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

‘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.’

Chapter Five

WITHOUT the little life pressed against her chest, Romy felt strangely cold.

They’d interrupted the carer sitting to dinner with her family but on seeing their precious bundle the whole family kicked into action, apparently well used to the arrival of pouch-age survivors of roo strikes. Before Romy and Clint left, the carer’s husband took a moment to introduce some other young kangaroos, all raised by their family, all survivors of road accidents. Seeing them so healthy and grown was the only reason Romy was willing to leave her tiny charge in their very good hands. Otherwise, she was going to ask for a crash course in marsupial raising and take the baby home again.

Clint had to shepherd her with his body away from the joey as it settled in a lamb’s-wool pouch in the arms of the carer, hungrily slurping rescue formula from a baby’s bottle. There was nothing more they could do, but she’d been strangely reluctant to go. It was stupid, but it felt like their joey—hers and Clint’s.

All the more reason to leave it behind, she thought now, staring out into the thick darkness of the forest as they drove. The last thing she needed was additional reasons to feel connected to a self-confessed hermit. And an ex-military one at that. She sighed.

‘People suck.’ Given they were the first real words she’d uttered in the forty-minute return trip, they held some weight.

Clint turned to look at her, his eyes glowing in the light coming off the dash. ‘Can’t disagree with that. Why particularly?’

‘That roo was just minding her own business, getting her baby somewhere safe for the night, and…wham!’ They weren’t called roo bars for nothing. Most country vehicles had them. Great for protecting the fronts of cars, not so great for the hapless roos they connected with.

‘We saved one life tonight. That’s something.’

She sighed deeply. ‘Doesn’t feel like enough.’

His voice dropped to husky. ‘You have a soft centre, Romy Carvell.’

She snorted. ‘Yeah, I’m a regular Turkish delight.’

His lips twisted as he returned to watching the road. ‘Maybe you have to have seen the loss of life to appreciate saving one.’

Romy glanced at him. ‘Maybe so. I’ve never had anyone close to me die. Not that I remember.’

He glanced at her. ‘Grandparents?’

‘Nope. Gone pre-me.’

‘Parents?’

‘Mum died having me. Dad’s still around.’ Somewhere.

‘Consider yourself lucky, then.’

‘You’ve seen a fair bit of death.’ Not a question.

‘Seen it.’ He took his eyes off the road for longer to stare at her. ‘Been it.’

She chuckled. ‘Now I’m imagining you getting around in a hooded cape with a sickle.’

‘It felt like it some days.’

Her voice softened. ‘It would take a lot of saved kangaroos to offset that, I would imagine.’

He thought about that. ‘Not so many. Death is a process. Life is a miracle. Saving even one means something.’

They passed through the WildSprings entry statement and Romy instinctively glanced around for any signs of trouble. Hard habit to break. She noticed Clint did the same. As they reached the admin building, Justin emerged with an armful of files, heading for his 4WD. He raised his free hand in a wave. Clint responded with the obligatory country salute, a couple of fingers lifted from the steering wheel.

She glanced at her watch, wondering why Justin was working so late and gasped. ‘It’s ten o’clock! I didn’t ring Leighton.’ It was too late to call now; the boys would probably be in bed.

‘He’ll be fine. Call in the morning.’

Being managed irritated her as much as the fact that Clint was once again giving her parenting advice. She reached for her mobile. ‘What if he needs me?’

He slid his hand over hers to prevent her from flipping her phone open. ‘Then he would have called you. Seriously, Romy. Let him enjoy a night away.’

Away from me? She measured her words before uttering them. ‘You think I overprotect him.’

‘I think you’ve done an amazing job with him…’

But…

‘…but he’s growing up and he’s going to start needing some space from Mum now and again.’

Romy knew he was right, but she didn’t like having it pointed out by a virtual stranger. No, her inner voice condemned. She may have only met him a week ago but Clint McLeish was less of a stranger than the small handful of people she’d known her whole life. He just seemed to…get her.

‘Are you speaking from personal experience? Did you value your space even as a kid?’ she asked.

He looked at her, surprised. ‘I guess I did, yes. I was eight before my brother came along, so I learned early to entertain myself.’

A younger brother. No wonder he knew how little boys could be. He’d watched one growing up.

‘What happened to your parents?’ Romy knew he owned WildSprings outright. Had they died?

