Praise for Nikki Logan

‘Superb debut. 4.5 Stars.’

—RT Book Reviews on Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss!

‘Now, here is an Australian writer who manages both to tell a good story and to capture Australia well. I had fun from start to finish. Nikki Logan will be one to watch.’

—www.goodreads.com on

Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss!

‘This story has well defined and soundly motivated characters as well as a heart-wrenching conflict.’

—RT Book Reviews on Their Newborn Gift

About Nikki Logan

NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

Once A Rebel…
Nikki Logan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Tracy Scarparolo.

And to Dan, the best office-mate and friend a girl could have.

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise for Nikki Logan

About Nikki Logan

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

PROLOGUE

www.remembermrsmarr.com

Front row seats for a Beethoven symphony

Bungee jump in New Zealand

Run a marathon

Ride like The Man from Snowy River

Hunt for a dinosaur fossil

Commune with the penguins in Antarctica

Float in a Hot Air Balloon

Climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Take a gondola ride in Venice

Climb Everest

Abseil down a cliff face

Be transported by a touch

Get up close and personal with dolphins

Take a cruise

Hold my grandchild

www.rem—

SHIRLEY keyed the first letters of the web address into her browser before it auto-completed the rest. She visited enough that it knew exactly where she wanted to go.

www.remembermrsmarr.com

The simple site opened and she spent the first moments—as she always did—staring at the face of her mother, captured forever in time in a delighted, head-thrown-back kind of joy. Exactly as she would have wanted people to see her. Exactly as her students did see her. And exactly how Shirley chose to remember her now, with the benefit of distance.

Clicking through to the list she knew was on the next page only disappointed.

Still nothing in the first column—the one headed ‘HT.’

After all this time.

Hayden Tennant had been her mother’s all-time favourite student. He’d been the one—hurt and grieving—to suggest the tribute website in the first place. So that they could each do the items on her mother’s bucket list. All the life experiences an unlicensed drunk-driver had robbed her of.

Hayden had pledged.

He’d vowed in that gorgeous, thick, grief-filled voice.

Yet every single square next to every single item on www.remembermrsmarr.com was empty where Hayden’s initials should have been.

Today was an extra sucky day to be staring at the list and finding it empty. Because today was ten years since Carol-Anne Marr had taken her last breath. How many weeks had passed before he’d forgotten all about it? Or was it days? Hours? Did he think no one would notice? Did he think his teacher’s only daughter wouldn’t be watching? Shirley tapped her purple fingernails on the keyboard and enjoyed the sound of the slick keys under them.

Come on, Hayden. You’ve had a decade.

Something.

Anything.

Swimming with dolphins. Climbing the Harbour Bridge. Running a marathon. Even she’d done that one, back before she’d got boobs. Back when her schedule had been able to tolerate training for eight straight hours. It had taken her eighteen months to train up and get old enough to qualify, but then she’d placed in the middle of the under-sixteens category and held her medal to the heavens as she lurched across the finish line.

And then she’d never run again.

If I can tick that one off, surely you can, Tennant.

Hayden, with his long, fast legs. His intense focus. His rigid determination. He wouldn’t even need to train, he’d just will himself to last the entire forty-two kilometres.

She’d hoped for a while that he was honouring her mother privately, keeping his own list the way she herself was.

But the truth had finally dawned.

All that angst, all that sorrow and despair at her funeral; all of that was simply the emotion of the moment. Like a performance piece. Terribly dramatic and intense. Terribly Hayden. None of it had been genuine. Amazing, really, that he was still forking out the cash annually to maintain the domain name.

She cocked her head.

The domain …

It took her just a few minutes to track down the site registration details and a few more for a contact number for the company it was registered to. Molon Labe Enterprises. That had to be him. He’d had a thing for Spartans the entire time she’d known him.

Known of him.

Watched him.

She chased down the contact details for the company right here in Sydney and its executive structure. He wasn’t on it. Disappointed by that dead end, she called the company direct and asked for him outright.

‘Mr Tennant does not take calls,’ the receptionist told her.

Really? Too busy and important? ‘Could you give me his email address, please?’

It took the officious woman nearly a minute to outline all the reasons why she couldn’t. Shirley rang off, far from defeated. Chasing down story leads was what she did for a living. It wasn’t stalking if you were a professional. A bit of reconnaissance, finding out where he was and what was so important it had made him forget the promises of a decade ago …

That was doable. He’d never even know.

Thank goodness for search engines.

Two hours went by before she surfaced, frowning deeply at the screen. Hayden Tennant was a time bomb. Her online search was littered with images of him stumbling out of one seedy venue or another on the arm of some blonde—always a blonde—going back six years. In most of them, it was hard to tell who was holding up whom, but the club security was always on hand to facilitate their departure.

She stared at one image. He looked nothing like the Hayden she remembered. He used to get around in a shabby kind of hip style—the garret look, her mother had used to joke and make Shirley promise never to go out in public like that. So of course she had instantly wanted to. The designer lank hair, holed jumper and frequently bare feet. Bohemian plus. She’d coveted everything about his personal style back then, as only a lovesick fourteen-year-old could.

But the Internet had him in some pretty fancy threads now, as carefully fitted as the women accessorising the sharp suit and cars.

Guess everyone grows up.

She searched up Molon Labe’s website, flicked through to their corporate contacts and scribbled down the address. Maybe his reception staff would find it harder to say no to her face? Not that she had the vaguest idea of what she’d say if she saw him.

Or why she wanted to.

Maybe so she could ask him, personally, why he hadn’t bothered to tick a single box. Maybe because she owed it to her mother.

Or maybe just so she could finally nail a lid on the last remnants of her childhood.

CHAPTER ONE

‘PLEASE be a stripper.’

His voice was thick and groggy, as though she’d just roused him from sleep. Maybe she had. It was a gently warm and breezeless day and Hayden Tennant looked as if he’d been lying in that longish grass at the base of the slope behind his cottage for quite some time.

Shirley found some air and forced it past a larynx choked with nerves. This suddenly seemed like a spectacularly bad idea.

‘Were you expecting one?’ she breathed.

He scrutinised her from behind expensive sunglasses. ‘No. But I’ve learned never to question the benevolence of the universe.’

Still so fast with a comeback. The man in front of her might have matured in ways she hadn’t anticipated but he was still Hayden inside.

Somewhere.

She straightened and worked hard not to pluck at her black dress. It was the tamest thing in her wardrobe. ‘I’m not a stripper.’

His head flopped back down onto the earth and his eyes closed again. ‘That’s disappointing.’

Discharged.

She stood her ground and channelled her inner Shiloh. She wouldn’t let his obvious dismissal rile her. Silent minutes ticked by. His long body sprawled comfortably where he lay. She took the opportunity to look him over. Still lean, still all legs. A tiny, tidy strip of facial hair above his lip and on his chin. Barely there but properly manicured. It only half-covered the scar she knew marred his upper lip.

The biggest difference was his hair. Shorter now than when he’d been at uni and a darker blond. It looked as if someone who knew what they were doing had cut it originally, but she guessed they hadn’t had a chance to provide any maintenance recently.

She pressed her lips together and glared pointlessly at him as the silence continued. Had he gone back to sleep?

‘I can do this all day,’ he murmured, eyes still closed. ‘I have nowhere to be.’

She spread her weight more evenly on her knee-high boots and appreciated every extra inch they gave her. ‘Me, too.’

He lifted his head again and opened his eyes a crack.

‘If you’re not here to give me a lap dance, what do you want?’

Charming. ‘To ask you some questions.’

He went dangerously still. Even the grass seemed to stop its swaying. ‘Are you a journalist?’

