Twelve Hours of Temptation

Melissa consulted the name on the map and told him.

‘You’ll need to go back the way you came for a kilometre or so,’ he said. ‘Turn right at the big purple house and you’ll see the signs for the hotel.’

‘Well, at least it got us this far,’ Samir said in resigned tones as he switched off the tablet a few minutes later. ‘Though I wish our friend back there had given clearer directions—every third house here is purple. It didn’t occur to me earlier—you’re Goan, aren’t you? Don’t you have family here?’

‘They all live very far away,’ Melissa said. ‘Um, should I call Devdeep or someone who’s already arrived and get proper directions?’

‘You’d need to explain where we are first,’ Samir said. ‘Let’s do the old-fashioned thing and ask a real live human being.’

The next ‘real live human being’ they met fortunately knew the area well, and within ten minutes they were pulling into the hotel grounds.

‘Thanks once again,’ Melissa said once they’d arrived. She was feeling unaccountably shy, and automatically reverted to formality. ‘You didn’t have to give me a lift, but you did, and I had a great time.’

For a few seconds Samir looked down at her, his dark eyes mesmerising in their intensity. Then a hostess bustled up to them with a tray of welcome drinks and the moment passed.

‘I’ll see you around, then,’ Samir said, taking his room keys from the bellboy and slinging his bag over his shoulder. ‘Some of the other guys are already here—you could call them and catch up maybe.’

Was that a subtle way of telling her not to expect to hang around with him? Melissa felt absurdly upset at the thought as she watched him stride away.

Just as he was about to step out of the lobby, he turned around. ‘Melissa?’

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Make sure you eat your meals on time, OK?’ he said, smiling a crooked little smile. ‘No fainting when you’re called up to receive the award.’

‘OK,’ she said.

It was only when she reached her room and looked into the mirror that she realised that she was still smiling goofily.

‘Idiot woman,’ she told her reflection crossly. ‘It was fun, but the trip’s over now. You’ll be lucky if he pays any attention to you at all after this.’

Her reflection looked back at her just as crossly, and she gave it a wry grin.

‘I know. I liked him too. But he’s my boss—I can’t chase after him. Time for a cold shower now, OK?’

She moved away from the mirror, her good humour at least partly restored. She’d decided a couple of years back not to take men too seriously, and so far she’d managed to stick by it.

Wandering into the bathroom, she hummed softly under her breath as she turned on the taps. Eek, the cold water was really, really cold. Maybe a lukewarm shower would do just as well without giving her pneumonia.

By the time she was done with ironing an impossibly crushed pair of shorts, tucking her hair under a shower cap and actually going ahead and taking a shower, it was past six. It took her a few seconds to give her hair a brushing and pull on a yellow spaghetti strap top over the neatly ironed shorts. Once she was done, she gave herself a quick look in the mirror and headed off to the beach.

There was an enthusiastic game of cricket in progress between Devdeep and a couple of other guys from Mendonca’s and a bunch of youngsters from another agency. Pretty much the entire Mumbai advertising fraternity seemed to be in Goa, either infesting the beach or helping the state economy along by drinking larger quantities of beer and feni.

‘Join us!’ one of the younger cricket players in the group yelled out to Melissa.

‘You’re supposed to play volleyball on the beach, not cricket,’ she yelled back. ‘Losers!’

‘Leave her alone—girls can’t play cricket,’ one of the surlier members of the team grunted.

‘Oh, can’t they?’ Melissa said, promptly kicking off her sandals and joining them.

The sand felt good under her feet—it had been a long while since she’d gone barefoot. Mumbai had its fair share of beaches, but they were crowded and often dirty.

‘You can field,’ the surly man said. ‘Just don’t get in the way of the other fielders.’

Melissa didn’t say anything—just waited till the luckless batsman hit a ball in her direction. She moved across the sand like a guided missile, leaving Mr Surly and the others gaping as she caught the ball in mid-air and whirled around to knock down a wicket. Clearly unused to running in the sand, the batsmen were only halfway down the crease—they didn’t stand a chance.

