AM almost certain this is not what my mother had in mind.’
Six weeks. Six weeks after the Paxos had berthed in Sydney and swapped her half-empty cargo for a full complement and left two passengers standing on the dock.
Six long weeks without seeing Hayden.
But she wasn’t about to betray her excitement.
The two of them wobbled horribly in a dug-out canoe ten feet from the jetty sticking out from the immaculately crafted but soulless canal suburb feeding off the Georges River.
‘Where did you hire this …?’ She hesitated to call it a boat.
‘This gondola.’
Her laugh was immediate. It was partly fuelled by sheer joy at sitting across from him again. She hadn’t realised until she’d opened the door to him earlier today how not-fully she’d been breathing in the previous six weeks. She sucked in the fresh air now and her body exulted. ‘This is not a gondola.’
He ignored her. ‘We’re not going to get to Venice on a freighter and even hiring a gondola here was more costly than I thought was appropriate, given the no-money restriction.’
‘This was the best you could steal?’
He tutted, offended. ‘Make, actually.’
‘You made this?’ She stared at the most cerebrally talented man she knew. ‘With your hands?’
He flushed overtly. ‘I had help, but yes.’
In that light, it wasn’t all that bad. But it still wasn’t a gondola. ‘Why isn’t it finished?’
He stared at her. ‘Because I’m impatient.’
Her heart flip-flopped. Had he been eager to see her? He could have picked up the phone at any time. Then again, no, he couldn’t, not without saying much more than he would have been comfortable with. ‘Impatient to finish the list?’
His eyes darkened and one side of his mouth quirked as he concentrated on keeping the little boat upright. ‘No.’
Oh. But she wasn’t brave enough to ask further so she worked her way around to what she really wanted to know. Crafty as a fox. ‘Who helped you make it?’
‘Russell.’
Should that mean something? ‘Russell who?’
His dark brows folded down. ‘Actually, I don’t know. Russell from the dolphin place.’
She sat back hard in the canoe. ‘The guide?’
‘Yeah. He’s a carpenter in his day job.’
Not a very good one, it seemed. But, since it was better than either of them could have done she wasn’t going to judge. ‘How do you know? You only said two words to him.’ And neither of them were polite.
‘We’ve been … working together.’
‘What? Since when?’ Not cool, that high-pitched squeak in her voice. She moderated it.
‘Since about a month after we went out into the surf with him.’
She gaped and then grabbed at the sides of the boat as it rocked perilously again.
‘He got me involved with the Dolphin Preservation Society. They’re a client now.’
Umbrage broiled up fast. ‘You hit them up for business?’
His lips thinned. ‘Yes, Shirley. I figured they must have millions hidden beneath the moth-eaten nothing they appear to have and I wanted my cut.’
She let the rest of her confusion out on a hiss. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I work with them pro bono. Help them to position themselves in the market, to find contributors for their cause and customers for the beach experience. Building their capacity.’
A strange kind of mist rose on the water, swirled around their boat and then sucked up into her body, making her feel light and fluid. ‘You helped them?’
‘I am capable of random acts of kindness from time to time.’ His words were half defensive.
‘I … Yes, of course.’ She’d seen that gentle side at work. Up close and personal. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I just did.’
‘No, months ago … Why keep it to yourself?’
‘I knew you’d carry on like this. Make a big deal of it.’
‘I’m not carrying on, I’m curious.’ She sat taller. ‘And it is a big deal.’
‘Well, far be it from me to fail to assuage Shiloh’s fathomless curiosity.’
Super-hedge. And then it hit her. Her breath tripped over the skipped beat of her heart. ‘Did you … Was it because of me?’
Ridiculous, surely. He wouldn’t care what she thought of him. Beyond what she thought of him in the sack. And he knew the answer to that. Because no one could fake the responses he elicited.
‘No, it wasn’t for you.’ Immediate. Slightly urgent.
Okay. ‘So it was for you?’
He rushed to address that misconception, too. ‘No, it was not. It was for them.’
She smiled as he realised he’d been snookered. Whether for her, or them or himself, it didn’t change the facts. ‘That’s a pretty significant philosophical shift, Hayden.’
‘You think I’m only interested in money? Ever?’
‘Based on the evidence, yes.’ Except now the evidence had changed. Now he’d thrown a massive curve-ball into her neatly stacked up preconceptions. And she knew she’d never be able to stack them the same way again.
Which meant it had just got a whole heap harder to keep her feelings at arms’ length. While he was a man who would use his skills to exploit and manipulate others it was possible to maintain a rigid defence against the attraction and intrigue that battered on the door of her resolve.
But if he was a man who helped those who helped others. A man who’d carve a boat to please her. Or jump from a bridge …
She needed to move things back onto a safer footing. ‘So this is our gondola?’
‘And this—’ he cast his arms wide at the ultramodern canal lined with expensive houses ‘—is our Venice.’
It was a bit of a cop-out, but then again Venice was a very long way away, and he had built something—with his hands—for her. That was a turn-on in a very caveman kind of way.
Okay, Venice it was.
She
