Her confusion doubled. ‘Why?’

‘If you swim, don’t do it in the dams around the cottage. Come here. This is the best for swimming.’

‘I’d already gathered that.’

‘Swim here.’ Why was he obsessing on this?

She straightened. ‘That sounds vaguely like an order.’

‘Will that have more impact?’

‘I’d prefer you to ask me.’

He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his board shorts. ‘Ah, sorry. Occupational hazard.’

‘You can take the man out of the corps…’

‘What do you know about the corps?’

‘Unit. Corps. God. Country,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t leave much room for being human.’

He squinted. ‘You know the code?’

‘I lived with the code.’

Her simple grimace was telling. He knew only too well the personal price soldiers paid for honouring that ideal. Family came in a poor fifth right behind your unit. The men who kept you alive, who had your back.

Or were supposed to.

For all those big, beautiful eyes seemed to know about loss, he doubted they knew squat about betrayal. The things he’d seen, things he’d done. The things others had done that he’d never been able to reconcile. She didn’t have a clue. Romy Carvell was like a fresh set of combat camos: unsullied, crisp at the seams. The sort of thing you could slip into and feel clean, just for a moment until the sand leached in.

‘I’m asking you, Romy. If you or Leighton swim, please make it here. Okay?’

She considered him long and hard. Then she shrugged. ‘It’s your property.’

Something deep inside him staggered with relief. ‘What are you doing this evening?’

She blinked at his rapid change of direction. ‘Uh…Helping Leighton with a science project.’

‘Friday, then. There’s something I’d like to show you on the estate.’ And there was. But mostly it was an excuse to spend some more time with her, to sit close to those crisp, new khakis and think about how good it would feel to be clean again. ‘Can you meet me in the afternoon?’

‘Where?’

‘I’ll find you.’

She nodded and he turned down the hill, towards the twinkling green water he swam in daily, trying to baptise himself for a new beginning.

Chapter Four

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.’