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“That’s not possible,” she whispered, dismayed. She couldn’t be falling in love with Dirk. She couldn’t. She’d only known him a day.
Love for Sean had taken months...almost a year to develop. And even then she’d constantly questioned herself, wanting to be sure. The sexual attraction had been there, but love? True love? The kind of love her parents had? When Sean had proposed on her nineteenth birthday, she’d accepted, but...she’d acquiesced to her parents’ request for a year’s engagement. They didn’t want her to rush into something that could turn out to be a mistake, and though she’d loved Sean, she’d seen the power of their argument.
Love wasn’t static. She’d known that even at nineteen. “More Today than Yesterday” wasn’t just a romantic song title, it was a life truth. Love either grew as you grew...or it died. All she had to do was look at her parents’ marriage to know what love could grow to be if it was nurtured. Cherished. Treasured.
When she was trying to hypnotize Dirk this morning she’d almost told him about her parents, about how difficult the decision had been for the two of them to marry. That had been a different time, of course—Chinese didn’t marry gwai lo back then. Not as a general rule. And gwai lo didn’t marry Chinese.
Mei-li smiled slightly as she looked at herself in the mirror and combed her hair dry. Gwai lo in Cantonese translated literally as “foreign devil” in English, although, as she’d explained to Dirk, nowadays it wasn’t used as a derogatory term so much, it just meant foreigners, especially Westerners.
And yet her parents had been young and in love. Not as they loved each other now, of course. But they had believed they could change the world. Their world. And in their own small way they had. Her mother came from an ancient Chinese family. Very proud. Very rich in tradition. Her father’s lineage was equally proud, equally ancient. When her parents had married in the face of opposition from both families, their families had cast them off. But eventually...years later...both families had come around. After the children had come along. Children have a way of breaking down the barriers, she told herself with a tiny smile.
There wasn’t the same stigma on mixed-race marriages today that there’d been back then. Not in most circles. And even if there was, she wouldn’t let anyone’s opinion sway her—the same way her mother hadn’t been swayed from marrying her father—if she loved Dirk.
Which brought her right back to the realization that she was falling in love with him. After a day. Which was so totally unlike her it was unbelievable. “It’s empathy,” she whispered. “Because you know what he’s going through with his daughters’ kidnapping. That’s all it is. Empathy.”
But empathy couldn’t account for the way she’d kissed him in the kitchen this morning. Or the way he’d kissed her, as if she was his salvation. Empathy couldn’t account for the way her breath caught in her throat when he smiled a certain way at her. An intimate smile, and yet...a curiously innocent smile. Not a sexually knowing smile—she’d been on the receiving end of enough of those to know that wasn’t what Dirk was thinking, even though he practically oozed sexiness from his pores.
And empathy couldn’t account for the way it seemed as if she could read his mind and he could read hers. As if they were on the same wavelength. As if they shared a bond that transcended time and space.
* * *
Dirk escaped to his bedroom for a shower before room service arrived. It was only May, but May in semitropical Hong Kong was already hot and sticky. The hotel was air-conditioned, of course, as was his suite, but he needed the shower. Not just because of the heat and humidity, but because he needed to clear his mind, and a shower had been his escape since forever.
His mind was teeming with random bits and pieces that kept coming back to him—the two phone calls from the kidnappers, the discussion with the doorman, the oh-so-tantalizing investigation this afternoon. And Mei-li. Everything she said, everything she did. Mei-li in the wee hours of the morning, sitting next to him in the lobby as the typhoon howled outside the hotel, comforting him by letting him see her own wounds, which were worse than his. The hypnosis session this morning, her holding him as he raged on the balcony, the kiss they’d shared in the kitchen.
But that wasn’t all. Admiration was also thrown into the mix. He hadn’t been exaggerating earlier when he told her whatever she was charging him wouldn’t even begin to cover what she was worth to him in this investigation. She might not have any experience with this kind of kidnapping, but he wouldn’t even have known where to begin without her.
