Singapore Fling with the Millionaire

by Michelle Douglas

  Besides, while she might be coming over all stoic and efficient he’d seen the shock in her eyes and the devastation that had flitted across her face. Some designers likened their creations to children—he didn’t know if that was an accurate analogy or not—but an inordinate amount of time, patience, care, frustration and commitment had gone into the designing of Christy’s beautiful beach umbrellas and other accessories. To see them so heartlessly and wilfully destroyed had to have hit her in a place that...

  His hands clenched and unclenched. In a place that wasn’t hard, wasn’t protected by armour. A soft place where one held their dreams and other soft things that the realities of the world tried to compromise or destroy.

  He also noted that, despite the valiant angle of her chin, her hands shook.

  ‘Lien,’ he called out—softly, as he didn’t want to startle either woman. The mess and destruction were enough to make anyone jumpy. He, however, was six feet of hard muscle and anger—he could hold his own. Christy would be...what? Five five if she were lucky. And while she had a really nice—Don’t! While she had excellent curves in all the right places, she wouldn’t weigh much. And slim Lien at five two would weigh even less. He made a mental note to send Lien home for the rest of the day and to hire a security guard for the store until the opening. As a rule, this centre had excellent security, but it evidently wasn’t foolproof. It helped to know that when he spoke with the centre manager his demand for extra security and extra vigilance would be heard.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ Lien appeared in the doorway that led to the storerooms and the staff kitchen.

  He tried to find a smile, though doubted it reached his eyes. ‘Please, Lien, you can call me James.’

  Lien promptly burst into tears. Christy hurried over and pulled the sobbing woman into a hug, which only seemed to make his store manager cry harder. ‘It must’ve been the most awful shock to walk in and see this mess this morning,’ Christy said, as if it hadn’t been the most awful shock for her. ‘Why don’t we go out the back where we don’t have to see it?’

  She led Lien, whose sobs had started to ease, out the back and James trailed along behind. Lien dried her eyes on a big red hanky with white polka dots that Christy pulled from her handbag. For some absurd reason that hanky was so her, and it made him want to smile. Had she made it herself? Could MA move into the designer handkerchief market too?

  ‘You wanted to ask me something, sir?’

  He didn’t tell her to call him James again, despite the fact he was doing his best to alter the former formality his mother had instilled in all MA staff. He didn’t want to give rise to a fresh bout of crying. ‘I was just going to ask if you could put some tea on to brew.’ He wanted both women to drink sugared tea—it was supposed to be good for shock, right? ‘But I’ll do it.’

  She pointed to a pot. ‘Already done, sir.’

  ‘Then I’d like you two ladies to sit down while I pour you both a cup.’

  ‘Oh, sir, I—’

  ‘I find it’s better to just do as he says,’ Christy said, pulling out a chair at the tiny table for Lien and taking the one opposite. No sooner had her backside hit the seat, though, when Christy bounced back up. ‘Ooh, look! They haven’t managed to kill all of my umbrellas.’

  He winced at her word choice—kill—but in one sense she was right. The debris on the shop floor wasn’t salvageable. She skipped over to a stack of rolled-up beach umbrellas carefully packaged in plastic. She lifted one and turned it in her hands, and then her lips curved into a smile that had his heart surging against his ribs. She glanced across at him and Lien. ‘May I?’

  They both nodded. He noted that Lien looked as dazed as he felt. He poured three cups of tea and liberally sugared them before taking them to the table and seating himself in the spare chair.

  He watched her unwrap the outer packaging carefully as he sipped his tea, enjoying its sweetness—it occurred to him that he rarely indulged his sweet tooth. He wondered why, before discarding the thought as ludicrous. Maybe he was in shock too.

  He forced his focus back to Christy. Her beach umbrellas deserved a much grander title. They were works of art. Like other beach umbrellas, Christy’s had a central pole that anchored them in the sand, and they had a canopy that shaded the people beneath it. But there all likenesses to normal beach umbrellas ended. The canopies weren’t necessarily round—they could be any shape. One of her bestselling designs was a castle with parapets rising above the canopy. Parapets!

