Once a Rebel... (4 page)

‘Not the alcohol, I hope?’

The glare intensified. ‘It’s not that kind of party. It’s for Luc’s nephew. He’s …’
God damn her snooping.
‘He’s nine.’

She blinked at him. A child’s party …? Then the tiniest of smiles crept onto her lips. ‘Please tell me you’re dressing as a clown.’

He threw his arms up and walked across the room from her. ‘Do you seriously think that a garden-variety clown would be the best I can do?’

‘No, I expect you’d be a miserable, creepy clown.’

He paused, uncertain whether he’d just been insulted. ‘Right. Exactly. Thankfully, Tim’s not into clowns.’

‘What is he into? And why are you trying so very hard not to say?’

He huffed a long breath. ‘Warriors.’

Those expressive brows folded again. ‘Soldiers?’

He guided her from the bar again without touching her. ‘Old school. Swords and shields type of warriors.’

Out of the corner of his vision he saw her press her lips together to stymie the smile he was sure was wanting to burst forth. ‘A boy after your own heart, then?’

‘That’s what Luc said.’

She walked beside him. ‘Okay, so for the princely sum of one child’s birthday party we now have front row access to the Berlin Philharmonic?’

He shrugged. ‘That should give you an idea of how not a big deal this trade is for Luc.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or how very big a deal a kid’s birthday party is for you.’

He grunted and pushed through the doors back into the foyer, holding it open for her. The noise
from the mounting audience surged and washed over them.

‘Are you coming or staying?’

It wasn’t too late to scalp the tickets out front for a profit.

She let the smile loose, finally. Smug and a little bit too appealing. ‘And forgo the chance to make you have to get your Spartacus on?’ She pushed past him and spoke into the crowd. ‘Not on your life.’

Shirley shuffled in her seat as the applause for the conductor finally died down. She had no idea who he was but every other person there clearly did, judging by the adulation. The white-haired man turned his back on the audience and sorted his music in the descended hush. The perfect acoustics of the venue meant that everyone heard it. Even the shuffling of music sheets sounded good.

Of course
, her mother would have chided.
Beethoven wrote it.

It was hard, as it always was, not to regret her mother’s absence. How she would have appreciated this special moment. Then again, if she’d been alive, would any of them have thought of doing it? She’d barely gone to the movies in all of Shirley’s childhood, let alone anywhere this special.

That was the awful irony about bucket lists.

‘Ready?’ Hayden leaned in and whispered. His shoulder brushed hers and the heat pumping off him surged.

The final murmurs from the rows of seating behind
and above them stopped and, though nothing in particular was said, the orchestra locked their eyes on the white-haired man in front of them the moment he raised both arms and held them there.

Shirley’s breath held, too.

And then they came … The first distinctive notes of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony.

Da da da dum …

Da da da dummmmm.

This close, the music was virtually a physical impact. Its volume. Its presence. The hairs curling around her face blew and tickled in the breeze generated only by the synchronised speed of the string section as they commenced their furious playing.

She still hadn’t breathed.

Hayden glanced sideways at her as the galloping, excitable violins grew in pitch and strength and she sat up straighter. It wasn’t until the trombone had its momentary solo that she heaved in her first breath.

And still he looked.

Amazing, this close, this live. The passion of the performers poured off the stage and washed over her. The drama of the conductor’s jerky directions, the rolling synergy of their notes.

Her eyes fell shut.

The music fluttered against her face as it entered the gentle, lyrical interlude which grew and grew.

This was what Beethoven must have experienced when he could no longer hear his music.

And then it came. The discordant counterpoint.

Her eyes opened and she glanced to her right. Hayden was still looking at her. She took a deep breath and returned her full attention to the hammering orchestra. Minutes passed, planets orbited, the poles melted. The music softened for a momentary reprieve. The poignant, forlorn aria of a lone oboe—she wondered how she’d never noticed it before when her mother cranked up her
Best of Beethoven.

And then the tumbling notes, the controlled descent before returning to the power of the full orchestra for the climax which ended so very like it had begun. Her chest heaved, her heart beat in synch with the strokes of the musical genius. Her body flinched with the explosive closing notes, and she pressed her lips together to stop from crying out.

And then … nothing.

Silence.

The conductor lowered his baton. The orchestra breathed out as one—long, slow and silent.

Shirley turned, breathless, to Hayden. She couldn’t clap because no one else was. She couldn’t leap up and shout for more, though it seemed ludicrous that music like that wasn’t supposed to be celebrated loudly. She could only look at him and hope that her excitement and appreciation were written in her eyes. Her fingers curled around his, hard, as though she could press her thoughts straight through his skin.

His return gaze was complex. Curious. As though she were an alien species he’d just discovered under a rock. But mostly laden with an unexpected quality.

Envy.

Someone behind them coughed. Someone else murmured as the orchestra quietly turned to the next piece. To them this was just another performance. Seven minutes of top-shelf proficiency.

To Shirley it was one of the most extraordinary things she’d ever done.

The audience murmuring grew loud enough that she risked a whisper. But while she might have been able to coordinate her lungs to push air through her voice box, she couldn’t quite make the sounds into a meaningful sentence.

‘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.

‘So the next one is yours,’ Hayden finally said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Our next adventure. Your choice. Your challenge. See if you can top this.’