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The remorse she’d seen in his vivid blue eyes before was back, and if they’d had the time she’d have forced him to tell her what it meant. Would have made him confess the secret guilt he carried in his breast—because she knew that was the only explanation for the regret in his eyes. Then, and only then, would she be able to break through the wall he’d built around himself, around his emotions.
Only then would he be free to accept her love...and return it.
* * *
They approached the Clock Tower from the north, having walked the relatively short distance from the Peninsula Hotel. The promenade was busy, as always, with locals and tourists passing to and fro, moving from the Star Ferry Pier along the waterfront to the Avenue of the Stars. The Clock Tower was brightly illuminated, its red brick and white granite both appearing as shades of orange under the night sky and the lights.
Mei-li had her smartphone out, pretending to take pictures of the clock, the harbor and the Hong Kong Island skyline across the water. She told herself not to, but she snapped two real pictures of Dirk when he wasn’t looking. Since it was night and he couldn’t wear his sunglasses without drawing unwanted attention to himself, he’d donned a ball cap advertising the Minnesota Twins and pulled the brim low over his face. Mei-li wasn’t a sports fan—horse racing at Happy Valley was about the only sport she watched, and that only occasionally—but she knew Americans were as crazy over American football as the rest of the world was over soccer...which they called football, too.
“Football fan?” she asked Dirk, pointing to his ball cap, making small talk as they leaned against the iron railing surrounding the harbor and waited for 9:00 p.m. to roll around.
Dirk grinned. “Baseball. If this were a football cap, it’d be the Vikings. The Twins are baseball.”
“Oh. Kind of like cricket, right?”
His grin deepened. “Nothing like. Except there’s a bat and a ball involved. Not much of a sports fan, I take it?”
“Not much. You?”
“When I’m not on location outside the US, shooting a movie, yeah, I’m a four-sport guy. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey.”
“Hockey?”
“I’m originally from Minnesota,” he said, exaggerating his pronunciation of the state’s name as “Meen-eh-soh-tah,” which Mei-li took to be some kind of inside joke. “I haven’t been to a live hockey game in years, but I used to go all the time back when I lived there. And I was on my high school team. Wasn’t very good, but...” He shrugged and grinned lightheartedly. “At least I made the team.”
The wind off the harbor caught Mei-li’s hair, pushing it across her face, and she looped it behind her ear. She glanced over at the Clock Tower, then at her watch, double-checking the time. “Basketball is big in mainland China,” she told Dirk. “Football—soccer to you—is big, too. But, somehow, I was never interested.” She chuckled softly to herself. “Jason, my brother, was into rugby when he was young. Pretty good, too. My father was super proud and so was my mother...right up until Jason broke an arm in a rugger scrum. After that, she wanted him to pursue a less-dangerous sport. What about your parents? Did they want you to play hockey?”
Dirk’s grin faded. “My parents both died when I was nine. Car accident. I went to live in Minnetonka with my aunt and uncle and their three kids, all under the age of seven. They loved me and I was fortunate not to be made a ward of the state when my parents died, but there wasn’t a lot of money in that household. Minnetonka has a reputation for being a wealthy suburb of Minneapolis, but not everyone who lives there is well-off. Anything I wanted, I had to earn the money for myself. Good thing about it? I learned early how to work hard. I learned how to set goals for myself...and achieve them. And I learned the value of a dollar.”
He waved a hand in the direction of the Peninsula Hotel. “I don’t live like that as a general rule. The studio is picking up the tab, and I had valid reasons for saying yes. But back home in Hollywood it’s a different story.” He breathed deeply. “I don’t skimp on the important things—my daughters, for one. I have a nanny and three bodyguards for them because they’re necessary, not a status symbol.
“And my housekeeper dates back to our early days in Hollywood—Bree and me. We really couldn’t afford her at first, but Hannah had lost her job, her husband and her home all in one fell swoop, so Bree and I took her in. Hannah didn’t want charity, so we let her do whatever she wanted to do around the house as a way of earning her keep. When I started making a name for myself in the film industry and wanted Bree to travel on location with me, Hannah just sort of took over as housekeeper, and she’s been with me ever since.”
