Читать книгу Summer Beach Reads - Natalie Anderson - Страница 37

‘I AM almost certain this is not what my mother had in mind.’

Six weeks. Six weeks after the Paxos had berthed in Sydney and swapped her half-empty cargo for a full complement and left two passengers standing on the dock.

Six long weeks without seeing Hayden.

But she wasn’t about to betray her excitement.

The two of them wobbled horribly in a dug-out canoe ten feet from the jetty sticking out from the immaculately crafted but soulless canal suburb feeding off the Georges River.

‘Where did you hire this …?’ She hesitated to call it a boat.

‘This gondola.’

Her laugh was immediate. It was partly fuelled by sheer joy at sitting across from him again. She hadn’t realised until she’d opened the door to him earlier today how not-fully she’d been breathing in the previous six weeks. She sucked in the fresh air now and her body exulted. ‘This is not a gondola.’

He ignored her. ‘We’re not going to get to Venice on a freighter and even hiring a gondola here was more costly than I thought was appropriate, given the no-money restriction.’

‘This was the best you could steal?’

He tutted, offended. ‘Make, actually.’

‘You made this?’ She stared at the most cerebrally talented man she knew. ‘With your hands?’

He flushed overtly. ‘I had help, but yes.’

In that light, it wasn’t all that bad. But it still wasn’t a gondola. ‘Why isn’t it finished?’

He stared at her. ‘Because I’m impatient.’

Her heart flip-flopped. Had he been eager to see her? He could have picked up the phone at any time. Then again, no, he couldn’t, not without saying much more than he would have been comfortable with. ‘Impatient to finish the list?’

His eyes darkened and one side of his mouth quirked as he concentrated on keeping the little boat upright. ‘No.’

Oh. But she wasn’t brave enough to ask further so she worked her way around to what she really wanted to know. Crafty as a fox. ‘Who helped you make it?’

‘Russell.’

Should that mean something? ‘Russell who?’

His dark brows folded down. ‘Actually, I don’t know. Russell from the dolphin place.’

She sat back hard in the canoe. ‘The guide?’

‘Yeah. He’s a carpenter in his day job.’

Not a very good one, it seemed. But, since it was better than either of them could have done she wasn’t going to judge. ‘How do you know? You only said two words to him.’ And neither of them were polite.

‘We’ve been … working together.’

‘What? Since when?’ Not cool, that high-pitched squeak in her voice. She moderated it.

‘Since about a month after we went out into the surf with him.’

She gaped and then grabbed at the sides of the boat as it rocked perilously again.

‘He got me involved with the Dolphin Preservation Society. They’re a client now.’

Umbrage broiled up fast. ‘You hit them up for business?’

His lips thinned. ‘Yes, Shirley. I figured they must have millions hidden beneath the moth-eaten nothing they appear to have and I wanted my cut.’

She let the rest of her confusion out on a hiss. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I work with them pro bono. Help them to position themselves in the market, to find contributors for their cause and customers for the beach experience. Building their capacity.’

A strange kind of mist rose on the water, swirled around their boat and then sucked up into her body, making her feel light and fluid. ‘You helped them?’

‘I am capable of random acts of kindness from time to time.’ His words were half defensive.

‘I … Yes, of course.’ She’d seen that gentle side at work. Up close and personal. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I just did.’

‘No, months ago … Why keep it to yourself?’

‘I knew you’d carry on like this. Make a big deal of it.’

‘I’m not carrying on, I’m curious.’ She sat taller. ‘And it is a big deal.’

‘Well, far be it from me to fail to assuage Shiloh’s fathomless curiosity.’

Super-hedge. And then it hit her. Her breath tripped over the skipped beat of her heart. ‘Did you … Was it because of me?’

Ridiculous, surely. He wouldn’t care what she thought of him. Beyond what she thought of him in the sack. And he knew the answer to that. Because no one could fake the responses he elicited.

‘No, it wasn’t for you.’ Immediate. Slightly urgent.

Okay. ‘So it was for you?’

He rushed to address that misconception, too. ‘No, it was not. It was for them.’

She smiled as he realised he’d been snookered. Whether for her, or them or himself, it didn’t change the facts. ‘That’s a pretty significant philosophical shift, Hayden.’

‘You think I’m only interested in money? Ever?’

‘Based on the evidence, yes.’ Except now the evidence had changed. Now he’d thrown a massive curve-ball into her neatly stacked up preconceptions. And she knew she’d never be able to stack them the same way again.

Which meant it had just got a whole heap harder to keep her feelings at arms’ length. While he was a man who would use his skills to exploit and manipulate others it was possible to maintain a rigid defence against the attraction and intrigue that battered on the door of her resolve.

