A flare of warmth and masculine interest in his eyes as he returned the smile told her that he wasn’t unaware of her as a female. From Joshua Tagget she found that faintly shocking, and had to remind herself that not only was she a grown woman now, he had no idea who she was, no memory of the teenage girl he had once known. But it was startling to find her cheeks heating slightly under the veiled curiosity in his gaze, and a disturbing sexual reaction to him tingling along her veins.
They skipped dessert, and Felicia declined coffee, instead asking for her bill.
‘And mine,’ Joshua said. As the waiter went to get them he turned to Felicia. ‘Do you have plans for the rest of the evening?’
‘I... was thinking of walking a bit before I turn in.’
‘I wouldn’t mind walking off that meal. A lone woman shouldn’t wander round on her own at night,’ Joshua said.
‘I believe China is pretty safe, actually.’
‘Maybe, but you’d be even safer with me.’
Something must have quivered in her expression. He queried, ‘You don’t believe that?’
‘You think I should take your word for it?’
He turned up his palms in a gesture of defeat. ‘You want references?’
‘Do you have any on you?’
Joshua grinned. ‘As a matter of fact I have a couple of quite impressive letters of introduction—they came in useful at the trade fair—but I’ve left them in my room.’
The waiter brought the bills and laid them on the table. Felicia signed her name and room number and picked up her bag.
As she stood up, Joshua followed. ‘So,’ he said, ‘do I have to go and fetch my references?’
‘Of course not.’
Felicia was pretty sure that if she went off by herself he would follow her anyway. Discreetly, perhaps at a distance, but—ironically—he was the sort of man who couldn’t knowingly let a woman walk alone down dark streets in a strange city.
The air was warm and heavy. The shops and street stalls had closed up but there were still people sitting on low stools outside their homes, playing cards or chess. Passing under an overhanging tree that cast a deep shadow on the pavement, Felicia stumbled a little on an uneven flagstone and Joshua took her arm to steady her.
‘OK?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She pulled away slightly and he released his hold. Felicia hoped he hadn’t discerned the small shiver that his brief grip on her arm had evoked.
A black-clad elderly woman approached accompanied by a boy of about twelve years old, already taller than she was. ‘Hello,’ the young boy said. ‘How are you?’ The old woman smiled proudly as Felicia and Joshua returned the greeting. Cooking smells wafted onto the street from a rattling air-conditioning unit set in a nearby wall. The city had a hot, heavy, alien aroma. The weight of centuries and the burden of a teeming population seemed to scent the very air.
They skirted a high corrugated iron fence with silent cranes inside it towering against the fading sky. The pavement was strewn with heaps of dirt and broken bits of wood and plaster.
‘Rebuilding,’ Joshua said, pausing briefly to peer through a peephole in the fence. ‘Whatever it is, it’s going to be big.’ He straightened and came back to her side.
‘I wonder how the others are enjoying their dinner,’ she said, making a random effort at conversation to divert her own attention from her stupid sensitivity to his nearness.
‘Sorry you didn’t join them?’ he asked.
‘No, of course not.’ Her denial was probably too quick, too emphatic. ‘The hotel food is very good—don’t you agree?’
‘Very,’ he assented gravely. Obviously he didn’t think much of her conversational powers. He wasn’t alone in that. Apart from anything else, now that she was sure he had no notion who she was it seemed simplest to keep things that way. She had no desire to discuss the past with Joshua Tagget, and ruin her holiday.
They reached the corner and Joshua said, ‘Round the block?’
‘Yes, OK.’
They walked in silence for a while. Felicia wondered if Joshua was wishing he’d joined the others. Suzette would miss him. ‘I’m not very good company,’ she said, despising herself for making excuses to him. But the silence had become too fraught for her, loaded with old memories and the new, unsettling reactions she was experiencing, too strong to ignore but too contradictory and perilous to make sense of.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’m too...tired to make conversation.’
‘If I’d wanted conversation I’d have gone to dinner with the crowd. I’ve had a very pleasant evening.’
They came to another corner and Felicia blindly changed direction, heading—she hoped—towards the hotel. Simple courtesy demanded that she say she had also enjoyed the evening. But for her it had been too emotionally charged.
She quickened her pace, and suddenly the road disappeared into an unlit alleyway. She stopped abruptly, and felt Joshua’s presence at her back, not quite touching her. ‘We’ve taken a wrong turning,’ she said.
‘Maybe.’
‘We’ll have to go back to the main road.’
As she made to retrace their steps, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. ‘But there’s light through there, and another road, see?’
She peered into the dimness, and saw at the end of the alley people passing back and forth, and a road with traffic, bicycles.
‘Never go back,’ Joshua suggested, ‘unless there’s no other way out.’
Felicia shrugged. There was something to be said, she grudgingly supposed, for having a male companion. Sensible women automatically avoided lonely, dark streets. She let him lead her forward.
One side of the alley was lined with dozens of bicycles standing silent and gleaming side by side in the gloom. On the other side were closed back doors.
Then quite quickly the alleyway emerged into a broad street, and she recognised that they were close to the hotel.
When they reentered the lobby a few minutes later it seemed very bright and spacious.
‘A nightcap?’ Joshua suggested. ‘The bar’s still open.’
‘Not for me,’ Felicia decided. ‘Thank you for your company.’ She had to get away from him to sort out the confusion of her feelings.
Joshua ignored the hand she held out. ‘I don’t want to drink alone. I’ll be going up to bed too. Tomorrow it’s the Great Wall, isn’t it? Stamina may be required.’
There weren’t many people about and they had the elevator to themselves. When the doors slid open at Felicia’s floor, Joshua surprised her by taking her shoulders and turning her gently but firmly to face him.
She hardly had time to register the taut, questioning look on his face, the deep light in his tigerish eyes, before he bent his head and pressed a warm, insistent, exploratory kiss against her mouth.
Taken unawares, she felt her lips quiver and part under his before she could stop herself.
Then she was free, and he had raised a hand to hold the door for her. She stepped back, staring at him, and heard him say, ‘Good night, Felicia,’ before the doors closed and she was left blinking at the bright red arrow above her.
‘... the only man-made structure visible