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Ending the call as politely as possible, Evie turned and pushed back the curtain on the incredible suite the Iondorran palace had arranged for her at one of Shanghai’s most famous hotels.
The view of the river took her breath away. As the sun crept upwards to meet the day, mist hazing the edges of the serene vista, she knew she was seeing a different image from the typical neon-bright, futuristic marvel that most people associated with the Huangpu. A golden glow pushed at the night’s blue slowly, edging it back to make way for the sun. It felt as if she was witnessing a glimmer of therealShanghai.
Evie had wanted to come here for years. She and the Professor had been due to attend the Shanghai Archaeology Conference two years ago but Professor Marin had passed just before. And to be here now, alone, made her feel a little sad.
Seeking comfort, she looked to the notebook she’d left on the bedside table. In the twelve hours of the flight from Spain she’d pored over every page, some of the Professor’s notes making her smile, some of them making her cry, and some making her wonder if Mateo had read the words written down by his father.
From his reaction when they had met, she doubted it, sadly.
And just like that, the thought of Mateo did it again—made her heart thud a little heavier in her chest, made her skin a little too sensitive. She pressed her fingers to her lips again, and tried to catch a breath. She bit down gently against her lower lip, hoping to relieve the ache that had taken up place the moment she’d pulled away from his kiss.
And then, just like when she’d tried to get some sleep on the plane, the memories of that kiss morphed into an earlier memory—one that was half-nightmare.
You couldn’t even pay me to kiss you.
The one time she’d ever had the temerity to ask someone out and, in her naïvety, had forgotten that she was a sixteen-year-old girl, surrounded by university students in their twenties. Of course, it had ended badly. Shame and embarrassment crawled up her neck in hot, ugly inches. And no matter how she tried to tell herself that what had happened with Mateo was different, the exact opposite even, something had connected them in her mind and she couldn’t seem to separate them.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned back to the bed. It was six am now and she had five hours before she could see the octant, and then, if it proved to be authentic, she would need to find something suitable to wear for the glamour of the evening’s auction. But as she crept between the covers of the bed, yawning, her last thought before falling asleep was of deep brown eyes and hot caresses.
Mateo descended the short flight of steps from the private jet that had brought him from Spain to Shanghai in a fraction of the time it would have taken Evelyn on a commercial airline, with Henri shouting down the phone in his ear.
‘A bottle of whisky! I left a bottle ofwhiskyin your room, not a woman! How could you think I’d do such a thing?’ Henri demanded.
Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘I mean, I’m a lot of things, Marin, but a procurer of women isnotone of them.’
‘Andthatis the most important part of everything I’ve told you, is it?’ groused Mateo.
‘Right. Your Father’s pretty assistant—’
Mateo pulled up short. ‘I didn’t say she was pretty.’
‘You kissed her. Is shenotpretty?’
Mateo clenched his jaw together, cursing that, no matter how much coffee he’d drunk that morning, or whisky he’d drunk last night, he could still taste a sweet citrus on his tongue. ‘That is not the point,’ he reluctantly replied. ‘She stole from me—’
‘So you kissed your father’s pretty assistant—’
‘She’s a professor,’ he reminded Henri, much in the same way that she’d remindedhimlast night.
‘Evelyn Edwards stole your father’s notebook and you’re in Shanghai to get it back,’ Henri replied in loud, sharp words down the phone.
‘Yes,’ Mateo said, pulling the phone away from his ear and wincing slightly as one of the cabin crew took his suitcase to the black town car waiting for him on the private landing strip. He smiled perfunctorily at the woman who had ideas in her gaze and suggestions on the tip of her tongue, and, ignoring both, he got into the back of the car...alone. ‘And while I’m here, I’ll be able to meet with Léi Chen.’
‘Only you would try to do a business deal while following a woman halfway around the world.’
Mateo pressed against the dull throb at his temples. Contrary to what women—and Evelyn Edwards—seemed to think, he wasn’t a notorious playboy willing to bed anyone that entered his bedroom. He still couldn’t work out what had come over him last night. He counted his drinks before she had appeared in his room. He’d only had one and that was most definitely not enough to fuddle his mind to the extent that he grabbed and kissed,thoroughlykissed, a strange woman in his room, no matter why he’d thought she was there.
‘Your message said that you’d left a present in my room.’
‘It. Was. Whisky.’
‘Where?Where did you leave this mythical bottle of whisky?’ Mateo demanded for the hundredth time.
‘I left it beside your bed.’
‘You left it in the darkest corner of my room, not known as the best place for leaving presents!’
