by Nikki Logan
‘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.
Her fingers tightened in his as if, by letting go, he’d be casting her adrift on a sea of remembered misery. He curled his other hand over the top and shifted forward so that she might feel his support.
The music turned more melodic, less mournful, and her lids fluttered open to reveal watery, sad eyes, a thousand miles from where they were, lost somewhere in memory. They looked right at him but he knew she wasn’t seeing him at all. She was seeing through him.
Exactly as he feared she might if she looked too closely.
That was why she’d never get this close again. After today.
Today she was just a fourteen-year-old girl who needed her mother, and the harder she fought the expression of her feelings, the more he wanted to hold her as she bled her grief out onto the Concert Hall’s plush carpet.
He shuffled his arm around behind her and pulled her gently to his shoulder.
The fact she came so very willingly told him a lot about how she was feeling.
They passed the whole piece like that, him curled protectively around her, giving her the privacy she needed, his eyes pressed closed against the evocative music. And against the warmth of the woman in his arms. He felt a few glances from the people around them but he didn’t care.
He pressed his lips to her hairline and left them there.
The final notes lingered, eddied around them and then rippled out through the venue and were gone. The audience was completely silent, the hard thrum of blood past his ears the only sound in the place.
The conductor lowered his baton and turned, the pianist stood and bowed, and the audience responded to his cue by bursting into loud fevered applause.
‘Shirley …’ Hayden said over the din.
Her arm curled around his neck and held him close, her shudder half-swallowed. He gave her a moment, lent her shelter, lent her his strength.
Surprised to discover he had any left at all these days.
But eventually one of them had to move. He cleared his throat. ‘Shirley …’
This time she withdrew—in body and in spirit—snaking her arms back into herself and pushing back in her seat. A furious flush stained her pale skin.
‘Are you okay—?’
She pushed to her feet, swiping at her eyes. Enough of the audience were on their feet to celebrate the brilliant piano interpretation that their departure wasn’t too shocking.
All anyone saw was an overwhelmed woman. They would have no idea what this evening meant to her.
‘Are you okay?’ he repeated the moment they were in the comparative silence of the empty foyer. A new piece began in the auditorium behind them.
‘I’m fine.’ She swiped at her eyes with a napkin she’d snatched from a foyer table and kept her eyes off his. ‘I just …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t ready for it.’
‘It’s okay to miss her, Shirley.’
Her laugh was harsh. ‘It’s been ten years. You’d think I’d have a handle on it by now.’
What could he say? ‘Would that we could all be loved that much.’
She shuddered in a deep breath and appeared to revive before his eyes. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘For arranging this. For her.’ She smiled, watery but strengthening, and he realised for the first time how very many smiles she had. And how differently he felt about each one of them.
‘I didn’t do it for her, Shirley. Or for me.’ Her delicate brows flickered. ‘I wanted you to have this.’
Not that he had a clue why. It wasn’t going to get him anything in return. Nothing she’d give him in a million years, anyway.
Her expression turned awkward. ‘You don’t think I’d have made it to the symphony unassisted?
‘You would have been halfway up the back. You would have heard the music but not …’ His fingers grasped for the words he couldn’t find.
She lifted her eyes. ‘Lived it?’
‘Breathed it. She was a wise woman, your mother.’
Shirley sagged. ‘I wish I’d known her as an adult, the way you did. To me, she was just my mum. She nagged me about homework and told me to clean my room and what not to wear in public.’
‘You took that last one to heart, I see …’
She threw him her fakest smile and he laughed. It felt odd to have run the full gamut of emotions with her in just a quarter of an hour. Exhilaration, devastation and now humour. An intimacy trifecta.
‘I would love to have just one adult conversation with her,’ she murmured.
He plunged his hands into his pockets to stop himself from touching her. From stroking the sadness from that flawless brow. ‘I think she would have been proud of what you do,’ he said. ‘Of the way you speak for some parts of the community and challenge others. Of how fearless you are. How provocative.’
She shrugged. ‘That’s Shiloh.’
He stared at her. ‘I’d like to meet Shirley some day.’
Shirley lifted her gaze to Hayden’s. ‘I don’t think she’d be a match for your sarcasm.’
The tic of his eye was almost a wince. ‘But Shiloh is?’
She lifted her chin. ‘Shiloh most definitely is.’
They stared each other down as music thumped, muted, from behind them. Two equals, perfectly matched.
