by Nikki Logan
Maybe misfits were drawn to each other.
‘Take me back to the jetty, Hayden,’ she breathed.
Jetty, car, her place. It was a one-hour trip, minimum. The sooner they could be in each other’s arms, the better. And the list clock was ticking.
‘Does that mean you don’t want to see my place?’
She lifted her head. ‘What place?’
‘The house behind the jetty. It’s mine.’
She twisted to peer down the canal the way they’d come. A huge beige monstrosity stood beyond an immaculate field of heavily reticulated turf.
‘That’s yours?’
In her periphery, she saw him nod. Watching her closely.
She turned back and folded her hands in her skirt and stared somewhere over his shoulder. ‘I like the cottage better.’
He stopped poling. Stared at her. Then he slowly started up again and muttered, ‘Me too, actually.’
‘Though it is pleasingly close,’ she teased, and plucked at the front of her peasant blouse. Loving the way his eyes instantly refocused.
‘You want to see it?’
‘You made me a boat—’ she shrugged, all absent concern ‘—I suppose that deserves some reward.’
He turned the gondola and punted double-time back towards the jetty. Following the strong movements of his muscles gave Shirley a thoroughly good mental distraction from his innocent question.
She’d never asked herself why the list had become her obsession virtually the moment she’d discovered its existence. Why she’d ridden it hard through the past decade. Why she’d built her life around accomplishing it.
For a woman used to asking the hard questions, this simple one her stumped.
Why the list?
‘Home sweet home,’ he said, sliding the patio door open and letting her into the ultra-white, ultra-clean living area.
‘No, it’s not. You don’t live here.’ A house full of props selected by a stylist, maybe, but nothing his. No mess. No plants. No books. It was the latter that gave him away most—his cottage was overflowing with books. Stuffed into every available crevice. ‘You probably bring women here. Maybe you stay here when you have late meetings. But you don’t live here.’
‘I did,’ he murmured, reaching into the enormous stainless-steel refrigerator for bottled water. She got glimpse enough to know the only other thing in there was a long-life milk carton. Unopened. ‘For quite a few years.’
She slid onto a white leather stool. ‘When did you move out to the cottage?’
His hand paused on the steel lid of the ornate designer water bottle, then flicked it off carelessly. Its tumble clattered and echoed in the big house. ‘Couple of years ago. When I scaled back at the office.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I needed time to reassess.’
Their lives were so different. The idea of just dropping off the grid for two years to reassess. ‘And how did everyone at the office feel when you recently reappeared?’
‘I took the front-of-house team to lunch. Made their managers sit on reception.’
She grudgingly smiled. ‘I’m sure that was popular.’
‘It got their attention. One coped just fine and the other knows where his knowledge gaps are.’
‘And the receptionists?’
‘Had a lovely lunch, got sloshed and betrayed everything that was really going on while I was away.’
Away. As if he’d been off travelling. Maybe that was what they thought. ‘Their existence should be hellish once you start firing people,’ she murmured.
He slid a glass of water towards her.
‘No one’s getting fired. I’m not going to punish anyone for something that was my doing. I was too focused on keeping the clients happy; I neglected the team. The people who helped me deliver it. So that’s my mistake, not theirs.’
She stared at him for long moments, unease at discovering these new aspects to him fuelling her confusion. Working with NGOs, owning his mistakes, hand-making boats.
What was he doing—trying to be irresistible?
She shook her head. ‘Who are you?’
‘Maybe a better question would be “who was I?”‘ He leaned back on the kitchen island, tall and strong, his hips turned squarely towards her, ankles crossed. ‘And the answer was “blinkered and self-involved”.’
‘Past tense?’
‘Somebody helped me to see things a little differently. To widen my lens.’
‘Would that someone be me?’ She dropped her eyes, then glanced up at him.
He winced. ‘See, somebody is bound to get full of themselves and become unbearable if I answer that.’
A smile slipped past her careful barriers. ‘Not that you’d recognise the signs of that.’
His own lips parted in a reciprocal smile. ‘Not at all.’
‘Huh. Shame,’ she said, leaning back as far as she could on her white stool and matching his body language. ‘I find self-confidence extremely appealing.’ He paused with the glass of water halfway to his lips. ‘Almost as appealing as that whole bad-boy thing you have going on.’
But only because she was starting to understand it was just a mask he wore. Maybe only another mask-wearer would notice.
‘I didn’t realise the bad-boy thing was part of the attraction.’ He placed his glass on the spotless benchtop and moved towards her. ‘Being a jerk will certainly save me a heap of time and effort.’
She laughed and tipped her head up to face him. ‘You’ve exposed yourself as a decent guy now. Damage is done.’
His grin turned feral. ‘It’s only just gone noon. I have hours yet to disappoint you.’
God, she adored this man’s brain. She knew plenty of smart men who left her cold, so it wasn’t just an IQ fetish. Hayden did intellectual foreplay like no one else on this planet. He barely had to try. No wonder she’d fallen for him.
She spluttered her first sip of water.
Realisation and despair flooded her in equal measures.
