One Night in the Orient

by Robyn Donald

  “No. I’m not afraid of flying.” The treacherous pulse throbbing in her throat was due entirely to his closeness. Hastily she said, “I’m just not used to such luxury. But don’t worry, I plan to enjoy it to the full.”

  He sat down beside her and asked, “Did you get all your emails off?”

  Siena pulled herself together. “Yes—and an answer from Dad.”

  “You’re a close-knit family.”

  It was the sort of thing any friend might say, but a note in his voice caught her attention. Perhaps it was also the sort of thing the product of a broken home might say. Did Nick have any relatives at all? He’d never mentioned any. She did know his mother had died shortly after Nick had bought her a home overlooking the harbour on Auckland’s North Shore. Almost immediately afterwards Nick had left New Zealand.

  Without looking at him, Siena said, “I needed to tell them about the change of plans.”

  She’d also laboured over a very short, extremely difficult email to her ex-fiancé, about whom she’d somehow developed an uneasy guilt.

  If only she hadn’t kissed Nick, she thought, then caught herself up. She couldn’t blame him for her suspicion that she’d somehow short-changed Adrian.

  While she’d been struggling with the email, the prospect of spending a night in Hong Kong with Nick had kept intruding, bringing with it such a turbulent combination of excitement and foreboding that she’d felt like a hypocrite.

  In the end she had forced herself to finish what had turned out to be a banal, stiff note.

  Nick asked, “How are your parents enjoying their cruise?”

  “They’re having a glorious time. Dad’s checked out every deck game and the library, and Mum’s made several friends already. And they’ve danced until the small hours each night.”

  “And how is Gemma?”

  Siena felt the jet begin to move. She looked out of the window, saying a silent goodbye to London.

  “She sounds much better.” She glanced at him and then away. “She’s very sensitive.”

  His raised brows irritated her, but the jet’s engines picked up speed and the plane began to move down the runway. Relieved, Siena leaned forward a little, watching the earth fall away as they finally soared into the hazy air.

  A strange sensation gripped her, as though she’d left her everyday life behind and somehow slipped through into another dimension, one both exhilarating and rather ominous, a place where the dictates of ordinary life were suspended. Unbidden and unwanted, a feverish anticipation licked through her, summoning dangerous thoughts.

  Perhaps this was what travelling in a private jet did, she thought fancifully.

  Be sensible, she warned herself, and asked, “Do you always travel in your own plane?”

  “Usually. It saves time and hassle, gives me space to work while I’m travelling, and generally is simpler all round.”

  “I’ll say!” Siena sighed. “This trip is going to spoil me for ordinary travel.”

  Nick’s smile held more than a hint of irony. “I doubt it.” He glanced at his watch. “I find it helps to avoid jet-lag if when I board I start operating on the current time at my destination. Once we reach cruising height I’ve ordered tea, but would you prefer something else to drink?”

  “Tea will be lovely, thank you,” she said gratefully, pulling out a book from her bag. “If you want to work, go ahead. I don’t need entertaining.”

  “I remember,” he said, amused again.

  Siena gave him a sideways look, not exactly relishing the way he’d slotted her neatly back into her place of childhood friend.

  He was still watching her, and although the smile that curved his chiselled mouth didn’t waver, she sensed a keener intensity in his green survey.

  What was he thinking?

  Who knew? Nick had always had a poker face; it had been one of the things she’d first noticed about him, an unchildlike refusal to show emotion. Now she found herself speculating about the source of that fierce self-control.

  It seemed possible that Nick’s cool, complete self-containment had originally hidden the sort of trauma no child should ever endure.

  But perhaps his self-control was inborn, an essential part of the boy he’d been and the man he now was.

  Nick said, “I do need to work, but I’ll wait until the seatbelt sign goes off.”

  Hastily Siena buried herself in her book, religiously reading until a ping announced they’d reached cruising altitude and Nick got up.

  “I’ll work at the desk,” he said. “If you need anything, the steward will deal with it.”

  She’d noticed the desk at the other end of the cabin. From beneath her lashes she watched Nick walk across to it and open up a drawer to take out a laptop.

  He was a surprising—and unusual—amalgam of magnate and sex symbol. Filmstar good-looks were intensified and overwhelmed by an earthy, potent aura that gave them a raw edge. In casual clothes obviously tailored to his measurements he dominated the trappings of extreme wealth without effort, reducing them to a mere backdrop.

  He was, she thought, nerves tightening in sensual appreciation, a dangerous man.

  And her attitude to him was veering uncomfortably and recklessly close to absorption.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HALF an hour into the flight Siena gave up on the thriller she’d been enjoying. For the past thirty minutes her eyes had skimmed words that made little impression, and she’d completely lost sympathy with the hero and heroine.

  She closed the book, got up and walked across to the sofa facing the television screen, lowering herself onto the seat.

  “If you want to turn on the TV,” Nick said, “go ahead.”

  She flashed him a smile, her stomach knotting as their eyes met. “No, thanks, but if you want to …”

  “I haven’t finished here,” he said, and returned his attention to the computer screen.

  Siena picked up a magazine and flicked over the pages. It was exactly what she’d have expected on a private jet, catering to an exclusive readership with money to burn.

