by Nikki Logan
‘Everyone feels pain.’
‘Not if you’ve numbed yourself to survive. I’d never let myself care enough, be engaged enough, be emotionally invested enough to care if something was taken away from me. Not since I was a boy. I’d shoved it right down deep inside out of sheer survival. I’d forgotten what loss felt like.’
Every humane cell in her body responded to that, totally overruling her anger.
‘I don’t want to be like him, Shirley. Controlling others to make up for something in myself.’
‘You’re not like him.’
‘Two years ago it finally dawned on me what I was becoming. The socially acceptable version of him. So I dropped out and tried to get myself sorted. I thought I had it beat. And then you looked at me that day in the tent the way my mother used to look at him. That awful mix of pain and love and resignation. And I knew I was kidding myself thinking I could manage it alone.’
Alone. Was he looking to her to be some kind of salvation?
‘I’m getting professional assistance now.’
Nothing he could have said—nothing—could have surprised her more. Not if he stood on the top of Everest and declared undying passion for her yak. ‘You’re in therapy?’
‘He’s an idiot—’ he brushed it off, shifting the angle of his crouch by her stretcher ‘—but he seems to know some things. We’re making progress.’
Given his budget, he probably had the best the country had to offer.
‘But I didn’t need Sigmund Freud to tell me why I was hurting. I missed you, Shirley. In my life. In my arms. In my business.’
He smiled, but she couldn’t match it. This was all too monumental.
Seriously, if she woke up on the side of some pebbly track with her Sherpa and the yak staring down at her she was going to just … walk off the edge of the nearest crevasse. And have a very unfriendly discussion with the God she was starting to get a sense of up here.
She got to her feet and he pushed himself up to stand in front of her. She stared up at him. Made herself say it. The bitterest pill.
‘You told me you could never love me.’
He dropped his eyes. ‘I told you I’d never be able to love you. Not the way you deserve. Not the way it is supposed to be.’
It was impossible to know whether it was just her air that got tighter or the altitude. ‘You let me believe it was me.’
‘I thought that was what you wanted to hear. Needed to hear.’
He was right. She had. She’d needed to hate him. She lifted her eyes and took a breath. ‘It’s too late, Hayden. I’ve moved on.’
His dark brows dropped. ‘On? To what?’
That was the problem with lying; ideally, you needed to have put thought into it. ‘On to … getting over you.’ Ugh. Lame. ‘I’m going to hold out for someone who can love me the way I need, the way I deserve.’
His colour dropped slightly. But then his eyes narrowed. ‘No. You fainted when you saw me.’
Confident words, but they weren’t matched by his tone.
‘It was the—’
‘No, it wasn’t.’ Stronger. Surer. He shuffled closer. ‘It was me. You still care.’
She clamped her lips together.
‘Shirley, you’re not that inconstant. And you’re too moral. You might have been trying to get over me, but you’re not.’
Pfff … ‘You’re so arrogant.’
He smiled. ‘Yet you still love me.’
She dropped her head and when she lifted it she left behind all her masks, all her pretensions. ‘Is this fun for you, Hayden, tormenting me? Is the ego stroke worth flying across the world for?’
His smile evaporated, his eyes darkened. ‘No, Shirley. This is not about my ego. This is about my … feelings. My heart.’
The discomfort was what gave him away. It showed in every crease and fold in his handsome face. Talking about this was excruciating for him.
He was serious …
‘Just say it, Hayden.’ Whatever he’d come here to say.
He looked around them again. ‘Not here. This is not how I imagined it.’
‘No. Here, or not at all. You don’t get to orchestrate every moment to your personal satisfaction.’ Not when it hurt this much.
Indecision flitted across his features. ‘Please, Shirley. Just step outside. Only a few feet.’
The plea was so honest and so earnest, it was hard to ignore. Fine. ‘Just outside. No further.’
He led her out into the bright daylight. After the darkness of the tent, the electric-blue sky half blinded her. She raised her hands to let her eyes adjust more slowly. It didn’t help when he turned her so that she was looking at him against the backdrop glare of the main peak of ‘Holy Mother’.
‘I need sunglasses—’ she started.
‘God, woman, you’re making this very hard.’
His tone clamped her mouth shut. He’d never, ever snapped at her like that, hissing with frustration. Even when they were fighting. But, for once, she didn’t immediately assume responsibility. Not everything was her fault. And that was a massive mental shift for her.