‘Not really.’

‘It’s a yes/no question.’

‘I write for an online blog.’ Understatement. ‘But I’m not here in that capacity.’

He pulled himself up and braced against one strong arm in the turf. Did that mean she had his attention?

‘How did you find me?’

‘Molon Labe.’

He frowned and lifted his sunglasses to get a better look at her. His eyes were exactly as blue and exactly as intense as she remembered. She sneaked in a quick extra breath.

‘My office wouldn’t have given you this address.’

No. Not even face to face.

‘I researched it.’ Code for I stalked your offices.

It had taken a few visits to the coffee shop over the road to spot what messenger company they used most regularly. A man at the head of a corporation he didn’t visit had to get documents delivered to wherever he was, right? For signatures at least. Sadly for them, if Hayden ever found out, the courier company had been only too obliging when a woman purporting to be from Molon Labe had called to verify the most recent details of one of their most common delivery addresses.

His eyes narrowed. ‘But you’re not here in a journalistic capacity?’

‘I’m not a journalist.’

‘Or a stripper, apparently.’ He glanced over her from foot to head. ‘Though that seems wasted.’

She forced herself not to react. She’d chosen this particular outfit carefully—knee-high boots, black scoop-neck dress cinched at the waist and falling to her knees—but she’d been going more for I am woman and less for I am pole dancer.

‘You used to say sarcasm was the lowest form of wit,’ she murmured.

One eye narrowed, but he gave no other sign of being surprised that she already knew him. ‘Actually, someone else did. I just borrowed it. I’ve come to be quite fond of sarcasm in the years since …?’ He left it open for her to finish the sentence.

He didn’t recognise her.

Not entirely surprising, given how different she must have looked when he last saw her. Fourteen, stick-insect-thin, mousy, uninspired hair. A kid. She hadn’t discovered fashion—and her particular brand of fashion—until she was sixteen and her curves had busted out.

‘You knew my mother,’ she offered carefully.

The eyes narrowed again and he pushed himself to his feet. Now it was his turn to tower over her. It gave him a great view down her scoop neck and he took full advantage. His eyes eventually came back to hers.

‘I may have been an early starter but I think it’s a stretch to suggest I could be your father, don’t you?’

Hilarious.

‘Carol-Anne Marr,’ she persisted, the name itself an accusation.

Was it wrong that she took pleasure from the flash of pain he wasn’t quite fast enough to disguise? That she grasped so gratefully at any hint of a sign that he hadn’t forgotten her mother the moment she was in the ground. That he wasn’t quite as faithless as she feared.

‘Shirley?’ he whispered.

And it had to be wrong how deeply satisfied she felt that he even knew her name. Hayden Tennant wasn’t a god; if he ever had been he was well and truly fallen now. But still her skin tingled.

She lifted her chin. ‘Shiloh.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Shiloh?’

‘It’s what I go by now.’

The blue in his eyes greyed over with disdain. ‘I’m not calling you Shiloh. What’s wrong with Shirley—not hip enough for you?’

It killed her that he was still astute enough to immediately put himself in the vicinity of the secret truth. And that she was still foolish enough to admire that. ‘I preferred something that was more … me.’

‘Shirley means “bright meadow”.’

Exactly. And she, with her raven hair and kohl-smudged eyes, was neither bright nor meadowlike. ‘Shiloh means “gift”. Why can’t it be a gift to myself?’

‘Because your mother already gifted you a name. Changing it dishonours her.’

Tendrils of unexpected hurt twisted in her gut and rolled into a tight, cold ball and pushed up through her ribcage. But she swallowed it back and chose her words super-carefully. ‘You’re criticising me for not honouring her?’

Surprise and something else flooded his expression. Was that regret? Guilt? Confusion? None of those things looked right on a face normally filled with arrogant confidence. But it didn’t stay long; he replaced it with a careless disinterest. ‘Something you want to say, Shirley?’

Suddenly presented with the perfect opportunity to close that chapter on her life, she found herself speechless. She glared at him instead.

He shook his head. ‘For someone who doesn’t know me, you don’t like me very much.’

‘I know you. Very well.’

He narrowed one eye. ‘We’ve never met.’

Actually they had, but clearly it wasn’t memorable. Plus, she’d participated secretly in every gathering her mother had hosted in their home. Saturday extra credit for enthusiastic students. Hayden Tennant had been at every one.

‘I know you through my mother.’

His lush lips tightened. She’d always wondered if her own fixation with Lord Byron had something to do with the fact that in her mind he shared Hayden’s features. Full lips, broad forehead, intense eyes under a serious brow … Byron may have preceded him in history but Hayden came first in her history.

‘If you’re suggesting your mother didn’t like me I’m going to have to respectfully disagree.’

‘She adored you.’ So did her daughter, but that’s beside the point. She took a deep breath. ‘That makes what you’ve done doubly awful.’

His brows drew down. ‘What I’ve done?’

‘Or what you haven’t done.’ She stared, waiting for the penny-drop that never came. For such a bright man, he’d become very obtuse. ‘Does remembermrsmarr.com ring any bells?’

His face hardened. ‘The list.’

‘The list.’

‘You’re 172.16.254.1’

‘What?’

‘Your IP address. I get statistics from that website. I wondered who was visiting it so often.’

‘I …’ How had this suddenly become about her? And why was he monitoring visitation on a website he’d lost interest in almost immediately after he had set it up? It didn’t fit with the man she visualised who had forgotten the list by the time the funeral bill came in.

‘I visit often,’ she said.

‘I know. At least three times a week. What are you waiting for?’

She sucked in a huge breath and ignored the flick of his eyes down to her rising cleavage. ‘I’m waiting for you to tick something.’

An eternity passed as he stared at her, the sharp curiosity he’d always had for everything in life dulling down to a careful nothing. ‘Is that why you’re here? To find out why I haven’t ticked some box?’

Pressing her lips together flared her nostrils. ‘Not just some box. Her box. My mother’s dying wishes. The things you were supposed to finish for her.’

His eyes dropped away for a moment and when they lifted again they were softer. Kinder. So much worse. ‘Shirley, look—’

‘Shiloh.’

‘Shirley. There’s a whole bunch of reasons I haven’t been able to progress your mother’s list.’

‘“Progress” suggests you’ve actually started.’ Okay, now she was being as rude as he’d been on her arrival. Her high moral ground was crumbling. She lifted her chin. ‘I came because I wanted to know what happened. You were so gutted at the funeral, how could you have followed through on none of them?’

He shrugged. ‘Real life got in the way.’

Funny. Losing your mother at fourteen had felt pretty real to her. ‘For ten years?’

His eyes darkened. ‘I don’t owe you any explanation, Shirley.’

‘You owe her. And I’m here in her place.’

‘The teacher I knew never would have asked anyone to justify themselves.’

He pushed past her and headed for his house. She turned her head back over her shoulder. ‘Was she so easily forgotten, Hayden?’

Behind her, his crunching footfalls on the path paused. His voice, when it came, was frosty. ‘Go home, Shirley. Take your high expectations and your bruised feelings and your do-me boots and get back in your car. There’s nothing for you here.’

She stood on the spot until she heard the front door to his little cottage slam shut. Disappointment washed through her. Then she spun and marched up the path towards her car, dress swishing.

But as she got to the place where the path forked, her steps faltered.

Go home was not an answer. And she’d come for answers. She owed it to her mother to at least try to find out what had happened. To put this particular demon to rest. She stared at the path. Right led to the street and her beaten-up old car. Left led to the front door of Hayden’s secluded cottage.

Where she and her opinions weren’t welcome.

