Lalita sat on the floor in the reception area, her high heeled shoes kicked off. A small, dark-haired girl, maybe four years old, sat next to her, playing with a small collection of Barbie dolls and an arrangement of fancy dresses. Lalita picked up a frothy, white gown and dressed one of the dolls, making it dance around the table. She chatted to the girl in a foreign language, obviously the girl’s native tongue, as she answered in return. Lalita flipped the doll, landing her on the floor and the child laughed.
The lift doors closed behind him with a loud bing and Lalita glanced up. She started to rise before the little girl put a hand on her arm and gazed up beseechingly. Settling back down, Lalita glared at Jeremy.
Jeremy ignored the unwelcoming frown and sat on the floor as well. He picked up another of the dolls lying on the coffee table. Not knowing whether the child spoke English, he smiled to gauge her reaction to his intrusion. The corners of her lips flicked upward and she offered no objection.
Jeremy dressed the man doll in a sharp suit, then picked up the doll that Lalita had put back on the table. He pointed the Barbie doll at Lalita and the Ken doll at himself then watched Lalita’s eyes when he brought the two dolls faces close together in a pretend embrace.
“I didn’t know you played with dolls.” Lalita’s voice was soft and breathless, as if the kiss had been between them and not the toys.
“I have three younger sisters. I have talents you know nothing about.”
“So it would appear.” Lalita turned to the amused little girl and spoke to her once again in her own language. The mailroom clerk hurried down the hall with his wire cart, seeming anxious. As he neared, he called out to Lalita.
“I sorry, Miss Evans. I longer than I think. So sorry, so sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Li. Xingwei and I were having a lovely time playing with her dolls. Mr. Lakewood has just joined us. However, I have a meeting in a few minutes, perhaps you could take her on the rest of your rounds?”
Lalita stood and picked up her shoes. She bent to give the girl a kiss on her cheek. Xingwei forestalled Lalita’s departure with a tight hug before picking up her dolls. The child put the treasured toys in her Hello Kitty backpack as if she were packing up the crown jewels.
Lalita walked over to her office still carrying her shoes. She closed the door without glancing back, leaving Jeremy to watch her strategic retreat. He put his hand on the mail clerk’s cart. “Does Miss Evans often play dolls with your daughter?”
“No, today first time. Xingwei has been very sick. We think she about to die. When Miss Evans find out, she send a helicopter to pick her up from the village where my wife live with our five children. Then Miss Evans pay for all the medical bill. My daughter has been in hospital for almost a month. My wife had to go home, but Xingwei had one more doctor appointment. So Miss Evans say Xingwei could follow me as I deliver the mail. Miss Evans bring the dolls and bag for a goodbye present. Tomorrow we go home and see all the family. It will be the first time I’m home since last year.”
“Miss Evans is a good boss, then?”
“The best, she pay good, even though I have little school. She always ask after my family and last year she give me a bonus, then I can go home for three whole weeks.”
“She sounds like a wonderful woman.”
“Oh, yes. And not only to me. All the people in the building love her. She doesn’t care that she is big boss, she talk to everyone and even in our own language. Now, I must go. Not all the bosses want little girls in the building.”
Jeremy watched as Li put his daughter’s backpack in the bottom of the cart. Then, taking the child’s hand, he walked over to the lift. Jeremy paused outside Lalita’s office door. She seemed to be on the phone, speaking in yet another foreign language.
Tomorrow they were due to start their road trip. Eight countries in sixteen days, they would be together more than apart. He’d use every avenue at his disposal to unearth the warm, passionate woman he glimpsed five years ago. The woman he’d worried had been buried under the heavy weight of business responsibility was not gone forever. This morning’s display had shown that.
• • •
Lalita’s senses were on high alert as Jeremy’s footsteps paused outside her office. She tried to focus on the voice on the other end of the phone. Japanese was not her favorite language and she always had to concentrate when conversing in it. Some of the tension eased when his footfalls retreated down the hall.
Finishing her Japanese call, she leaned back in her chair and stared out the window at Singapore’s eclectic skyline. Old, historical buildings fought for light with modern glass skyscrapers — the past and future co-existing with mutual respect.
Lalita let out a huge sigh. The vulnerability she had shown this morning embarrassed her, sure the fledgling desire to have a family of her own had been reflected on her face as she played dolls with Xingwei. She didn’t know whether it was seeing her younger sister so happy at her engagement party, her older sister glowing with expectant motherhood, or Jeremy making her feel like a woman every time he walked into the room, but she was beginning to feel that there should be more to her life than just a career. However, how could she have a family when she had no real idea of who she was?
One thing had become obvious over the years — John and Julia Evans were not her biological parents. How could she pass on an unknown heritage to future children? What if she carried some dreadful genetic malfunction that would condemn her child to a lifetime of pain? No, she needed to find out who she was before she could even contemplate changing her focus. Even for the ever-so-sexy Jeremy Lakewood.
