Nikki Logan - Once a Rebel...

‘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.