Heart of the Dragon (8 page)

At first Kash told himself that her withdrawn attitude was a blessing; he needed the quiet time to observe her and silently sort out his emotions. No other woman had ever made him feel this way. He alternated between exhilaration and confusion.

Her moodiness began to grate on him. Where was the stubborn teasing, the humor, the fascinating storm of emotion and conversation he’d expected? He was churning inside because she wouldn’t speak to him. He, who rarely craved more than his own thoughts, much less a near stranger’s conversation, was an emotional mess because of this troublesome woman, a stranger who might have hidden intentions toward the client he’d pledged to protect.

Kash pushed his lunch aside and frowned at Rebecca as she ate.
Talk to me
, he ordered mentally.

“Smart monkey,” she said, her gaze riveted to the tiny, agile animal that was peeling fruit for its owner, a street peddler, under an awning just outside the café. “I wonder if it knows that I like to squeeze an orange slice into my coffee?”

A quick flood of understanding made Kash tilt his head and look at her pensively. “Ah-ha. You had your darkest vice exposed, and you’re feeling threatened.”

“No more than usual, since I met you.”

She switched her cool gaze to him with the directness he’d craved all morning. The blue of her eyes was even more vibrant, accented by the blue-and-gold silk dress he’d given her at her room. The traditional Thai skirt
wrapped around her snugly and reached her midcalf, and the matching top fit closely and was nipped in at the waist, with short, capped sleeves and a stand-up collar. When she swung her head a certain way, her brunette hair caught at the gold piping along the collar’s edge. He fought a constant desire to reach over and caress the different textures. The smooth skin of her throat invited his touch, as well.

“I’m not accustomed to having someone investigate me behind my back,” she said scornfully. “I guess I expected you to investigate me face to face, listen to what I had to say about myself and my background, and see for yourself that I’m telling the truth.”

“Look at it this way. Through the miracle of modern communication, since yesterday I’ve acquired an extensive file on you from my researchers in America. They’ve confirmed all the basic facts. You’re twenty-six years old, have a degree in commercial art, sold your first cartoon in high school, lived with your father until you were twenty-three, teach Methodist Sunday school, own a small, neat house in a small, neat town, and make approximately thirty thousand dollars a year selling a cartoon strip about life in small-town America.” He paused to take a sip of his tea.

She watched him wide-eyed, her mouth open. “Go on.”

“According to newspaper articles in your hometown paper, you’re widely regarded as odd but likable, and the only scandal in your life occurred last year, when you broke your engagement to the mayor’s eldest son, one Leonard ‘Leon’ Cranshaw, who had been your steady since junior year in high school, where he was voted ‘Most Likely to Wear White Dress Shoes and Plaid Jackets.’ I’m very curious about Leon.”

“He was a nice guy, with clean fingernails and no imagination. I don’t appreciate you bringing him into this. Or checking up on me at all.”

Kash raised his hands in supplication. Secretly he
was pleased. She’d showed good taste in ridding herself of Leon. “You weren’t meant to have a safe, boring relationship with a man.”

“Thank you, Mr. Manners, for the advice.”

“I’m sorry my investigation makes you angry. But consider this—now I don’t have to wonder if you’re really who and what you say you are.” He spread his hands magnanimously. “I’ve put us light-years ahead in getting to know each other.”

“Oh? Will you give me all the details of
your
life, so we’ll be even?”

He nodded, then leaned forward and propped his chin on one hand. “I’m thirty years old, I have a business degree from Harvard, I work for my adopted father’s private security service, I’m unmarried, honest, honorable, but not the most lighthearted person in the world. I’m a firm believer in not believing. If anyone hurts my loved ones, they hurt me. If I’m assigned to do a job, I finish it. I know how to fight. There. You know me.”

“Thanks for the detailed info. I’ll write it down on the back of a stamp.”

“I’ve told you what you want to hear. It’s the truth. If I told you more, you wouldn’t like it. I’d never fit in with your warm little vision of the world.”

She chuckled fiendishly. “I’ve already made up much worse stories about you than could ever be true. So talk.”

