Once a Rebel... (7 page)

‘Actually, I let myself in.’

‘But I didn’t throw you out. In the exact moment I accepted your intrusion, I bought-into your quest.
I gave you something small—my attention—then you incrementally asked for more.’ His eyes fell to her lips, which had parted softly. ‘A few hours of my time to do the dolphins. Then a commitment to spend a lot more of my time working out how to do it on the cheap. Then you triggered my natural competitiveness and got me to buy in even further. And now we’re sitting on a freighter getting ready to go to another country.’

‘All because you let me into your house?’ she breathed.

‘All because you got me to commit a tiny part of myself to this quest. And the moment I made the mental shift there was no turning back.’

‘I didn’t mean to do any of that.’ Heat rushed up her cheeks.

‘Yes, you did, you just didn’t name it. No one does.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve made my business out of naming it.’

Out of selling his soul. For top dollar.

She watched him steadily. Read him correctly. ‘So why do you still do it?’

The million-dollar question. The answer would be worth that if anyone could give it to him.

‘Because I can?’

‘Is that a good enough reason?’ she murmured. ‘Just because you can?’

‘And because someone else would if not me.’

‘Why don’t you just leave them to it?’

‘Because they won’t do it as well as me.’ He’d chosen that profession and he was good at it.
The best. It was about the only validation he got these days.

Her curious green eyes dug deep. Trying to figure him out. There was more he could say, things that would only add to her confusion. But he didn’t because they would only smack of justification.

‘Anyway. That’s how it’s done. In life. In love. In everything.’

‘Not love—surely?’

‘Love isn’t special. Or different. You just have to find the in-point. Something small.’

‘That makes it sound very calculated.’

He shrugged. ‘What is seduction if not entirely calculated?’

‘We were talking about love, not seduction.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Then it hit him. ‘You don’t believe that love is something that just happens without effort?’

She frowned and colour pricked at her cheeks.

‘How can Shiloh operate on the sharp edge of the sword when it comes to every other aspect of contemporary life, yet still buy into the whole romantic love myth?’

‘You don’t believe in falling in love?’ she bristled.

‘That implies some kind of uncontrolled accident of fate. Love is a steady, intentional climb towards a goal.’

‘You speak from experience?’

‘I speak from centuries of experience.’ Other people’s experience. Myriad lives across time.

She lifted one brow. ‘And the centuries tell you that seduction and love are the same thing?’

‘They’re symbiotic. Seduction is the best part of love.’

‘Spoken like a true man,’ she grunted. ‘Somehow, I thought you’d be a devotee of the meeting of intellects being the purest form of love.’

He looked down on her. ‘You think Plato or Socrates didn’t consider mental sparring as a kind of seduction?’ She wanted to deny it—he could see it in her troubled expression.

‘Surely there has to be a physical attraction?’ she pressed.

‘It’s a bonus but not essential.’

Keen green eyes fixed on him and he could see her sharp brain taking hold exactly as it had at the dolphins. Her mind was engaged. Great, he could work with minds.

‘So how would you start a seduction of a complete stranger?’ she asked. ‘If I brought the question to Molon Labe as a business hurdle?’

He folded his arms and pretended to consider it. He didn’t need to. This stuff came so naturally to him after all this time. In fact, even before that, human nature had always been so very obvious to him. The links between people, their motivations and drivers. It had taken him years to realise the rest of the world was more or less oblivious to that.

‘You have to start with the ultimate goal. Do you want to feel desired? Get married? Be loved?’ He locked his eyes on hers. ‘Or do you just want
to scratch that itch that burns like fire-ants under your skin?’

She swallowed hard, but her pupils grew bigger. ‘Let’s keep this tasteful. Let’s say married.’

So Shirley Marr blushed like a schoolgirl at the thought of sharing a room with him and wanted to be desired and loved but wasn’t saying so.

Interesting.

He thought about it for a few moments, for effect. ‘Marriage is a commitment. So your first step is to find a way to get a man to commit to the idea of commitment itself.’

‘How?’