‘They split after twenty-five years together.’ He coughed. ‘Mum met someone else. She moved to the US around about the same time I enlisted.’

Wow. ‘What happened to your brother?’

‘He was only ten. He went with her to America.’

She watched the tension play out across his features and tried to imagine how that would have divided a son’s loyalties, even a nearly grown one. ‘That must have been hard.’

He shrugged. ‘It made me a prime catch for the Taipans. The most effective operators have little or no family ties. Nothing to come home to. Nothing to hold them back on missions.’

Nothing to live for?

‘With his whole family gone Dad didn’t really have a good reason to stay. He sold up half the land to a neighbour and joined his brothers in Tasmania on the proceeds. He signed the remaining property over to me. To give me somewhere to come home to.’

‘To an empty house?’ Romy didn’t have to like him to empathise with that.

Clint’s smile was grim. ‘I only came here because it was empty. I was no fit company back then.’

She risked poking the stick a bit further in, her curiosity piqued. ‘Why not?’

Like an angry sea anemone, he shut down before her eyes. ‘Don’t interrogate me, Romy.’

Whoops, too far.

She sighed. ‘You should really get out with people more often, McLeish. Your social skills could do with some polishing.’

She turned to stare out into the darkness. The silence was hardly golden. The fork in the track separating her house from Clint’s came up in the headlights. He slowed the ute to turn.

‘What are you doing?’ Her head snapped around.

‘I’m following your advice. Getting out with people more often. I’m taking you to my place.’

The lurch of anticipation in her chest was warning enough. She could not be alone with him in his house. Not while she was so emotionally raw from the evening’s events. She needed fortification before she tackled this. ‘No, you’re not!’

He read the panic in her voice. Glanced at her. ‘You’ve never seen my house. You’d like it.’

‘I’d like it in the daytime just as much.’

‘I’m talking about a short visit, Romy. Grabbing something to eat. As your growling stomach keeps reminding me, I kept you out through dinner.’

Embarrassed, she pressed an hand to her belly. But being so close to him all evening had triggered a different kind of appetite altogether. And she absolutely, categorically, could not hunger for this man.

‘I have food at my house. Take me home, please.’ The tightness in her whole body seeped out through her words.

He slowed the car to the side of the track and dropped it back to a quiet idle. He turned in the seat and pinned her with his eyes, a deep frown cutting over them. ‘Romy, I’m talking about a simple meal between colleagues. Nothing loaded.’

She stared at him boldly. ‘Simple? I bet you’ve never shared a meal at home with a colleague in your life.’

His gaze fell away briefly. ‘All the more reason to break the cycle. We’ll just eat together. I don’t know…talk.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘I can work on my people skills.’

The reluctance in his expression helped her to relax. It seemed entirely genuine. Could two people want to spend time together less? Her lips quirked slightly. ‘You’ll make something normal to eat?’

He laid his large hand over the left side of his chest in a pledge. ‘No extreme cooking.’

Her breath caught at the intensity in his eyes, despite his light manner. Colleagues. Someone needed to remind her body of that, the way it was straining to lean closer to him. ‘Okay. Sorry to have overreacted.’

He looked at her seriously. ‘You weren’t wrong about my people skills—I am out of practice. I should have asked. Again.’

‘You should have, yes.’

His burning gaze threatened to flame right over her. ‘Romy Carvell, would you like to have a meal with me? See my house? No strings attached?’

Amazingly, the answer, now he was actually asking instead of telling, was yes. She nodded.

‘Thank you.’ He cranked the ute into gear and bumped off along the track.

In less than two minutes, they were there. Her breath caught high in her chest at the first sight of his infamous tree house. It was aptly named.

Built around majestic tree trunks, the timber-and-glass house seemed to grow out of the forest surrounding it. Light glowed invitingly inside and he parked the ute right beneath its sprawling supports. Moments later she climbed the timber staircase leading into the house.

‘This is amazing. You built it?’ Since when did military training encompass this level of construction skill?

‘It’s part kit home and part architect modified. I got assistance in as I needed it, but otherwise I constructed it myself.’

‘It took two years?’ He’d said something about living in her cottage for that long.

‘I wanted to get it right.’

She looked around at the open-plan sensation as he swung the entry door inwards. The two enormous tree trunks seemed to push through the floor and extend way up to a high-pitched roof. The entire front wall was glass, framed by more timber. It looked out onto the same view as Leighton’s window but from the other end of the gully.

