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She chose her words with care. “I was nineteen when Sean and I became engaged. He was twenty-three. I was just starting my second year toward a mechanical engineering degree. He was being groomed to eventually take over the reins of his family’s business. Sean’s family is fifth-generation Hong Kong native—gwai lo,” she explained, using the phrase euphemistically. “That just means they’re not Chinese. Foreigners. But born here in Hong Kong—and superwealthy by Hong Kong standards. Sean was their only son. His grandfather—if I told you his name you’d recognize it—he and the company he founded are world famous. Both our families were happy for us, even though my parents thought I was too young and wanted me to wait until I graduated from college. Sean and I didn’t want to wait that long, but we did agree to a year’s engagement.”
She paused, gathering courage for what she would say next. “Three days before our wedding, Sean was kidnapped. The payoff was botched...and Sean was killed.”
At one time Mei-li wouldn’t have been able to talk about this at all. She’d grieved intensely after Sean’s death, but it had happened almost eleven years ago. And her grief had found an outlet in her life’s work. She was good at what she did—damned good—because she knew the consequences of not being good. In all the years she’d been doing this, every kidnap victim on every case she’d worked had been recovered alive. Sometimes the kidnappers had been caught, and sometimes they hadn’t been. Sometimes the ransom had been recovered, in full or in part. But the money had always been secondary to the families involved. Recovering their loved ones was always the primary goal, and Mei-li never lost sight of that fact.
For just a moment she let her pain reflect in her eyes, sharing this very private grief with Dirk. “I wanted to die after Sean died. I wanted to. But I didn’t. And I know now there was a reason God didn’t let me die. Every time I help bring a kidnap victim safely home, every time I see the joy on their families’ faces, I know that’s the reason I survived.”
* * *
Dirk woke when the woman in his arms stirred in her sleep. For just a moment he thought it had all been a horrendous nightmare. Then reality crashed in on him—his daughters really had been kidnapped.
But he’d slept. Impossible as it seemed, somehow he’d slept. And he knew whom he had to thank.
He surreptitiously loosened his hold on Mei-li, telling himself not to breathe in the scent of her—an enticing combination of ginger and warm woman—and slid out from beneath the blanket covering the two of them. He stood and stretched, feeling every one of his thirty-six years, his muscles aching from a night spent on a hard, bare floor. But there was one part of him that didn’t ache for that reason, although it did ache. And the reason it ached was the woman who’d spent the night in his arms.
He forced himself to look away from Mei-li, her face soft and rosy in sleep. But as he did so he remembered the night they’d first met, and he realized he now had the answer to one of the questions he’d first posed to himself about her—her skin really was as satiny smooth as it looked.
The faint light creeping through the boarded-up windows told him it was early, and a quick glance at his smartphone confirmed it was just after six. Then it dawned on him that sunlight meant the typhoon had passed, and with that realization came renewed hope—at least now he could do something. No more forced inactivity.
Everyone else in his little group was still asleep, but there was a general stirring around him. He yawned and stretched again, then reached down and gently shook Mei-li’s shoulder. He hated to wake her, but he didn’t want anyone else to know they’d shared a pillow and blanket...and he didn’t think she’d want that, either.
She came awake immediately and sprang lightly to her feet. “Are you okay?” she asked in a low voice. “Did you sleep?” And an emotion he didn’t recognize curled through him.
“Yeah.” Unable to help himself, he stroked one finger down her cheek. “Thanks to you.”
She stared up at him, her face solemn. “I’m glad.”
The urge to pull her into his arms slammed into him out of the blue, and it took all his willpower to resist. But he wasn’t able to prevent himself from brushing his fingers over the curve of her chin and sliding a thumb over her lips. Then he turned away from temptation, bent down and picked up the blanket. He shook it vigorously, as if he could shake some sense into himself at the same time. He folded the blanket with firm, compact movements, then dropped it on top of the pillow.