  Christy didn’t just execute a design of a single flower, for instance, she did a whole garden. Flowers and leaves would emerge above the canopy and flap in the breeze above its lucky owner’s head. Perhaps trailing ivy would form an exotic fringe. You might discover a woodland creature peering out. Her umbrellas were full of whimsy—the same kind of whimsy he recalled feeling for merry-go-rounds as a child.

  He held his breath and waited to see what she would bring forth now. He could see her measuring the width of the room, but in terms of staff kitchens it was generous, and she carefully and with tantalising slowness opened the umbrella. What emerged was a gold canopy and rising above that was a red Chinese dragon. Chinese symbols hung from the canopy’s fringe and he knew that an explanation and translation of each one was in the accompanying booklet.

  He stared at it, and the longer he stared, the lighter he started to feel. A glance at Lien told him it was having the same effect on her.

  Carefully, Christy leaned it against the wall in such a way it stayed upright, and then moved back to the table to sip her tea. She didn’t wrinkle her nose at its sweetness either. Instead her lips lifted in appreciation as she inhaled the steam. Something in his chest started up a low hum. He forced his gaze from her and back to the beach umbrella.

  ‘I’m proud of this design. It took some ingenuity to get the dragon to sit so triumphantly. There were a lot of less than stellar attempts at first. I came up with this idea during the Chinese New Year festivities in Sydney two years ago.’

  ‘Your Chinese series,’ he murmured. ‘You did a red lantern that—’ He tried to find words to describe it. ‘It just blew me away.’ The words felt lame even though they were true.

  The smile she sent him, though, was anything but lame. It blew him away too.

  He swallowed, forced his gaze back to the umbrella. He needed to be careful—seriously careful. Not only was Christy beautiful, but he suddenly realised what she’d done. She’d gone out of her way to make him and Lien feel better, to momentarily forget the disaster that was lying out there on the shop floor. It should be him who was trying to make her feel better.

  Attractive and kind. He shifted on his chair. It’d been a long time since he’d felt the kind of interest for a woman that he was starting to harbour for Christy, but it’d be folly to let it grow or to give into it. He had to keep things strictly professional. He wasn’t his father. And he owed MA his very best efforts—he’d promised.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHRISTY LET OUT a slow breath from choked lungs as Lien and Jamie’s tension visibly eased. Glancing at her Chinese dragon again, she felt some of the weight pressing down on her lift too. Her designs had always helped people to...feel better—helped them to see the lighter side of life. She didn’t understand how she was able to forge such magic, but she was grateful for it.

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘You know, while I’m in Singapore maybe I could develop a few ideas for a Singapore series.’

  Just imagine if she had a chance to visit all of the world’s beautiful places. She could dedicate a series to each of them. How much fun would that be?

  Not that it could ever become a reality until she passed the reins of Beach Monday to someone else—until someone else had the responsibility for balancing the books and coordinating advertising campaigns and...and hiring and firing staff.

  The fact she was away from all of that, if only for two week
s, was deliciously liberating. For this moment in time she could pretend she was just a designer and nothing more.

  ‘Lien, you wouldn’t happen to have any paper here, would you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jamie and Lien said at the same time.

  Lien handed her a pile of printer paper, and Christy pulled a pencil from her handbag. Jamie stared at her as if she were a magician. It made her warm all over. She rolled her shoulders. She had to stop that, noticing every little thing about her disturbing host. She couldn’t let herself be beguiled by his attention. It didn’t mean anything. This might feel like a holiday—and she might flirt with the pretence of being nothing more than a designer—but she couldn’t forget she was in Singapore on business. She’d forget that at her own peril. And the peril of everyone relying on her.

  ‘You have an idea for your Singapore series already?’

  His words snapped her back. ‘Absolutely.’ And that in itself was a mini-miracle. Not to mention a relief. She’d been mortally afraid her creativity had packed its bags and deserted her for greener pastures. ‘It struck me as I was walking through the airport—such a beautiful airport.’

  ‘Hollywood?’

  She shook her head, not meeting his eye. ‘That’s a different idea.’