  But both the photography and the writing were superb. Her attention caught, she read an article about a castle in the Pyrenees before moving onto a rhapsodic description of a spa in Bali. Admiring the rooms and courtyards that combined restraint and tropical exuberance, she decided that one day she’d visit that exquisite island with its tropical flowers and gentle people. Perhaps.

  When she’d found a job and saved the money.

  A little later, deep in pictures of impossibly manicured rice paddies climbing mountains, she heard someone cough.

  Looking up, she saw the steward coming with a trolley.

  “Tea, Ms Blake,” he said. “May I …?”

  He showed her the trolley. Just like high tea at a very good hotel, she thought, smiling at the memory of the one time she’d been treated to such an occasion.

  She looked across to Nick, who glanced up from his computer and said, “English Breakfast, no milk or sugar, and whatever else looks good.”

  Choose for him? She remembered him devouring her mother’s chocolate cake and pavlova, New Zealand’s classic meringue confection decorated with kiwifruit slices, but apart from that she had no idea of his tastes.

  So she smiled at the steward and said, “Just leave the trolley, thanks.”

  When Nick sat down beside her she poured tea and handed his cup to him, making sure she didn’t touch his fingers.

  To fill in the silence she said chattily, “This reminds me that after my capping ceremony Mum and Dad took us all—several friends—to a hotel and shouted us high tea. We drank champagne first, and ate little delicacies like these sandwiches and scones.” She laughed as she added milk to her own cup. “And the waiter was so busy staring at Gemma he almost tipped champagne down my front, all over the robes I’d hired for the day.”

  The corners of Nick’s mouth twitched. “Very unprofessional of him,” he said somewhat austerely.

  “Ah, well, if you go
out with Gemma you get used to that sort of thing. It was a great day.” She smiled, recalling her excitement and joy.

  He said, “I tried damned hard to get there, but I had an emergency on my hands and I couldn’t make it.”

  She’d been disappointed, but also just a little relieved. “Trust the world’s finances to collapse the month I graduated.”

  “You didn’t want to do postgraduate study?”

  She shook her head. “You weren’t the only one dealing with a financial meltdown. Dad and Mum had helped me enough. Anyway, I wanted to get out into the real world and do some work.”

  “So you started in a plant nursery—after taking a commerce degree.”

  The faint note of surprise in his voice produced a shrug that probably seemed a bit defensive. “I like gardens and plants. In fact, I tossed up about taking a landscaping course before I settled on commerce. And I really liked the woman who hired me. Furthermore, she needed me.”

  “Why?”

  “Her husband had just died, and he’d always looked after the business side of things. She was a gardener, not a businesswoman, and she was lost and afraid and grieving. So she was more than happy to let me take over the management of the place while she dealt with the plants.”

  “I’m not in the least surprised,” he said dryly, and selected a sandwich from the tiered stand. “You have an air of competence that must have been very reassuring to a woman dealing with widowhood.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, surprised. “Nick, I seem to remember you used to love scones. I don’t, so why don’t you eat them all?”

  He laughed, and for a moment she saw the boy who’d teased two small girls, taught them games and asked them riddles, comforted Gemma when she’d been bullied about her height at school, climbed to Siena’s aid when she’d got herself stuck halfway up a big jacaranda tree, and warned her about overestimating her ability to swim long distances.

  With adults he’d been wary and controlled until over the years her father’s cheerful pleasure in his company had slowly won acceptance.

  Which might have meant that before he’d become a part of their lives he’d discovered it wasn’t safe to trust adults.

  “That,” he said on a coolly questioning note, “is a very intent look. Did you want the scones after all?”

  “No!” she expostulated, and laughed, feeling strangely as though she’d been caught out. “Just don’t think you can get away with eating all the club sandwiches.”

  He seemed to relax. “You always did have a hearty appetite. I used to wonder where you put it, but it wasn’t long before I realised you ran it off. It’s good to see a woman who isn’t picky about her food.”

  “Now you’ve made me feel greedy.” She sighed and added, “But I’m still going to have that cupcake, even though it will be like eating a work of art. Do you remember Mum used to slice the tops off and cut them in two, then use whipped cream to glue the halves on like wings?”

  “I do indeed,” he said. “You called them butterfly cakes.”

  She laughed. “And I remember that once you ate five of them. I was hugely impressed.”

  Later, she sat on the side of a big double bed in the larger of the two bedrooms. Except that they were probably called cabins, she thought with a hint of a smile. Far from being ostentatious or blatant, the interior had been fitted out with an eye to welcoming comfort. Her room even boasted an en suite bathroom, as elegant and efficient as that in Nick’s house.

  In her chain-store pyjamas she was definitely out of place—as alien as she would be on a space ship. And she was way out of her league.

  Had the Nick she remembered ever really existed? Occasionally she saw flashes of that boy, but underlying the fragile link of shared childhood experiences smouldered something else, something hard-edged and very, very basic.

  Sudden tears burnt the back of her eyes. She had the weird feeling she’d never known herself, that the woman who’d become engaged to Adrian—made love with him, planned a future with him—had been acting a part.

