The Men In Uniform Collection. Barbara McMahon

pure strategy, Clint. He’s clever.’

      He launched away from her, as far as he could get in the tiny room. ‘Make up your mind, Romy. One minute he’s damaged, the next he’s Einstein.’ He swung back to burn down on her. ‘There’s something I don’t understand. If you’re so determined to come between us why didn’t you tell me about him hitting on you yourself?’

      Because his brother’s touch blew everything else from my mind, eclipsed everything that came before it. ‘Maybe because his weren’t the only hands I had on me that night!’

      But one look at his bleached face and she knew how it sounded. Her stomach contracted.

      ‘Clint…’

      He cut her off physically, pushing past her to leave the office. He threw the offending report onto her desk. ‘Stay the hell away from my family.’

       Chapter Ten

      ‘CLINT’S here! Clint’s here!’

      A human cannonball came thundering down the stairs two at a time. Romy froze where she was standing, in the midst of lighting her living room candles. She lit them every evening, an array of subtle, scented lights to ease away the worries of the day and fill her environment with beauty. Tonight she’d lit double.

      It still wasn’t enough.

      Leighton flung the door open before Clint even had a chance to knock. He hurled himself at the jean-clad legs, more like the little boy he had been last week. Her heart squeezed to see someone else making her son so happy. Wasn’t that her job?

      ‘Hey, champ, how are you doing?’

      She hated the light, relaxed tone he employed with her son. It was so different to the way he spoke to her.

      Leighton bounced at his feet. ‘Have you come to take me on our bushwalk? Mum said she was going to ask you.’

      Clint’s cold green stare met hers. Her lashes swept down. Lord, she’d completely forgotten her promise to her son.

      ‘Sure did, champ,’ he covered smoothly, ‘and your mum, too.’ There was the barest pause before he added, ‘If she wants to come.’

      Romy wasn’t certain which of them looked less enthusiastic about that. Possibly even herself. Spending time with Clint was the very last thing she wanted to do.

      ‘Right now?’ she hedged.

      ‘Unless you have something more important to be doing.’ Like lighting candles, his raised eyebrow seemed to say.

      ‘Yay!’ Leighton leapt back into the house and scampered up the stairs.

      Romy raced through her options. She could beg off, blame her ankle, but that meant leaving her son with Clint unsupervised, and he was just as likely to teach him how to shoot something if she wasn’t there to stop it. Prohibiting Leighton from going would destroy what little repair work she’d managed to do to their relationship. Or she could go. Endure two hours in Clint’s company like an adult and try not to say something that might get her fired.

      Leighton reappeared in the kitchen carrying his hiking boots. She smiled at him brightly. ‘What about our movie night?’ It was worth a shot.

      He looked at her, crestfallen. ‘Can’t we watch the movie tomorrow night, Mum?’

      That sweet face broke her. She knew only too well how it felt to try and please everyone all of the time. The pressure that put on little shoulders.

      She sighed. ‘Okay, let me blow these candles out…’

      Leighton let out another cheer and burst out the door, leaving Clint standing alone in the kitchen.

      ‘Let me help you with that,’ he said tightly.

      ‘No, thanks. I’ve got it.’ Her puffs of air were quick and efficient and extinguished each candle as if, with every one, she snuffed out one of her complex feelings for the man hovering in her doorway.

      ‘Romy…’

      She spun around and faced him. What was he going to say? Sorry I ripped your heart out and threw it against the wall. My mistake. Can you ever forgive me?

      Her stare felt as dead as her heart. ‘I assumed when you told me to stay away from your family, it was a given you’d stay away from mine.’

      He sighed and dropped his gaze to the floor. ‘He’s my brother, Romy. You investigated him based on nothing but a gut feeling.’

      ‘Accurate gut feeling.’

      ‘It’s not an insignificant thing.’

      She didn’t want to see the sense in that. She didn’t want to let him off the hook. Hurting was too good. Like vindication for every suspicion she’d ever had about Clint McLeish and his values. The aching tooth you can’t leave alone.

      ‘You employed me to protect WildSprings and you are WildSprings, Clint. I’m trying to protect you,’ she whispered, conscious of little ears nearby.

      ‘I don’t need protection, Romy. Not from my brother.’

      ‘You don’t know that.’

      ‘I do.’ His lips pressed together and he shook his head. ‘For someone who dislikes being judged so much,’ he went on, ‘you do a pretty good job of judging others.’

      Fury boiled between them like a natural spring. But just as she opened her mouth to let him have it, Leighton bounced back into the house. He glanced from one to the other and some of the glow dimmed in his cheeks. He looked anxious. ‘Are we still going?’

      Romy immediately turned her focus onto her son with a bright smile. ‘Yep, good to go. Which way are we headed?’

      Leighton looked to Clint for an answer.

      ‘I thought I’d take you around to the next gully. Out towards the roosting site,’ he said. ‘Would you like to see where the cockatoos sleep, champ?’

      ‘Yeah!’ Leighton burst out the door again.

      Clint turned back to say something further but Romy locked her gaze somewhere over his shoulder and studied the kitchen wall. Her voice was frigid.

      ‘Let’s go.’

      The route to the roosting site, as the crow flew, was shorter than the track he and Romy had taken by car. Nevertheless, the bushwalk nearly killed Clint.

      He was still mission fit—being on four-hour call perpetually was a hard habit to break—so it wasn’t the cross-country trek down the heart of the gully that took so much out of him. It was the silence that grew exhausting, almost unendurable. It was nothing like the crucial silence he maintained while on mission, nor the comfortable one he enjoyed with Leighton—two mates, twenty years between them, hanging out. It was the draining, stressful silence of two people who’d wounded each other too badly to undo. Two dogs starved into fighting who don’t have the heart or the energy to finish each other.

      His nerves were still frayed from the days of non-contact. Romy avoiding him was all too similar to the men in his unit steering clear of him after he’d dogged on their lieutenant. In his head he knew it was probably for the best, that there was no future for them, regardless of the killer chemistry they shared. But in his heart…

      Walking between them, Leighton kept up a relentless stream of innocent questions about the bush, wildlife, the park. Clint did his best to answer while his mother maintained a stony silence. But as the evening sun dropped closer to the tree line and the mosquitoes moved in, Clint realised the questions were becoming more strategic. Less about bush-craft and more about military field-craft.

       How do you move so quietly through the trees?

       How can you tell which way