  She pressed a finger to her lips for quiet, and did what she could to ignore the quickening of her pulse. His beautiful voice—deep and assured—distracted her, brought to mind full-bodied red wines, autumn leaves, and Tuscany. A combination that made no sense. But she jotted the words down all the same.

  Focusing her mind, she turned her attention to the paper in front of her. Visualising the airport again, she sketched a quick picture of a grove of orchid blossoms—not staked but ballooning and cascading over a rock. Some of the dangling blossoms and leaves could become bunting or a fringe. People loved things that fluttered and took on a life of their own in the breeze.

  For a little while she lost herself to her sketch—art had always been her go-to when she’d felt down and unhappy or stressed.

  She held it out at arm’s length when she was done and viewed it critically. This would make a rather fine print for beach towels and sarongs too. ‘I don’t have my colour pencils with me, but I’m thinking the blossoms should be shaded in pale pinks and lilacs...with darker hearts. Maybe I’d have a spear of orchids rising up from the canopy here—’ she pointed ‘—just for fun.’

  Though, it’d look a bit phallic. She glanced at Jamie and heat suddenly scorched her cheeks.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, Christy, don’t even go there.

  ‘That is beautiful,’ Lien breathed, reaching out as if to touch the paper and then pulling her hand back at the last moment, as if afraid she’d ruin it.

  Christy handed the other woman her sketch to study in closer detail. ‘What colours would you choose?’

  ‘Pink and purple, like you said. But you could make this in a range of colours and that way customers could buy one in their favourite colour.’

  ‘That’s not the way Christy’s Beach Monday designs work,’ Jamie said.

  She glanced up. He’d done his homework. It shouldn’t surprise her.

  ‘She does one unique design, and that’s it.’

  Of course he’d noticed. He wanted to buy her. He’d have had a market appraisal and feasibility study done on Beach Monday. Or had some minion do so.

  The thought had her mind glazing over. Lord, why hadn’t anyone ever warned her how unbearably monotonous and...boring it could be to run your own business? She did what she could to stop her nose from curling.

  Be professional. Be businesslike.

  She managed a quick smile for Lien. ‘It’d seem like cheating.’ Staring at her sketch, her mind suddenly started to race. ‘But...’ She seized her phone and quickly made a note. Could she create slipcovers for this design? The umbrellas could come with an entire range of differently coloured slipcovers that its owner could choose from to suit their mood.

  Heaven, it’d take some ingenuity to work it out but...

  She made a few more notes and things inside her that’d felt bound and chained for too long started to stretch their wings and take flight. When she was finished she eased back in her chair. Coming to Singapore...was that all it took to have her creativity firing again? Seriously?

  In her heart she knew it wasn’t coming to Singapore but being away from what had become a soul-destroying daily grind. If she’d needed further proof that selling Beach Monday was the right decision for her, then she had it. She just had to make sure nobody in her production chain was materially damaged by such a decision.

  ‘But?’ Jamie’s voice broke into her reverie.

  She shook herself, straightening. ‘Just another idea.’ An idea she wasn’t sharing until she decided to whom she was selling Beach Monday. Instinct told her that Jamie wouldn’t steal her ideas or designs, but...

  Recalling the mess on the shop floor, she winced. Today industrial espionage seemed an ugly possibility.

  Lien handed her back the sketch. ‘It was a privilege to watch you do that.’

  Jamie surveyed them both as they finished their fragrant sweet tea. ‘Lien, I’d like you to take the rest of the day off.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Cooper-Ford, that isn’t necessary. I’ll wait until after the forensic team is done and—’

  ‘James,’ he corrected gently. ‘And I’ll take care of the forensic team.’

  Lien had already given her statement to the police before Christy and Jamie had arrived, and they were sending a forensic specialist to fingerprint the store.

  Lien still looked pale, and Christy loved that Jamie was giving her the rest of the day off to recover from the shock. ‘You could come to the Gardens by the Bay with me,’ she offered.

  Lien smiled shyly. ‘That is very kind of you, but... It would be nice to visit my grandmother. She hasn’t been well and seeing her always makes me feel better.’