Kash shook his head slowly, and watched the taunt fade from her eyes. He had the disturbing notion that she sensed the darkness in him, and he wondered if she was afraid of him. The thought that someone like her would be shocked or disgusted by his childhood didn’t surprise him. He’d been careful over the years never to discuss his past with anyone, after a few pitying and repulsed people had hurt him with their reactions.

“You can’t imagine,” he said grimly. “But never fear, the dragon won’t breathe fire on your angel wings.”

She brought her chopsticks up in the air as if she
wanted to reach across the table and pinch him. “So now that you’ve used some kind of sleazy private-eye team to check on me, am I innocent? Does it matter that I’m exactly what I said I am?”

“It helps. And by the way, the organization I work for—my father’s organization—is one of the most respected private intelligence groups in the world. We take only high-level cases. In fact, this minor job for the Vatan family is only a favor. My father was an old friend of Mayura’s uncle. Ordinarily we specialize in international terrorism and kidnapping cases.”

She looked suspicious but intrigued. “You must make a lot of money.”

“At times. But I was adopted into a wealthy man’s home, so neither he nor I do this work for the money. My father is interested in giving something beneficial back to society. And we do.”

“Why should I believe that, when you won’t believe me?”

“I have no reason to deceive you. No personal involvement with the Vatan family. Nothing to gain.”

“So you say. But you think I could be lying about my reasons for wanting to meet Mayura?”

“Exactly. It’s my job to be suspicious.”

“No, I think it comes naturally to you.” She made a growling sound of disgust, dropped her chopsticks on the table, and rose abruptly. Snagging the small white purse she’d bought to match the white flats she wore, she slung the long strap over her shoulder, gave Kash a menacing look, and walked away.

He tossed some bills on the table and went after her, sliding his hand around her bare forearm as he caught up with her on the crowded sidewalk. The contact brought them both to an abrupt, highly charged stop. “Be patient, Corn Blossom,” he said as lightly as he could. “We’re making progress.”

“You’re making progress,” she retorted, “but I’m getting a royal Siamese pain.”

“Let’s walk and enjoy the scenery. A block or two from here we can stroll along one of the prettier canals.”

“I don’t ‘stroll’ in this elastic bandage of a skirt, I wiggle.”

“Yes,” he admitted, giving her a sideways glance. “Every inch of you. That’s the scenery I was referring to.”

A flush crept up her cheeks, but she squinted at him defiantly. “Since you’ve found out everything about me, you must know that I’ve never worn anything provocative in my whole life. So why’d you buy this dress for me—as a joke?”

Kash dropped the taunting attitude and looked at her with a troubled frown. “Take a chance. Be who you want to be. I suspect you want a dress like this, that you’re dying to be admired for something a little more exciting than your good manners.”

“Nothing in a research file could have told you that.”

“No,” he agreed. His fingers ached to stroke the satiny skin of her arm. “Sometimes a man just goes by instinct. And hands-on experience. Judging by what my instincts tell me, I predict you’ll be completely corrupted by the time I’m done with you. You won’t know your wiggle from your walk.”

“That can work both ways, Santelli. I’ll have you so turned upside down that you won’t be able to find your cynical attitude from a hole in the ground. You’ll be ready to join the PTA and sing in the church choir.”

Kash gave her a tightly controlled smile. She chortled. “You’re worried,” she proclaimed victoriously. “You’re actually worried.”

Feeling undone, he pushed her firmly along the sidewalk. “Wiggle,” he growled. Her accuracy and continuing laughter, a soft, pleased snicker, pestered him, making him want to tell her how ill-suited he was for her fantasy. Everything he’d survived and all the years of adjustment afterward had turned him into a loner, guarded about his emotions, bewildered by the family life he saw all around him. He thought even Audubon,
who had tried very hard to help him adjust, never expected him to fit in.

“Why so quiet, Dragon?” she asked slyly several minutes later, when they were threading their way along a canal dock crammed with Thai shoppers and lined with peddlers.

“I’m enjoying a daydream.” He nodded toward the murky water. “What a colorful splash you’d make.”

She turned to scowl at him, but his attention was already taken by three Thai men who were idly browsing through a vendor’s silver trinkets. Alarm raced through his blood. Casually he took Rebecca’s arm. “Don’t turn around and stare at them, and don’t appear shocked. But we may have an unwanted audience.”

Her face paled. “Who?”

