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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.’