Then again, she’d made rather a life speciality out of unpopular opinions. Why stop now?

She turned left.

Hayden marched past his living room, heading for the kitchen and the hot pot of coffee that substituted for alcohol these days. But, as he did so, he caught sight of a pale figure, upright and prim on his lounge-room sofa. Like a ghost from his past.

He backed up three steps and lifted a brow at Shirley through the doorway.

‘Come in.’

Her boots were one thing when she was standing, but seated and carefully centred, and with her hands and dress demurely folded over the top of them, they stole focus, big time. Almost as if the more modest she tried to be, the dirtier those boots got. He wrestled with his gaze to prevent it following his filthy mind. This was Carol-Anne’s kid.

Though there was nothing kid-like about her now.

‘The door was unlocked.’

‘Obviously.’

She pressed her hands closer together in her lap. ‘And I wasn’t finished.’

‘Obviously.’

Less was definitely more with this one. The women he was used to being with either didn’t understand half of what he said or they were smart enough not to try to keep up. It had been a long time since he’d got as good as he’d given. One part of him hankered for a bit of intellectual sparring. Another part of him wanted to run a mile.

‘I think you should finish the list,’ she said in a clear, brave voice.

Little faker.

‘Start the list, technically.’

‘Right.’ She seemed nonplussed that he’d made a joke about it. Was she expecting him to go on the attack? Where was the fun in that when he could toy with her longer by staying cool?

Now that he looked at her, he could see the resemblance to Carol under all her make-up. Mrs Marr to everyone else, but he’d presumed to call her Carol the first time he’d sat in her class and she’d smiled every time and never corrected him.

It was Shirley’s irises that were like her mother’s—the palest khaki. He’d have assumed contact lenses if not for the fact that he’d seen them before on a woman too sensible and too smart to be sucked in by the trappings of vanity. Shirley reminded him of one of those Russian dolls-inside-a-doll things. She had large black pupils surrounded by extraordinary grey-green irises, within the clearest white eyeballs he’d ever seen, and the whole thing fringed by smudges of catwalk charcoal around her lashes. Her eyes were set off by ivory skin and the whole picture was framed by a tumble of black locks piled on top. Probably kept in place by some kind of hidden engineering, but it looked effortless enough to make him want to thrust his hands into it and send it tumbling down.

Just to throw her off her game.

Just to see how it felt sliding through his fingers.

Instead, he played the bastard. The last time he’d seen her she’d been standing small and alone at her mother’s funeral, all bones and unrealised potential. Now she was … He dropped his gaze to the curve of her neck. It was only slightly less gratuitous than staring at her cleavage.

Another thing he hadn’t touched in years. Curves.

‘Looks like you’ve been on good pasture.’

The only sign of that particular missile hitting its target was the barest of flinches in her otherwise steady gaze. She swallowed carefully before speaking and sat up taller, expression composed. ‘You really work hard at being unpleasant, don’t you?’

A fighter. Good for her.

He shrugged. ‘I am unpleasant.’

‘Alcohol does that.’

His whole body froze. A dirty fighter, then. But his past wasn’t all that hard to expose with a few hours and an Internet connection. ‘I don’t drink any more.’

‘Probably just as well. Imagine how unbearable you’d be if you did.’

He fixed his eyes on her wide, clear ones, forcing his mind not to find this verbal swordplay stimulating. ‘What do you want, Shirley?’

‘I want to ask you about my mother.’

‘No, you don’t. You want to ask me about the list.’

‘Yes.’ She stared, serene and composed. The calmness under pressure reminded him a lot of her mother.

‘How did you even know it existed?’

Her steady eyes flicked for just a moment. ‘I heard you, at the wake. Talking about it.’

He’d not let himself think about that day in a long, long time. ‘Why didn’t you add your name?’

She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t invited.’ Her eyes dropped. ‘And I didn’t even know she had a bucket list until that day.’

Did that hurt her? That her mother had shared it with strangers but not her? A long dormant part of him lifted its drowsy head. Empathy. ‘You were young. We were her peers.’

She snorted. ‘You were her students.’

The old criticism still found a target. Even after all this time. ‘You weren’t there, Shirley. We were more like friends.’ He had hungered for intellectual stimulation he just hadn’t found in students his own age and her mother had filled it.

‘I was there. You just didn’t know it.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I used to hide under the stairs when you would all come over for your extra credit Saturdays. Listen in. Learn.’

What? ‘You were, what, fourteen?’

‘Actually, I was eleven when you first started coming. I was fourteen when you stopped.’

‘Most eleven-year-olds don’t have a fascination with philosophy.’

She licked her lips, but otherwise her face remained carefully neutral. Except for the tiny flush that spiked high in her cheeks. And he knew she was lying about something.

‘Ask me what you really want to know.’ And then go. His tolerance for company was usually only as long as it took to get laid.

She leaned forward. ‘Why didn’t you even start the list?’

Oh … so many reasons. None of them good and none of them public. ‘How many have you done?’ he asked instead.

‘Six.’

Huh. That was a pretty good rate, given she had been a teenager for the first half of that decade. The old guilt nipped. ‘Which ones?’

‘Ballooning, horse-riding in the Snowy Mountains, marathon—’

He gave her curves a quick once-over. ‘You ran a marathon?’ She ignored him. With good reason.

‘—abseiling, and climbing the Harbour Bridge.’

The easy end of the list. ‘That’s only five.’

‘Tomorrow I swim with the dolphins.’

Tomorrow. The day after today. Something about the immediacy of that made him nervous. ‘Won’t you eviscerate if you go in the sun, or something?’

She glared at him. ‘I’m pale, I’m not a vampire. Stop hedging. Why haven’t you done a single one?’

She was going to keep on asking until he told her. And she wasn’t going to like the answer. ‘I’ve been too busy besmirching my soul.’

She frowned. ‘Meaning?’

‘Making lots of money.’

‘That should make it easier to do the things on the list, not harder.’

‘Success doesn’t make itself. You have to work hard. Put in the hours.’ So many hours …

Her lips thinned. ‘I’m well aware of that. But this list was your idea. To remind you of the importance of feeding your soul.’ His own words sounded pretentious on her dark-red lips. ‘To honour my mother’s memory.’

The distress she was trying to hide under her anti-tan crept out in the slightest of wobbles.

There it was again. The weird pang of empathy. ‘They’re meaningless, Shirley. The things. They won’t bring her back.’

‘They keep her alive. In here.’ Pressing her long, elegant fingers to her sternum only highlighted the way her dress struggled to contain her chest. And the way her chest struggled to contain her anger.

‘That’s important for you; you’re her daughter—’

‘You were her friend.’

His gut screwed down into a hard fist. He pushed to his feet. Forced lightness to his voice. ‘What are you, the Ghost of Christmas Past? Life goes on.’

Those eyes that had seemed big outside were enormous in here, under the fluorescent glow of her sorrow. The silence was breached only by the sound of her strained breathing.

‘What happened to you, Hayden?’ she whispered.

He flinched. ‘Nothing.’

‘I believed you, back then. When you sat at my mother’s funeral looking so torn up and pledged to honour her memory.’

She stared at him. Hard. As if she could see right through him. And for one crazy moment he wished that were true. That someone could drag it all out into the open to air. Instead of festering. But the rotting had started long before he’d begun to go to her house on Saturdays.

He clenched his fists behind his back. ‘That makes two of us.’

‘It’s not too late to start.’

He needed to be moving. ‘Oh, I think the time for me to make good on that particular promise is long past,’ he said, turning and walking out of the room.

She caught up with him in the kitchen, grabbed his arm and then dropped it just as quickly. Did she feel the same jolt he had?

