After a few
breaths she pushed up and off the wall, yanking open the inner door to step into
the small vestibule so that she could lock the outer door. She reached into the
pocket of her sweats to find the key, looked up - and gasped when she found
Connor looking back at her through the glass.
The last of a
glorious summer’s day was dying in the sky behind him while he stared at her,
his jaw line clenching while he thought. And on the other side of the door
Shannon stood transfixed, holding her breath, waiting to see what he was going
to do next.
“Open the
door.”
Shannon shook her head and he scowled in
response,
“Open, the
door, Shannon.”
She shook her
head again, “It’s not locked.”
Stating the
obvious tore a small smile from him, before he glanced away, looked heavenwards,
and then pulled open the door, stepping into the small space she made for him
when she stepped back.
Towering over
her again, he searched her wide eyes for a long moment, watching as she pursed
her lips together to stop from saying something that might start another
argument.
Then he took
a breath, “I wasn’t trying to give you what you wanted to make things worse.”
“I kn-“
He held up a
hand, “No – don’t say a word. Let’s not do any more damage, okay?”
Shannon pursed her lips again.
While the
hand in front of her curled until he had a forefinger to point at her, “You
– are capable of making me angrier,” His hand uncurled again as he held both
hands out in a sweeping movement, “than any other woman on this
planet. I have no idea why it is you can do that.”
She pursed
her lips even tighter together. Because that statement was just begging
for an answer.
“But what
beats the hell out of me even more is that I keep coming back, every damn time,”
He took a deep, steadying breath, glancing briefly upwards again, “Alright, so
I’m not perfect, but you’ve known me a long time, so you’ve always known that.
And frankly, I have no interest in being perfect ‘cos that’s one hell of a lot
of pressure to put on yourself. So yeah, occasionally I am going
to mess up – like I apparently did five minutes ago when I tried
to remove this great pink elephant that always seems to be standing between us
communicating.”
Shannon swallowed hard and allowed her
mouth to relax. Because she genuinely didn’t want another argument with him, and
when he was making this big a gesture by staying to talk it through with her
there was just no way she was going to do anything to spoil it. She even
attempted a small smile of encouragement on for size.
Which brought
his gaze to her mouth for a long, long while before he swallowed hard, locked
eyes with her again, and his voice became huskier, “The thing about being a
crusader Shannon is that you have to have a ‘She who casts the first stone’
quality to you. I could say plenty about you building some kind of stand-in
family for yourself here rather than making one of your own with someone-“
Oh and that
had to be answered!
But he raised
a hand again as her mouth opened,” No, now you know that’s true.
Don’t bother denying it. Many things I may be but blind isn’t one of them.”
She resorted
to scowling up at him instead.
“It’s like
this. Neither of us are necessarily doing a good job with our lives right now
this second. But you can’t make me find my path – that I’ll do on my own -
which, right now leaves me with just the one problem to deal
with…”
Her eyebrows
rose in question.
And finally
he smiled a small smile in return, “Aren’t you going to ask me what that problem
might be?”
“Oh, I’m
allowed to speak now am I?”
“Yes, you
are.”
Everything in The Return Of The Rebel centres
around
the run down old building that Shannon leases from Devenish Enterprises -
the fictional company Connor inherits... So the majority of the scenes happen
there, and a lot of the arguments they have are because of it. I guess there are
shades of the building in Two Weeks Notice - the Hugh Grant,
Sandra Bullock
movie
there - with all of Shannon's varying community groups and it's eclectic
conglomeration of folks being so important to her that they lead her to butt
heads with Connor... (watch out for Mario - he's my favourite!)
much
description. The thing with a Modern Extra is that it is more about the 'feel'
than great long descriptive passages about places. The characters, their way of
talking, their modern day thoughts and approaches to things are more important
than the naming of specific streets or areas in the City they live in. Which was
just as well with this particular story I think, cos Shannon and Connor had so
much to deal with as it was that having to add a lot of descriptive 'atmosphere'
would have made the book waaaayyyy too long!
The music I was playing while writing The Return Of The Rebel even
made it into the book itself, when
Connor
goes to see Shannon in her apartment and she has it playing in the background -
which is great!