‘Just let me do this,’ he gritted. He paused, composed himself and then lifted his eyes back to hers. ‘Shirley … You were never going to be just casual for me. I was a fool not to see it coming. I was way too fascinated and intrigued by you.’
Everest disappeared. Her entire vision right now—her entire world—was Hayden Tennant.
‘I pushed you away and threw the gift of your love back in your face rather than face my own demons.’ He blew out a long breath. ‘I was terrified that I would hurt you even more if I stayed in your life. I even justified it that way to myself and felt quite the hero for doing the hard thing. I couldn’t have been more patronising if I’d tried. The truth is …’
He frowned and struggled with what came next but she couldn’t move for all the oxygen bound up in the snow-caps.
‘The truth is, I was scared to let myself feel. To care. Love and I don’t have a particularly good track record; my father’s obsession with my mother destroyed her, my love for her imprisoned me with him. I have no idea what loving someone safely entails. I was frightened that I would stuff it up if I tried. That I’d fail and you’d end up hating me. But you ended up hating me anyway—’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she murmured.
‘You must have.’
‘I wanted to, believe me. I couldn’t forgive you but I couldn’t forget you, either.’ She sighed. ‘And I couldn’t hate you.’
His Adam’s apple bungeed a few times. ‘Then I saw your blog and what you said about not having the heart for a love that was like a military campaign—’
‘Actually, that was—’
‘Will you stop interrupting?’ he barked. ‘I’m trying to tell you I love you.’
Oxygen-less air whooshed into her lungs.
Hayden snapped his mouth shut, and then his lips tightened. ‘Though I was hoping to do it more romantically than that,’ he muttered.
She didn’t dare breathe out in case there was nothing left to take back in. The dark patches appeared in her peripheral vision again. ‘More romantic than at the foot of Everest? Having flown halfway around the world and paid off half of Nepal and Tibet to find me?’
His lips twisted. ‘Yeah. More than that.’
She finally inhaled. A ridiculous lightness—totally different to what she’d felt coming up the mountain—suffused her.
His eyes darkened. ‘This is what I came to. Love liberates, it doesn’t entrap. It’s not something you can plan for or manage. It’s like stepping off a bridge into nothing.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But it’s so much less terrifying when there’s someone there, stepping off with you.’
She swallowed back tears. She’d done enough blubbing in front of Hayden for a lifetime. He took her hands.
‘If this isn’t love,’ he said, threading his fingers through hers and boring into her with the intensity of his gaze, ‘then it should be.’
<
br /> So much for not blubbing. Tears spilled, heedless of her will, over her lashes and ran down her wind-whipped, make-up-less face. Lord, what a picture she must present. But she didn’t care. She’d bare her whole soul if he asked her to.
And then—despite every fear and doubt and heartbreak and agony of the past months—they were kissing again. The sensation she’d believed she’d never have access to again, the rush of adrenalin that came from just touching him, coursed through her blood where the oxygen couldn’t go.
She clung to his strong frame, weakened, and he gathered her more tightly in to him, worshipping her mouth with his. There was barely enough oxygen to go around for one, let alone keep two hearts pumping. They fell apart, panting.
‘I am good enough for you,’ she gasped. It felt important to make that clear.
He blinked, confused. ‘I agree.’
‘I mean that I’m through with doubting myself. Believing myself unworthy. I want a strong, equal relationship.’
‘Princess, you’re preaching to the choir …’
‘And I want you to admit that this wasn’t strategic. Neither one of us made the other love us.’
His eyes softened. ‘Everything about you made me love you, Shirley.’
She glared at him.
‘You want the lightning bolt?’
‘I want you to admit that something special happened here. Something bigger than both of us.’
‘How about I tell you when it happened, instead?’
She stared.
‘I first bought in to loving you when you stood on my porch and called me an ass that day. No one had challenged me like that, ever.’ He stepped closer. ‘Then when your ridiculous stockings at the beach forced such lightness into the darkness inside me.’ His hand twisted up into her hair. ‘Then when you gave up your seats at the symphony for some strangers way up the back and you revealed your soul.’
Her eyes brimmed over again.
‘But I still wavered. Then you were so natural and good with the boys at Tim’s party and all I could think about was what a spectacular mother you would make.’
