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‘Tastes like dust.’
‘More wine?’ She poured him some anyway, whether he wanted it or not, and maybe that wasn’t such a good idea because he drained it in one long swallow. ‘You need to give me some time with this.’
‘Little hint for you, Lena: this doesn’t require much thinking. We’ve known each other a long time. I’ve been trying to impress you since primary school. You’re either impressed or you’re not. You either want me or you don’t.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘I saw your body earlier.’ She didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say. ‘It’s perfect.’
‘It’s skin.’
‘It’s still perfect.’
‘Still just skin. You think I can’t see beneath yours?’ He eyed her steadily. ‘You have flaws. So do I. No one’s going into this blind.’
‘Look at me, Adrian. Think of all the things you can do that I can’t do any more. I’d hold you back and you’d come to hate me for it. I’d come to hate me for it. You’d have to be blind to want this.’
‘I’m not blind,’ he said grimly. ‘This can work—you and me. You just have to want it to.’ He sat back in his chair and pushed a hand through his dark shaggy curls. ‘This isn’t going well, is it? You don’t think of me in that way at all.’
‘I didn’t say that! Don’t put words in my mouth. God.’ Trust her to push him away when she didn’t mean to. She just didn’t know how to not push him away now that he wanted to get closer. ‘You’re important to me, Adrian. You occupy a huge part of my life and always have done. Aren’t you scared that if this doesn’t work out, we’ll lose everything else we do have?’
‘Scared is watching you slide into unconsciousness for the sixth time in as many hours. Scared is thinking you’re going to die in my arms. This doesn’t even rate a mention on the fear scale.’
‘Speak for yourself. I’m terrified here.’ Lena reached over and circled his wrist with her fingers as best she could, one fingertip to his pulse point and her heart beating a rapid tattoo. His pulse skittered all over the place too. ‘You’re not that calm.’
‘Could be I’m a little nervous. Doesn’t mean I haven’t thought it through,’ he said stubbornly. He withdrew his hand from beneath her fingers and headed for the bedside phone. He picked it up, pressed a button and waited.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You said you needed some time with this. I’m giving you some.’ He turned his head into the phone a little. ‘This is Adrian Sinclair. I’m going to need a second room. King bed this time.’ He listened a moment. ‘No, it doesn’t have to be connected to this one.’ He waited another moment. ‘Thanks.’
He put the phone down. ‘A porter will be here for my bag in a few minutes.’
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
He didn’t have to repack his bag. His stuff was good to go. She didn’t want him to go. ‘Adrian, I—’
‘See you for breakfast, yeah?’
Hell. ‘Yeah.’ She tried again. ‘It wasn’t a no. I haven’t said no to anything you’ve put forward. I have thought of you like that. From time to time. I’m female. You’re you. Who wouldn’t?’
She thought she saw a glimmer of a smile.
‘But think about it, Adrian. Are you sure this is what you want? Because I really don’t think you have thought this through.’
He frowned down at her, and then he leaned down and gently brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth. His lips were soft and warm. Lena felt her eyes flutter closed.
He drew back slowly and she wondered when his eyes had got so dark and hungry.
‘I’ve thought it through. You need to do the same.’
He picked up his bag; he walked to the door.
And it clicked shut behind him.
* * *
As far as declarations of intent were concerned, that one could have gone better, decided Trig as he headed for the lifts. Lena had never handled romance well. In her teens she’d been too forward with boys, too fearless, too competitive, and she’d sent them running. Later on she’d got the hang of not scaring away potential suitors—she’d even taken a few of them to her bed, but for some reason known only to her none of them had ever measured up. Not in her eyes.
Not in Trig’s or Jared’s eyes either.
So she’d had standards that had suited them all.
Standards based around her father, the highly successful international banker. Around Damon, adrenaline junkie and hacker extraordinaire. Around Jared, who feared nothing and regularly achieved the impossible.
