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The bed was frighteningly big for one person, bigger than a king—a whole royal family of a bed. The bathroom was black marble. The huge bath sunken in front of the floor to ceiling windows faced the Huangpu River. She could see the Pearl Tower and the lights of the economic zone of Pudong.
She opened the doors to the balcony, grinning into the heat of the midnight sky at the sheer luxury, the absolute inappropriateness and the fait acompli of it all. She shouldn’t be in this room, but she had no wa
y of finding the man from Tara to issue a protest. If he thought he could buy her he was in for a surprise.
So for tonight she’d play princess. Tomorrow she’d have them shift her to an ordinary room and swap his credit for hers. This might get tricky when it came to claiming her expenses, though Mark was unlikely to care if they were less than budgeted for. There’d be one night’s less accommodation to pay for.
When she stretched out in the jasmine scented bath she recognised the tune in her head was Green Day. The song she’d once thought in a dark mood of sarcasm to be her deflowerer Ben Tucker’s theme song. Now it seemed to be a signature tune for her Shangri-La experience.
She sang the chorus aloud, the bathroom acoustics making her singing voice sound vaguely Celine Dion. Right at this unpredictable moment she was having the time of her life.
An hour later, wearing the hotel’s cream silk robe, she considered the bed and the eight pillows across its headboard. It was entirely too beautifully made. It seemed criminal to muck it up. It was hard to know whether to choose an end or shoot for the middle and sleep starfish just because there was all this space. It was hard to know if she would sleep in any case. Despite the bath, she was too keyed up. The suite was one thing, but the man? The man was another.
Somehow he’d known when they’d be released. He’d woken her fifteen minutes before the official arrived, with enough time to straighten herself up and splash water on her face. He’d obviously been working while she slept, a laptop, its screen glowing, open on the table.
He’d held out a hand to help her to her feet and smiled at her like she was Christmas morning. He’d had the devil in his eyes when he asked if she’d slept well, making it sound like an invitation to further debauchery, and he’d laughed richly when she’d blushed from the sudden awkwardness of the scene.
The young immigration official who came to stamp their passports and release them copped a tongue lashing from him, making him colour and duck his head. There’d been lots of pointing at the ceiling so she figured it had something to do with the air-conditioning.
When they’d cleared the airport, his car and driver were magically waiting. He’d insisted she take it. He handed her into the back seat, and she thought he was going to go old world gallant and take her hand to his lips, but he half climbed in, pushed her into the soft, yielding leather and kissed her hard on the lips while the driver watched in the rear-view mirror.
She’d grabbed his shirt. “What’s your name?”
He laughed. “More fun without names.” He pulled away, giving incomprehensible instructions to the driver, the only word of which she understood was ‘Peninsula’, the hotel she’d told him she was booked in.
He was rough, commanding. He was oddly graceful; he was impolite, brusque even. He was unexpectedly charming. He was utterly intriguing, with his hard eyes and big toughened body, and disarming with his quick wit, brutal honesty and deft, practiced touch.
Darcy lay in the centre of the big bed, and despite the long cleansing soak she could still feel him on her skin. The stroke of his palms, the bite of his fingers, the slow teasing circle and fast, tense rhythmic thrust that made her body flex and tighten and shudder.
Her brain wondered what it would be like to have him properly inside her. Her body knew it would be good.
He’d kissed her like it meant something to him. He’d held her like she was important. Though that couldn’t be right, that was her imagination. That’s what having no male attention for months on end could do to a girl. Make her have Bill Clinton style sex with a complete stranger. She’d done a reverse Monica Lewinsky. It was sex and danger, and all about the thrill though God, she’d have taken it even further if he’d let her.
In the temperate dark with Shanghai sparkling outside the glass wall, Darcy’s body was flooded with heat at the memory of what the man from Tara did to her. She pulled a pillow from the top of the bed, jammed it between her knees and rolled on her side, as longing swept through her.
She was ensconced in a room he’d paid for, in a bed made for play and she had no idea who he was or how to contact him. She had the number plate of the Audi but no knowledge of how to trace it. She’d already been refused the information about how her room was paid from reception and the hotel duty manager. Her butler’s impeccable, American accented English had also failed her.
He was either a mirage or a magic trick, and she wasn’t sure if she was meant to feel romanced by the fantasy or lost, stupid and cheap. Bought and paid for. It was an uncomfortable feeling, made more so when she woke and discovered a breakfast buffet laid out for her in the dining room and understood the butler had been in the suite while she slept.
He’d left an envelope on the table. Inside was a typed note. ‘Please allow me to join you for an informal dinner in your suite tonight. The chicken won’t be virgin.’ It made her swallow a grape whole. It was unsigned, but it had to be from him, and the arrogant bastard had left her no way to refuse.
She considered the idea of making a fuss with the hotel manager until she got his contact information. She measured the idea of teaching him he couldn’t control her by getting her own room. Simply not being here when he showed up.
She was unsurprised to find herself ambivalent about both those ideas.
Out on the street, Darcy forgot about Tara. She scoped out the old world European style buildings lining the Bund. Twenty-six in all, built from 1897–1948 with Parker Corporation headquarters in the 1920s-built Jardine Matheson building on the corner of Beijing Road.
From there she checked out the famous Peace Hotel. Brian had been here in the late nineties with Prime Minister Paul Keating on some Asia Co-operation junket. The twelve storey building with its copper roof was constructed in 1929 from the proceeds of opium and guns, according to the map she’d picked up at the Peninsula. The hotel had a famous six piece jazz band, all old guys. But there was no jazz being played in the white marble foyer that morning.
She quit the cool interior and headed down the Nanjing Road pedestrian mall, which according to the pamphlet was one of the world’s busiest shopping streets. From the number of big brand hotels and fast food outlets: McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway, and the number of times she was hit on by touts to buy a fake Versace handbag alone, that stat must have been correct. She passed Zara, Chloe, Dior, Tods, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Armani. Shops she’d never think to enter at home and didn’t appear any more affordable here, even with the favourable exchange rate. One part of being a print journalist that sucked; the very ordinary pay packet. It made retreating to Starbucks for a coffee feel sensible, if just to escape the colour and clang of the street.
Watching from her outdoor table was a better option than being in the mix. Darcy sipped her Frappuccino while the free tourist-trolley car traversed the street and shoppers of all ages and nationalities, arms laden with store bags and wallets lighter, looked about for their next retail fix.
Her post-pause itinerary included a stroll through Fuxing Park, a peek at Shanghai Museum, checking out the curios on Dontai Road and a stroll through the back streets of the old French Concession. Then back at the hotel, she’d organise a room switch and Tara would find she could be just as mysterious as he’d been.
Of course that meant she’d never know who he was, never see him again. That should’ve been a comforting thought. No, more than a comforting thought. It was a smart move. Thinking about what he’d done to her was enough to make the milk in her drink curdle. And the whole hotel suite thing was beyond even the worst Pretty Woman fantasy.
Darcy didn’t do pretty. Pretty took time and consideration and while she was no bush pig, Andy’s favourite description of an unattractive woman, she’d rather be acknowledged for her thought patterns than her eye makeup. More to the point, she didn’t do kept, so the only reason she was even trying on silk dresses and considering a pair of frivolous emerald green ballet flats was because she could.