Her steady words gave nothing away. ‘Come to the dolphins with me tomorrow.’

‘No.’

She curled the fingers she’d touched him with down by her side. ‘Why not? Scared?’

He turned and gave her his most withering stare. ‘Please.’

‘Then come.’

‘Not interested.’

The smile she threw him was tight, but not unattractive. ‘I’ll drive.’

He glanced down at her boots. ‘You’re just as likely to get your heel speared in the accelerator and drive us into—’

At the very last moment, his brain caught up with his mouth. She didn’t need a reminder of how her mother had died.

Silence weighed heavily.

She finally broke it. ‘I’ll pick you up at dawn.’

‘I won’t be here,’ he lied. As if he had anywhere else to be.

‘I’ll come anyway.’ She turned for the door.

He shouted after her. ‘Shirley—’

‘Shiloh.’

‘—why are you doing this?’

She paused, but didn’t turn back. He had no trouble hearing her, thanks to the hallway’s tall ceiling. ‘Because it’s something I can do.’

‘She won’t know,’ he murmured.

Her shoulders rose and fell. Just once.

‘No. But I will.’ She started down the hall again. ‘And so will you.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘COME on, Hayden,’ Shirley muttered.

She banged the door with the heel of her hand to protect her acrylics. She paused, listened. Stepped back and leaned over to look in the window.

Which bothered her more? The fact that he’d actually left his home before dawn to avoid having to see her again or the fact that she could have turned around a dozen times on the drive over here—maybe should have—but she’d decided not to.

Because she wanted to give him a chance. The old Hayden.

No one could be that much of an ass, surely. She stared at the still silent door.

Looked as if he was the real deal.

‘Ass!’ she yelled out to the empty miles around them, then turned and walked away.

The front door rattled as her foot hit the bottom step on his porch.

‘Is that some kind of greeting ritual in your culture?’

By the time she had turned, Hayden was leaning on the doorframe. Shirtless, barefoot. A pair of green track pants hanging low on his hips and bunched at his ankles. Looking for all the world like he wasn’t expecting a soul.

One hundred per cent intentional.

He was trying to throw her.

‘Good. You’re ready,’ she breezed, working hard to keep her breathing on the charts and her eyes off his bare chest. She’d spent years as a teenager secretly imagining what her mother’s star pupil would look like under all his loose bohemian layers. The sudden answer may not have been what her teenage self would have conceived, but it didn’t disappoint. No gratuitous muscle-stacks, just the gently curved contours up top and the long, angular lines down lower that showed he kept himself in good, lean shape.

And he knew it.

She fixed a brave smile on her face and turned to make room for him on the steps. ‘Shall we?’

‘You don’t actually think I’m going like this?’ he drawled.

No. She hadn’t. But she’d be damned if she’d play his games. She kept her face impassive. ‘Depends if you have swimmers on beneath the track pants.’

His grin broadened, dangerously good for this early in the morning. ‘Nope. Nothing at all under these.’

Her pulse kicked into gear. But she fought it. ‘Well, you’ll have to change.’

‘Easily offended, Shirley?’ He dropped his chin so that he peered up at her across long, dark lashes. It was possibly the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. More theatrics. She took a breath and remembered who she was. And who Shiloh had dealt with and bested in the past.

‘The dolphins.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Wouldn’t want them to mistake you for a bait fish.’

An awful tense silence crackled between them and Shirley wondered if she’d gone a step too far. But then he tipped his head far back and laughed.

‘Give me five …’ he said, still chuckling, and was gone.

She let her breath out slowly and carefully. That could easily have gone the other way. Maybe the last ten years hadn’t thoroughly ruined him, then.

Only partly.

When he returned he was more appropriately clothed in a T-shirt, sports cap, board shorts and sockless runners. The covered-up chest was a loss but at least she could concentrate on the road with him fully clothed. The T-shirt sleeves half covered a tattoo on his biceps, but she’d been able to read it briefly as he stretched his arm up the doorframe earlier.

MΩΛΩN ΛABE. Classical Greek.

She turned for the street.

‘I’m not getting in that.’ His arms crossed and his expression was implacable.

‘Why not?’

He eyed her car. ‘This looks like the floor might fall out of it if you put a second person in it. We’ll take my Porsche.’

Nope. ‘Wouldn’t be seen dead in it. This is a ‘59 Karmann Ghia. Your Porsche’s ancestor.’

‘It’s purple.’

‘Well spotted. Get in.’

‘And it has Shiloh plates.’

‘And here I thought your mind was more lint-trap than steel-trap these days.’

He glared at her. ‘I’m not driving this.’

She snorted. ‘You’re not driving at all.’

‘Well, you’re sure as hell not.’

She swallowed the umbrage. ‘Because …?’

‘Because I drive me.’

‘You had a chauffeur.’ She’d seen him in enough Internet photos falling out of limos or back into them.

‘That’s different.’

‘You’re welcome to ride in the back seat if it will make you feel more at home.’ And if you can dislocate your hips to squeeze in there.

He glared at the tiny back seat and came to much the same conclusion. ‘I don’t think so.’

He folded himself into her low passenger seat and turned to stare as she tucked the folds of her voluminous skirt in under the steering wheel.

‘Not the most practical choice for swimming, I would have thought,’ he challenged.

‘It won’t be getting wet.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Because we won’t or because you have something else?’

She glanced at him, then away. ‘I have something else.’ A something else she never would have worn in a million years if she’d had more than a few hours’ notice that he was coming along. In fact, she would have chosen a totally different box on her mother’s list if she’d thought for a moment that Hayden would actually join her. Something that didn’t involve taking anything off. She’d only asked him along to shake him out of the unhappy place she’d found him. And to get him started on the list.

But parading around in swimwear in the presence of the man who’d made such a crack about her curves—yet who was apparently fixated by them—was not high on her list of most desirable things.

The thirty-minute drive would have been a whole heap more enjoyable if she’d been able to sing to the music pumping out of the phone docked to her stereo. It did prevent much in the way of conversation—a bonus—though it contributed to Hayden’s general surliness—a minus—even after she’d pulled into a coffee drive-through for him. He’d leaned across her to take the coffee from the drive-through window and the brush of his shoulder, the heat of his body and the scent of early-morning man had stayed with her for the rest of the drive. She left her window wound down in the vain hope that the strong salty breeze would blow the distracting masculine fog away.

When they arrived at the beach, Hayden found himself a comfortable spot in the shade to resume napping and she wandered off to change in the public changing rooms.

She peeled off her dark red skirt, top and sandals, stored them carefully in her temporary locker and glanced critically in the mirror at what remained. Black one-piece, sheer wraparound skirt—also black—purple and black striped stockings to her mid thighs.

Swimwear for the undead. If the undead ever went to the beach.

She piled her hair high, smoothed thirty-plus-plus-plus foundation where her neck was suddenly exposed and turned to the mirror.

Pretty good. Nothing she could do about the Boadicean body. She’d had it since she was sixteen and had learned by necessity to love it, even if it wasn’t apparently to the taste of a man more used to size zero. But she still looked like Shiloh. And Shiloh could definitely walk out onto that beach and spend a morning in the water with Hayden Tennant.

Even if Shirley wasn’t certain she could.

Today wasn’t about how good or otherwise she looked in a swimsuit, and it wasn’t even about the man waiting outside the changing rooms. Today was about living another experience that her mother had never had the chance to.

Making good on her promise to her fourteen-year-old self.

She swung away from the mirror and stepped through the door into the light.

‘What were you doing, sewing the—’ His impatient words dried up when he saw her, his mouth frozen half-open. The fascination in his gaze should have annoyed her, not made her pulse jog.

