Once a Rebel...
Authors: 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
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.
For Tracy Scarparolo.
And to Dan, the best office-mate and friend a girl could have.
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—
S
HIRLEY
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.
‘P
LEASE
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.