Once a Rebel... Read online

  Praise for Nikki Logan

  ‘Superb debut. 4.5 Stars.’

  —RT Book Reviews on Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss!

  ‘Now, here is an Australian writer who manages both to tell a good story and to capture Australia well. I had fun from start to finish. Nikki Logan will be one to watch.’

  —www.goodreads.com on

  Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss!

  ‘This story has well defined and soundly motivated characters as well as a heart-wrenching conflict.’

  —RT Book Reviews on Their Newborn Gift

  About Nikki Logan

  NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

  Once A Rebel…

  Nikki Logan

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  For Tracy Scarparolo.

  And to Dan, the best office-mate and friend a girl could have.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Nikki Logan

  About Nikki Logan

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  www.remembermrsmarr.com

  Front row seats for a Beethoven symphony

  Bungee jump in New Zealand

  Run a marathon

  Ride like The Man from Snowy River

  Hunt for a dinosaur fossil

  Commune with the penguins in Antarctica

  Float in a Hot Air Balloon

  Climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge

  Take a gondola ride in Venice

  Climb Everest

  Abseil down a cliff face

  Be transported by a touch

  Get up close and personal with dolphins

  Take a cruise

  Hold my grandchild

  www.rem—

  SHIRLEY keyed the first letters of the web address into her browser before it auto-completed the rest. She visited enough that it knew exactly where she wanted to go.

  www.remembermrsmarr.com

  The simple site opened and she spent the first moments—as she always did—staring at the face of her mother, captured forever in time in a delighted, head-thrown-back kind of joy. Exactly as she would have wanted people to see her. Exactly as her students did see her. And exactly how Shirley chose to remember her now, with the benefit of distance.

  Clicking through to the list she knew was on the next page only disappointed.

  Still nothing in the first column—the one headed ‘HT.’

  After all this time.

  Hayden Tennant had been her mother’s all-time favourite student. He’d been the one—hurt and grieving—to suggest the tribute website in the first place. So that they could each do the items on her mother’s bucket list. All the life experiences an unlicensed drunk-driver had robbed her of.

  Hayden had pledged.

  He’d vowed in that gorgeous, thick, grief-filled voice.

  Yet every single square next to every single item on www.remembermrsmarr.com was empty where Hayden’s initials should have been.

  Today was an extra sucky day to be staring at the list and finding it empty. Because today was ten years since Carol-Anne Marr had taken her last breath. How many weeks had passed before he’d forgotten all about it? Or was it days? Hours? Did he think no one would notice? Did he think his teacher’s only daughter wouldn’t be watching? Shirley tapped her purple fingernails on the keyboard and enjoyed the sound of the slick keys under them.

  Come on, Hayden. You’ve had a decade.

  Something.

  Anything.

  Swimming with dolphins. Climbing the Harbour Bridge. Running a marathon. Even she’d done that one, back before she’d got boobs. Back when her schedule had been able to tolerate training for eight straight hours. It had taken her eighteen months to train up and get old enough to qualify, but then she’d placed in the middle of the under-sixteens category and held her medal to the heavens as she lurched across the finish line.

  And then she’d never run again.

  If I can tick that one off, surely you can, Tennant.

  Hayden, with his long, fast legs. His intense focus. His rigid determination. He wouldn’t even need to train, he’d just will himself to last the entire forty-two kilometres.

  She’d hoped for a while that he was honouring her mother privately, keeping his own list the way she herself was.

  But the truth had finally dawned.

  All that angst, all that sorrow and despair at her funeral; all of that was simply the emotion of the moment. Like a performance piece. Terribly dramatic and intense. Terribly Hayden. None of it had been genuine. Amazing, really, that he was still forking out the cash annually to maintain the domain name.

  She cocked her head.

  The domain …

  It took her just a few minutes to track down the site registration details and a few more for a contact number for the company it was registered to. Molon Labe Enterprises. That had to be him. He’d had a thing for Spartans the entire time she’d known him.

  Known of him.

  Watched him.

  She chased down the contact details for the company right here in Sydney and its executive structure. He wasn’t on it. Disappointed by that dead end, she called the company direct and asked for him outright.

  ‘Mr Tennant does not take calls,’ the receptionist told her.

  Really? Too busy and important? ‘Could you give me his email address, please?’

  It took the officious woman nearly a minute to outline all the reasons why she couldn’t. Shirley rang off, far from defeated. Chasing down story leads was what she did for a living. It wasn’t stalking if you were a professional. A bit of reconnaissance, finding out where he was and what was so important it had made him forget the promises of a decade ago …

  That was doable. He’d never even know.

  Thank goodness for search engines.

  Two hours went by before she surfaced, frowning deeply at the screen. Hayden Tennant was a time bomb. Her online search was littered with images of him stumbling out of one seedy venue or another on the arm of some blonde—always a blonde—going back six years. In most of them, it was hard to tell who was holding up whom, but the club security was always on hand to facilitate their departure.

  She stared at one image. He looked nothing like the Hayden she remembered. He used to get around in a shabby kind of hip style—the garret look, her mother had used to joke and make Shirley promise never to go out in public like that. So of course she had instantly wanted to. The designer lank hair, holed jumper and frequently bare feet. Bohemian plus. She’d coveted everything about his personal style back then, as only a
lovesick fourteen-year-old could.

