Twelve Hours of Temptation

‘We’ll be in Kolhapur in another hour or so,’ Melissa said, effectively breaking into his thoughts. ‘Are we stopping there or going straight on?’

‘We could stop for lunch,’ Samir said. ‘There’s another burger place on the highway, and a couple of coffee shops as well.’

Melissa wrinkled up her nose. ‘I had two burgers for breakfast,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can look one in the face for a while. Can we go somewhere else? I’ve often seen Vegetable Kolhapur on restaurant menus—would it be a kind of speciality here?’

‘Along with Kolhapuri chappals,’ Samir agreed solemnly.

Melissa made a face at him. ‘I wasn’t planning to buy footwear. But do let’s stop somewhere in the city.’

It would add another hour to the drive at least, but Samir complied. After Melissa’s fainting fit his attitude towards her had changed. Not normally indulgent towards other people’s whims, he found himself unaccountably wanting to fall in with whatever she wanted.

They chose a small restaurant in the centre of the city—the food was spicy, and not really to his taste, but it was worth the delay just to see Melissa savour the meal. Unlike the perpetually dieting women Samir normally dated, she genuinely enjoyed her food, just about stopping short of licking her fingers after polishing off everything on her plate.

‘Dessert?’ he asked after she was done. ‘There’s ice creams and gulab jamun. Or, no, you can’t have the ice cream if you’re lactose-intolerant. Gulab jamun?’

It was the first time anyone had actually remembered she was lactose intolerant—people who’d known her for years, including her own sister-in-law, continued to ply her with milkshakes and ice cream every time they met. Maybe he just had a good memory, but she couldn’t help feeling a little flattered.

‘Gulab jamun,’ she said.

Samir watched her as she dug a spoon into a gulab jamun, golden syrup gushing out of the round sweet. It was a messy dish to eat, and she paused a couple of times to lick the syrup off her lips. His eyes were automatically drawn to her lush mouth and the way her little pink tongue ran over its contours. She was the first woman he’d met whose simplest gesture ended up being unconsciously sexy. Or, then again, maybe he was just turning into a horny old man.

‘How old are you?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Twenty-four,’ Melissa said, and her brow furrowed up as she polished off the last bit of gulab jamun. ‘Why?’

Why, indeed? She looked so young that for a second he’d wondered if she was underage.

‘I was thinking about the ad you wrote,’ he said. ‘I’d assumed it was written by an older woman—someone with kids.’

‘Oh, that,’ she said, looking embarrassed. ‘I spent a lot of time with my sister-in-law after my nephew was born. She didn’t have anyone else to help her with the baby.’

‘Still, it was a very insightful piece of work. I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t win something.’

Feeling more and more embarrassed, Melissa said, ‘Has Brian been brainwashing you?’

Samir laughed, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in a particularly attractive way. ‘He happened to mention it a few times. But I don’t get easily influenced by other people’s opinions. Are you done? We should leave if we want to get to Goa before it’s dark.’

He put a hand under her elbow to guide her out of the restaurant and Melissa felt all her fantasies come rushing back in full force. Of course he was probably just being polite. Or he was worried she’d keel over and faint once again, and he’d have to carry her out on his shoulder. Either way, her insides were doing weird things at his touch, and the temptation to touch him in return was immense.

She tried to kill the fantasy by imagining his reaction. Shock? Embarrassment? Then she remembered the feel of his lips on her fingers as he’d taken the sticky candy from them, and she couldn’t help thinking that maybe, just maybe, he’d reciprocate. Bend down and kiss her. Tangle his big strong hands in her hair and tip her head back to get better access to her lips...

‘Melissa?’

Brought back to earth with a thump, she realised he was holding the car door open for her.

‘Sorry,’ she said, sliding into her seat quickly.

‘You’re a complete daydreamer, aren’t you?’ he asked, looking rather amused as he got into the driver’s seat. ‘What were you thinking about?’

Ha—wouldn’t you like to know? Melissa felt like saying. Maybe some day she’d actually be confident enough to come back with the truth when a man like Samir asked her a question like that. Unfortunately, as of now, she was less than halfway there.

‘Just stuff,’ she said after a pause.

‘Random stuff?’

‘Oh, very random.’ He’d sounded a bit sceptical, and she felt she needed to justify herself. ‘As random as Brownian motion—you know, that thing they show you in school...dust motes being tossed around by invisible molecules...my mind’s a bit like that.’

He gave her a long look, and she shook her head, laughing.

‘Sorry, sorry. Rambling a bit there.’

‘Just a bit,’ he said, but his lips quirked up at the corners as if he was trying hard not to smile.