Not everyone appreciated her fashion sense. She understood that. And she got that look a dozen times a day. But somehow on Hayden it rankled extra much.

She walked towards him and retrieved her towel. ‘Ready to go?’

‘You can’t … Can you swim in that?’ he muddled.

‘I’m not expecting to swim, just wade. The dolphins will come to us.’ A blessing, because waist-high water would disguise her worst assets and highlight her best. And the dolphins below the water wouldn’t care about her sporting thighs.

It didn’t take Hayden long to recover his composure and he followed her down to the water’s edge, glancing sideways at her and smiling enigmatically. She kept her chin high the entire way, ready for another crack about her body.

None came.

She smiled at the girl working at the edge of the water and breezed, ‘Hi, I’m—’

‘I know who you are,’ the teenager gushed, ticking off her name on her register. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw who was in today.’

Hayden glanced from her to the young girl and back again. Confused. Small revenge for how off-kilter he’d tried to keep her yesterday.

‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Shirley smiled. ‘What do we do?’

The girl stammered less when she was in official mode and so their instructions were quick. Head right out into the low tide, where a distant volunteer was waiting for them, and then stand still when the dolphins come.

Simple.

But not for Hayden. He stood rooted to the spot as she waded ahead of him into the surf, stockings and all.

She turned and looked back at him, the slight waves buffeting her. ‘Coming?’

Or was he going to bail?

His eyes narrowed and he slid his sunglasses down against the glare of the water, then followed her out.

His longer strides meant they reached the volunteer at the same time. The man launched straight into a security drill, although the only emergency they really ever had was if the dolphins got too boisterous and knocked someone down. Then he opened a pouch on his side and retrieved a defrosted treat.

‘Bait fish,’ he announced as he held it under the surface and shook the morsel.

Shirley glanced sideways at Hayden, who was concentrating in the same direction as the volunteer. Except he had the tiniest of smiles on his lips. Exactly the same size as hers.

Within minutes, they found themselves circled by three curious dolphins.

‘They come in every day about this time,’ the man told them. ‘And in the afternoon too, in summer. Three, sometimes more.’

Shirley held her footing against the repeated close buffeting of the soft warm mammals. Hayden did the same.

‘They’re well trained,’ he commented.

‘Not trained. They come in because they want to. We just make sure we’re standing in the right spot when they come.’

Hayden’s snort could have been a puff of air as one of the larger males ran up against him. ‘It has nothing to do with the fish you were waving around.’

Shirley glanced at him. Really? He was going to be like this? When they were here in her mother’s name?

‘We only use one fish to encourage them over. We don’t want them to get habituated,’ the man said.

‘Yep. That would be awful for your business,’ Hayden murmured below his breath.

‘They stay because they want to.’ The volunteer held his own. ‘They find us interesting. This is their routine, not ours. We just bring people here to meet them.’

‘Yet you charge for the privilege?’

‘Hayden,’ she muttered. ‘Do you remember why we’re here? Can you contain your cynicism for a few minutes, please?’

But the volunteer didn’t need her help. He stood taller. ‘Twenty-eight dollars of your entry fee goes directly to cetacean research. The other two dollars helps pay our wildlife licences and fees. All our staffing is volunteer-based.’

‘What would stop me from walking up the beach this time tomorrow and waving my own fish?’

Shirley pressed her lips together.

‘Nothing at all,’ the man confessed. ‘Except that here you’ll learn a whole heap more about these amazing creatures than just how much they like fish.’

Hayden stood straighter and considered that.

Heh. Volunteer: one … Bitter, twisted cynic: nil.

‘What sort of things?’ she asked, moving the man on and giving him her best Shiloh.

Amazing things, was the answer.

He plied them with stories of dolphin intelligence and resilience and sentience and even unexplainable, extra-sensory experiences, and all the while the dolphins wove in between them, trying to trip them up, playing with each other.

‘My colleague, Jennifer, had worked here four years and then one day Rhoomba, the big male—’ he pointed at one of the dolphins ‘—started to nudge her mid-section. Every day he’d shove his snout just under her ribs and stare there intently. He got quite obsessed. One of the old fishermen who knows these waters told her to go for tests. They found a tumour behind her liver. She was away from the beach for over a year with the surgery and her chemo but on her first time back Rhoomba nudged her once, just to check, and then never did it again.’

Hayden lifted just one eyebrow over the rim of his sunglasses. Shirley hurried to fill the silence before he said something unpleasant.

‘How is she now?’

‘Good as gold. No further problems.’

They spent fifteen minutes out in the water, even after the dolphins swam off to re-join their pod. Volunteer talking, Shirley questioning, Hayden glowering. But the chill coming off the water finally got their attention.

‘Make sure you give us a good rap, Shiloh,’ the volunteer said, winding up.

‘No question,’ she assured. ‘It was amazing, thank you so much.’

He turned for shore. So did Hayden.

He had taken a few steps before he realised she wasn’t following. ‘Shirley?’

‘I’ll be a sec.’ She let the onshore breeze carry her words back to him and she stared out into the sea where the dolphins now swam deep. The rhythmic slosh of the waves against her middle was hypnotic. Hairs blew loose from the pile atop her head and flew around her face.

‘Another one done, Mum,’ she murmured to the vast nothingness of the sea after a moment. ‘I would have preferred to do this with you, instead of—’ She cut herself off. ‘But it’s a start, hey?’

There was no response save the beautiful language of air rushing across water. It was answer enough.

Then right behind her, a voice spoke, cold and curious. And male.

‘Why exactly are you so determined to make me start this list?’

I would have preferred to do this with you, instead of—

Him.

If there was any doubt in his mind as to what she meant, it evaporated the moment Shirley spun her horrified face to his. It was more ashen than usual.

‘I thought you’d gone in.’ Flummoxed. Discomposed. The only sign he’d had of the real person beneath the make-up since the barest eyelid flinch yesterday.

‘I bet you did.’

But she didn’t answer his question. She just started pushing towards shore, hurrying ahead of him. He gave her a few moments, mostly enjoying the view as the sea floor rose to become the shore and first revealed the curve of her sodden wraparound skirt and then those ridiculous stockings. Except they weren’t entirely ridiculous; they were also one part intriguing. The way they clung just above her knee. It made the narrow strip of skin above the stocking but below the wrap into something really tantalising. Even though there was much more gratuitous flesh on show higher up.

This was forbidden.

This was private.

And, from the back, it was insanely hot, because even she didn’t get to see that angle.

He took his time following her as his cells blazed.

Onshore, she retrieved her towel and turned back to him, clutching it to her body. It did a reasonable job of helping him focus.

Down the sand, the teenage girl who’d gushed earlier called out, ‘Bye, Shiloh!’, as if they were now best friends. Shirley threw her a dazzling smile in return and waved, making her day.

Gracious.

He should have expected that of a Marr.

The brilliant smile looked out of place with lips coloured like black blood, but he realised that somewhere between yesterday and today he’d forgotten his first impression of her, standing over him with those forever boots, and she’d just become Shirley. Quirky and courageous and fast with a comeback.

She spun back to him and the dazzling smile died.

‘Was she that easy to forget, Hayden?’ Hurt blazed in her pale eyes. ‘Or was it just some kind of dramatic, absinthe-fuelled gesture for an audience? And you expected everyone else to do the hard yards?’

He had pledged. He had vowed.

Then he had done nothing. Not one thing.

But he wasn’t about to cop to it. ‘Why are you so concerned about what I do? How do my choices mean anything at all to you?’

‘Because she gave you her life. She gave you all her days teaching and her nights assessing your work and her Saturday afternoons giving her star pupils extra credit.’