‘Out,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘I think I’ll bowl next, thank you.’

There was a second of stunned silence, and then ‘her’ team started cheering madly. The bowler was the man who’d first called out to her, and he relinquished his place to her gladly. He was a nice-looking chap, with curly hair and an impish grin, and Melissa liked him immediately.

‘Down here for the ad fest?’ he asked as he handed over the ball.

Melissa nodded.

‘I’m Akash,’ he said. ‘Would you like to catch up later? Figure out which of our entries is likely to get a gold in the festival?’

‘Akash, stop hitting on the bowler,’ one of the other players said.

‘Yeah, Akash, there’s no way she’d want to be seen with a loser like you,’ another chimed in.

Melissa gave the guy a saucy grin. ‘I’ll tell you once the game is over,’ she said.

She wasn’t in the least attracted to him, but it made sense hanging out with a bunch of people her own age rather than hanging around and hoping Samir would come and find her.

THREE

After thirteen hours behind the wheel, every muscle in Samir’s body felt stiff—he was supposed to be at a ‘networking’ session, but it sounded so incredibly boring that he’d made a flimsy excuse and escaped to his room.

Once there, he changed into running shorts and a dry fit T-shirt before slipping on his running shoes. A run would make up for the gym session he’d missed in the morning. Hopefully it would also get him tired enough to stop thinking about Melissa’s lissom body.

Used to running on Tarmac, or on the jogging track at the Mumbai race course, Samir avoided the beach. The lane outside the hotel had a fair bit of traffic, and he turned off into a by-lane as soon as he could. There was much less traffic here, other than the occasional cow or motorcycle, and he was able to build up a decent pace.

Running always helped clear his head, and he was able to think a little more rationally about his reaction to Melissa. She was an attractive woman, but he’d been seeing her around the office for weeks now and had never turned to give her a second look. Maybe it had been the effect of being thrown together with her for several hours—yes, that had to be it, he decided. And her fainting fit in the morning had aroused his protective instincts.

The sun was on the verge of setting when Samir glanced at his watch. He had been running for forty-five minutes—a little short of his normal hour, but perfectly respectable. He was opposite one of the public entrances to the Uttorda beach, and he slowed to a walk.

He felt strangely reluctant to go back to the hotel. It had been only a couple of years since he’d started actually running the companies his family owned, and he wasn’t yet used to the automatically deferential way the teams treated him. It was especially noticeable in Mendonca Advertising, because as a rule advertising people were a lot less respectful of hierarchy—Brian had been treated more like a well-loved uncle than a boss.

Maybe the rumours that he was planning to downsize accounted for it. People like Devdeep were desperately trying to prove that they were creative and revenue-focussed at the same time, like a modern-day David Ogilvy and Jack Welch rolled into one. And others, like Dubeyji, the elderly man who managed their Hindi advertising, were openly resentful. If you wanted to run a company successfully you couldn’t keep everyone happy—Brian had tried, and in the process almost run the agency into the ground.

Green coconut water would be good, if he could find someone selling it, he thought as he made his way to the beach. There was a small stall right at the entry to the beach, and he paid for a coconut, sipping the delicate water through a straw as he walked towards the sea. There was a game of cricket in progress—and while the teams seemed to have very little regard for the rules of the game, they were evidently having the time of their lives.

Something vaguely familiar about one of the women playing caught his eye, and he automatically slowed down. She was slim, brown-skinned, with endless legs and flyaway hair, and he felt a jolt of recognition hit him as she turned to laugh at something one of the other players was saying.

In the next second Melissa caught sight of Samir, and she tossed the bat to the next player and came towards him.

‘I just got run out,’ she said, making a face. ‘I’m brilliant at bowling and fielding—batting’s not so good. though. Where were you? Jogging?’