the immediacy of that made him nervous. ‘Won’t you eviscerate if you go in the sun, or something?’
She glared at him. ‘I’m pale, I’m not a vampire. Stop hedging. Why haven’t you done a single one?’
She was going to keep on asking until he told her. And she wasn’t going to like the answer. ‘I’ve been too busy besmirching my soul.’
She frowned. ‘Meaning?’
‘Making lots of money.’
‘That should make it easier to do the things on the list, not harder.’
‘Success doesn’t make itself. You have to work hard. Put in the hours.’ So many hours …
Her lips thinned. ‘I’m well aware of that. But this list was your idea. To remind you of the importance of feeding your soul.’ His own words sounded pretentious on her dark-red lips. ‘To honour my mother’s memory.’
The distress she was trying to hide under her anti-tan crept out in the slightest of wobbles.
There it was again. The weird pang of empathy. ‘They’re meaningless, Shirley. The things. They won’t bring her back.’
‘They keep her alive. In here.’ Pressing her long, elegant fingers to her sternum only highlighted the way her dress struggled to contain her chest. And the way her chest struggled to contain her anger.
‘That’s important for you; you’re her daughter—’
‘You were her friend.’
His gut screwed down into a hard fist. He pushed to his feet. Forced lightness to his voice. ‘What are you, the Ghost of Christmas Past? Life goes on.’
Those eyes that had seemed big outside were enormous in here, under the fluorescent glow of her sorrow. The silence was breached only by the sound of her strained breathing.
‘What happened to you, Hayden?’ she whispered.
He flinched. ‘Nothing.’
‘I believed you, back then. When you sat at my mother’s funeral looking so torn up and pledged to honour her memory.’
She stared at him. Hard. As if she could see right through him. And for one crazy moment he wished that were true. That someone could drag it all out into the open to air. Instead of festering. But the rotting had started long before he’d begun to go to her house on Saturdays.
He clenched his fists behind his back. ‘That makes two of us.’
‘It’s not too late to start.’
He needed to be moving. ‘Oh, I think the time for me to make good on that particular promise is long past,’ he said, turning and walking out of the room.
She caught up with him in the kitchen, grabbed his arm and then dropped it just as quickly. Did she feel the same jolt he had?
Her steady words gave nothing away. ‘Come to the dolphins with me tomorrow.’
‘No.’
She curled the fingers she’d touched him with down by her side. ‘Why not? Scared?’
He turned and gave her his most withering stare. ‘Please.’
‘Then come.’
‘Not interested.’
The smile she threw him was tight, but not unattractive. ‘I’ll drive.’
He glanced down at her boots. ‘You’re just as likely to get your heel speared in the accelerator and drive us into—’
At the very last moment, his brain caught up with his mouth. She didn’t need a reminder of how her mother had died.
Silence weighed heavily.
She finally broke it. ‘I’ll pick you up at dawn.’
‘I won’t be here,’ he lied. As if he had anywhere else to be.
‘I’ll come anyway.’ She turned for the door.
He shouted after her. ‘Shirley—’
‘Shiloh.’
‘—why are you doing this?’
She paused, but didn’t turn back. He had no trouble hearing her, thanks to the hallway’s tall ceiling. ‘Because it’s something I can do.’
‘She won’t know,’ he murmured.
Her shoulders rose and fell. Just once.
‘No. But I will.’ She started down the hall again. ‘And so will you.’
‘COME on, Hayden,’ Shirley muttered.
She banged the door with the heel of her hand to protect her acrylics. She paused, listened. Stepped back and leaned over to look in the window.
Which bothered her more? The fact that he’d actually left his home before dawn to avoid having to see her again or the fact that she could have turned around a dozen times on the drive over here—maybe should have—but she’d decided not to.
Because she wanted to give him a chance. The old Hayden.
No one could be that much of an ass, surely. She stared at the still silent door.
Looked as if he was the real deal.
‘Ass!’ she yelled out to the empty miles around them, then turned and walked away.
The front door rattled as her foot hit the bottom step on his porch.
‘Is that some kind of greeting ritual in your culture?’
By the time she had turned, Hayden was leaning on the doorframe. Shirtless, barefoot. A pair of green track pants hanging low on his hips and bunched at his ankles. Looking for all the world like he wasn’t expecting a soul.
One hundred per cent intentional.
He was trying to throw her.
‘Good. You’re ready,’ she breezed, working hard to keep her breathing on the charts and her eyes off his bare chest. She’d spent years as a teenager secretly imagining what her mother’s star pupil would look like under all his loose bohemian layers. The sudden answer may not have been what her teenage self would have conceived, but it didn’t disappoint. No gratuitous muscle-stacks, just the gently curved contours up top and the long, angular lines down lower that showed he kept himself in good, lean shape.
And he knew it.
She fixed a brave smile on her face and turned to make room for him on the steps. ‘Shall we?’
‘You don’t actually think I’m going like this?’ he drawled.
No. She hadn’t. But she’d be damned if she’d play his games. She kept her face impassive. ‘Depends if you have swimmers on beneath the track pants.’
His grin broadened, dangerously good for this early in the morning. ‘Nope. Nothing at all under these.’
Her pulse kicked into gear. But she fought it. ‘Well, you’ll have to change.’
‘Easily offended, Shirley?’ He dropped his chin so that he peered up at her across long, dark lashes. It was possibly the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. More theatrics. She took a breath and remembered who she was. And who Shiloh had dealt with and bested in the past.
‘The dolphins.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Wouldn’t want them to mistake you for a bait fish.’
An awful tense silence crackled between them and Shirley wondered if she’d gone a step too far. But then he tipped his head far back and laughed.