Searching her father’s private papers had yielded no clues. However, the more she thought about it, the file marked Bombay seemed to be significant. The notations of payments made from her father’s personal account to the office in Mumbai were peculiar. The disbursements had begun the year she was born and finished six years ago. Why had her father transferred his personal money into the general office account? Lalita couldn’t help feeling it had something to do with her.
Lalita dug into her handbag and pulled out a folded piece of scrap paper. A phone number had been scrawled on it with a blotchy red pen. She had been given the information by a rather dodgy business acquaintance. Her hand shook as she reached for her phone. Lalita stabbed at the numbers with a pencil.
Before she could look to the future, she had to find her past.
Chapter 4
“Lalita.”
She glanced up to see her secretary standing at the office door, holding a summer frock over one arm and a pair of sandals in the other hand. “Grace, what are you doing with my dress and shoes?”
“You’re being kidnapped. Here, put these on.” Grace advanced on the desk and passed the clothes to Lalita.
Lalita studied Grace, wondering if she’d misunderstood. How could her secretary stand there, blatantly hand her some clothes, and claim she was being kidnapped?
“What?”
“Put on the dress,” her secretary repeated, about to exit the room, “you’re being kidnapped. Oh, by the way, he says that if you don’t change, he’ll come and do it for you.” A huge smile creased Grace’s face as she turned back toward her boss.
“Grace!” Lalita called but her secretary had already left.
Lalita strode to the door and wrenched it open. She was about to demand an answer from her secretary when she saw Jeremy lounging against Grace’s desk. He straightened at her appearance, a frown creasing his brows. He’d changed out of the suit he had been wearing that morning and now wore jeans and a button-down white short-sleeved shirt.
“Need a hand getting changed?” Jeremy took a step toward her.
“No!” Lalita threw up her hand. “But I don’t have time to be kidnapped. I have work to do — ”
“No, you don’t,” Grace interrupted. “You’ve finis
hed everything we discussed this morning. All the rest you can do next week.”
“Okay, so maybe I don’t want to be kidnapped.” Lalita resisted the urge to stamp her foot, realizing how ridiculous it would appear.
“The thing with kidnapping is you don’t have an option. Get changed, Lalita. You have five minutes before I come in there,” Jeremy threatened.
The glare Lalita shot him should have withered him on the spot. She turned and re-entered her office, having no doubt he would live up to his threat. Last thing she needed was a confrontation in the office and people questioning their relationship. Gritting her teeth, five minutes later she re-emerged, dressed in the casual summer frock with the low heeled sandals.
“Don’t worry about anything here. I’ll take your laptop and any paperwork you need up to your flat and lock up the office. Have a wonderful time, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.” Grace had a smile on her face that rivaled a flashbulb for brilliance.
“That’s a dirty trick, teaming up with my secretary. She’s supposed to be on my side,” Lalita exclaimed as Jeremy led her by the arm to the lift.
“Grace is on your side. She agreed with me that you needed a break. The next two weeks will be very busy. Taking a couple of hours off shouldn’t be a capital crime.”
“Where are you taking me?” They stood on the sidewalk outside the office building and Jeremy hailed a cab.
“It’s where you’re taking me. You’re the local, where shall we go?”
Lalita spoke to the taxi driver in Chinese. She sat back and stared at Jeremy.
“Was it really necessary to kidnap me?”
“Would you have come if I’d just asked?”
“I might have,” Lalita challenged.
“I didn’t fancy the odds. I hadn’t counted on you having an apartment in the same building as the office, very convenient.”
“The flat is owned by the company. I don’t usually stay there. We keep it for out-of-town managers who come for an extended time period or when my father comes to Asia, because he hates hotels. I have my own house not too far from here.” Lalita got out of the taxi.
Jeremy looked at the sign for the Botanical Gardens but made no comment. It was one of Lalita’s favorite places — a serene spot away from the bustle that characterized the rest of Singapore.
“Why aren’t you in your house, then?”
“I let Li, the mail clerk, and his wife stay there while she was in Singapore. Li lives in a dormitory; there was no space for his wife. As I was out of town for two weeks in the UK, it seemed a good idea. Plus I had a lot of work to catch up on when I returned from London. The flat is convenient when I work late.”
“If it’s so convenient, why don’t you stay there all the time?”
“Because it’s too convenient. I lived there for the first year I was in Singapore. Then one week I realized I hadn’t been out of the building in five days. I went from the flat to the office and vice versa. I didn’t think it was healthy, so I found a place away from the office.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Jeremy agreed.
“See, I can be reasonable,” Lalita countered.
“Good to hear. I’m sure Damian appreciates you getting away from the office.”
“Damian?” Lalita stopped walking and turned to gaze up at Jeremy.
“You said you wanted him to call. Don’t you want to get back together with him?”
“Get back together with Damian? No, I want his advice to set up a foundation to help migrant workers. Damian is a genius with financial structures and that sort of thing. But I have no intention of dating him again.”
“Why not? You said you got along great. He’s rich, drop-dead-gorgeous, according to Grace, and Terry Panioutou says he’s a nice guy.”
“What, have you joined the Damian Lindstrom fan club? Damian is all those things, but there was no spark between us. The match may have been logical on paper but I can’t be with someone if there is no chemistry.”
