Twelve Hours of Temptation

Why, indeed? She looked so young that for a second he’d wondered if she was underage.

‘I was thinking about the ad you wrote,’ he said. ‘I’d assumed it was written by an older woman—someone with kids.’

‘Oh, that,’ she said, looking embarrassed. ‘I spent a lot of time with my sister-in-law after my nephew was born. She didn’t have anyone else to help her with the baby.’

‘Still, it was a very insightful piece of work. I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t win something.’

Feeling more and more embarrassed, Melissa said, ‘Has Brian been brainwashing you?’

Samir laughed, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in a particularly attractive way. ‘He happened to mention it a few times. But I don’t get easily influenced by other people’s opinions. Are you done? We should leave if we want to get to Goa before it’s dark.’

He put a hand under her elbow to guide her out of the restaurant and Melissa felt all her fantasies come rushing back in full force. Of course he was probably just being polite. Or he was worried she’d keel over and faint once again, and he’d have to carry her out on his shoulder. Either way, her insides were doing weird things at his touch, and the temptation to touch him in return was immense.

She tried to kill the fantasy by imagining his reaction. Shock? Embarrassment? Then she remembered the feel of his lips on her fingers as he’d taken the sticky candy from them, and she couldn’t help thinking that maybe, just maybe, he’d reciprocate. Bend down and kiss her. Tangle his big strong hands in her hair and tip her head back to get better access to her lips...

‘Melissa?’

Brought back to earth with a thump, she realised he was holding the car door open for her.

‘Sorry,’ she said, sliding into her seat quickly.

‘You’re a complete daydreamer, aren’t you?’ he asked, looking rather amused as he got into the driver’s seat. ‘What were you thinking about?’

Ha—wouldn’t you like to know? Melissa felt like saying. Maybe some day she’d actually be confident enough to come back with the truth when a man like Samir asked her a question like that. Unfortunately, as of now, she was less than halfway there.

‘Just stuff,’ she said after a pause.

‘Random stuff?’

‘Oh, very random.’ He’d sounded a bit sceptical, and she felt she needed to justify herself. ‘As random as Brownian motion—you know, that thing they show you in school...dust motes being tossed around by invisible molecules...my mind’s a bit like that.’

He gave her a long look, and she shook her head, laughing.

‘Sorry, sorry. Rambling a bit there.’

‘Just a bit,’ he said, but his lips quirked up at the corners as if he was trying hard not to smile.

Melissa had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking about. She concentrated on her phone for a bit, replying to the various texts that had come in while they were at lunch. When she looked up they were on the highway again, going down a rather lovely stretch of road with sugarcane fields on both sides and rolling green hills on the horizon.

‘Look at the bougainvillaea down the centre of the road—aren’t they beautiful?’

Samir hadn’t noticed the bougainvillaea other than as an unnecessary distraction—at her words, though, he gave them a quick glance.

‘They’re OK, I guess,’ he said. ‘Though they seem to be planted in any old order. White for a few hundred metres and then miles of pink, with a couple of yellows thrown in.’

‘I thought that was the nicest thing about them,’ she returned. ‘They look as if they’ve just sprung up, not as if someone planned—’ She stopped short as she took in Samir’s less than interested expression. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The driving must be stressful, and here I am babbling about bougainvillaea.’

‘And now you’re making me feel guilty about being a grumpy old git,’ Samir said wryly. ‘I’m sorry—I’m not very good at noticing things.’

‘I’m the opposite,’ Melissa said, mock-mournfully. ‘I notice everything. My head’s chock-full of all kinds of unnecessary junk.’

‘It’ll all come in handy some day,’ Samir said. ‘You’ll be brilliant if you’re on a quiz show, one day, and they show you a picture of a road and ask you to identify it.’

The good stretch seemed to be over now, because the next turnoff they took was onto a road that barely deserved the name. It was pretty much a long stretch of potholes connected by little strips of tar, and Melissa winced as the car bounced up and down.

‘Sorry,’ Samir said, putting a brief steadying hand on her knee as they went over a particularly bad crater.

Even through the frayed denim of her cut-offs Melissa could feel the warm strength of his hand, and she began to feel a lot more positive about the state of the road. Every cloud...et cetera, et cetera, she thought, an involuntary grin coming to her lips.

Beginning to enjoy herself thoroughly now, she let the next crater bounce her sideways so that she landed on his shoulder. ‘Oops,’ she said. ‘You need to drive more carefully, Samir.’

Samir gave her a sideways look but didn’t say anything. That last bounce had been deliberate, he was sure of it, but she seemed to be doing it for fun. He was used to women saying and doing things to win his approval—Melissa was something else altogether. She was definitely as attracted to him as he was to her, but she was treating the whole situation as a bit of a joke.

‘I’m rolling the windows down,’ she announced when they came to a stretch where, wonder of wonders, there was an actual repair crew busily laying a new layer of tar on top of the existing apology for a road. ‘I love the smell of fresh tar.’

She didn’t wait for his permission, and Samir wondered what she’d have said if he told her he was allergic to dust and tarry smells. He wasn’t, but if he had been she’d probably have found that funny as well, he thought resignedly.

‘Did you notice how the colour of the soil changes between states?’ she was asking. ‘It was brown while we were in Maharashtra, then it turned black near the Karnataka border—and in Goa it’s brick-red.’

Samir shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t notice something like that even if there were mile-high signs telling me about it.’

Melissa didn’t say anything, but it was clear she thought that not noticing anything sounded incredibly boring.

He gave her a quick smile. ‘Though I do notice that you have a dirt smear on your cheek,’ he said, stroking the offending item lightly with the back of his hand. ‘That comes from having your nose stuck out of the window.’

‘Touché,’ Melissa said and grinned as she rubbed the smudge off. ‘I’ve always wanted to say that to someone, only I’ve never met anyone swanky enough to speak French to.’

‘I might be swanky, but I can at least speak Hindi,’ Samir remarked. ‘You’re jabbering away in English all the time.’

‘In the agency? That’s because poor old Dubeyji almost had a heart attack when I tried speaking to him in Hindi. Apparently my grammar’s all wrong, and I sound terribly rude.’

‘You sound terribly rude even when you’re speaking English,’ Samir murmured.

She punched him lightly in the arm. ‘Ouch, way too musclebound,’ she said, pretending to nurse the knuckles on her right hand. ‘You should go easy on the gym—live life a little. You’d make a much nicer punching bag if you were flabby.’

‘What a nice thought,’ he said, laughing. ‘But I think I’ll stick to my gym routine. And you might want to concentrate on that map—there’s a town coming up and I’ve no idea whether to go through it or around it.’

* * *

‘You have reached your destination,’ the smug voice-over on the map informed them a few hours later.

‘Except that we’re in the middle of freaking nowhere,’ Samir muttered.

After telling them to take a right turn towards the Uttorda beach the map had carefully led them to a cul-de-sac, with the beach on one side and a grove of coconut trees on the other.

A man passed by them, whistling cheerfully, and Melissa rolled down the window. ‘Is there a hotel nearby?’ she asked him in Konkani.

‘Lots,’ the man said. ‘This is Goa—not the Thar desert. Any particular one that you might be looking for?’