‘Instead of being with you? Is that what you mean?’

She shook her head. But she also flushed. ‘She gave you everything, Hayden. But when she died you just … shrugged and moved on?’

He hadn’t worked at the top of his field without learning a thing or two about subtext. This wasn’t really about him … He just wasn’t sure yet exactly what it was about.

‘Every square next to your name is empty. Others have made progress, or at least a start. They’ve made an effort.’

She was going to ride the denial train right to the end of the line.

‘Shouldn’t you have let it go by now?’ he asked.

She blew air out from between dark lips. ‘Yes, I should have.’

The moment of honesty took them both by surprise. She frowned. ‘If you told me that you’d been busy building orphanages in Cambodia for the last decade I think I could accept that. But you haven’t. You have no excuse.’

He swallowed back what he really wanted to say. ‘I don’t need an excuse, Shirley. I’m not answerable to you.’

She clutched the towel closer to her pale skin. Her eyes flicked away and back again. ‘I just thought you might …’

She didn’t want him to do it because she’d make him feel guilty. She wanted him to do it because he was an all-round great guy deep inside. Secretly. ‘Hate to disappoint you further, Shirley.’

Her shoulders rose and fell just once as she filled her lungs and moderated her exhalation. Just like her mother used to do before starting a tutorial. Her piled-up hair swung around her face in surf-dampened strands like Medusa’s serpentine locks. ‘At least take your name off the list. If you’re not going to do any.’

So that the world didn’t have to look at his disinterest? ‘Why don’t you add yours? To balance out my lousy effort. Show everyone how it should be done.’

‘Maybe I will.’ She turned to go, disappointment at his sarcasm patent in the drop of her shoulders.

Honey, I’ve done a lot worse in my life than let down someone who’s been dead for a decade. Your silent judgement can just get in line.

Then she spun back around. ‘Molon Labe.’

That threw him. ‘What?’

‘Your business name. Your tattoo. Why Molon Labe?’

He shrugged. ‘Military defiance. When the outnumbered Spartans were called to surrender arms they said Molon labe— “Come and take them”.’

‘I know. I saw the movie. But why that phrase?’

His entire body tightened. ‘Because I have a thing for the Spartans. Their courage.’ Their defiance in the face of death.

‘You don’t find the irony exquisite?’

The breath thickened in his lungs. ‘What irony?’

‘You named your business after it. You branded your body with the Greek letters. Yet, in life, you laid down arms at the first hurdle. You dropped totally off the radar.’

She turned and walked towards the changing rooms. Away from him. Away from the disappointment. Away from the crater her verbal detonation had caused.

He forced his lungs to suck in air and his fingers to open and close again. Forced himself to remember she had absolutely no idea what she was dismissing.

How could she?

But he had enough fight left in him not to let that go unchallenged.

‘Shirley,’ he called.

She stopped. She turned. She looked ridiculously natural standing there, dripping wet and defiant. But also so very young.

‘I understand deflection better than most,’ he said without raising his voice across the space between them. Knowing she heard him. ‘Attacking me takes the focus off you. But given there’s only the two of us here and you clearly don’t give a rat’s what I think or feel—’

Her extraordinary eyes flickered.

‘—you might want to ask yourself what you’re trying to take the focus off. And for whose benefit.’

‘Cos it sure as hell wasn’t his.

Her gaze widened and then dropped to the sand. He turned away from her to climb the dunes up to the road, to find his own way home. He wasn’t stupid. No way she was letting him back in her car. No way he’d get in there, even if she did.

Today had been a huge error on his part.

He’d been stupid to think that he could make good on any of his past failings. That just didn’t happen.

And something else he knew.

Her stupid purple and black stockings pressing through the beach sand … That was the last of Carol-Anne Marr’s crazy, high maintenance daughter that he’d be seeing.

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU went to Antarctica.’

Not Hello? Not Is Shirley there? Not Sorry I was such an exceptional ass. Shirley took a long slow breath and released it away from the mouthpiece of the phone.

‘Hello, Hayden.’ She’d know that deep, disparaging voice anywhere.

Instantly.

She’d flown back in yesterday evening and initialled the website just before collapsing exhausted into bed.

Commune with penguins.

Tick.

‘That was a big one,’ he opened.

‘Certainly was,’ she closed.

He didn’t miss the frost in her tone. ‘Listen, about the other day—’

Three months ago.

‘—I’d like to apologise.’

Too late. She leaned back in her writing chair. ‘No need. I had no right to judge you.’

A long pause from him. Was he trying to decide if she was genuine? ‘I could have been more … diplomatic that day. I’m sorry if it hurt you.’

It had hurt but not because he’d slapped her down. Dredging it all up again had hurt. Sifting through her reasons had been hard.

She shrugged. ‘The truth does sometimes hurt.’

A long, empty pause. Then, ‘I climbed the bridge.’

Shirley’s hand froze on the phone. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was on the list. The tiniest of flames puffed into existence deep inside her.

He’d started the list.

‘I was there for a stockholder meeting. Thought I might as well.’ The flame snuffed out again. Did he add that especially so she’d know how little effort he’d made?

‘You didn’t tick it off.’

‘No, I …’ Another pause. But she could hear his breathing. He cleared his throat. ‘I thought I’d get a few under my belt before updating the site.’

A few? Did that mean he was going to honour his promise? But she wasn’t ready to trust him yet. ‘What are you going to do, work your way down the list?’

‘The top is as good a place to start as any.’

Sorrow welled up inside, from somewhere deep and dark. ‘Well, that should take you about a fortnight, then.’

This time the pause was laden with confusion. His. That was fair enough; she herself barely understood the bitterness creeping through her voice. ‘I thought that we could team up for a few of them,’ he persevered. ‘Two birds, one stone kind of thing.’

Because this was such a massive inconvenience? ‘The list is not really a team sport …’

‘I enjoyed the dolphins.’ A single strand of pleasure twisted through the darkness at his admission. ‘The experience I would have had on my own was different to the one I had with you there.’

That was certainly true. ‘You would have ended up in a fist-fight with the volunteer.’

‘He was smug. And showing off for your benefit.’

‘He was passionate. And proud of the work they do. You belittled him.’

‘I tested him. Big difference.’

Why did that surprise her? He’d always been interested in breaking people down to see what made them tick. ‘Not to the person on the receiving end.’

That shut him up. For almost half a minute.

‘So, is that a no to partnering up? I already have reservations.’

She hated doing this by phone. It was all too easy to imagine vulnerability in his tone. If she was looking him in the eye he’d never get away with that. But his tone changed hers. She sighed. ‘Tickets to what?’

‘The symphony.’

‘The Australian Symphony doesn’t have Beethoven on their line-up for this year.’ She’d already checked.

‘Not the ASO. The Berlin Philharmonic. They’re in town for a limited season. Three concerts.’

‘Those tickets were expensive.’ She’d checked that, too.

‘So?’

‘So throwing money at it is a fast way to get the list out of the way.’ And off your conscience.

‘Really? I suppose you walked to Antarctica, then?’

‘No. I took a work opportunity. There was a media call to promote the hundredth anniversary of the end of Scott’s expedition and I qualified. The only thing I paid for was my thermals.’

‘Nice junket,’ he snorted.

‘Sure. If you don’t count all the freezing-your-butt-off and hauling yourself up rope nets on and off an ice-breaker.’ That had nearly killed her. Although it had helped her get fit preparing for it.

‘So how were you planning on getting to Everest without money?’

She tossed back her hair. Maybe it would translate in her voice. ‘I don’t know. Work on a cruise ship to earn passage. Then make my way to Kathmandu by bike.’

