CHAPTER THREE

Mey-Rin woke to the whispering of palm fronds as they brushed against the balcony. She still lay sideways across the bed, exactly as she had drifted off. Her bare feet dangled over the edge, toes not quite touching the floor.

It wasn't dark, but the room was in shadow, so the sun must be quite low in the sky on the far side of the island by now. She pushed herself up groggily. How long had she slept? Two hours? Three?

Odd - her watch said only an hour and five minutes had passed. Her mouth dry and limbs heavy, she staggered into the en suite and attempted to make herself human again. The huge mosaic-walled shower with its ventilated roof was too attractive to ignore, and she stepped under it to allow the colander-sized tap to do the work, pounding the remaining tension out of her.

Sunset was imminent when she emerged, turning the sky mauve and amber as she opened one of the suitcases and picked out a long shift dress, that she hoped would impart no-nonsense sophistication to that stuck-up know-it-all butler. He'd had plenty of time to get ready - at least two hours. Showing him that she could be prompt without prompting would put him in his place.

She pinned up her long damp red waves again in an equally no-nonsense pleat, tucked any loose curls firmly behind her ears, and set off along the boardwalk back to the mansion.

As she walked between the darkening trees, rows of fairy lights and Chinese lanterns suddenly popped into life either side of her, giving her a mild but not unpleasant start, as if something magical in the forest had acknowledged her passing.

"Oohhh," she breathed involuntarily, as the pathway ahead was bathed in gentle rainbow colours, stopping to admire the effect on the surrounding foliage.

"I was about to come and check you were still alive," interrupted the butler, and she glanced up sharply to see him waiting on the terrace. "Good thing I spotted you, it's nearly dark. You should have rung to let me know you were up."

"It's not even been two hours," Mey-Rin scoffed. "No need to be checking up on me so soon…"

"It's Wednesday evening," he informed her. "You arrived yesterday afternoon."

"What?" she gasped.

"You've been here over twenty-four hours already," he confirmed. "You must have been exhausted. I assumed you were working your way through the mini-bar in the lodge and waiting for Mr. Lao's arrival."

"Has he called?"

Sebastian shook his head, and for some reason she felt almost relieved.

"The house is ready if you'd like me to move your things indoors," he continued, calmly.

"Of course." She felt dazed. She'd slept for a whole day! Good thing this wasn't a weekend break - she'd have missed half of it already…

"Can I get you anything first?" he suggested, and looked her up and down as she stepped onto the terrace, with rather too much scrutiny. She noticed his uniform had also changed to a darker waistcoat and pants since earlier. "You must be starving."

"Just some coffee to start with." She rubbed her forehead, trying to re-evaluate the situation. Dang goes putting the smug butler in his rightful place, she thought. Gah

"In or out?" he queried, and his eyes glinted at her nonplussed glare. "On the front terrace? Or there's a nice view from the lounge."

Mey-Rin nodded, and followed him indoors as he grinned and beckoned. Smug butler suited him down to the ground. He's a Smutler, she improvised in her head, a thought which quite cheered her up.

Until it was instantly forgotten, in the incandescence of the room which awaited her.

The full-length bi-fold window was open to allow an uninterrupted view of the sunset, a larger terrace beyond ending in an infinity pool overlooking the island's western coastline.

"I'll get your coffee," he said, a hint of amusement in his voice at her evident shell-shock, and disappeared again.

Mey-Rin prided herself in her usual coolness over things that were purely aesthetic, which had made her a level-headed and sensible personal assistant. But even though what she knew she was mostly witnessing now was Mother Nature doing her everyday thing, merely framed by a bit of architecture and a water-feature, she couldn't help standing there agape, like a gob-smacked goldfish.

"Where would you like this?" Sebastian interrupted again already, and she had no idea how long she had stood rooted to the same spot, transfixed. He motioned the tray towards the seating under the canopy outdoors. "Here? Or inside?"

"Thank you." Mey-Rin felt as though she was gliding on rollers out onto the warm terracotta tiles, and sinking involuntarily into the sofa, glued to the view.