  ‘Then you should absolutely do that,’ Christy agreed.

  After Lien had gone, Jamie turned to her. ‘And you should go and visit your grove of Supertrees.’ He scanned her face, his eyes narrowing. ‘But you’re not going to?’

  She didn’t want to mar her memories of Merlions and Supertrees with today’s vandalism. She’d visit the Supertrees another day. Tomorrow maybe. ‘It hardly seems fair to leave you alone to deal with all this.’

  ‘It’s what I get paid the big bucks for. Besides—’ he waved towards the front of the store ‘—you don’t need to keep seeing that ugliness.’

  He was right, but she had a feeling what she really needed was a time-out from him. He’d started to disturb her in ways she hadn’t envisaged—and in ways no man had in a long time. ‘I might just go for a stroll...maybe even walk home—enjoy the sun and sights.’

  ‘If you want a driver...?’

  ‘Not at all, I can get a cab or take the underground if I get tired. My map tells me it’s only a half-an-hour walk back to the apartment.’ She posted on a big smile. ‘I might even do some shopping.’

  Men always thought women loved to shop, right? But Jamie didn’t look convinced. ‘I’m sorry this has marred what was supposed to be a fun day of sightseeing and R & R.’

  Those ocean-blue eyes of his saw too much. She shrugged. ‘It isn’t your fault.’

  ‘Let me make it up to you.’

  Despite herself, she couldn’t help feeling intrigued. ‘How?’

  ‘Let me take you to dinner. Somewhere special. Like the rooftop terrace of the Marina Bay Sands. The view up there is extraordinary. You’ll love it, I promise. And then we can watch the laser show in the bay.’

  She bit her lip. It sounded wonderful. ‘What would I have to wear? Is it super formal up there on top of the world?’

  ‘What you have on now would be perfect.’

  She clasped her hands beneath her chin and
forced herself not to bounce from one foot to the other. ‘Then that sounds wonderful.’ She was going to dine at the Marina Bay Sands? Yes!

  His low chuckle heated her from the inside out. ‘You do know that if you needed a formal dress you have all of Orchard Road at your disposal.’

  And all of it outside her price range too, no doubt. She was being as frugal as she could with her money at the moment. Shopping for a new frock wasn’t on her agenda. Nevertheless, she slapped a hand to her forehead and rolled her eyes. ‘Doh! Of course I do.’

  ‘I’ll collect you at seven.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’ She almost leaned across to kiss him on the cheek. It felt like the natural thing to do. Hauling herself back, she gave a tiny wave and raced away before she did something so stupid.

  * * *

  Christy sipped her iced water until the waiter moved away. Only then did she set it back down and glance up to meet Jamie’s gaze full in the face. ‘Right... So... Who resents you enough to vandalise my umbrellas?’

  She winced as the words left her—they sounded even more bald and uncompromising out loud than they had in her mind.

  Jamie raised an eyebrow. If her words rocked him, he didn’t show it. ‘Me?’

  ‘I don’t mean you personally, of course. I mean Molto Arketa.’

  ‘What makes you think MA is the target? The police think it might be a random act.’

  The vandalism hadn’t looked random to her—it’d looked targeted. ‘Do you think it was random?’

  He pursed his lips and then shook his head. ‘No. Try the wine.’

  He lifted his glass to his lips and awareness skittered across her skin as the candlelight played across the planes of his face, highlighting the angular jaw and high cheekbones. Michelangelo would’ve gone into raptures if Jamie had ever modelled for him. She was in raptures just sitting across from him.

  ‘It’s very good.’

  With a start, she realised she’d been staring. Seizing her glass, she lifted it to her lips, doing her best not to spill it down her chin. He’d chosen a cool dry white and notes of oak and passionfruit exploded across her tongue. She closed her eyes on a groan, momentarily transported. ‘It’s delicious.’ She took a second sip before setting it down and topping her water glass up from the carafe on the table and downing half a glass in one go. At his amused smile, she pointed to the wine. ‘Best wine ever. I want to savour it, not gulp it down to quench my thirst.’