  But the Internet had him in some pretty fancy threads now, as carefully fitted as the women accessorising the sharp suit and cars.

  Guess everyone grows up.

  She searched up Molon Labe’s website, flicked through to their corporate contacts and scribbled down the address. Maybe his reception staff would find it harder to say no to her face? Not that she had the vaguest idea of what she’d say if she saw him.

  Or why she wanted to.

  Maybe so she could ask him, personally, why he hadn’t bothered to tick a single box. Maybe because she owed it to her mother.

  Or maybe just so she could finally nail a lid on the last remnants of her childhood.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘PLEASE be a stripper.’

  His voice was thick and groggy, as though she’d just roused him from sleep. Maybe she had. It was a gently warm and breezeless day and Hayden Tennant looked as if he’d been lying in that longish grass at the base of the slope behind his cottage for quite some time.

  Shirley found some air and forced it past a larynx choked with nerves. This suddenly seemed like a spectacularly bad idea.

  ‘Were you expecting one?’ she breathed.

  He scrutinised her from behind expensive sunglasses. ‘No. But I’ve learned never to question the benevolence of the universe.’

  Still so fast with a comeback. The man in front of her might have matured in ways she hadn’t anticipated but he was still Hayden inside.

  Somewhere.

  She straightened and worked hard not to pluck at her black dress. It was the tamest thing in her wardrobe. ‘I’m not a stripper.’

  His head flopped back down onto the earth and his eyes closed again. ‘That’s disappointing.’

  Discharged.

  She stood her ground and channelled her inner Shiloh. She wouldn’t let his obvious dismissal rile her. Silent minutes ticked by. His long body sprawled comfortably where he lay. She took the opportunity to look him over. Still lean, still all legs. A tiny, tidy strip of facial hair above his lip and on his chin. Barely there but properly manicured. It only half-covered the scar she knew marred his upper lip.

  The biggest difference was his hair. Shorter now than when he’d been at uni and a darker blond. It looked as if someone who knew what they were doing had cut it originally, but she guessed they hadn’t had a chance to provide any maintenance recently.

  She pressed her lips together and glared pointlessly at him as the silence continued. Had he gone back to sleep?

  ‘I can do this all day,’ he murmured, eyes still closed. ‘I have nowhere to be.’

  She spread her weight more evenly on her knee-high boots and appreciated every extra inch they gave her. ‘Me, too.’

  He lifted his head again and opened his eyes a crack.

  ‘If you’re not here to give me a lap dance, what do you want?’

  Charming. ‘To ask you some questions.’

  He went dangerously still. Even the grass seemed to stop its swaying. ‘Are you a journalist?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It’s a yes/no question.’

  ‘I write for an online blog.’ Understatement. ‘But I’m not here in that capacity.’

  He pulled himself up and braced against one strong arm in the turf. Did that mean she had his attention?

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Molon Labe.’

  He frowned and lifted his sunglasses to get a better look at her. His eyes were exactly as blue and exactly as intense as she remembered. She sneaked in a quick extra breath.

  ‘My office wouldn’t have given you this address.’

  No. Not even face to face.

  ‘I researched it.’ Code for I stalked your offices.

  It had taken a few visits to the coffee shop over the road to spot what messenger company they used most regularly. A man at the head of a corporation he didn’t visit had to get documents delivered to wherever he was, right? For signatures at least. Sadly for them, if Hayden ever found out, the courier company had been only too obliging when a woman purporting to be from Molon Labe had called to verify the most recent details of one of their most common delivery addresses.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘But you’re not here in a journalistic capacity?’

  ‘I’m not a journalist.’

  ‘Or a stripper, apparently.’ He glanced over her from foot to head. ‘Though that seems wasted.’

  She forced herself not to react. She’d chosen this particular outfit carefully—knee-high boots, black scoop-neck dress cinched at the waist and falling to her knees—but she’d been going more for I am woman and less for I am pole dancer.

  ‘You used to say sarcasm was the lowest form of wit,’ she murmured.

  One eye narrowed, but he gave no other sign of being surprised that she already knew him. ‘Actually, someone else did. I just borrowed it. I’ve come to be quite fond of sarcasm in the years since …?’ He left it open for her to finish the sentence.

  He didn’t recognise her.

  Not entirely surprising, given how different she must have looked when he last saw her. Fourteen, stick-insect-thin, mousy, uninspired hair. A kid. She hadn’t discovered fashion—and her particular brand of fashion—until she was sixteen and her curves had busted out.

  ‘You knew my mother,’ she offered carefully.

  The eyes narrowed again and he pushed himself to his feet. Now it was his turn to tower over her. It gave him a great view down her scoop neck and he took full advantage. His eyes eventually came back to hers.

  ‘I may have been an early starter but I think it’s a stretch to suggest I could be your father, don’t you?’

  Hilarious.

  ‘Carol-Anne Marr,’ she persisted, the name itself an accusation.

  Was it wrong that she took pleasure from the flash of pain he wasn’t quite fast enough to disguise? That she grasped so gratefully at any hint of a sign that he hadn’t forgotten her mother the moment she was in the ground. That he wasn’t quite as faithless as she feared.

  ‘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.’