She was nothing if not an idealist.

‘It would take a lifetime to do the list that way.’

She stared at the wall. Suddenly something important clicked into place for her. Something she’d been missing.

‘“Full effort is full victory”,’ she murmured. Satisfaction lay in the effort, not the attainment. Gandhi knew it. It was just a pity Hayden—the student of human nature—had forgotten what that felt like.

‘What?’

She refocused. ‘The list was supposed to be about honouring my mother’s memory. Buying your way down the list does the opposite.’ Almost worse than doing nothing at all.

His pause grew dangerous. ‘So, now you don’t want me doing the list?’

I want you to care. And she had no idea why that was so important to her. ‘Not if it means you put in the minimal amount of effort or outsource it to someone to make you up an itinerary.’

Silence descended as he considered that.

‘What if I didn’t pay for the tickets?’

She blinked. ‘Then I assume you’ll be arraigned for theft when the curtain rises.’

‘Ha ha. I meant that I contra’d them. Does that change how you feel?’

Did it? Last week, if someone had given her a month off work and a cashed-up credit card she would have zoomed through the list knocking things off, too. But she felt sure that there’d be no sense of achievement. Not like the year of preparation for the marathon, or learning to horse-ride well enough to tackle the Snowy Mountains, or working for months on the Antarctica proposal and her ice fitness.

Could she even enjoy the victory if it came so easily?

‘Using your influence is like using your money—’

‘It wasn’t influence. I bartered a friend for the tickets. Good old fashioned labour.’

Labour? Those hands? ‘What for?’

‘I give you my word it’s nothing that wouldn’t honour the intent of Carol’s list.’

She turned it over in her mind. And over. And then looked under it and really tried very hard to find something reasonable to object to. But her curiosity was piqued, too. What exactly did one trade for tickets to a performance that exclusive?

‘Front row?’ Okay, now she was just picking a fight.

‘Centre.’

‘When?’ Did he just assume she’d be available?

‘Tuesday night.’

Damn. She was.

Somehow it being an evening thing made it feel more like a date than a business arrangement. Which was ridiculous. Two birds, one stone, he’d said. The deal was made. The tickets arranged. Why shouldn’t she benefit from whatever hard manual labour he was going to have to undertake to pay them off?

She sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll see you then.’

‘Really?’

Lucky he couldn’t see her, because she completely failed to hide the tiny smile that broke at the surprise in his voice. Too cool for school was kind of his thing back when she used to watch him from the stairs. It was nice to know that someone who had been that jaded at nineteen was still capable of surprise at thirty.

‘Really.’

‘Great.’ Awkward. ‘See you Tuesday, then.’

Her chest squeezed tighter at his parting words. But nineteen year old Hayden would never have been a good choice for her and she suspected thirty year old Hayden was even less so.

Lucky this wasn’t a date, then.

‘Is that a cape?’

Hayden stepped around her in the concert-hall foyer to check out the back of the indigo cloak that Shirley had put on over her simple black dress. The shoulders formed a reverse V that left her décolletage bare and met at an ornate black clasp that closed like fingers around her throat.

‘Capelet, according to the label,’ she informed him.

Whatever it was, it did amazing things to her eyes. And the dress for the rest of her, too.

‘You’re early,’ she announced.

‘I wanted to pick up the tickets. You’re earlier.’

‘I wanted to people-watch.’

At least Shiloh did.

He should have twigged when she’d first told him her new name, except that he’d been out of action for so long his connection to the living world had dwindled to what he read in the newspaper and saw on television the few times he turned the thing on.

The fawning of the girl on the beach that day was his biggest clue. That had sent him hunting on the Internet and it took no time at all to realise that his Shiloh was that Shiloh.

The people’s princess.

Blogger extraordinaire.

Queen of snark and acute social awareness.

Possessor of a two-million-plus social network and a list of subscribers that contained every major news journalist, politician’s aide and celebrity in the country. No one wanted to be the one not following Shiloh’s eloquent posts, even if they didn’t always like them. Or understand them.

He found the dolphin story—beautifully researched and filled with example after example of people whose lives had been changed following an encounter with a cetacean. Hundreds more in the reader comments. The dolphin that sensed the tumour. Or a pregnancy. A whale that monstered a swarm of sharks away from a flipped catamaran long enough for its passengers to scramble onto the upturned hull. Even a shy manatee that nudged an unconscious boy repeatedly to the surface until help arrived. She’d given the many people who volunteered with wildlife a nod through the voice of that man they’d stood with in the shallows. Yet she’d taken care not to identify the beach location or the animals, protecting them, too.

She knew her boundaries. And her power.

So he’d followed her blogs these past weeks to get a feel for the woman he’d only ever known as a child. She didn’t disappoint. Astute. Acerbic. Fearless.

‘The symphony’s not really the sort of place you’d expect to encounter intriguing story leads.’

‘You might be surprised at what people will talk about under cover of a crowd.’

She didn’t even blink that he knew who she was. She tossed her hair and a waft of amberwood hit him, provocative and sensual. His breath thinned.

‘Are you a regular at the Concert Hall?’

Not really the place he’d bring most of the women he’d dated. ‘I’ve been a few times, but I usually sit up the back.’ Right up the back, in the control box with Luc, generally. ‘This will be my first front row.’

Her carefully shaped brows folded.

He stepped closer as someone squeezed past them, then looked down on her. ‘That surprises you?’

She did her best to step back. ‘You don’t really strike me as an up the back kind of guy. I thought you’d want to be seen.’

‘But you don’t know me at all.’ Despite what she thought. ‘Come on, this way …’

He set off in the direction of the bar, not waiting for her to follow. Ordinarily he’d have found some way by now to touch a woman he’d invited on a date, multiple times if possible while shepherding her through the assembling crowd. But not only was this very much not ordinary, and not a date and not leading to anything further after the instruments were all back in their cases, but he thought Shirley might bite his hand off if he touched her. And he knew for sure she’d object to being corralled like some fragile thing.

She was anything but.

They passed the handful of patrons who’d turned up earlier than they had and crossed to the back area of the bar that served the exclusive members’ lounge, past the shelves of expensive drinks. All his old friends lifted their hands in salute, trying to catch his eye. Johnny. Jack. Remy. MacCallan.

He pressed on past them all.

‘Luc?’

It took a moment before anyone responded, but then his oldest friend appeared from a pair of doors behind the bar, carrying a sheaf of papers. He clapped forearms with Hayden and did a credible job of not looking at Shirley for more than the time it took to smile politely. Though he knew he’d get hammered for details later.

‘Mate, good to see you,’ Luc said.

‘Is it all arranged?’ Hayden asked. Keeping things businesslike.

‘Good to go.’ Luc reached into his pocket and produced two tickets. He held them aloft. ‘These weren’t easy to come by. There’ll be no reneging?’

Please … ‘When have you ever known me not to be as good as my word?’

‘I’ve never asked something like this of you, though.’

Shirley and Shiloh both grew interested in that.

He handed over the tickets and Hayden pumped his hand. ‘Cheers, mate. I owe you one.’

Luc laughed. ‘You know what you owe me.’ Then he disappeared back into the bowels of the Concert Hall. Hayden could feel Shirley’s gaze branding the back of his head, so he took his time turning around. When he did, her immaculately made-up eyes were narrowed.

‘What did you trade?’

He let a cautious nothing wash over his face. ‘Oh, just a favour for a mutual friend.’

‘What kind of favour? If I’m going to be party to a fraud, I’d like to know exactly what I’m buying into.’

‘You’re not buying into anything. This was my trade.’

‘What was?’ Her hands balled on her hips. ‘I’m not moving until you tell me the truth.’