But if he was a man who helped those who helped others. A man who’d carve a boat to please her. Or jump from a bridge …

She needed to move things back onto a safer footing. ‘So this is our gondola?’

‘And this—’ he cast his arms wide at the ultramodern canal lined with expensive houses ‘—is our Venice.’

It was a bit of a cop-out, but then again Venice was a very long way away, and he had built something—with his hands—for her. That was a turn-on in a very caveman kind of way.

Okay, Venice it was.

She settled herself more primly in the bow of the boat and tucked the folds of her skirt around her. ‘Shouldn’t you be poling us along? And singing in Italian?’

‘Nobody needs to hear that,’ he joked. ‘But … Ecco!’

He drew a tall, brightly painted pole from along the floor of the canoe. The boat wobbled horribly as he rose to his feet, balancing the timber across him like some kind of trainee circus performer and then lowering it into the water on one side. Somehow they stayed upright.

‘Is it long enough? This channel looks awfully deep.’ It had to be for some of the enormous pool toys moored to every jetty.

He slid it into the water. ‘We’ll find out.’

It was, though Hayden’s prowess in the field of gondoliering left a lot to be desired. Fortunately his prowess in other fields more than made up for their slow progress. They splashed on in silence for a few minutes and Shirley let herself enjoy the view. Both in the boat and out of it. Hayden’s muscles bunched under his T-shirt as he propelled them along, his locked thighs holding him steady in the little boat.

She let herself look her fill. Everything around them went kind of … glazy.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Shirley,’ he warned after a silent moment. ‘It’s just a canoe.’

Whoops. What had she failed to disguise? She caught his eyes. Held them. ‘You built it with your hands.’ For me. ‘That’s not nothing.’

His snort was about as graceful as his boat. ‘I did that to get laid. I knew I couldn’t show up empty-handed and expect you to invite me back into your bed.’

No. She knew him well enough now. The defensive tone stood out in mile-high fluoro. He’d done it for her. To please her. A warm rush started at her toes and worked its way upwards. But pressing the point wasn’t going to help matters.

‘How kind that you were willing to wait for an invitation,’ she teased.

He smiled, infuriating in its confidence and seat-squirmingly uncomfortable in its sexiness. ‘Lip service. I know how I affect you.’

Yes, he did. More fool her. And he was affecting her right now. To the point that she wanted to do something about it. Something they weren’t going to be able to manage in his terrible gondola.

So she changed the subject instead. Big time. Desperate times, desperate measures.

‘How old were you when your mum died?’

Hayden dropped his chin, didn’t answer, just kept punting them along. For the longest time. ‘What makes you think she died?’ he eventually said.

She shook her head. ‘What you said just before you met Twuwu, about your parents sitting there together being the least likely thing you could ever imagine. And then at the gorge, you said that we were a decade too late for her.’

‘It’s not really something I talk about,’ he said.

None of your business, in other words. She’d been telling other people straight for long enough to recognise from the hip when she saw it. And to accept it. It wasn’t reasonable to be offended by it. Even if it also hurt.

‘No. Okay.’

Splash, splash … They drifted on, a dark, heavy cloud suddenly hanging over Hayden. She distracted herself looking at the McMansions lining the canal side.

He cleared his throat. ‘There was a reason I was so gutted when we lost your mum.’

We. She would have liked that sentiment at the time; it would have made her feel less alone.

‘It hit me extra-hard because I was grieving for two mothers.’

Her stomach tightened. ‘Did yours go that same year?’

‘Three years before. Just before I started coming to your house on Saturdays.’

Shirley realised what a jerk she’d been, assuming his anguish at the funeral had all been for effect. ‘You hadn’t grieved?’

‘Not properly. There were … reasons for that. But it all kind of caught up with me at Carol’s funeral.’

Where did a girl begin to undo that kind of mistake? ‘I’m sorry that I judged you for not starting the list.’

He shook off the dark cloud. ‘Their deaths motivated me. It reminded me that you can’t rely on anyone but yourself. I set up Molon Labe the next year. Started small, building a client list, making my own way.’

She stared at the darkening waters that rolled in huge swells past the boat. ‘And your father?’

‘He’s still around. I see him about once a year when he wants money.’

Her chest squeezed as tight as his voice. ‘God, Hayden …’

‘It’s a small price to pay. Literally.’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘What about yours?’

Her father? The man who’d left them when she was small. ‘No idea. I don’t remember him.’

