IT WAS A GREY, rainy day when Dora and Archie left England. Arriving in Macau felt like waking in the middle of a Technicolor dream.
She’d had no real idea what to expect. All she’d really known was that Della had been in love with the place.
Her mouth twisted.
More accurately, her sister had been in love with Lao Dan—and to her Macau was Lao Dan.
She glanced out of the window at the vivid egg-yolk-yellow sun. According to the internet, Macau was ‘a vibrant mash-up of old and new, East and West’, and probably on closer inspection that would be true, she thought, stifling a yawn.
But her first impression was that she had never seen so many people—except maybe on Oxford Street at Christmas.
And they were all so busy.
Eating, and shopping, and doing Tai Chi in the little parks between the roads—roads that were jammed full of every conceivable form of transport from rickshaws to Rolls-Royces.
Beside her, her so-called ‘assistant’, Li, leaned forward and pointed proudly at a large glossy black car as it cruised smoothly past them. ‘See the crest on the door? That belongs to the Black Tiger—Mr Law’s hotel casino,’ she added as Dora stared at her blankly. ‘VIP guests have exclusive use of the cars during their stay.’ She smiled. ‘They are very popular.’
Dora smiled back, but she felt her stomach flip over as she caught a glimpse of the crest—the head of a snarling black tiger.
No wonder he’d chosen that name for his casino, she thought. The tiger was a symbol of power and strength, and of course it was also stunningly beautiful.
Her heartbeat skipped.
But being beautiful didn’t change a tiger’s nature. No matter how soft its fur, it still had sharp fangs and claws. And Charlie Law might have used persuasion, not force, to get what he wanted, but beneath that civilised exterior lurked the heart of a predator, and she needed to remember that when she was dealing with him.
She felt her stomach perform another slow somersault. She had been damping down a feeling of uneasiness since leaving Charlie Law’s penthouse five days ago. Now, though—now that she was actually here in Macau—it was threatening to rise up and swamp her.
She’d been dreading the flight over ever since his incredibly efficient PA, Arnaldo, had got in touch with her and told her when a limousine would pick her and Archie up.
The idea of flying sixteen hours on a plane with an eleven-month-old baby had appalled her, but the prospect of flying with Charlie on one of the Lao family’s private jets had been even more appalling.
Fortunately, he’d had to fly back to Macau early, so she’d been spared that ordeal. But it had only been a temporary reprieve, and now the clock was counting down to when she would have to face him again.
Her chest tightened as she remembered their last encounter in his apartment. Or, more specifically, those few tense, tantalising moments as they’d waited for the lift to arrive.
What would have happened if her bag hadn’t got caught? Or if she hadn’t tripped? Or he hadn’t caught her?
Her cheeks felt hot.
Or, more worryingly, what would have happened if the lift hadn’t arrived when it had?
She had been asking herself those same questions over and over again since it had happened.
Except nothing had happened, she told herself.
Her body tensed, and memories of what hadn’t happened crowded her head.
He had been so close. Even now she could still feel how it had felt—the heat and the dizzying maleness of his body, the intensity of his dark eyes on hers. She had been mesmerised, rooted to the spot, drawn into his gaze so that the world had been reduced simply to the two of them, with her heartbeat drowning out everything else.
But it didn’t matter that the fierce hunger inside her had been momentarily reflected in his face. From now on there were going to be no more ‘what ifs’.
She glanced over to where her nephew sat in his car seat, ignoring the view outside the window and gazing in rapture at his octopus activity toy, his little hands clenching and unclenching with excitement at his reflection in a tiny rectangle of mirror.
This trip was for Archie’s benefit.
And nothing—certainly not some insane attraction to a man she didn’t like very much, and didn’t trust—was going to jeopardise that.
As the limousine turned off the highway a sick feeling began to unravel in her stomach. Turning to Li, she said quickly, ‘How far are we from Mr Law’s house?’