Standards that made her picky, and then, when she did break things off with the latest but not quite greatest, she’d start second-guessing herself and getting all despondent because the jerk she’d just let go had told her she wasn’t feminine enough or that she needed to soften up a bit before any man would take her seriously. Sour grapes, a parting shot, but Lena had never seen it that way.
She’d mope for a few days and then Jared would tell her he was going skydiving on Friday and that he’d saved her a chute.
She’d try and be softer with other people for a bit and then Trig would turn up with his lightest kite-boarding rig, and there’d be a thirty-knot cross-shore wind blowing and he’d eyeball the conditions and they’d barely be manageable and he’d ask if she wanted to go break something.
The answer to that being, ‘Hell, yes.’ Always yes.
Until she’d got shot and everything had changed for all of them.
These days no one challenged Lena to push harder or go faster, even though she still pushed herself.
These days he looked at her with concern in his eyes; he knew he did. And she looked at him and told him to go away.
Rough couple of years.
But things were getting better now. Lena was getting better now and together they could find a new way of doing things and of being with each other if only she’d try.
The lift doors opened. A uniformed boy gave him an appraising stare. ‘Mr Sinclair?’
Trig nodded.
‘Let me take your luggage.’ If the boy wondered why Mr Sinclair needed to change rooms, he was too discreet to ask. ‘Room 406 for you, Mr Sinclair. I have your entry cards here.’
Trig stepped into the lift.
He just had to convince her to try.
FOUR
Trig woke to the sound of morning prayer at a nearby mosque. His bed had been big enough but his dreams had been chaotic. Loss, always loss. Lena walking away from him because he’d asked too much of her. Lena disappearing into the gluggy grey mud of East Timor. Slipping away from him, one way or another, with Trig powerless to prevent any of it.
The prayer song was hypnotic.
Trig closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair and sent up a prayer of his own that this day would be a good day and that Lena wouldn’t be freaking out about last night’s declaration of undying devotion—or whatever it was that he’d declared.
She wouldn’t run; she was smarter than that.
But she might feel uneasy with him and he wouldn’t put it past her to have argued herself around to thinking that she wasn’t good enough for him or that he’d be better off without her. For someone so magnificent, she had the lowest sense of self-worth he’d ever encountered.
She’d told him once that it came of being an ordinary person in an extraordinary family. She’d never seen herself as extraordinary too.
He reached for the hotel phone, tapped in the other room number and waited.
She wouldn’t have done a runner. If nothing else, she knew he’d track her through Amos Carter if he had to. She might reschedule but she wouldn’t blow that meeting off. Her need to find Jared was too strong.
‘What?’ she finally mumbled, once she’d picked up.
‘You want to have breakfast at this little café I saw on my walk last night?’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Five-seventeen.’
Lena groaned, a sleepy, sexy sound that had him shifting restlessly. ‘You want to have breakfast now?’
‘I’m starving.’
‘You’re always starving.’
‘Their breakfast special is lentil soup, a loaf of sourdough and a big chunk of cheese.’
‘Go get ’em, Tiger. Bring me back a cup of tea,’ she muttered and hung up.
Trig grinned and shoved the sheet aside, suddenly hungry to seize the day. She hadn’t said no and she hadn’t been wary. She hadn’t said, ‘Darling, come make me yours,’ yet either, but that was pure fantasy anyway.
He got breakfast.
He went walking and found the gate where Lena would meet up with Carter and set about exploring exit options and observation points. By the time the seven a.m. prayer session sounded, he was back at the hotel and knocking on Lena’s door, takeaway tea in one hand and a tub of yoghurt and honey in the other.
‘Breakfast,’ he said when she opened the door, and she let him through and closed the door behind him and yawned.
She looked like a waif. A little too slender, a halo of tangled black hair and those startling bluish-grey eyes, smudged with black lashes. A modelling agency had offered to contract her once after seeing her on the beach. Surfing sponsors had come after her too. She’d turned down both offers with startled surprise. Couldn’t see what they’d seen in her. Didn’t want what they’d offered anyway.