Hayden relieved her fingers of her own half-drunk glass and Shirley used the moment to curl her other hand around the leather top of the seat and steady herself while her world rocked. Like balancing in the gondola in stilettos. She kept her eyes fixed on him, convincing herself that if he wasn’t stumbling then the intense rocking couldn’t be real.
Fallen for him? Was she that stupid?
He helped her down off the stool and led her across the lower floor of the property. ‘Where are we going?’ she murmured past the tight choke in her chest.
Love. The one thing she’d promised herself she would not do. Not with him.
He turned back to her, oblivious to her crisis. ‘I thought you might like to see the view from the bedroom.’
She forced air back over her lips and into her tight lungs, determined to give nothing away as his fingers curled more securely into hers and they stepped onto the central stairway. ‘That’s subtle. Has that worked for you in the past?’ She forced another breath in.
That was the key—in, out, in, out. Until breathing felt normal again.
‘It’s working for me now. You’re still moving.’
She made herself laugh. Light and casual. Nothing like she actually felt. ‘It’s in my best interests to follow you. We don’t have much time together. I wanted this.’
But she didn’t want to love him. She hadn’t meant to.
‘See. You’re an influence natural. I should recruit Shiloh.’
That actually achieved the impossible, distracting her slightly from the momentous bad news of just a moment before. The one starting with L …
She stopped midway up the stairs and stared at him. He turned back and looked down at her.
‘It hasn’t dawned on you yet, has it?’ he said. ‘How similar our jobs are.’
‘They’re nothing like each other.’
‘Come on,’ he challenged. ‘You didn’t write that article on Russell’s group to get him a swag of new supporters? To raise awareness
about dolphins?’
‘I informed people …’
‘You influence them.’
She stared. He pulled her into movement again, up onto a landing as immaculate and show-homey as downstairs.
‘You appealed to their compassion or their intellect, you targeted it and you used it. Admit it, we’re in the same game.’
‘No, we’re not.’ He seemed way too pleased with that idea.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised; we were taught by the same woman.’
Fortunately, he stopped to open two enormous doors into an equally enormous suite. That saved her the trouble of having to plant her feet again.
‘What?’
‘Your mother was the queen of influence, Shirley. She knew how to get the best from her students, the top grants out of her institution, the best office from her Dean.’
She had sure as hell known how to get her daughter to toe the line.
‘Is this really your best effort at foreplay, Hayden? Talking about my mother?’ But even that was better than the way her thoughts had been headed downstairs.
He swung her around in front of him to stand at floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the sparkling canal. ‘No, this is …’
He pressed a button and they darkened just slightly. He moved up behind her and leaned her into the glass.
‘One-way tinting,’ he murmured, reaching around both sides of her to loosen the ribbons of her blouse. ‘We can see out, no one can see in.’
Anticipation robbed every thought from her brain. And an empty mind was exactly what she needed right now.
An empty mind, a fully occupied body and strong arms to hold her.
Together, they might just be enough to outrank a heart gone rogue.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE’D finally got his fantasy moment there in his pristine white bed, unlacing Shirley hook by hook as though she were some medieval maiden, burying his hands in layers of fabric and stripping it back. Kissing the colour right off her mouth and revealing the pink, pure lips beneath.
The whole gondola thing had been a travesty. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time but he’d come across as a sap and a soft touch, telling her about his work for the dolphin mob. Thank God she hadn’t pressed him regarding the growing list of others.
How would he explain that he had besmirched his soul in seducing her and now he scrubbed it clean again helping a raft of new clients? They bought him perspective. And balance.
A good balance.
He still struggled with the lingering sense that there was something extra wrong about the time he spent with Shirley; that it had just been too fast for him to believe she wanted this as much as he did, so it was probably just as well that weeks passed between them seeing each other. And it was probably just as well that the list was nearing an end for her.
A dark shadow took him.
He stared at www.remembermrsmarr.com on his laptop, at his own listings and at hers she’d added back when he’d challenged her to. Shirley had had a seven-tick head start even before he’d started trying.
He ticked off ‘Hunt for a dinosaur fossil’ on the live site. That only left the three unachievable ones. Everest, a grandchild and being touched again. It was odd imagining that his mentor—the woman who’d insisted that Plato’s intellectual love was the purest—had secretly wanted to be loved again. Touched again. And all the while she’d had a small, vulnerable girl right there just begging to give her as much love as she needed. And to receive it.
But this dinosaur trip into the desert meant their achievable list was done. No more list, no more reason to be together. No more together, no more sex. No more sex, no more precious glimpses deep inside the mind and soul of the most intriguing woman he’d ever known. And if he was getting intrigued and habituated …
Probably just as well it was over.
‘Hey.’ Shirley pushed into their tent, two coffees in hand, looking earthy and radiant.
Nearly over.
He had one weekend. One last opportunity to be greedy. He wasn’t going to wish that away until he absolutely had to. He hastily unchecked the box.
She sank down, cross-legged, next to him and passed him a steaming mug. ‘Freshly brewed.’