Melissa had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking about. She concentrated on her phone for a bit, replying to the various texts that had come in while they were at lunch. When she looked up they were on the highway again, going down a rather lovely stretch of road with sugarcane fields on both sides and rolling green hills on the horizon.

‘Look at the bougainvillaea down the centre of the road—aren’t they beautiful?’

Samir hadn’t noticed the bougainvillaea other than as an unnecessary distraction—at her words, though, he gave them a quick glance.

‘They’re OK, I guess,’ he said. ‘Though they seem to be planted in any old order. White for a few hundred metres and then miles of pink, with a couple of yellows thrown in.’

‘I thought that was the nicest thing about them,’ she returned. ‘They look as if they’ve just sprung up, not as if someone planned—’ She stopped short as she took in Samir’s less than interested expression. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The driving must be stressful, and here I am babbling about bougainvillaea.’

‘And now you’re making me feel guilty about being a grumpy old git,’ Samir said wryly. ‘I’m sorry—I’m not very good at noticing things.’

‘I’m the opposite,’ Melissa said, mock-mournfully. ‘I notice everything. My head’s chock-full of all kinds of unnecessary junk.’

‘It’ll all come in handy some day,’ Samir said. ‘You’ll be brilliant if you’re on a quiz show, one day, and they show you a picture of a road and ask you to identify it.’

The good stretch seemed to be over now, because the next turnoff they took was onto a road that barely deserved the name. It was pretty much a long stretch of potholes connected by little strips of tar, and Melissa winced as the car bounced up and down.

‘Sorry,’ Samir said, putting a brief steadying hand on her knee as they went over a particularly bad crater.

Even through the frayed denim of her cut-offs Melissa could feel the warm strength of his hand, and she began to feel a lot more positive about the state of the road. Every cloud...et cetera, et cetera, she thought, an involuntary grin coming to her lips.

Beginning to enjoy herself thoroughly now, she let the next crater bounce her sideways so that she landed on his shoulder. ‘Oops,’ she said. ‘You need to drive more carefully, Samir.’

Samir gave her a sideways look but didn’t say anything. That last bounce had been deliberate, he was sure of it, but she seemed to be doing it for fun. He was used to women saying and doing things to win his approval—Melissa was something else altogether. She was definitely as attracted to him as he was to her, but she was treating the whole situation as a bit of a joke.

‘I’m rolling the windows down,’ she announced when they came to a stretch where, wonder of wonders, there was an actual repair crew busily laying a new layer of tar on top of the existing apology for a road. ‘I love the smell of fresh tar.’

She didn’t wait for his permission, and Samir wondered what she’d have said if he told her he was allergic to dust and tarry smells. He wasn’t, but if he had been she’d probably have found that funny as well, he thought resignedly.

‘Did you notice how the colour of the soil changes between states?’ she was asking. ‘It was brown while we were in Maharashtra, then it turned black near the Karnataka border—and in Goa it’s brick-red.’

Samir shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t notice something like that even if there were mile-high signs telling me about it.’

Melissa didn’t say anything, but it was clear she thought that not noticing anything sounded incredibly boring.

He gave her a quick smile. ‘Though I do notice that you have a dirt smear on your cheek,’ he said, stroking the offending item lightly with the back of his hand. ‘That comes from having your nose stuck out of the window.’

‘Touché,’ Melissa said and grinned as she rubbed the smudge off. ‘I’ve always wanted to say that to someone, only I’ve never met anyone swanky enough to speak French to.’

‘I might be swanky, but I can at least speak Hindi,’ Samir remarked. ‘You’re jabbering away in English all the time.’

‘In the agency? That’s because poor old Dubeyji almost had a heart attack when I tried speaking to him in Hindi. Apparently my grammar’s all wrong, and I sound terribly rude.’

‘You sound terribly rude even when you’re speaking English,’ Samir murmured.

She punched him lightly in the arm. ‘Ouch, way too musclebound,’ she said, pretending to nurse the knuckles on her right hand. ‘You should go easy on the gym—live life a little. You’d make a much nicer punching bag if you were flabby.’

‘What a nice thought,’ he said, laughing. ‘But I think I’ll stick to my gym routine. And you might want to concentrate on that map—there’s a town coming up and I’ve no idea whether to go through it or around it.’

* * *

‘You have reached your destination,’ the smug voice-over on the map informed them a few hours later.

‘Except that we’re in the middle of freaking nowhere,’ Samir muttered.

After telling them to take a right turn towards the Uttorda beach the map had carefully led them to a cul-de-sac, with the beach on one side and a grove of coconut trees on the other.

