his head. ‘What if I challenged you?’
She frowned. ‘To what?’
‘You challenged me to do the list on a budget. What if I challenge you to do it in civvies with no make-up?’
‘Why would you?’
He couldn’t think of a clever answer to that so he went for honest. ‘Because I got such a short glimpse of Shirley at Tim’s party. And because that way we’re both out of our comfort zones.’
And because I’m dying to know what colour your lips really are. He stared at them now, stained with dark lipstick, and imagined wiping it off with his thumb.
She stared him down. Thinking. ‘All right.’
He knew her too well to imagine she’d just capitulate. All they’d done since meeting was trade—insults, tasks, looks—this wasn’t going to be any different. ‘But …?’
‘I’ll ease up on the make-up while we’re on this trip if you’ll answer a question. Honestly.’
The keen glint of her eye should have been warning enough. But he was too dazzled by it to recognise it straight away. ‘Okay.’
‘What was your fascination with my mother?’
His gut tightened up immediately, the bad old days still not his favourite pre-dinner conversation. But he’d agreed to be honest. ‘She was a great teacher.’
Those eyes so very like her mother’s narrowed. ‘Every Saturday for three years?’
He stood. This conversation just didn’t feel right with him stretched out on the tiny bed. Shirley crossed her arms, taking the leggings she was still holding with her. They bunched across her torso.
‘She knew so much. She gave us one hundred per cent of her focus.’ Which was a bit rough when that left nothing for her daughter, he suddenly realised. But at the time he’d simply craved a motherly connection. Anyone’s mother would have done.
‘I didn’t have … access to my own mother. Spending time with yours was good for me. She helped keep me grounded. Her expectations. She set a high bar.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Shirley muttered, then cleared her throat and said, louder, ‘You were pretty cut up when she died.’
He had been. Everything he’d shoved way down deep to survive his mother’s death had come bubbling back up at Carol’s. Except he had found something to console him, eventually. A series of somethings: pills, women, alcohol, in that order. And they’d got him through that loss and out the other side. And then they’d propped him up well into the next decade. Until he’d gone cold turkey on all three a few years ago.
Saved his life.
‘Nothing compared to your loss, I imagine,’ he murmured.
She shut that line of conversation down with the not very subtle zip of her empty suitcase. ‘I always wondered where you’d gone for your knowledge fix after that.’
‘I didn’t. It was never about the knowledge for me.’ It was about having a mother figure in his empty life.
She glanced back up at him. ‘Then why do it?’
He shrugged. ‘I was good at it.’
She turned back. ‘I’m sure you were good at a lot of things.’
Not if you’d asked his father. Or his other lecturers. ‘Really? What else? Cutting up the athletics track? Musical accomplishment? Do you think a masterful maths mind lurks in here?’ He tapped his forehead.
‘Masterful enough to run a successful business. Even more successful recently.’
He stared at her, a warm realisation leaching through his body. She’d been checking up on him. ‘Someone else has been busy on Google, then.’
She stiffened, but ignored him. ‘I thought you walked away from your business for a reason.’
Her green eyes bored into him, towards the truth that lurked deep within. ‘I realised it was easier to change the business than myself.’ And who he’d become was so tightly enmeshed with what he did. He’d needed some healthy distance in order to untangle it all.
‘Changed it to what? From what? It’s so hard to tell from your website.’
Why not? She’d find out eventually. It might as well come from him. ‘I did my Masters in Influence.’
Her snort was the least ladylike and most sexy he’d ever heard. This woman just didn’t care for the slightest pretension. ‘Did you make that up?’
‘No. It’s made me rich.’
‘You have some massive clients. That much I could tell.’
‘Clients who paid generously for a look into the hearts and minds of their future customers.’ She frowned and her eyes grew keen, and he remembered who he was also talking to: Shiloh. But—inexplicably—he also trusted her. ‘Their businesses revolve around knowing where to target likely customers and what will get their buy-in.’
She stared at him. ‘That’s …’
‘The word you’re looking for is “lucrative”.’ It wasn’t, but it was true.
‘Which doesn’t make it any more palatable.’
He tipped his head and granted her that. It was no more than he’d eventually come to think. The day he’d realised how closely all those ‘somethings’ that he consoled himself with were linked to his profession.
‘Show me.’
He looked up. ‘Show you what?’
‘How it works. On me.’
‘Oh Shirley, I don’t think you’re the same as everyone else. I wouldn’t begin to claim I understand how your mind works.’ Disappointment stained her already dark lips. He thought fast. ‘But I can show you how you did it to me.’
Show her how it was inherent in everyone—even the virtuous Shiloh. Bred into the human species.
She sat on the edge of the second bed and folded her hands on her lap. It was entirely demure and insanely provocative.
‘Influence is all about buy-in,’ he started. ‘Once you can get someone to say yes to something small they make a mental commitment to that thing and transitioning them to something bigger is more straightforward. If I want you to buy my car I get you to sit in it. If I want you to borrow money from me as an adult I give you a money box when you’re a child. If I want you to accept my faith I get you to accept something smaller from me first.’
Her eyes slowly rounded as he spoke.
She might as well know who she was dealing with. ‘You wanted me to do the list. You got me to let you into my house first.’
‘Actually, I let myself in.’
‘But
