Once a Rebel...
Shy teenager Shirley Marr fell for her mother’s most brilliant student, the charismatic rebel Hayden Tennant. When her mother passed away, both vowed to keep her memory alive by fulfilling her bucket list wishes.Ten years later, Shirley’s nearly done – but Hayden has yet to begin. And Shirley wants to know why! Hayden is happily set on the path to self-destruction, and is not best pleased to find his late-mentor’s daughter judging his choices.The blushing girl he remembers was easy to resist, but this Shirley is older, curvier, and worryingly, far more formidable…
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Praise for Nikki Logan
âSuperb debut. 4.5 Stars.â
âRT Book Reviews on Lights, Camera ⦠Kiss the Boss!
âNow, 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.â
âwww.goodreads.com on Lights, Camera ⦠Kiss the Boss!
âThis story has well defined and soundly motivated characters as well as a heart-wrenching conflict.â
âRT 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 nightâthe 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.
For Tracy Scarparolo.
And to Dan, the best office-mate and friend a girl could have.
Table of Contents
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.remâ
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 momentsâas she always didâstaring 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 columnâthe one headed âHT.â
After all this time.
Hayden Tennant had been her motherâs all-time favourite student. Heâd been the oneâhurt and grievingâto suggest the tribute website in the first place. So that they could each do the items on her motherâs bucket list. All the life experiences an unlicensed drunk-driver had robbed her of.
Hayden had pledged.
Heâd vowed in that gorgeous, thick, grief-filled voice.
Yet every single square next to every single item on www.remembermrsmarr.com was empty where Haydenâs 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 heâd forgotten all about it? Or was it days? Hours? Did he think no one would notice? Did he think his teacherâs only daughter wouldnât be watching? Shirley tapped her purple fingernails on the keyboard and enjoyed the sound of the slick keys under them.
Come on, Hayden. Youâve had a decade.
Something.
Anything.
Swimming with dolphins. Climbing the Harbour Bridge. Running a marathon. Even sheâd done that one, back before sheâd 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 sheâd 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 sheâd 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 wouldnât even need to train, heâd just will himself to last the entire forty-two kilometres.
Sheâd 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.