A man passed by them, whistling cheerfully, and Melissa rolled down the window. ‘Is there a hotel nearby?’ she asked him in Konkani.

‘Lots,’ the man said. ‘This is Goa—not the Thar desert. Any particular one that you might be looking for?’

Melissa consulted the name on the map and told him.

‘You’ll need to go back the way you came for a kilometre or so,’ he said. ‘Turn right at the big purple house and you’ll see the signs for the hotel.’

‘Well, at least it got us this far,’ Samir said in resigned tones as he switched off the tablet a few minutes later. ‘Though I wish our friend back there had given clearer directions—every third house here is purple. It didn’t occur to me earlier—you’re Goan, aren’t you? Don’t you have family here?’

‘They all live very far away,’ Melissa said. ‘Um, should I call Devdeep or someone who’s already arrived and get proper directions?’

‘You’d need to explain where we are first,’ Samir said. ‘Let’s do the old-fashioned thing and ask a real live human being.’

The next ‘real live human being’ they met fortunately knew the area well, and within ten minutes they were pulling into the hotel grounds.

‘Thanks once again,’ Melissa said once they’d arrived. She was feeling unaccountably shy, and automatically reverted to formality. ‘You didn’t have to give me a lift, but you did, and I had a great time.’

For a few seconds Samir looked down at her, his dark eyes mesmerising in their intensity. Then a hostess bustled up to them with a tray of welcome drinks and the moment passed.

‘I’ll see you around, then,’ Samir said, taking his room keys from the bellboy and slinging his bag over his shoulder. ‘Some of the other guys are already here—you could call them and catch up maybe.’

Was that a subtle way of telling her not to expect to hang around with him? Melissa felt absurdly upset at the thought as she watched him stride away.

Just as he was about to step out of the lobby, he turned around. ‘Melissa?’

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Make sure you eat your meals on time, OK?’ he said, smiling a crooked little smile. ‘No fainting when you’re called up to receive the award.’

‘OK,’ she said.

It was only when she reached her room and looked into the mirror that she realised that she was still smiling goofily.

‘Idiot woman,’ she told her reflection crossly. ‘It was fun, but the trip’s over now. You’ll be lucky if he pays any attention to you at all after this.’

Her reflection looked back at her just as crossly, and she gave it a wry grin.

‘I know. I liked him too. But he’s my boss—I can’t chase after him. Time for a cold shower now, OK?’

She moved away from the mirror, her good humour at least partly restored. She’d decided a couple of years back not to take men too seriously, and so far she’d managed to stick by it.

Wandering into the bathroom, she hummed softly under her breath as she turned on the taps. Eek, the cold water was really, really cold. Maybe a lukewarm shower would do just as well without giving her pneumonia.

By the time she was done with ironing an impossibly crushed pair of shorts, tucking her hair under a shower cap and actually going ahead and taking a shower, it was past six. It took her a few seconds to give her hair a brushing and pull on a yellow spaghetti strap top over the neatly ironed shorts. Once she was done, she gave herself a quick look in the mirror and headed off to the beach.

There was an enthusiastic game of cricket in progress between Devdeep and a couple of other guys from Mendonca’s and a bunch of youngsters from another agency. Pretty much the entire Mumbai advertising fraternity seemed to be in Goa, either infesting the beach or helping the state economy along by drinking larger quantities of beer and feni.

‘Join us!’ one of the younger cricket players in the group yelled out to Melissa.

‘You’re supposed to play volleyball on the beach, not cricket,’ she yelled back. ‘Losers!’

‘Leave her alone—girls can’t play cricket,’ one of the surlier members of the team grunted.

‘Oh, can’t they?’ Melissa said, promptly kicking off her sandals and joining them.

The sand felt good under her feet—it had been a long while since she’d gone barefoot. Mumbai had its fair share of beaches, but they were crowded and often dirty.

‘You can field,’ the surly man said. ‘Just don’t get in the way of the other fielders.’

Melissa didn’t say anything—just waited till the luckless batsman hit a ball in her direction. She moved across the sand like a guided missile, leaving Mr Surly and the others gaping as she caught the ball in mid-air and whirled around to knock down a wicket. Clearly unused to running in the sand, the batsmen were only halfway down the crease—they didn’t stand a chance.

‘Out,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘I think I’ll bowl next, thank you.’

There was a second of stunned silence, and then ‘her’ team started cheering madly. The bowler was the man who’d first called out to her, and he relinquished his place to her gladly. He was a nice-looking chap, with curly hair and an impish grin, and Melissa liked him immediately.