“I agree entirely,” Jeremy said. He released a huge breath. For a moment Lalita was sure he was going to take her hand. She squelched a feeling of loss when he walked on without touching her.
“So, tell me about your family and how you know the Johnsons,” Lalita prompted. The last thing she wanted was to continue discussing her non-existent love life with the man that was to blame. Although if he kept up this torture of not touching her, she might have to take extreme measures and tackle him into the bushes.
“I’m the oldest of five children. Natasha is a year younger than me. She’s married to a plumber named Doug. They have two children, Timothy and Emma. Brian is next, he’s not married. Susan is four years younger than me. She was living with some guy and they have two children, Ashton is five and Tara is a year old. The relationship ended about a month ago and Susan and the children have moved in with my mother. Daisy is my youngest sister, she also lives at home.”
No wonder Jeremy was at ease with Xingwei the other day. “That’s a big family. What does your father do?”
“When I was fourteen, my father was killed by a drunk driver. In a heartbeat, my mother went from housewife to breadwinner. She got a job with the Johnsons as a housekeeper. They are a wonderful family. My youngest sister, Daisy, has Down’s syndrome and they let Mum bring her to work when she wasn’t in school. I went after class and helped with some of her duties. That’s where I met Robert and Wesley. They both had trouble with English literature but as reading is my favorite pastime, I was able to help them out. We became good friends. For rich people, they are incredibly down-to-earth. It sounds as though your family is similar.”
“Yes, my father and mother raised us, saying we were the same as everyone else, except we had greater opportunity to help others. Jane loves children so she became a pediatric nurse. Jessica has the patience of a saint and chose to work with the developmentally challenged. I didn’t inherit any of their altruistic tendencies. I went into the family business.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You just told me you wanted to set up a charity for migrant workers.”
“If you saw how those men exist, you would do the same. They live in squalor so they can send every penny possible home to their families. All they need is a bit of help to set themselves up. And if they can learn English, they have more earning potential. It doesn’t solve the problem of them having to work and live away from their families, but hopefully it will give them some dignity.”
“Sounds pretty altruistic to me,” Jeremy commented.
“Don’t mistake me for my sisters. I’m not a softy. When people live better, they work better. It’s a basic business principle.”
“Have you always been this cold?”
“I prefer to think of it as focused,” Lalita replied. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a familiar figure. Were they being followed? She led Jeremy toward the orchid garden.
“Have you always been this focused, then? Even as a little girl?”
“As I said, I’m not my sisters. I’m different. I’m not sweet and instinctively loving. I have to stay centered to prove I’m an Evans.” She kept her eyes on the amazing display of blooms although she felt Jeremy’s gaze search her face.
“Prove you’re an Evans? Doesn’t your birth certificate do that?”
“Allegedly.” Her voice came out all whispery. She cleared her throat.
“Lalita, not all siblings are alike. In fact most are very different. My brother, Brian, is a lazy, self-indulgent waster. He has no work ethic and no family pride. He takes my poor mother for every cent she has, rather than support her. The two of us couldn’t be more different if we tried.”
She glanced around, but couldn’t see the man she thought was following them. Maybe she was just being paranoid, thinking her reaction to Jeremy could be clearly seen by everyone. They wandered out
of the orchid garden and along the path to the lake. “Maybe he is trying — to be different. Maybe you’re such a wonderful son all that is left is for him to be the bad one.”
Jeremy stopped walking again and stared at the black swans gliding around the lake. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But it still doesn’t excuse his behavior.”
“I’m not saying it does. But sometimes rebellion is the easiest way to get attention.” Lalita pretended to examine one of the shoreline flowers when Jeremy’s intense blue eyes shifted back to her.
“And did you rebel to get attention?” Jeremy put a finger under her chin until her eyes met his.
“Not intentionally. But I still managed to screw up royally a couple of times.”
“This I have to hear.” He seemed about to caress her face, but dropped his hand instead.
“It’s not a pretty story.”
“Please, I think it would help me know you better.”
Lalita searched his face, trying to decide if he was sincere or playing the marketing game. It was dangerous getting too personal with Jeremy. She was already battling lust; she didn’t need to add any more complicated emotions to the mix. “Why do you need to know me better?”
“I just do. You’re an enigma to me, Lalita Evans. You come across as a cool, detached business professional but I know underneath that veneer beats the heart of a passionate, sensuous woman. Are you afraid of letting her out?”
“She’s the one that gets in trouble.” Lalita shrugged. It was her turn to stare at the swans on the lake. They glided over the water without a care in the world. A faint breeze ruffled Lalita’s hair, a teasing caress. The smell of thousands of exotic blooms wafted across her, tickling her senses.
Jeremy ran a hand through his hair, then shoved it into his trouser pocket. She wished he would take her in his arms and kiss her. All this waiting and wondering was wreaking havoc with her nerves. Every cell in her body edged closer to Jeremy. At this rate, she wouldn’t be surprised if some of them didn’t jump ship and join the dark side.
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