&
nbsp; ‘So the next one is yours,’ Hayden finally said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Our next adventure. Your choice. Your challenge. See if you can top this.’
‘I didn’t realise we were taking turns.’ Or doing it again.
‘Seems equitable,’ he said. ‘You’re all for equity, I know.’
‘You picked a pretty easy one.’
‘How about you dress up in a loincloth and brave a house full of nine year olds, then tell me how easy this one was.’
She stared at him. Thinking. ‘All right.’
‘All right, what?’
‘All right, I’ll be your warrior sidekick. For the party. Since I enjoyed half of the reward today, it seems only fair that I should pay half the price.’
‘You want to come to the kids’ party with me?’
Yes. Inexplicably. Maybe it had something to do with seeing how he was with children? You could tell a lot about a man from how he interacted with animals and kids. Maybe she was just looking for the kiss of death to her lingering question marks about Hayden Tennant. To put them to the spear once and for all.
‘I’m willing to do my part. In the interests of equity,’ she said.
‘You’ll have to dress up. Or down in this case.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Completely. Just tell me who you’re going as and I’ll match you.’
‘You even have to ask?’
‘Leonidas.’ Of course; the Spartan king who’d first uttered those defiant words. Come and take them.
She could well imagine Hayden leading a dwindling army into certain death with defiance on their faces and blood-mingled sweat in their eyes. Barefoot, wild, determined.
Half-naked.
She shifted her eyes away from him as warmth suffused her. Perhaps the party wouldn’t be entirely without reward, then. And just like that, she’d decided. Even though saying yes to this was a de facto agreement to undertake more of the list with him.
Her breath thinned. ‘When is it?’
‘Two weeks Saturday. I’ll text you the address.’
She flicked her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Great. In the meantime I’ll get to work on our next tick off the list.’
How subtly my had become our. Had she made the mental shift when she’d agreed to come to the symphony with him? Or he’d agreed to go to the dolphins with her? Or was it implicit in the moment she’d curled her fingers so tightly in his during the Moonlight Sonata and she’d not objected when he’d pressed his lips to her forehead?
Maybe he’d branded them they with that one gentle action?
Certainly he’d branded her. She could still feel the place his mouth had lingered.
Shirley snorted inwardly. Or was she just a whole lot easier and a whole lot more female than she’d believed? One promise of a bit of gratuitous flesh on show and she totally caved in.
But some concessions were more tingly than others, it seemed. She took a deep breath. Finishing the list was now a combined effort. She had a point to prove about the real meaning of her mother’s unfulfilled wish list and she suspected he had his own agenda, his own dark reasons for wanting to prove her wrong.
Yet, somehow, tackling the list with someone else—even if it was a someone else with a vested interest in not succeeding—made it seem less lonely, more achievable. More rewarding.
Even if it was also entirely foolish.
‘Okay, see you two weeks Saturday, then.’
He glanced at the large auditorium doors. ‘You don’t want to go back in?’
Did she? They could walk back in after the first intermission. But how could she top either of those pieces for sheer impact? She looked around for an usher, caught his eye and called him over.
‘Hi—’ she smiled, one hundred per cent Shiloh ‘—I’ve got a sudden migraine and we were front row centre. I’m wondering if you could fill the seats for us? So that the Symphony aren’t staring at a hole in their front row?’
The young man smiled. ‘Yes, thank you for letting us know.’
He started to move away.
‘Actually, do me a favour. Could you find someone way up the back—someone who would die for those seats—and give them to them?’
The man’s entire body language changed. ‘That’s awesome. Yes, I can. I have just the couple in mind. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He departed and Shirley turned. Hayden’s expression was a mixture of bemusement, curiosity and something else. Something she couldn’t quite define. ‘What?’
‘That was nice.’
‘I’m frequently nice; don’t look so surprised.’
‘No, I mean that was nice. I wouldn’t have thought to tell them, let alone offer them to someone who was missing out.’
She studied him for a moment. ‘I think that says more about you than me, don’t you?’
He thought about that. ‘Maybe.’
‘So … You’ll text me?’
‘I will.’
‘Okay. See you then.’ She crossed to the lifts.
‘Who will you be coming as?’ he called after her. Almost as if he were forestalling her departure.
‘I’ll let that be a surprise.’
‘I hate surprises.’
