AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Effortlessly she dragged herself up off the lounger, feeling dizzy and disorientated
as she stood up. She was on one of the layered roofs of the hotel, in an airy garden lush with potted palms and raised flowerbeds, with a sort of green felt carpet laid everywhere except for on the vivid blue tiling around the pool. As she stood in the sunshine, the heat hit her again, like a blast from a fire. After another dip in the pool she would have to go inside again—she felt weak from the heat.
The cool of the water closed over her like a blessing, and she sighed in pleasure. It was not crowded—just a few women, like her, lounging around the poolside. The hum of traffic from busy Orchard Street below could hardly be heard above the music piped out of speakers hidden in the greenery.
She dunked her head under the water, letting her hair flow out like a mermaid’s, floating back bonelessly, limbs splayed.
Eyes closed, she let the sun beat down on her face.
What am I doing here?
The question echoed around her brain, pointless, rhetorical.
She was there because Diego Saez wanted her to be there.
With him.
As she waded out of the pool, patting herself dry with one of the towels provided, wringing out her hair, she again felt the need to get back into the air-conditioned interior. Wrapping her sarong around her still damp bathing suit, she headed indoors.
She let herself into the suite with the key the reception desk had given her when she’d requested one, and stopped dead.
Diego was there.
He was sitting on one of the pair of sofas, legs extended, remote control in his hand as he watched stock prices flicker on the huge flat screen television in the room.
He looked up.
His face was shuttered.
But something flared deep in his eyes as they ran fleetingly over her scantily clad body, draped in the filmy sarong, dampened from the bathing suit beneath.
She stood there, incapable of speech.
She’d assumed—wrongly, it seemed—that he would be out all day—off downtown to the business section of Singapore, west of the harbour, where all the international banks and corporations were.
His voice, when he spoke, was dry.
‘Did you sleep well?’
She swallowed, and nodded infinitesimally.
Inside her body, her heart suddenly seemed to have got too large. It was choking her. Her skin felt clammy, despite the chill of the room.
‘Pleasantly rested?’
She gave that minute nod again, as her breath froze in her throat.
She could feel panic starting to mount, coursing into her bloodstream.
He got to his feet. It was a single, smooth, limbering movement.
She stood stock still, frozen to the spot.
He came towards her.
Her heart was racing. Like a stricken deer, fleeing for its life.
And finding itself at bay.