Didn’t let herself, anyway. Though she’d found a photograph amongst her mother’s things and kept it. Just because.

‘Carol only spoke of him once. Sounds like a man unsuited to settling down.’

A man just like Hayden? Was she really that much of a cliché? Falling for a man like her father? ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘You’ve never tried to find him?’

She looked up. Her chest pressed in. ‘He knew where we were all that time. He lived there, too, when I was a baby. Until he left. And we were doing fine. Mum finished her PhD at night, then she went back to work as soon as I was at school full-time. We got by.’

‘What about her funeral. You didn’t send word?’

‘I sent word.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘He just didn’t come.’

‘That’s …’ A lost-for-words Hayden was a rarity. ‘He had no contact after he left?’

The pressing against her lungs became crushing. ‘He’d made his choice. He left because of me; he was hardly about to ask for weekend visitation.’

Hayden stopped, turned towards her. ‘Who says he left because of you?’

She studied the sparkling water. The poling stopped.

‘Shirley?’

‘He wasn’t ready for fatherhood. And I wasn’t a quiet baby.’

‘But who says that?’ He pushed them along again. ‘If you were so young, how do you know that’s true?’

She blinked at him. ‘Mum said. Now and again. When she was mad or upset.’ Or wanting to dent Shirley’s embryonic spirit. ‘Sometimes she’d talk about how much she loved him. Other times she’d talk about how he wasn’t cut out for parenthood. Or how maybe if I’d been quieter … happier …’

‘She blamed you for his leaving?’

‘She attributed his leaving to me,’ she said carefully. ‘There’s a difference.’ But when you were six years old, the difference wasn’t very distinct. ‘It took her a long while to get over him.’

He shook his head. ‘She never remarried?’

Shirley raised her hand. ‘Guilty again. It was hard to find love with a toddler in tow.’

Hayden frowned. ‘Where are these words coming from? They’re not yours.’

She actually had to think about it. Though she knew exactly where the ideas had come from—and the words—when she let herself acknowledge it. ‘My mother wasn’t quite so prosaic when it came to her own emotions as she was when discussing Nietzsche or Socrates or Demosthenes.’

‘And you were how old?’ His words were as unexpectedly gentle as his touch late at night.

She shrugged. ‘Depends; she said some more than others.’

But enough that she’d received the message loud and clear. Enough that Shirley had spent her young life trying to make up for crimes she hadn’t even meant to commit.

He stared at her. ‘My mother was far from perfect, but everything she did she did for me. I can’t imagine her ever putting her own needs ahead of mine like that.’

The intense desire to excuse her mother overwhelmed her. That was straight from the ancient part of her brain. ‘She was brilliant and focused and hardworking and totally dedicated to her job.’

To the exclusion of all else.

He turned and looked at her. ‘I guess all that focus had to be coming from somewhere.’ She glanced away. ‘I’m really sorry it was from you.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not your fault she wasn’t better at the personal stuff—’

‘It wasn’t your fault either, Shirley.’ He moved them onwards, visibly battling with something. He lifted the pole out of the water and sat down in front of her, with it lying flat across the gondola. ‘I’m sure there are things in your childhood you did do and you can feel all the guilt in the world you want over those, but don’t take on your father’s abandonment. That’s a reflection on him, not you. And if your mother let you be the reason she never tried to build a new family for you, then that’s on her. Plenty of single mums build new families. Their kids are only an impediment if they’re looking for one.’

‘Why would she seek out reasons not to find love again?’ Who didn’t want to be loved? Other than Hayden.

‘Maybe she couldn’t find it and it was easier to blame something external for that.’

She stared.

‘I’m just saying you shouldn’t carry guilt for her issues,’ he finished.

She sat up straighter. ‘I’m not.’

‘You’re carrying something. Why else would you have this burning desire to finish her list?’

‘To honour her memory.’

‘Why does it need to be honoured?’

‘Because I loved her.’ Even if it wasn’t a perfect love. She was the only mother—the only parent—she’d had.

‘You don’t need a bunch of activities to love her. Why the list?’

She stared at him. Utterly at a loss. How had their nice day on the water turned suddenly so very confrontational?

He wobbled back up onto his feet and moved them along again. ‘That’s a rhetorical question, Shirley. You don’t have to answer to me. Only to you.’

They rowed in silence, the splish-splash of the pole becoming quite hypnotic.

‘Amazing we turned out such a balanced pair, really,’ he murmured into the warm air.

His smile was contagious. Then it turned to a chuckle and a full-out laugh and the gondola rocked. Neither of them could really claim any prizes for mental health. Not if you scratched below the surface. Not even far below.

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.