“Three men over by the silversmith’s cart. They were outside the restaurant when we left. It’s just odd that they’d end up here too.”

She didn’t flinch. His admiration for her steady nerves translated to his hand’s reassuring squeeze on her arm. “Do you think the Nalinat family is after me?” she asked.

“I think they’re convinced you know where Mayura is. If they can find her, they’ll try to force a marriage between her and their son.”

“Is that legal in Thailand?”

“In this part of the world family relations and saving face are more important than the law.”

“But I can’t tell them anything. Couldn’t we just explain to the Nalinat family that I’m an outsider to this whole feud?”

“They’d never believe it.”

She trembled against his hand, though her face remained calm. “I’m not some kind of spy for them, I swear it. Even if you never believe my story about Mayura being my half sister, even if you always suspect my motives for coming here to meet her, don’t ever turn me over to the Nalinats.”

The desperation in her voice sent a white-hot surge of protectiveness through Kash, even though such fierce gallantry made him feel a little foolish. The world wasn’t made of heroes, only human beings trying to save what little hope and happiness they could. “What, you’d rather stay with me?” he asked in a gruffly teasing tone. “You find me preferable to a family of scheming, coldblooded Nalinats?”

Her mouth crooked up at one corner. “Only a little.”

“Good. Then come on. Well make sure those apes over there can’t follow us.”

He grabbed her hand and led her down a set of weathered wooden steps to the edge of the canal. It was packed with long, flat boats, each guided by peddlers who squatted in the rear under small canopies, with their wares spread out in the hull for people on the street to see. Merchants would maneuver to the docks for shoppers to reach them. Farther out, bigger boats with cylindrical coverings were home to entire families and their merchandise. To Rebecca, the big boats resembled floating Quonset huts.

“Step carefully and follow me,” Kash instructed her. Then, to an old man seated in one of the small boats crowded up to the dock, he said in Thai that even Rebecca could understand, “Excuse us, please.”

The next thing she knew, Kash was tugging her aboard the narrow vessel, and she was trying very hard not to step on ripe fruits piled to overflowing. “Don’t bounce. Step from boat to boat,” he told her. His strong, confident grip pulled her along firmly as she cringed and tiptoed from one teetering surface to another, her breath frozen in her throat.

“Excuse us, please,” Kash said repeatedly, smiling broadly and bowing to each merchant they passed. His smile was a glorious flash of white, a marvel of incredible charm. “The only time you show your teeth is when you want something,” she accused, casting her gaze down hurriedly as she almost stepped on a black duck.

“You smile for your needs, I’ll smile for mine,” he called over his shoulder. “Mine are practical.”

“So are mine. Smiling reminds me that the world is basically a happy place. Ow! A crab reached out of a crate and pinched my ankle!”

“Smile at him. And don’t tell him he’s going to be someone’s dinner tonight. He might not agree with you that the world is so happy.”

“Cynic.”

They finally landed on the box-filled deck of a large boat. Kash pulled her behind him through an open flap in the curved canvas hut. A wide-eyed family of five looked up from a meal. Rebecca stared back at them in mutual discovery. Kash dropped her hand, then pressed both of his in a low, respectable
wai
, smiling again, as if he and she had just dropped by to visit old friends.

Rebecca listened in bewilderment as he spoke to them in fluent Thai, motioning to her and then himself. The family’s patriarch lost his wary look. His brows shot up with excitement. He and Kash exchanged a long series of hand gestures and words, dramatic grimaces, and shaking of heads. Finally Kash sighed and nodded. Suddenly the whole family was smiling and making
wais
at both of them.

Kash glanced over his shoulder at her. “We’ve made a deal. They’ve sold me their boat.”

“This one?”

“No, a smaller one. I’m in no position to press my luck. I’m giving them a ridiculous amount of money as it is. And all the extras.”

“Extras?” she echoed warily.

“Our clothes. They’re poor people, and these clothes are worth a lot to them.”

After a stunned moment she said under her breath, smiling at the family to be polite, “Not
my
clothes, bub.”

“They’ll trade. You won’t be naked. The point is for us to disappear into the crowd of boat merchants. We’ll head upriver, away from the market. I’m tried of strangers
following us. I want a chance to talk to you, not spend my time wondering if we’re going to be jumped from behind.”