"I brought you some brochures from the other islands, in case you start to feel a bit isolated out here," he said smoothly, pouring out her coffee with care. "What would you like for dinner? There's still bacon."

"Lao said…" Mey-Rin frowned, vaguely. "Mr. Lao said the menus had all been arranged in advance."

"So they have. I just wondered if you had any other personal preferences when dining alone."

Mey-Rin felt the dig at the word 'alone' and it occurred to her that the menus had been wholly arranged without her input. She had trusted that Lao knew her tastes, but now wondered if it was also something he had discussed with Ran-Mao instead, without her knowledge.

"I like chicken," she said, cautiously. "Rice - curry - Chinese food - barbecue. All the usual suspects, you could say."

"All at the same time?" He raised an eyebrow.

"No," she scowled. "Don't be daft."

XxX

Sebastian suppressed a smile. Not the usual suspects, when it came to Lao's companions. Usually, they'd order a swordfish steak salad, eat only the watercress, and down two bottles of Merlot for dinner. So perhaps the squid and raw steak previously designated as carpaccio and yuk hwe for the couple's first meal could be made alternative use of. Ran-Mao had a thing for Korean cuisine, he recalled.

Besides - if this Mey-Rin was a sperm-jacking bride, raw meat was among the least advisable.

"There's a barbecue I can start right here if you'd like?" he said, gesturing towards the far end of the terrace.

XxX

More of a fully-fitted outdoor kitchen, Mey-Rin noted, observing the pizza oven and granite surfaces.

"That would be nice," she agreed, and turned her gaze down to the tray, noticing the hotel brochures for the first time. Understated, silk-finish printing, and artfully close-up images of wine glasses, candles and rose-petals hinted of things she would think twice about paying for, even if she had the joint account card with her.

Her heart sank. With the alternative being three weeks in the company of Mr. Smutler, she was starting to wish it was that simple.

He was messing around in the terrace kitchen now, having brought out various food containers. Something soon started sizzling under a metal cover, while he set about chopping tomatoes for a salad or salsa. But the silence felt awkward.

What was missing?

"Is there any music?" Mey-Rin asked suddenly.

"Huh?" He winced, as the point of the knife slipped. "Whoops. How much blood do you like in your tomatoes?"

She jumped to her feet and hurried over, as he dropped the knife and groped around for a hand-towel.

"It's okay, I'll just run it under the tap," he said, rather alarmed by her sudden interest.

"No - hold it up in the air," she corrected. "Above your head. And put pressure on it. Not with that towel - use a clean napkin…"

He grinned wryly as she took his wrist and surveyed the damage.

The sharp vegetable knife had sliced neatly into the pad of his bare ring finger. Inwardly scolding herself for noticing such an irrelevant detail, she covered it with a paper napkin and held it upward. He was quite a bit taller than her, so he was obliged to take the hint, and moved his arm higher, out of reach.

"You can move fast when you want to," he remarked, still smiling as she withdrew. "Are you a First Aid expert?"

"First Aid in the workplace trained," she said, and threw a glance over the chopping board before skulking back to her seat, working on her composure once more. "Sorry. Gut reaction."

"Don't worry, I'll throw those away and start again," he assured her. "I'll get a plaster from the box to cover it when it stops bleeding. Are people normally accident-prone where you work?"

"Sometimes around safety pins," she admitted. "Or falling off their high shoes… I'm an administrative manager at the fashion studio."

"I wondered if you had anything to do with modelling," he mused.

She gave him a sceptical look over her coffee cup.

"I just schedule bookings for shoots, organise the diary and do general reception and I.T. work," she shrugged.

"Been doing it long?"

"Er, no," she admitted, with an unexpected, embarrassed laugh. "I was a P.A. before that… and before that, I was a nanny. Been working in different jobs since I was seventeen. Had a stroke or two of luck, and here I am."

"Here you are indeed," Sebastian repeated, sounding even more intrigued.

"What about you, have you always been a butler?"

Sebastian chuckled.

"No," he said. "Not long at all."

"What did you do before?"

"After university - I travelled, worked for a few family businesses, on and off, travelled again - liked the travelling a bit too much… and I guess, here I am."

