CHAPTER TWO
What was he staring at? Shouldn't butlers be seen and not heard? Or not seen at all, unless you wanted something?
He looked a lot more presentable, anyway, now he was dressed in a white shirt, silver-grey waistcoat and linen trousers - no tie, but she guessed it was too hot for the full traditional three-piece suit and dicky-bow. The unruly black hair was combed back neatly behind his ears, and he'd quickly shaved off the lazy stubble, highlighting his beautifully symmetrical square jaw and angled cheekbones, a perfect setting for the most hypnotically sardonic eyes that Mey-Rin had ever seen.
He'll be asking what I'M staring at if I'm not careful, she realised, and concentrated instead on mopping up the last of the French dressing with her sandwich crusts. How did that sly git Lao get to be such a stud? Compared to this hunk of manservant, Lao was a hunchbacked desk-driving little troll.
And compared to Ran-Mao, I'm a chubby little chequebook-chaser, she groaned inwardly. A gym-hating, control-panty-wearing, bacon-sandwich-loving, upwardly-mobile upstart. She'd believed that Lao was tired of unrealistic, aloof women, and found her curves and modest stature comforting, natural, and she had dared think it - potentially maternal. Now - she didn't know what to believe. Everything she thought she had known for the last eighteen months had been shattered.
And that butler was still staring…
XxX
Sebastian had as many questions heaping up as she did, some of them along the same theme. Sure, Lao pulled in a few exotics occasionally, to enhance his regular stable of vacuous leggy blondes with double-barrelled surnames. But this almond-eyed pretty redhead was something else entirely. Not supermodel material. Not Hollywood starlet or Broadway songbird. Not hotel heiress, and definitely not an entitled title of somewhere-or-other.
Who was she? Besides 'Mrs. Lao'?
"Is Mr. Lao planning on joining us later in the week?" he said, diffidently.
Her dark eyes flashed something - anger, defensiveness - he couldn't tell.
"Maybe," she said tightly, dabbing her mouth with the napkin. "He's very busy."
"I'll need to know for certain in order to summon a full staff," he continued. "That's why I thought you might be more comfortable in the meantime on one of the larger populated islands."
"We booked this one," she replied flatly. "Can't you ask the staff to come back anyway? I'm here - shouldn't the house be staffed?"
"I'm here too." He looked down at himself. "Not enough for your needs?"
"Supposing I want to take a boat trip?"
"I think I could manage without you for a few hours."
"No…" She pulled a face. "I can't sail."
"So what would you be doing with a boat?" he asked, enjoying her exasperated expression. "I'm confused."
"Who would take me out?" His blank face seemed to aggravate her even more. "On the water?"
"Oh… I can do that."
"What? Isn't your job - housekeeping?"
"I'm multi-skilled," he grinned. "Butler of all trades."
"Supposing I want my hair and nails done? Or a massage?"
Aha. The high-maintenance diva was emerging after all.
"That might be a bit more of a challenge, but I could be persuaded," he replied, keeping a straight face. "Do you need a massage now? I had a towel on me just a moment ago…"
Her look of horror wasn't the usual response to his offer of massage, but it was the desired one.
"What…" she managed to blurt.
"I think what you really need is a proper hotel," he reiterated, still managing to remain serious. "Room service, salon, bar. Lots of people to look after you…"
XxX
Mey-Rin felt her resistance weakening. People running around at her beck and call… it did sound nice…
But then she recalled she'd come here only with what she grabbed from their safe at the wedding venue. She had no money of her own to book into a hotel. She didn't even have a card for their joint account on her. Her own pocket funds would barely pay for a drink and a snack in one of the bars around here.
She'd have to play it stubborn. Three weeks of luxury had been booked and settled in advance, and three weeks of luxury she was damn well going to have.
"I think I'm big enough to look after myself," she said. "If the rooms are ready, I'd like to go and lie down."
He seemed prepared to fight another round, but she was prepared to be as inflexible as her finances.
"Now, please?" she hinted, summoning just enough warning tone.
"I'll take you to the guest lodge," he announced, after only the briefest pause, and picked up her bags. "The house will be ready in a couple of hours, but you can sleep at the lodge if you need to."
"Fine." With a sigh, she managed to shuffle her feet back into her pumps, and retrieved the mess from her purse.
The guest lodge was a short stroll from the main house along a boardwalk through the trees, and was far more than the basic annexe she was expecting. More of a high-end tree-house greeted her, with its own balcony, hammock, sitting-room, en-suite, and four-poster bed under a crimson mosquito-net, with matching bed-linens.
Sebastian pulled a cord to raise the mosquito netting. Damn, that bed looked inviting.
"There's a bell here you can ring if you need anything," he pointed out, indicating the very old-school bell-pull by the bed. "And I can ring you in turn for things like meals - or when the house is ready for you to move into. Would you like me to ring when the time comes, or would you rather sleep through until you're ready?"
"No bells," said Mey-Rin. "Unless there's a fire. I'll wake myself up."
"Okay, but you ring me if you're coming over to the house, so I can look out for you. It gets dark quickly out here."
"Sure." She glanced at him, and towards the door. "Thank you, Mr. Sebastian."
"Would you like me to call the hotel in case you change your mind?"
"I'll be fine. That's all, thank you."
"Yes, Mrs. Lao."
He closed the door behind him.
Relieved, Mey-Rin kicked her shoes back off and perched tentatively on the edge of the high bed, before permitting herself to roll back and look up at the wooden ceiling through the drapery. She could quite happily doze off like this for just a few…
XxX
Sebastian strode back to the house. He always knew Lao was asking for trouble, but never expected it to materialise. She was either a very persuasive gold-digger or a very clever sperm-jacker, but neither one or the other had ever pushed Lao into matrimony before. He just got the chequebooks out, gave them what they wanted, and then they moved onto the next schmuck.
She just didn't seem to be his usual type. Nothing wrong with her, a perfectly attractive little thing - just not in the typical packaging that one was accustomed to seeing as an accessory to Lao's lifestyle.
Sebastian headed into the study and checked Lao's forwarded message. Yes - it clearly said that the honeymoon was 'cancelled' and that he would be in Venice. Ran-Mao's name wasn't actually mentioned, but Ran-Mao and Venice were inextricably connected in Lao's travelling history. No reason was given for the cancellation - so as far as anyone could tell, the wedding had gone ahead, and there really was a real live Mrs. Lao. Who could be telling the truth.
But she wasn't expected to be turning up here.
Clearly, no-one had told her that.
He scanned the other items in the inbox. Eighteen unread messages from Angela now. He selected them all and deleted them, unopened. One day, he'd figure out how 'block sender' worked - even for when the sender opened a new email account to get around the previous blocks. Just a glance at the subject lines was enough to keep his own sense of hostility alive.
DO NOT DELETE THIS! And DON'T IGNORE ME!
It was like having his own personal scammer, attempting to hack into his personal details. Which was a pretty good analogy of their relationship, now he thought about it.
And now his three weeks of anticipated privacy had been invaded by another one.
So long as she got bored and moved on quickly, perhaps not for too long.
He decided against calling Lao for back-up. If Lao was already on the run from her himself, he'd be waving his chequebook at Sebastian instead, ordering him to put up and shut up.
In which case, it would be more profitable to find out what his problem was with her first.