He searched the air for ideas. A hundred came to him immediately. ‘Start a project together. Travel. Buy a puppy. Put a vegetable patch in. Get him to give you a space for your toothbrush at his place. Anything that requires him to lock a part of himself into something.’

The dark hair mounded on her head tipped as she considered that.

‘Once he’s made the mental shift towards commitment, then it’s just a series of incremental rises until he’s totally on-board with the idea of a permanent commitment.’

She stared at him. ‘No wonder you’re so cynical. If that’s what you believe people do.’

‘I’m not saying it’s conscious, necessarily.’

‘Surely being aware of it means it wouldn’t work?’

He laughed. ‘You wanted me to commit to the
list and I did. Knowing what was happening didn’t stop it from working.’

She chewed her lip. Suddenly two hundred per cent of his focus centred there.

‘A demonstration, perhaps?’ he murmured.

Her eyes darkened and widened within their kohl smudges as she stared up at him warily.

‘I find myself very interested in the shape and taste of your lips,’ he said theatrically. ‘And I’m declaring that to you so you’re aware of the direction of my thoughts and so you can plan to resist when the moment comes.’

And because success will be so much more satisfying that way.

He reached down and pulled her to her feet. She rose to stand before him.

Shirley had to push extra-hard to get words past her suddenly tight chest. ‘This is hypothetical, I assume?’ Hayden’s smile reminded her of the Huntsman-wolf in Red Riding Hood.
All the better to eat you with …

‘If that makes you feel better about your chances of resisting,’ he said.

He pulled her a little closer. Closed his arms around her, hot and strong. Her heart went berserk. ‘So the question is, Shirley … knowing what I’m doing and knowing what my goal is—’ he breathed down on her ‘—are you any less inclined to let me kiss you?’

She licked her lips. Struggled for air. ‘You’re assuming you already have my buy-in?’

Hayden blinked, slow, confident. That caused
Shirley’s own lids to follow suit, growing heavier. She tried to glance away to break the contact.

‘A kiss is the touching of flesh on flesh. You started to buy into me touching you months ago … the first time you let my glance rest on your porcelain skin. Then later, when you let my fingers graze your hair. Then take your hand. Even now … my eyes are roaming where my lips cannot and you’re allowing it.’

Sure enough, his veiled gaze browsed her mouth and made it part in breathless anticipation. She forced it closed.

‘And now, even knowing what I plan to do and why, you’re still in my arms. I think I’d call that buy-in.’

‘Pretty clever,’ she breathed, desperate to preserve some dignity. ‘Assuming it’s going to be any kind of kiss at all.’

His teeth flashed white and dangerous. ‘And there it is. Full commitment.’

He took her weight on his arm and leaned her back into it, his mouth pressing down confidently onto hers, sliding against it, still half-smiling in his victory. She held firm against the heavenly feel and smell of him so close, refusing to give in.

She would have loved to stand, unmoved, in his hold. To let him kiss her senseless and then to emerge untouched. Indifferent.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Not in this lifetime.

The moment she resisted, holding her own—barely—against the breathless spin of her mind, he upped the ante. Plying her with the technique
that must have unzipped many a skirt in its time. His mouth glided over hers, alternating pressure, his tongue teasing the firm line she maintained where her lips met. His flesh blazing against hers. Her head spun wildly.

He pulled back a little, breathed words against her flaming skin, and something about the shift of colour in his eyes told her he wasn’t playing a game any more. ‘I’m going to kiss that dark gloss off until I reveal what’s underneath it.’

A sudden erotic lance speared way down deep inside. He set to work doing just that, pressing himself more fully into her, binding them close and kissing the living daylights out of her. Her fingers, pressed against his chest to stop him getting closer, curled, of their own accord, into the fabric of his shirt. Her feet, which she’d positioned to help her push against Hayden, subtly shifted weight so that she leaned more fully into him.

Into his kiss.

Her head, which should have been screaming resistance, swam uselessly in the wash of scent and sensation pumping off the human hormone holding her up.