  With Nick she felt stimulated, aroused, elated—more alive, more.

  Just more. Blinking hard, she looked around, eyes roaming the soothing blues and creams of the room.

  And she’d better get over that feeling, because she didn’t belong here. This was Nick’s world now, but it had never been hers. And it never would be.

  When he married—if he ever did—he’d choose someone who fitted into this existence of jetting from one side of the world to another in the utmost luxury. Any interest he might have in her clearly wasn’t going to be acted on; after that kiss he’d made no attempt to touch her. Her position as her father’s daughter meant he didn’t consider her as … what?

  A candidate for the position of lover?

  “Oh, come off it,” she muttered beneath her breath. Nick could have almost any woman in the world … why would he choose her?

  A knock on her door startled her. She opened her mouth to call Come in, but closed it when she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror. Her skimpy singlet top and shorts revealed almost as much white skin as her nakedness last night.

  Hastily she got up and huddled into the dressing gown—several sizes too large—hung for her to use. Her heart pounding a sudden tattoo, she opened the door.

  Nick stood there. He examined her with suddenly intent eyes. “You’ve been crying.”

  “I—no, not really,” she said foolishly, resisting the urge to take a step back. Swathed in white towelling she had to look like a kid in dressing-up clothes, and he seemed to loom over her.

  When he reached out she froze, her breath locking in her chest as her eyes widened.

  He brushed the skin beneath one eye, a touch so light she should barely have felt it. Instead it registered in every cell in her body, fierce as a lightning strike, potent as an age-old curse.

  Seductive as sunlight and champagne on a summer’s evening.

  Tension tightened her throat but she managed to say hoarsely, “It’s all right. I’m not going to howl all over you again. Did you want something?”

  “Just to make sure you have everything you need.” His voice was curt, each word bitten off as though he was angry.

  “Yes, thank you.” It sounded stiff and abrupt, but she didn’t dare say anything else.

  Clearly it was enough. “Good. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  And he turned away.

  Siena closed the door with a small click and leaned back against it, sombrely eyeing herself in the mirror. She looked like a.

  “A dormouse,” she muttered between her teeth. “A white dormouse out of a children’s book.”

  She shrugged off the gown and hung it up again, then crawled into the bed, turned off the lights and lay contemplating the ceiling, the steady sound of the jet’s engines a background to her thoughts.

  One thing she’d always prided herself on was her common sense, and now was the time to call on it. Only an idiot would moon over a man who was doing his utmost to show her how much he regretted kissing her. Nick might even be rueing his offer to convey her back to New Zealand. Certainly he’d only made the suggestion because she was her father’s daughter.

  Her mouth firmed. No more foolishness.

  From this very moment she’d enjoy the unaccustomed luxury, relish the visit to Hong Kong—and keep reminding herself she was merely a childhood acquaintance of Nick’s, nothing more.

  She’d scarcely thought of Adrian since she’d got on the plane. Was she going to cut him out of her heart so swiftly—so easily? It made a mockery of everything she’d believed, everything she’d felt. She hated to believe she was so shallow and faithless, but unpalatable or not, it seemed she was.

  The words on the screen seemed to jump, and after a glance at the time Nick pressed “Save” and “Quit” and got to his feet. His first meeting with the Chinese delegation was less than two hours after the plane arrived in Hong Kong, so he needed to be on top form.

 
And that meant sleep. But excess energy seethed through him, demanding release. What he really needed was a workout, an hour spent forcing his body past its limits and into exhaustion.

  Mouth set in a grim line, he strode to the other bedroom. A shower eased muscles set too long in one position, and once in bed he stretched the few remaining kinks out of his long limbs. Normally he’d have slept immediately, but as the jet droned on towards Hong Kong he found himself lying awake, an image of Siena in the far-too-large dressing gown curling his mouth in a smile.

  Not for long, however. His expression hardened as he faced an extremely unpalatable truth. Even swathed in what had seemed acres of white fabric, he’d wanted her.

  He still wanted her. Hunger ached through his body like a sweet fever, one that had lain quiescent for years only to ambush him the moment he’d seen Siena again.

  Not for the first time he cursed his weakness.

  He could—perhaps—have understood if it was her sister who affected him like that, yet Gemma’s beauty left him completely cold.

  Five years ago, when he’d lost his head and made love to Siena, it had felt like coming home. Afterwards, while she slept in his arms, he’d fought a desperate fight against the prospect that this overwhelming feeling for her might be love. Angry at his loss of control, he’d forced himself to ignore her warmth and soft litheness, the sense of completeness he’d never felt before.

  Love was a danger he’d not foreseen. He knew about love, had lived all his life with its other, hidden face; he’d seen too much of the havoc it could create. It held people prisoner, kept them a willing slave to another’s cruelty.

  And five years ago not only had he been immature but he’d had an empire to rule, a future to create—a future where his emotions were kept under strict control.

  A future that—until a few days ago, when Siena burst into it like a small tornado—had been lived on his terms. Although he’d always given and demanded fidelity in his relationships, he’d never expected or wanted emotional commitment. His life had satisfied him completely until now, when it suddenly seemed barren.