Mey-Rin nodded. That explained why he was so keen to get rid of her.

"So this is like a working holiday to you?" she guessed.

"You could say that, yes." He lowered his arm to inspect the cut, and raised it again for a bit longer.

"The less work, the better?" she suggested, a knowing glint in her eye.

"Yup," he said, to humour her. "Don't go getting any demanding diva notions."

Mey-Rin, who had been lining up ideas to make his job as irritating as possible if he gave her too much attitude, wondered if he was being serious or sharing a joke.

"What was it you asked for?" he remarked. "Before I decided to add finger to your food."

"Music," she said, quietly.

"Oh, yes." He pointed to the table in front of her. "There's a media control panel in the middle just there. Tap on it and the menu should pop up."

The glass table centrepiece turned out to be one big tablet computer. Mey-Rin immediately felt more at home, interacting with technology rather than the sole company of a stranger. She found a soothing classical play-list and selected a tune to start, which emerged from unseen speakers around the pool, and occupied herself playing with the accompanying lighting effects, now that dusk was setting in.

"Nice," Sebastian murmured, now fully Band-Aided and back to the job of cooking. "Good choice."

Mey-Rin ignored him studiously, not having invited his input. Lao's housekeeper had a much more limited vocabulary. It was 'Good (insert time of day) Miss Mey-Rin' and nothing else, pretty much, unless a question was directed at her. And the woman was practically invisible anyway. Lao's routines, when he was at home, required little in the way of prompting. Everything was clean, and replenished, and re-stocked during the working day, and if there was a dinner party later on, food was magically prepared and everything laid out ready - the woman must come and go by the kitchen window, she was so unobtrusive…

The thought occurred to Mey-Rin that unlike Lao's domestic, the Lucky Island butler Sebastian lived here on the premises.

It bugged her all the while he was cooking, and the level in the coffee-pot was rapidly lowering. She flipped through the hotel brochures just for something to do, unable to ignore the concern from the second it popped into her head. There must be an annexe - or a separate apartment, somewhere in the huge house, or elsewhere on the island.

"I hope you're ready to eat," he interrupted, as trays and cutlery started to appear in front of her. The smell suggested to her again that cooking skills weren't something he needed to work on - maybe just his chopping skills.

"Do you have your own kitchen as well here?" she asked, and he looked briefly confused at the query. "For yourself, I mean."

"I live in the basement," he confirmed. "It's got everything. Separate entrance, straight out onto the beach."

"Oh." Mey-Rin picked up a napkin to open out onto her lap. "That sounds nice."

"It is," he agreed. "So no peeking when I go for my early-morning skinny-dip."

Her jaw went slack as she wondered what to say.

"Can I get you anything else?" he asked. "Any more sauces? More coffee? Mineral water? Cigarettes? I forgot to ask if you smoke. There's a full wine cellar going to waste as well."

Mey-Rin looked at the spread in front of her, struggling to find a mental foothold in the unexpected twists and turns that the conversation was taking. She felt completely out of control of things, every time she opened her mouth.

"Maybe a white wine spritzer," she said at last. "Not too strong. Whatever you recommend."

"Yes, Mrs. Lao."

She piled salad and chilli-marinaded barbecue steak strips onto her plate, finding room for garlic-sautéed potato and parmesan-dredged calamari as well. Wherever his attitude was coming from, his cooking very nearly made up for it.

Maybe her Mr. Smutler was one of those butlers who got work in spite of having an attitude problem. A chef savant. A Mansavant! He'd hand out abuse, personal judgements, and horrible criticism of everything you wore, while doing perfect hand-starched collars and Eggs Benedict. Some employers liked staff with a bit of sass. Lucky's owner must be one of those. Unlike Lao, who preferred them invisible - like his private life…

Brooding, Mey-Rin forgot to taste her food as she chewed, and reached for the wine glass dully as it clinked onto the table in front of her.

"How is everything?" Sebastian enquired.

"Fine," she grunted distantly, chugging down a big gulp of spritzer, as if it would help swallow her fragile mood.

"You're welcome," he said, a little coldly, and turned away to clean up the barbecue area.