She turned her head back over her shoulder and gave him a blast of Shiloh. ‘A bit of delayed gratification might be good for you.’
And then she walked out. And left him and his gorgeous suit standing in the foyer all alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
IF HAYDEN’S mouth gaped any further, one of these rampant nine-year-olds was just as likely to mistake it for a bouncy castle and run into it.
‘Leonidas—’ Shirley bowed ‘—Boudicca, Warrior Queen of the Iceni.’
She didn’t have to worry about how low she bowed; the suspension in the get-up that Andreas had helped her with would have kept Dolly Parton fully immobile. The bodice was more strapping than bra, swathes of earthy fabric wrapped tight around her torso in the manner of the Celts and then flying back over her shoulder to form a cape.
‘How did you even get into that thing?’ he breathed.
‘Andreas helped me.’
‘Andreas?’
‘My neighbour.’
He quirked an eyebrow, not that she could be certain under his ornate beaten-copper face-shield, which left only his eyes and lips visible, but it tipped slightly and his tone left her in no doubt that it would be lifted beneath the tin.
‘Your gay male neighbour?’
Seriously, Hayden? ‘My straight seventy-year-old, ex-opera-wardrobe-master-who’s-great-with-a-toga neighbour.’ The relief on his face was comical. And confusing. ‘What does it matter who helped me dress?’ she quizzed.
His eyes grew vague. ‘Undress. Do you think that’s appropriate to wear around young boys?’
She glanced down to make sure everything was still where she’d put it. With her long flowing skirts, the only part of her bare was a strip of midriff and her arms and shoulders, which Andreas had carefully decorated with eyeliner tribal tattoos. And her feet, which surely could not offend anyone.
Her laugh was ninety per cent outrage. ‘That’s rich coming from a man in a miniskirt.’
A thoroughly hot and distracting miniskirt and not a lot else. Leather thong sandals and wrought-copper leg guards protecting his shins—possibly handy if things turned ugly with the nine-year-olds—and some kind of metallic breastplate that accentuated the breadth of his shoulders. Spear with a cork stuck on the dangerous end. Battered shield. And the battle-mask which supported the mother of all mohawks above his head.
That was about it.
Nothing more gratuitous than she’d seen in the water three months ago but somehow infinitely hotter in the suburbs.
What was it about a man in a skirt?
‘What did you do to your hair?’ he accused.
Had holding that long blunt spear turned him into a caveman? ‘I died it. Henna.’
‘I liked the black.’
‘Strangely enough, your preference didn’t really influence my decision. Boudicca had flaming red hair.’
‘And she was a brutal warrior. Again, maybe not appropriate for children.’
‘Unlike Leonidas, who just carried his spear to pick up litter?’
Luc wandered past them with a steaming bowl of mini red frankfurters in one hand and a family-sized tomato ketchup in the other. ‘Come on, you two, the fighting is supposed to be fictional.’
Shirley snapped her mouth shut with a click.
Hayden looked her over once more for good measure, shook his head, then turned and strode away from her. The turning caught his little skirt and gave it extra lift as he marched ahead of her and gave her a better look at his strong thighs.
Would Boudicca have busied herself with the undersides of the Roman tunics? she scolded herself.
A tiny smile crept onto her warrior lips.
I’d like to imagine so.
‘You are the best army I’ve ever led!’ Shirley whispered to her seven young boys, hunkered down behind a barrier of rubbish bins and a play house. Every one of them grinned, wide-eyed and excited, through the tomato ketchup now painted on their faces in a replica of her Celtic swirls.
Shirley doled out more fist-sized ammunition.
‘I think it’s time for a strategy change …’ she whispered, laying on a thick accent that was somewhere between Scots and Welsh. And almost certainly nothing like Icenian. ‘An army is never as strong without its leader so this time I want you to hurl everything you’ve got at Leonidas. Take. Him. Out!’
‘Yeah!’ The boys pumped their fists in the air and took up positions in the cracks between their protective barricade. Across the garden, she could see the erect mohawk of Hayden’s Spartan headdress poking up above a hastily constructed shelter made of a deflated paddling pool and some upturned garden chairs and waving as he gave an inspirational battle speech of his own. Then half a dozen little faces peered up over the shelter with their own improvised headdresses on. A cut-down bucket, a foil headpiece, a dustpan brush taped to a head …
It made them easier to find than her stealthy, sauce-smeared Celts.