She was almost speechless. ‘You did get it right. This is beautiful.’

The place oozed sanctuary. The mix of natural materials, space and light was healing all in itself. She turned to look at him. ‘You should be really proud of this.’

The tiniest hint of colour formed where the hard angle of his jaw started. When he flipped a light switch, huge floodlights came on outside, illuminating the trees that surrounded them. Romy gasped. Two dozen glowing eyes blinked back at them, reminding her of pink Christmas lights.

‘Can we turn it off?’ She crossed to the glass doors opening onto the deck, loath to disturb the possums’ nocturnal wanderings. ‘I love the darkness at WildSprings.’

Were there even more stars visible from this side of the gully? Impossible, of course, but they seemed to blanket the sky. She tucked her arms in against the coolness of the night and tipped her face to the twinkling brilliance.

He followed her outside, stood chest to shoulder with her. Silent. Strong. The darkness and silence were his friends, too, she remembered.

Just colleagues. The words echoed in her brain, demanding to be heeded. But as the warmth from his body reached out to her and the fragrance of the night bush mingled with his scent, she had to fight to keep them in focus.

Colleagues. She swallowed and stepped away. ‘Do you mind if I look around?’

‘Help yourself. I’ll get something cooking. Spaghetti bolognaise pedestrian enough for you?’

She sighed on a smile. Leighton didn’t like pasta so she hardly ever made it. The chance to enjoy real bolognaise on a dinner plate instead of on toast from a tin was hard to knock back. ‘It sounds wonderful. Thank you.’

Clint busied himself in the kitchen and Romy took the opportunity to put some distance between them. She padded up the sweeping timber steps to the second storey and tiptoed along the corridor. Immediately on her right was the master bedroom. She averted her gaze and pushed past, not ready to intrude into his personal space but not able to say why. She started at the far end of the hall.

The first door she tried was a bathroom, simply but tastefully decorated with an oversize glass shower recess. No bath. That didn’t surprise her in the slightest. Clint McLeish didn’t strike her as a soaker. He was all business. Get in dirty, get out clean. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. She, on the other hand, liked nothing better as a rare treat than to light a bunch of candles after Leighton had gone to bed and soak until the water turned cold in her old claw-foot bath. The getting clean part was an incidental bonus.

Mind you, they probably didn’t make baths big enough that could comfortably contain a man Clint’s size. The impromptu thought was too close to imagining him in her claw-foot bath, and so she shut the thought away with a firm click of the bathroom door behind her.

The next room was a small study, significantly less tidy than the rest of the house. Computer, desk, wall-to-ceiling bookshelves, mixed art pieces, stuff everywhere. Much more like most of the rooms at her place.

Across the hall, a spare room with a single bed and simple decoration. Some basic weight-training gear leaned against the wall. A distant part of her wondered why a man who never had visitors bothered to hide his clutter away in the study.

Romy returned to the first door she’d encountered. The master bedroom. She froze. It’s only a room…Stick your head in and then head downstairs. Simple!

Right. But, oh, she was curious. You could tell a lot about a person by their bedroom. If you had questions…

She nudged the door with her shoulder, glancing selfconsciously behind her. The sounds of occupied clanking from the kitchen encouraged her to continue. By far the most dominant feature in the room was a low-profile, king-size bed with a rich charcoal bedspread. Entirely practical for a man of Clint’s height but there was something so…decadent…about the size and shape of it. Any bed she could sleep in lengthways, widthways or diagonally was all right in her book. It was far too easy to imagine herself stretched out on it.

And not necessarily alone.

She spun around, her feet moving silently on the woollen rug. A bank of built-in wardrobes lined one wall and Clint had positioned a couple of oversize armchairs in the corner for good measure. Everything was just…big. Romy suddenly felt like tiny Jack in the beanstalk story, sneaking through the giant’s palace in search of the golden goose.

As she had the thought, a golden glint on the far wall caught her eye. A small, framed curiosity was perfectly mounted in a prominent position. On the left, a silver sword flanked by two snakes with the motto Morte prima di disonore scrolled across the bottom. Death before dishonour. The symbol of Strike Force Taipan. That’s where she’d recognised his tattoo from. The insignia and others like it had practically wallpapered the Colonel’s living room wall.