A tear wobbled free.
‘But if you want the thunderbolt. The moment I knew I was screwed?’
Only from Hayden would she take screwed as a compliment. She nodded and shook another tear loose.
‘The giraffe. That moment surrounded by sea containers and diesel fumes when you held your hand out to me, your eyes filled with such magic and mystery and drew me into your fantasy. No-one had ever given me the gift of joy before. Unconditional generosity.’
And there was the magic word.
Unconditional.
‘I don’t ever want to have to earn your love,’ she whispered.
He stepped back and regarded her gravely. Then he sank to one knee, on the rocks and shale underfoot, just as he had inside the tent. It wasn’t a proposal. It was older and more classic than that. It was a Spartan honour pledge.
‘I give it to you. As a gift. Whether you want to keep it or not, it doesn’t change how I feel. My love is yours, unconditionally.’
She sank down onto her knees to join him. The stones cut into her skin. She ignored it. ‘I accept. And I love you. Every part of you.’
They fell forward into each other’s lips, kissed as if it were their first time. Then they pulled back and stared at each other, lost. Panting.
‘I caught up to you on the list,’ he got out between breaths.
She leaned against him. ‘In just a few weeks? How?’
‘I cheated.’ He laughed. ‘We’re neck and neck now that we’re both here.’
She smiled. ‘You know what? That list doesn’t seem so important now.’
He curled his arms around her. ‘Typical. Just as defeat is on the horizon.’
She chuckled. ‘We have something much more impressive on the horizon.’
They stared up at the Himalayan peaks together. Awed.
‘This really hurts,’ Shirley finally admitted.
‘You’re not kidding.’ He pushed to his feet and then pulled her carefully up with him off the sharp rocks.
‘You know you’re hiking down off the mountain with me, right? I won’t be seen in your chopper.’
‘And miss all those nights in a tent with you?’ He kissed her again. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way. You still owe me from the dinosaur dig.’
‘We can’t do anything.’ She giggled. ‘We’ll have a guide sleeping just feet away.’
He pushed back and stared at her. ‘Did you Just … giggle?’
Truly unmasked now. Exactly how she wanted to stay. ‘That’s just one of a range of ordinary-person sounds I make when I’m not on guard,’ she joked. ‘And you’re going to get to discover them all.’
He swooped down to kiss the side of her throat. ‘That’s not going any way to preserving the modesty of your guide. Now all I can think about is getting you in a tent and eliciting all those sounds.’
‘Truly,’ she said, curling her head and seeking out his lips for more oxygen deprivation. ‘They can’t be any worse than the sound of the yak on the way up.’
EPILOGUE
Two years later
EXACTLY as Hayden had promised her all those adventures ago at Everest, it was so much less terrifying when there was someone there, stepping out into the nothingness with you.
He hadn’t left her side, not for one overwhelming moment of the birth.
She lay curled around their tiny baby boy, throbbing with love for this precious, precious gift. She’d thought it impossible to feel more love than she already did for her complex, brave Hayden but this little bundle had come out with masses more all ready to go.
She stroked his tiny cheek and glanced at her sleeping husband.
Hayden had pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and leaned forward to watch his son nurse with all the pride and amazement and trepidation of a first-time dad. Then he’d fallen asleep there, totally destroyed by the past forty hours, with one hand on her and one on his new son, draped on the side of her bed. Even the visiting nurses worked quietly around him so that he could sleep.
Then again, he had charmed every one of them. They would have done anything for him. She bundled Leo up more tightly in her hold and looked up and around her, too shattered—too happy—to sleep.
‘Mum,’ she whispered to the night. ‘This is your grandson, Leonidas. I’m sorry you can’t hold him yourself but Hayden and I will hold him for ever for you and keep him safe.’
She stroked his flushed little cheek with her index finger. ‘I get it now, Mum. How unprepared we all are at this moment. How much we want to be the perfect parent for our babies. But it doesn’t change us. It can’t make us perfect, or even better. We can only do our best.’
She gently extracted the sleeping baby from under Hayden’s touch, bundled him more securely and curled him into a hold close to her body.
And then she rocked him and told him all about his grandma.
Tick.
ISBN: 9781472039392
ONCE A REBEL…
© Nikki Logan 2013
First Published in Great Britain in 2013
Harlequin (UK) Limited
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