‘Down here for the ad fest?’ he asked as he handed over the ball.

Melissa nodded.

‘I’m Akash,’ he said. ‘Would you like to catch up later? Figure out which of our entries is likely to get a gold in the festival?’

‘Akash, stop hitting on the bowler,’ one of the other players said.

‘Yeah, Akash, there’s no way she’d want to be seen with a loser like you,’ another chimed in.

Melissa gave the guy a saucy grin. ‘I’ll tell you once the game is over,’ she said.

She wasn’t in the least attracted to him, but it made sense hanging out with a bunch of people her own age rather than hanging around and hoping Samir would come and find her.

THREE

After thirteen hours behind the wheel, every muscle in Samir’s body felt stiff—he was supposed to be at a ‘networking’ session, but it sounded so incredibly boring that he’d made a flimsy excuse and escaped to his room.

Once there, he changed into running shorts and a dry fit T-shirt before slipping on his running shoes. A run would make up for the gym session he’d missed in the morning. Hopefully it would also get him tired enough to stop thinking about Melissa’s lissom body.

Used to running on Tarmac, or on the jogging track at the Mumbai race course, Samir avoided the beach. The lane outside the hotel had a fair bit of traffic, and he turned off into a by-lane as soon as he could. There was much less traffic here, other than the occasional cow or motorcycle, and he was able to build up a decent pace.

Running always helped clear his head, and he was able to think a little more rationally about his reaction to Melissa. She was an attractive woman, but he’d been seeing her around the office for weeks now and had never turned to give her a second look. Maybe it had been the effect of being thrown together with her for several hours—yes, that had to be it, he decided. And her fainting fit in the morning had aroused his protective instincts.

The sun was on the verge of setting when Samir glanced at his watch. He had been running for forty-five minutes—a little short of his normal hour, but perfectly respectable. He was opposite one of the public entrances to the Uttorda beach, and he slowed to a walk.

He felt strangely reluctant to go back to the hotel. It had been only a couple of years since he’d started actually running the companies his family owned, and he wasn’t yet used to the automatically deferential way the teams treated him. It was especially noticeable in Mendonca Advertising, because as a rule advertising people were a lot less respectful of hierarchy—Brian had been treated more like a well-loved uncle than a boss.

Maybe the rumours that he was planning to downsize accounted for it. People like Devdeep were desperately trying to prove that they were creative and revenue-focussed at the same time, like a modern-day David Ogilvy and Jack Welch rolled into one. And others, like Dubeyji, the elderly man who managed their Hindi advertising, were openly resentful. If you wanted to run a company successfully you couldn’t keep everyone happy—Brian had tried, and in the process almost run the agency into the ground.

Green coconut water would be good, if he could find someone selling it, he thought as he made his way to the beach. There was a small stall right at the entry to the beach, and he paid for a coconut, sipping the delicate water through a straw as he walked towards the sea. There was a game of cricket in progress—and while the teams seemed to have very little regard for the rules of the game, they were evidently having the time of their lives.

Something vaguely familiar about one of the women playing caught his eye, and he automatically slowed down. She was slim, brown-skinned, with endless legs and flyaway hair, and he felt a jolt of recognition hit him as she turned to laugh at something one of the other players was saying.

In the next second Melissa caught sight of Samir, and she tossed the bat to the next player and came towards him.

‘I just got run out,’ she said, making a face. ‘I’m brilliant at bowling and fielding—batting’s not so good. though. Where were you? Jogging?’

‘Running,’ he said.

She probably didn’t care if he’d been running or sprinting or playing hopscotch, but it seemed important to make the distinction. Jogging sounded like the kind of thing you did when you were forty and over the hill. Of course, to someone Melissa’s age thirty might seem just as ancient.

She was looking at his shoes now, inspecting them as carefully as if she meant to buy them from him. ‘You have proper running shoes,’ she stated, sounding surprised. ‘Everyone I know uses everything interchangeably—tennis shoes and football studs and running shoes.’

‘Or they just run around barefoot,’ Samir said, before he could help it.

Even covered in sand, her feet were very pretty, the nails painted a bright turquoise and a little silver anklet around one ankle. He’d been trying to keep his eyes off her legs and her small, pert breasts jiggling around under her yellow top, but her bare feet were pretty sexy as well.

Melissa made a face. Her spontaneous reaction when she’d seen Samir had been to come across to him—she’d forgotten what a sight she must look, with her muddy denim shorts, windswept hair and bare feet.

‘I didn’t bring proper shoes,’ she said. ‘And it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, joining these guys—I was planning to go and splash around in the sea, so I wore beach slippers.’

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