And her mouth opened.

Instantly he was in, his triumph punctuated by the thrusts of his tongue and the heaving breaths they both stole between kisses. Her whole body flamed with desire and she speared her fingers up into his hair, keeping him close. He backed her up against the wall.

‘Witch,’ he pressed into her hungry lips. ‘There was never any other avenue for us.’

Something about speech. Something about the incendiary way the two of them had burst to flame the moment they touched and the way the oxygen they sucked in only fuelled it more.
Something
finally drew her attention to what they were doing and where.

She pulled back, chest heaving. ‘You assume that was all your doing,’ she whispered the moment her lips were free. ‘What if I’ve been angling for a kiss since the beginning?’

His eyes darkened, dropped. Then his hands followed suit. Then he stepped away.

‘That’s the other key principle of influence,’ he heaved, dragging his wrist across his lips. ‘Convincing the subject it was their idea all along.’

And then he was gone, back across the hall to his own room, leaving her half sagging against the cold steel wall of the cabin.

Damn you, Hayden Tennant.

It was minutes before she had the strength to lever herself upright away from the wall long enough to sag down onto the little bed.

Had she ever before wanted something as badly and resented it so thoroughly as that kiss? She hated the fact that she was no more a match for his seduction than any of the other women he’d targeted and overpowered. And she
really
hated the fact that he’d been so supremely confident of her capitulation. Was he that sure of his own prowess
or did he think her so lacking in resolve and character?

Quite accurately, as it turned out. On all fronts.

Should she cut herself some slack that it was—without question—the best kiss she’d ever received? That it jammed electrodes into parts of her that usually slumbered happily and forced them into sparking, buzzing animation until they lurched to life like the Frankenstein of body organs. It was as surreal and unforgettable—and futile—as being snogged by some handsome movie star who kissed for a living. What hope did she have?

Yeah, that was satisfactory. No personal responsibility required at all, then.

‘Ugh.’ She bounced her head a few times on the neat pillow in its faintly diesel-smelling coverslip.

Of course she was responsible.

She’d been on slow simmer since the day of Tim’s party, having filled her imagination and the weeks since with images of an oil-slicked, half-naked Hayden sprawled so comfortably on that lawn chair. Yet strangely, it had been his comfort—not his state of undress—that had particularly appealed to her that day. She’d stretched out alongside him, dripping and smiling, and felt such an astonishing sense of amity for the man she’d only sparred with until then. Fellowship made a nice change from the thin edge of conflict or the dangerous high-wire of attraction. The best parts of being with Hayden were just … being.

But she knew which part got her pulse racing hardest.

She lifted her fingers to her lips.

So he’d kissed her. So what? He was just making a point. It just happened that he was as good a point-maker now as he had been when he was younger. Thorough and convincing. And she’d been well convinced by his kiss.

Right up until the moment he’d taunted her that it was fake and walked out of the room.

She rubbed the puffy skin of her bottom lip. Ridiculous. It was
not
still tingling. It was projection. It had just been a really spectacular kiss from someone self-proclaimed in the art of seduction. And she was generally hormone-deficient, so hitting a charisma bomb like Hayden was bound to have an impact.

Not
deficient;
that was hardly fair to a body that was capable—more than capable, apparently—of simmering. Perhaps
suppressed
was a better word. If you denied something long enough, your body eventually stopped expecting it.

Shirley blew air slowly out through still-pulsing lips.

She needed fresh air. Perspective.

She needed to get away from his lingering scent and the breath-stealing memory of him bending her back in his arms and plundering her mouth. Like the pirate he was. The stealer of kisses. And of dignity.

Half an hour in the bracing air of the Tasman Sea would do her wonders.

It might even help distract her from the all-encompassing desire to find Hayden and to pick a fight with him again, just to keep her arousal levels up. Up where he’d left them dangling so helplessly. So wasted.

If she couldn’t kiss him, she could shout at him a little bit and release tension that way.

H
E’D
made his point but he didn’t feel particularly good about it. Hours later and far out to sea, Hayden was still rattled by that kiss. The kiss he’d initiated then rapidly lost control of.