Coffee only came one way on this expedition—hot and strong. But it had been months since he’d craved something fancier. Barista-made had lost its charm. Plain and strong would do him just fine.
‘Thank you.’
She was back to being Shirley again, regular make-up and a more moderate selection of clothes without a buckle or hook in sight if you didn’t count her laced-up trainers. He loved to spend time with this Shirley. Though he couldn’t say he didn’t love it when Shiloh made an impromptu appearance in their limited together time, too. The wilder the better.
‘What are you doing?’ She leaned over to glance at his screen.
He tipped the screen towards her. ‘Visiting the list. You haven’t updated.’
Her eyes briefly flicked to the corner of the tent. ‘No. I’m keeping track in my notebook.’
He tipped his head. ‘Privately?’
She studied the floor and then lifted green eyes to his. ‘I think it should always have been private. It should never have mattered what everyone else was doing.’ She took a breath. ‘I’m sorry I pressured you into it. That was unfair.’
Her unrealistic expectations seemed like eons ago. And totally irrelevant now. He wanted to say without that we never would have met, or something equally corny. Wanted to, but he didn’t. He reminded himself that the past months had probably been all the better for being temporary.
‘Are you kidding?’ He kept it light. ‘If not for you, I would never have detached my retinas or frozen my butt off in the desert.’
She smiled. ‘It’s lovely out here, though, despite the cold. So incredibly vast. Can you imagine how much life is buried in ancient sediment here?’
The ancestors of eagles, enormous wombat third-cousins, a sea-floor full of marine fossils from back when the desert plain they’d pitched their tent into had still been ocean floor. The team had uncovered lots of ancient bones, but none of them dinosaur.
Yet.
The museum had willingly taken on two unskilled assistants for the long weekend and even been kind enough to find them tasks to do that felt meaningful. They weren’t. Everyone seemed to know that but they were entirely prepared to fake it out of consideration for their guests. This time, no one knew she was Shiloh and no one knew that he was loaded. As far as the museum team was concerned, they were just hopeless enthusiasts.
We can always do with enthusiasm, the project director had kindly told Shirley when they’d applied. And she’d glowed. There was a lot to be said for kindness.
And for Shirley glowing.
‘What time are they heading out?’ he asked.
‘As soon as everyone’s caffeine ratio is optimum. Mornings seem to be expedition time and afternoons are for analysing results.’ She rummaged around, tossing things onto her air mattress. Their air mattress, since it was a double and since they were back in ‘list time’. Short grabs of heaven every few weeks. Little contact in between.
The perfect set-up.
Shirley’s mattress pile grew. A spare shirt, camera, notebook, drink bottle, insect repellent, sunscreen. Everything a girl could need for a day in the desert.
‘Be right back.’ She bent and crawled out of the tent and he took the chance to watch. He’d grown really fond of that rear end really fast. He hooked the fly sheet with his boot and pulled it back to see where she went as he sipped his coffee. The latrine tent. Dug way out in the distance, necessarily.
His own pack was already loaded up so he grabbed hers and started stuffing the piled-up items into it as well as taking a couple of snack bars from the container she kept perpetually handy. The notebook slipped off the pile as he packed and fell open at an oft-thumbed page.
Her list.
He stared guiltily. Cross-through after cr
oss-through mocked his still poor effort. She had thirteen of the fifteen items. Worse than he’d realised. She’d even crossed the dinosaur one off already.
His belly looped back on itself.
Hang on … Thirteen? When only twelve were achievable?
He traced the page with his finger and then slid to a halt at the mystery tick-box. He stared.
Be transported by a touch.
His first reaction was an insanely powerful surge of self-satisfaction. His touch had transported her. His touch. Impossible to know exactly when she’d ticked that but there’d been a whole lot of touching going on since their first night on the Paxos. Then the gondola day. And the previous two days.
And then … right behind the conceit came a wave of dread.
That wasn’t the tick of someone who was casual about their time together. That wasn’t the tick of someone who was content to let weeks pass between encounters. Or who’d be unfazed about moving on when the time came.
The wave of dread solidified.
That was the tick of someone for whom their encounters had been meaningful. Enough to tick a box on a list that had taken on religious significance for her. That tick meant something.
Not something … everything.
He shoved the notebook and pen in on top of the snack bars and zipped the pack up, then sat back and stared at the brown swirl in his cup. Was it a mistake to have let himself believe she was in the same class of woman as the others in his past? Easier, faster women. Or was it just blind wishful thinking on his part? Maybe he’d just seen what he wanted to see?
Wouldn’t be the first time.
‘Taking up reading coffee grinds?’ she joked, ducking back into the tent. She saw her packed bag. ‘Oh, thank you.’ She threw it over her shoulder, bent and kissed his cold lips and ducked back out again. ‘I’ll see you by the truck.’
Confusion roiled.
Her demeanour was relaxed enough. Her kiss, easy. She wasn’t fawning or clinging. In fact she’d just ditched him for more interesting people, as far as he could tell. Nothing about her actions betrayed the glaring tick in that very significant box.