Air hissed from between his drawn lips. ‘I’m helping out with a party Luc’s sister is throwing in a few weeks.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you’re paying for it?’

‘No. I told you this wasn’t a financial transaction.’

‘I didn’t realise event coordination was your bag.’

‘I’m not organising it, either.’

‘Catering?’

He glared at her.

‘Not the alcohol, I hope?’

The glare intensified. ‘It’s not that kind of party. It’s for Luc’s nephew. He’s …’ God damn her snooping. ‘He’s nine.’

She blinked at him. A child’s party …? Then the tiniest of smiles crept onto her lips. ‘Please tell me you’re dressing as a clown.’

He threw his arms up and walked across the room from her. ‘Do you seriously think that a garden-variety clown would be the best I can do?’

‘No, I expect you’d be a miserable, creepy clown.’

He paused, uncertain whether he’d just been insulted. ‘Right. Exactly. Thankfully, Tim’s not into clowns.’

‘What is he into? And why are you trying so very hard not to say?’

He huffed a long breath. ‘Warriors.’

Those expressive brows folded again. ‘Soldiers?’

He guided her from the bar again without touching her. ‘Old school. Swords and shields type of warriors.’

Out of the corner of his vision he saw her press her lips together to stymie the smile he was sure was wanting to burst forth. ‘A boy after your own heart, then?’

‘That’s what Luc said.’

She walked beside him. ‘Okay, so for the princely sum of one child’s birthday party we now have front row access to the Berlin Philharmonic?’

He shrugged. ‘That should give you an idea of how not a big deal this trade is for Luc.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or how very big a deal a kid’s birthday party is for you.’

He grunted and pushed through the doors back into the foyer, holding it open for her. The noise from the mounting audience surged and washed over them.

‘Are you coming or staying?’

It wasn’t too late to scalp the tickets out front for a profit.

She let the smile loose, finally. Smug and a little bit too appealing. ‘And forgo the chance to make you have to get your Spartacus on?’ She pushed past him and spoke into the crowd. ‘Not on your life.’

Shirley shuffled in her seat as the applause for the conductor finally died down. She had no idea who he was but every other person there clearly did, judging by the adulation. The white-haired man turned his back on the audience and sorted his music in the descended hush. The perfect acoustics of the venue meant that everyone heard it. Even the shuffling of music sheets sounded good.

Of course, her mother would have chided. Beethoven wrote it.

It was hard, as it always was, not to regret her mother’s absence. How she would have appreciated this special moment. Then again, if she’d been alive, would any of them have thought of doing it? She’d barely gone to the movies in all of Shirley’s childhood, let alone anywhere this special.

That was the awful irony about bucket lists.

‘Ready?’ Hayden leaned in and whispered. His shoulder brushed hers and the heat pumping off him surged.

The final murmurs from the rows of seating behind and above them stopped and, though nothing in particular was said, the orchestra locked their eyes on the white-haired man in front of them the moment he raised both arms and held them there.

Shirley’s breath held, too.

And then they came … The first distinctive notes of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony.

Da da da dum …

Da da da dummmmm.

This close, the music was virtually a physical impact. Its volume. Its presence. The hairs curling around her face blew and tickled in the breeze generated only by the synchronised speed of the string section as they commenced their furious playing.

She still hadn’t breathed.

Hayden glanced sideways at her as the galloping, excitable violins grew in pitch and strength and she sat up straighter. It wasn’t until the trombone had its momentary solo that she heaved in her first breath.

And still he looked.

Amazing, this close, this live. The passion of the performers poured off the stage and washed over her. The drama of the conductor’s jerky directions, the rolling synergy of their notes.

Her eyes fell shut.

The music fluttered against her face as it entered the gentle, lyrical interlude which grew and grew.

This was what Beethoven must have experienced when he could no longer hear his music.

And then it came. The discordant counterpoint.

Her eyes opened and she glanced to her right. Hayden was still looking at her. She took a deep breath and returned her full attention to the hammering orchestra. Minutes passed, planets orbited, the poles melted. The music softened for a momentary reprieve. The poignant, forlorn aria of a lone oboe—she wondered how she’d never noticed it before when her mother cranked up her Best of Beethoven.

And then the tumbling notes, the controlled descent before returning to the power of the full orchestra for the climax which ended so very like it had begun. Her chest heaved, her heart beat in synch with the strokes of the musical genius. Her body flinched with the explosive closing notes, and she pressed her lips together to stop from crying out.

And then … nothing.

Silence.

The conductor lowered his baton. The orchestra breathed out as one—long, slow and silent.

Shirley turned, breathless, to Hayden. She couldn’t clap because no one else was. She couldn’t leap up and shout for more, though it seemed ludicrous that music like that wasn’t supposed to be celebrated loudly. She could only look at him and hope that her excitement and appreciation were written in her eyes. Her fingers curled around his, hard, as though she could press her thoughts straight through his skin.

His return gaze was complex. Curious. As though she were an alien species he’d just discovered under a rock. But mostly laden with an unexpected quality.

Envy.

Someone behind them coughed. Someone else murmured as the orchestra quietly turned to the next piece. To them this was just another performance. Seven minutes of top-shelf proficiency.

To Shirley it was one of the most extraordinary things she’d ever done.

The audience murmuring grew loud enough that she risked a whisper. But while she might have been able to coordinate her lungs to push air through her voice box, she couldn’t quite make the sounds into a meaningful sentence.

‘Hayden …’ she got out.

He seemed to understand, but his eyes glanced to the stage and then back at her as the conductor called his performers to order with a dramatic flourish and a man she hadn’t been aware of stood and walked to a piano she’d barely noticed.

And then it happened …

The first sombre note of the Moonlight Sonata. It wasn’t called that on the programme so she was taken unaware. Her eyes were still locked on Hayden’s when recognition hit. The music that had played when they’d carried her mother’s coffin out of the chapel. The emotional elation of just moments before plunged dramatically as the first haunting notes filled every crevice in the concert hall. She gasped.

Sorrow held her rigid and all she could do was hold Hayden’s eyes, his fingers, as the warmth leached slowly from her face.

That horrible, horrible day.

His eyes darkened and his fingers curled around hers in support. She might have cried alone at her mother’s funeral ten years ago but this time Hayden Tennant was here with her. Holding on to her. The only other person in the room who knew what this music meant.

Her chest heaves increased as she fought back the tears she could feel forming.

In vain …

Her eyes welled as the beautiful music unfolded in isolation of every other instrument on the stage. The rich, saturated tones of the expensive piano formed a thick private blanket of sound to hide her grief beneath. From everyone but Hayden; he had an unexpected stage-side seat to her pain.

She let her lashes drop to block even him out.

From the sublime to the tragic in the space of two beats of silence. He’d been captivated by Shirley’s ecstasy in the face of the music. It had been so long since he’d felt anything, he was quite prepared to feed off her evident joy—her total absorption—like some kind of visceral vampire. He’d been able to stare at her for seven whole minutes unmolested as she reached some place high above the real world.

Buffeted and carried by the music.

Her eyes, when the first famous piece came to a powerful crescendo and she’d gifted him with her focus, had looked as they might in the throes of passion.

Bright, exhilarated, fevered.

And for one breathless heartbeat he’d imagined putting those expressions there, of inciting this strong, unique woman to cast aside the veneer of control that she always wore.

Possession had surged through him, powerful and unfamiliar.

But now those same eyes were off-limits to him, a fat tear squeezing out from under her long dark lashes and rolling down blanched skin. He knew what this music meant and he remembered how Shirley had looked—so small and bereft—the last time he’d heard it.

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