‘Is this the courting you?’ she wanted to know as he set the tea and yoghurt on the table.
‘This is the impatient me,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen this me before. I’m waiting to see if you want me to court you before I start that.’
‘My mistake.’ Lena smirked and carefully removed the lid on her tea. ‘What’s got you all pepped up?’
‘You mean besides wanting to know if you’ll go out with me?’
‘Yeah, besides that. Because I’m not awake enough yet to make a definitive decision on that. I couldn’t think clearly enough to make a decision on it last night either.’
‘Red wine does that.’
‘True.’ She sipped at her tea and let out an appreciative sigh. ‘So you’re happy this morning because...’
‘You have got to see this bazaar.’
‘You’re excited about shopping?’
‘It’s not shopping, it’s haggling. It’s a blood sport.’
‘Is anything even open yet?’
‘Couple of stalls are.’
‘What did you buy?’
‘Carpet. But I haven’t bought it yet. I’ve just had it set aside so I can think about it.’
‘Uh-huh. How much?’
‘That’s what we’re negotiating.’
‘Ballpark.’
‘It’s a really nice carpet. Silk.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Seven thousand dollars was a lot to pay for a two metre by one point six metre bit of mat that people walked on. ‘It’s an investment piece.’
‘Is it magic?’
‘I didn’t ask. Maybe you should come with me when I go back.’
‘When are you going back?’
‘After I’ve shopped around.’
‘Who are you and what have you done with Trig?’
‘Could be I’m nesting,’ he said. Way to harp on a tricky subject. ‘You all the way awake yet?’
‘No.’
‘Because if you are, now would be a good time to tell me if you’re going to go out with me.’
‘Still weighing the pros and cons.’
There was just no rushing her these days. ‘I brought you breakfast. That would be a pro.’
‘You also woke me up at five a.m.’
‘You’re welcome.’
He could make her snort. That had to count for something.
‘How’s the body this morning?’
‘Functional,’ she said around a mouthful of yoghurt. ‘Stop fussing. Boyfriends don’t fuss.’
‘Now you’re just making shit up.’
‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s true.’
He shook his head, slid her a sideways glance. ‘Pursuit aside, how are we tracking with regards to our regular relationship? The one that doesn’t have me in knots. We good?’
‘Yeah.’ She sounded a little uncertain. ‘We’re good.’
* * *
They made it through the morning, mostly because Trig headed back out again to look at carpets, and then it was time to meet Carter, with Lena taking point and Trig bleeding into the bustle at the gate. Another tourist, one of many, and maybe he was meeting someone or perhaps he was just taking a breather before diving into the next shop full of goodies. Either way, nothing untoward here.
He spotted Carter moments before the older man made him, but they didn’t acknowledge each other. He and Carter had worked together before, albeit briefly, back in the days when Carter had worked for ASIS. Carter would know Trig was running surveillance on the meet. Carter probably had someone else doing the same.
Carter approached Lena and held out his hands and she took them and smiled as he kissed her on each cheek. Old acquaintances and all for show. Trig ground his teeth and watched some more as Carter and Lena strolled through the gate and into the bazaar, their pace leisurely and their conversation animated.
Trig made a process out of checking his phone as he waited to see who else might be headed that way before he too took a stroll. It was a busy gate. A lot of people followed Carter and Lena into the bazaar.
He kept them in sight while he browsed and they browsed and then five minutes later Carter bought Lena a scoop full of candied citrus, presented it to her with a smile, kissed her once again on each cheek and, between one blink and the next, disappeared into the ether.
Lena didn’t look back at Trig; she knew this game too well for that. She bought three silk scarves and a handful of sugared almonds. She paused outside a shop filled with carpets and the vendor—and probably his brother—instantly tried to woo her in. She offered them almonds, which they refused. They offered her apple tea, and carpet viewing, which she refused. With a great deal of hand waving all round, everyone called it quits and Lena moved on.
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