Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

She’d definitely felt it when he’d kissed her half to death to make his point just a few nights ago.

      All of those moments were just leading to the one they’d just shared in the boat.

      And he knew it.

       You started to buy in to me touching you months ago …

      He’d warned her. He’d told her how his vision of strategic seduction worked. Why should she be surprised, now, to discover his manipulations were working?

      Except … was it manipulation if you really wanted it?

      If you started it?

      Then again, wasn’t that one of the key principles of his theory? Convincing her it was her idea all along.

      She emerged at the top of the gorge slightly ahead of him and didn’t wait. She struck out across the car park, shaking her head briefly at the staff member waiting at the top to upsell a second jump.

      Seriously? People could do it again after just a short break?

      ‘Shirley …’

      She kept moving.

      ‘Are we jogging back to the ship?’

      That slowed her. Where exactly did she think she was going? She had to face him sometime.

      ‘Stop.’ A strong hand curled around her upper arm and drew her to a halt.

      She let him pull her into a standstill, smack bang in the middle of the car park out here in the middle of nowhere. Halfway back to the locker that held their daypacks.

      She spun on him. ‘What?’

      ‘We kissed. It’s not the end of life as we know it.’

      Not for him, maybe. The chances of her ever forgetting how she’d felt with her skin merging with his? Not high. ‘It wasn’t what I wanted.’

      ‘You kissed me.’

      ‘I know!’ That was what was so infuriating. And confusing.

      ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

      Again, not for him, maybe. She lifted her eyes. ‘It means your stupid games worked.’

      He wasn’t about to pretend he didn’t understand. A tiny part of her acknowledged the respect that hinted at. ‘I thought it was a pretty good way to cap off an amazing experience.’

      ‘That’s because it wasn’t your mother we were doing this for.’ She frowned. How had her mother come into this all of a sudden?

      ‘No. We’re a decade too late for my mother. And she never had a bucket list. She was too busy surviving.’

      A car tooted politely behind them and Shirley realised they were standing in the middle of the vehicular thoroughfare. She stepped back, away from Hayden, and he did the same. The car progressed through.

      ‘What do you mean?’ she asked when he stepped back up next to her.

      His eyes stayed fixed on the building their lockers were in. But he avoided her question. ‘You can’t use your mother as a shield every time we start getting close.’

      She stiffened. ‘I don’t.’

      ‘Yeah, Shirley. You do.’

      ‘Then we see it differently.’

      He hissed his frustration and she turned and kept walking. ‘I’ll tell you how I see it,’ he said, catching up with her. ‘We have massive chemistry but, instead of indulging it and working it out of our systems, we go head to head constantly and leak it out that way.’

      ‘Speak for yourself,’ she muttered.

      ‘I am speaking for myself. I just stand near you, Shirley Marr, and my cells start twitching. If that little boat had been slower and emptier and if what I wanted was the only thing that mattered, then you and I would be having sex right now instead of standing up here getting our kicks verbally.’

      ‘You make a lot of assumptions, Tennant.’

      ‘You’re lying if you say you don’t feel it.’

      She spun again. ‘I don’t want to feel it.’

      He snorted. ‘I get that, loud and clear. It must infuriate you to find yourself attracted to a man like me.’

      ‘Oh, will you let that go? I was angry.’

      ‘You’re always angry, Shirley. And it’s getting pretty old.’

      She stared at him, shuffling through all the words available to her and none of them seemed adequate. Except maybe the truth.

      ‘You’re not safe, Hayden,’ she whispered, pressing her fingers to her left breast. ‘For me.’

      The rapid change of direction had him shaking his head. He took a moment to choose his words. ‘Life isn’t safe, Shirley. But you have to live it or you might as well not bother.’

      ‘Like you haven’t been for the past few years?’

      His eyes didn’t waver. ‘Yeah. Exactly like that. I was just taking up air.’

      Her lips pressed together. But on some level she recognised his use of the past tense. ‘Why?’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t get to have it both ways, Shirley. You can’t keep me locked at arm’s length but then expect me to share myself with you.’

      ‘Is that why you never have close relationships? So you don’t have to share yourself?’

      His jaw tightened and his skin seemed to drop colour. ‘The bus is coming.’

      She followed his eyes and, sure enough, the hourly shuttle bus back to Queenstown was trundling over the traffic bridge that spanned the Kawarau River.

      They turned for the locker area and retrieved their property. Shirley checked in briefly with the owner and got a contact for a later interview on the history of this insane sport, then jogged across the asphalt and climbed onto the waiting bus.

      Hayden sat three-quarters of the way back, staring out of the window. Expression closed. As she approached, she saw that his bag occupied the empty seat next to him.

       Right.

      She pivoted on her feet and returned to a seat immediately behind the driver and promptly engaged him in a conversation long enough to pass the entire trip back to Queenstown.

      The driver radioed ahead and arranged with the departed Invercargill bus to slow its progress long enough for them to intercept it on the highway. They did a quick roadside bus-swap and found themselves heading south. This time Hayden left the seat next to his open and she sank into it wordlessly. She pulled out her notepad and made some fast notes from her discussion with the driver and then busied herself admiring the stunning scenery as they travelled south to the coast. Out of the window, away from Hayden. But the whole time he dominated her thoughts. Him and the heated moments in the boat.

      They cleared port immigration and headed for the waiting Paxos.

      ‘Welcome back,’ the crewman they’d first met said as she hurried up the gangway. Not because the ship was waiting to leave but because she couldn’t wait a moment longer to get a nice solid door between herself and Hayden.

      So much hung, unsaid. Yet they’d also said too much. How could both be true?

      He led them back up to the accommodation corridor and turned to them with a flourish.

      ‘Two rooms,’ he announced in passable English, clearly pleased with himself.

      They’d had to surrender their rooms on arrival for immigration reasons but their bags sat waiting neatly in the hallway outside their previous accommodation. Shirley stared at her bag as though she were seeing it for the very first time.

      Hayden’s