He’d lost control before, but it was always a carefully reined surrender. Even letting himself go came with some strict rules and recovery solutions. At all times.

With Shirley he’d literally lost it. His body participated in direct defiance of his will. On its own agenda. Nice little karmic reward for being a bastard and bending her to his will.

Just because you can …

He released his fingers from the punishing fists he’d made standing there at the bow of the
Paxos
, resting his arms on the aperture in the high wall which protected the crew and cargo from potentially high seas. Other people clenched their teeth when they were stressed, he clenched his fingers. To the point of pain.

It was unconscious but it made his dentist happy.

‘Hayden.’

Shirley spoke, soft and tentative, behind him. Knowing he was the cause of her uncertainty only infuriated him more. He turned slowly and faced the music.

She was in black from head to toe but it was just a T-shirt and leggings and she’d toned her make-up right back to a translucent foundation. Closer to what it had looked like the day she’d wiped Boudicca from her skin. Hayden stared at her and she shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny. When he wasn’t being distracted by dramatically highlighted eyes and burnished coffee lips it was possible to appreciate the fine texture of her skin. He’d attributed its smoothness to her make-up. But it looked as if it was all natural.

He cleared his throat. ‘You honoured our bargain.’

One elegantly plucked brow arched. ‘You thought I wouldn’t?’

‘I thought I might have voided it.’
By kissing you.

She glanced away briefly. ‘I asked you a question and you answered it. It wouldn’t be reasonable to protest.’

‘Most people would.’

‘I’m not most people.’

No. She wasn’t.

‘Anyway, I came to get you. There’s something you need to see.’

‘Where?’

‘Towards the back of the ship.’

A mosaic of sea-containers? He could see those
from here. But what else did he have to do with his time other than humour her? Even a half-hour in the stuffy little cabin had done his head in.

‘Lead on.’

She led him down the length of the ship and then stopped as she slipped one shoe on from its resting place against a giant blue sea-container. It was only then he realised she’d come to him barefoot. It seemed so comfortable on her he hadn’t stopped to think how out of place it was on a working freighter.

‘I worried I might not find it again,’ she said, her face strangely alight, turning down a gap between the high-rise of stacked containers.

‘For someone who takes things so seriously you seem unnaturally delighted by shipping containers.’

She laughed but didn’t turn, continuing into the man-made valley. ‘Just wait …’

They turned at her next shoe and he began to understand why she’d needed markers. Without the horizon to keep you oriented, this was a maze. She marched onwards then peered to her right—straight into another container from where he stood—paused and turned back to him, looking for all the world like a delighted child.

Was it a coincidence that he’d only been able to remember her after she’d shed the Shiloh mask?

She grinned at him. ‘What’s the thing least likely to be around this corner? In the whole world?’

The rapid mental shift that question required
took him a moment to adjust. He thought of the craziest and most unlikely thing he could conceive. ‘My parents having high tea.’

The delight fell from her face just slightly and her slim fingers rested gently on the edge of the container as she frowned at him. She wouldn’t know—about
them
, about why that was such a ludicrous concept, whether they were at sea or not—but she was smart enough to read between the lines.

‘I assume it’s not that,’ he said to cover the silence. To mask his sudden pain.

She straightened and backed up, holding one hand out as though to take his across the emptiness between them, keeping her eyes firmly locked on his. Warm. Beckoning.

A true Siren …

It was only as he stepped towards her that he realised it wasn’t a solid wall of sea containers to her left; it was another turn. A turn which opened out to—

‘What the—?’

Her face split into a radiant smile and he stumbled to a halt, utterly and genuinely dumbfounded for the first time in his entire life.

A giraffe.

It stood, munching happily on straw and staring at him with a general sort of curiosity as he stood gaping at it. It was housed in the biggest animal crate he’d ever seen, with an opening large enough for it to stretch its long neck and head out of and get a whiff of the sea. A large sort of container
clearing had been built around it at the heart of the ship to shelter it from rough weather but give it some sense of air and space.

