‘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.
