did get under her skin. Second, it had to be her ex who’d been in the military; he’d never got a clearer anti-forces vibe from anyone. Third, she was the first person to call him arrogant to his face without even blinking. And, most pressing, that he really wanted to hear his name on her lips.
Justin was going to be so pissed.
‘Call me Clint, Ms Carvell. Since we’re going to be working together.’
She watched him, warily. ‘You’re hiring me?’
The harder she tried to mask her excitement the more colour stained her cheeks. He wondered if she’d intentionally hit every one of his weak points. The kid. The eyes. The virginal blush.
‘It takes guts to pull off what you did today, and also a keen understanding of operational vulnerabilities. That tells me you know your stuff and you’re prepared to take risks.’
Her body language changed in a flash and the colour drained out of her. ‘I can’t afford to take risks, Mr McLeish. I have a son to think about. If this job represents any kind of danger, then I’ll have to pass.’
‘Clint. And there is no danger—it was a figure of speech. But young boys will always find trouble if they’re looking for it. We have electric fences, deep stretches of bush between our luxury chalets.’ He paused and swallowed hard. ‘Dams. A wilderness property still has plenty of potential danger.’
She watched him warily. ‘No more than the city, I imagine. But it offers one thing the city can’t for an eight-year-old nature freak. Wildlife. Leighton will die when he hears we get to stay.’
She’s doing this for her son. The realisation hit him like a mortar. For all her extremely convincing claims to be seeking challenge, a role to get her teeth into, she was really looking for a safe place to bring up her son.
A sanctuary.
He was hardly in a position to judge since he’d come to WildSprings for precisely the same reason…
‘Are you aware accommodation is part of the deal?’ he asked. If young Leighton wanted wildlife he wouldn’t be disappointed. The mile between his house and theirs was packed with all manner of creatures. One mile. The closest anyone had come to being a neighbour in…forever. Three years at WildSprings and eleven years in the Defence Force before that. No fixed address. What the hell was he going to do with a neighbour? Apart from the obvious…
Avoid them.
‘I wasn’t, no. But it makes sense to have security on-site this far from town.’
‘Can’t imagine yourself in all this tranquillity?’
‘On the contrary.’ Her stare bored into him. ‘I look forward to the solitary existence very much.’
He straightened. Message sent and received.
Well, that was fine with him. He had no interest in playing happy neighbours no matter who her son reminded him of. The more space Romy Carvell gave him, the happier he’d be regardless of whatever this was arcing between them. There was no chance she’d let him close enough to form any kind of friendship and he had no interest in one.
Plus, he was now her boss, which put a really fat bullet in any possible chance of anything ever starting up between them. Not that she’d be seeing him again; in precisely twelve minutes he’d be returning to the privacy of his forest cabin, his massive DVD collection, his rapidly expanding library and his blessed MIA status.
Little Miss Snarky was now officially his brother’s problem. He looked at all five foot three of bristling hostility putting her coat on and grinned.
Oh, Justin was going to be so pissed.
‘LOST something?’
Romy popped her head from behind the latest box to see Clint McLeish filling her new doorway. She winced, knowing how filthy she was. She’d peeled off her cotton shirt hours ago as the afternoon had warmed, and her tank top, shorts and tennis shoes were all smudged with a day full of house moving. Her hair sprang wildly about her face, what strands of it weren’t stuck to the sweat on her forehead.
Great.
Still, he was her boss. It was a good thing if he saw she was a hard worker. She glanced around. ‘Nope, just unpacking. I haven’t had a chance to lose anything yet.’
‘I meant this.’ He stood aside and Leighton squeezed past him into the house.
‘Hey, Mum,’ her boy chirped like a magpie as he disappeared up the stairs to his bedroom, dumping his backpack along the way. ‘Clint is our neighbour!’
Romy closed her eyes and groaned inwardly. Letting her minidynamo out to expend all his boyish excitement outdoors had not included popping around to visit the neighbours. She held the screen door open for Clint to enter. ‘Please tell me he didn’t turn up at your house?’
‘Not quite, but he was close.’
‘I asked him to stay on the track.’ She hated the defensive tone in her voice but knew she’d let more time pass than she realised. Great first impression. Security coordinator loses own son.
His smile was thin. ‘He did, but not on your track.’
She suddenly realised where the fork about half a mile back must lead. Her mumbled apology was entirely inadequate. The man reeked of solitude and her eight-year-old cyclone had just barged into his serenity.
‘Can I offer you something to drink? Beer?’
‘Thanks, no,’ he said coldly. ‘I don’t mean to intrude. I wanted to get your boy back to you safely. You must have been worried.’
‘Yes…’ If I wasn’t the worst mother in the world. Courtesy demanded she should persist. ‘I’m dying for a break myself. Coffee, then?’
His lips pressed together. ‘Sure, thank you.’ He glanced around cautiously and cleared a stray box from the dining table so he could sit. ‘I saw the moving van leave just after breakfast. You’ve done all this today?’
He didn’t look all that pleased to be staying, it had to be said. Romy set the kettle on to boil and followed his gaze into the living area where most of the boxes were now folded flat and stacked for storage by the stairs. A few pictures lined the walls and her lavender throws draped casually on the sofas.
‘I specialise in unpacking.’
His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘You move around a lot?’
Romy swallowed, cursing herself for opening that particular door. ‘Not any more. I wanted to get us settled in so Leighton can wake up to a fully furnished house.’ She’d have to work late into the night to pull it off, but since her dance card was conveniently blank…
Moving house at all went against everything she’d ever wanted for her child. Uprooting him from school, dragging him three hundred kilometres away into the forest. But the chance to get him away from the rotten neighbourhood they lived in—and his grandfather—had been too good to resist. Even if it brought back uncomfortable memories of being dragged from base to base.
‘Did you find the air con?’ Clint’s sceptical glance at her appearance made the question redundant.
They had air conditioning? That would have been good to know two hours ago. Romy stretched her sweaty back and ran a self-conscious hand through the damp thickness of her hair. ‘I wasn’t really warm enough to go looking.’ Liar. ‘Where’s the controller?’
He pulled his considerable bulk out of her dining chair and crossed to a small door beneath the stairs, the storage area she’d earmarked for all her packing boxes. He opened it and bent to reach inside, then emerged with a cream remote in his hand.
‘I