The strangest sense washed through him—alien and long-forgotten.

Wonder.

Had it really been that long since something had amazed him? Moved him the way those enormous thick-lashed, liquid mercury eyes did. This extraordinary creature standing in this extraordinary place.

Maybe so.

‘Back again?’ A blonde woman stepped out from behind the crate and murmured quietly to the giraffe before turning her attention to Shirley. She was dressed casually but had the boots and tan of someone who worked outdoors for a living.

‘Hayden, this is Caryn,’ Shirley said next to him. ‘And that—’ she nodded at the enormous chomping head fifteen feet above them ‘—is Twuwu. She’s en route to a new home in New Zealand.’

Shirley greeted the woman as he still struggled to find words. En route to a zoo. Of course she was. He’d never had occasion to think about how else you got an animal as big as a giraffe across an ocean.

Shirley went straight into Shiloh mode, asking what were clearly not her first questions of the day, examining the box, leaning back on a tower of containers and just … contemplating. He watched her do her thing but mostly he watched Twuwu. She
was so very unconcerned by what was happening around her, content to merely munch on her hay.

‘Is she sedated?’ he asked.

Caryn turned to him and gave him a winning smile. She was every bit a daughter of nature. Golden-haired, tanned, fit. And interested. Instantly obvious.

‘She was lightly sedated for the drive down to the port, and the loading. But she’s fully recovered now.’

‘She’s placid.’

‘She’s spent a lot of time in that crate preparing for the journey. It’s become like her stable.’

He glanced around at the multicoloured wall of containers that surrounded the crate on all sides. ‘What would happen if she saw the ocean?’

Again the brilliant smile. Caryn sank on one hip and looked up at him. ‘Hopefully we won’t find out.’

Shirley rejoined them. ‘Will you stay out here for the whole journey?’ she asked tightly.

‘Most of the day, monitoring her condition, but I’ll sleep up in the cabins with everyone else.’

Did she just flick him a glance? Yes, she did.

Well, well …

Shirley continued with her questions and, before long, they knew everything there was to know about international wildlife transactions and the toiletry habits of giraffes. He watched Shirley work—drawing conclusions, filing away every answer for a future story. Eventually all the questions
were asked and all the good reasons to be hanging around evaporated.

‘You should come back and visit Twuwu during the trip,’ Caryn said to Shirley but her eyes flicked to his again. ‘She likes company.’

Shirley thanked her and they retraced their steps back through the maze of containers from the heart of the ship to the edge.

‘You seem very relaxed.’ Just when he thought he liked her best off kilter. Mellow Shirley made him think about long, lazy summer sleep-ins. Naked.

Not appropriate.

‘There’s something about this ship … Maybe it’s the gentle sway … But it chills me out. I find myself relaxing.’

‘Maybe it’s me?’

Her immediate laugh ricocheted off the containers. ‘It’s not you.’

Right.
Then again, his first instinct on getting her alone in a room with a bed in it had been to paw her. So …

‘The giraffe then?’ Twuwu had certainly done wonders for his blood pressure.

‘Maybe.’ They turned out of the massive load of containers at the edge of the ship. ‘I’ll certainly be visiting again. What an awesome bonus.’

Their next steps passed in silence. Until he couldn’t take it any more. ‘What do you want to do now?’ he blurted.

She turned and blinked at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Us. What will we do now?’ And for the next four days.

She laughed and started walking again. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m going to start a story for next week.’

He frowned. ‘You’re working on this trip?’

‘Of course. So are you.’

He was supposed to be. But … ‘We’re in the middle of the ocean. Surely that demands some down time?’

‘You’ve had two years of down time. Are you really so hungry for more?’

No. But he was hungry for something and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It was an odd kind of … emotional famine. Then it dawned on him.

He wanted company.
Shirley’s
company.

‘I’m bored. Sea life is interminable.’

She laughed again and jogged ahead of him up the functional steel staircase. He lagged back to appreciate the view. ‘We’ve only been out of the harbour for a couple of hours, Popeye,’ she said.

‘Entertain me.’

She threw him an arch look back over her shoulder. ‘Entertain yourself.’

He thought about Caryn. Then dismissed it. Prodding at Shirley was so much more fun. ‘You can write your story when it’s dark.’

‘I plan to be sleeping when it’s dark.’

‘Really?’ He followed her from the deck into the long corridor that their cabins were in. ‘That’s a lot of cabin time. What will I do?’

She paused at her door. ‘Whatever you want. I have work to do.’

Seriously? She was ditching him? ‘Will I see you in the mess room?’

She turned back from unlocking her door. ‘Seven p.m. sharp.’ She stepped into the room, faced back out at him and leaned on the door. Smiling the way you did to door-to-door salesmen you wanted to get rid of. ‘See you then.’

And then she was gone and Hayden stood staring at the flaking paint on the timber, speechless for the second time in a day.

Blonde.

Of course she was. And, in case Hayden hadn’t noticed her golden locks, Caryn had tossed them around unmissably. Her skin as tanned as Twuwu’s markings and with lashes just as long, too. And all the while
she’d
hovered off to the side, ignored, with her thick hair hauled back in a sea-sensible ponytail and her face virtually make-up-less.

Shirley lay back on one of the two beds in the room and glared at the ceiling. Could it be any more grey or uninspiring?

Could she be any grumpier?

She’d liked Caryn just half an hour earlier. They’d chatted for ages about her work and destination. Then she’d introduced Hayden, picked up on the none too subtle vibe pinging between the two of them and rapidly gone off her.

Not that it was Caryn’s fault. She was blonde, gorgeous and willing. Exactly Hayden’s type, even
if she was wearing steel-capped boots and serviceable shorts and not something slip-thin and expensive. And she herself had been the genius to go and find him and hand him, gift-wrapped, to the only blonde on the freighter. It was entirely self-inflicted.

She sighed.

She’d just … She’d wanted him to have the experience she’d had. The discovery. Coming around that corner and seeing that beautiful animal, so misplaced and unexpected. And she’d enjoyed giving it to him. Everything had gone slow motion just then, as she’d fixed her eyes on his and stepped backward to bring him out into the giraffe’s eye line. His face had transformed in that moment, practically glowed, and she had—for precious seconds—a glimpse of the old Hayden. The young man who’d found every aspect of life a revelation. She remembered that face from when she’d hidden under the stairs and watched him through the door crack on Saturdays.

And she’d given him that today.

And then his eyes had refocused on their target—a blonde, the only kind of woman he ever dated—and they’d hardened back into the new Hayden. The Hayden she’d met that very first day at his cottage. The Hayden who was bored with life and out to wring its riches. He hadn’t done much else—he hadn’t needed to, really, because Caryn seemed happy to carry the burden of the flirting—but her implication was clear.

Come back and visit …

Yay.

She pushed herself onto her side and sat up. Work. She’d said it to get a clean break from Hayden, but suddenly it did seem like a reasonable distraction from her unsanctioned thoughts about
the kiss.
First, unpacking had been a good excuse to stay in here long enough to lose him to his curiosity about how freighters worked. Then roaming the deck and the Lego-stacks of containers.

Now work.

Caryn’s chat had triggered a blog idea. About the unseen challenges of international livestock transactions. Zoo animals, racing horses, stud bulls. How many other unique passengers were sitting in crates on ships, planes and trucks around the world right at this moment? It was as unsung as travelling the world on passenger freighters.

She sketched out the preliminary outline of a story and jotted down some research ideas. That neatly took care of … oh … minutes.

‘Ugh.’ She threw herself backwards and stared again at the offending ceiling. Had they not painted this vessel at all since it was commissioned?

Hayden was responsible for this off-balance mental mess. His incendiary kiss. It had been as unexpected as the giraffe. Though, like the giraffe, once discovered, it was a hard thing to put out of your mind. She’d had to work hard out there on the deck not to keep staring at his mouth. Remembering.