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‘If I’d wanted conversation I’d have gone to dinner with the crowd. I’ve had a very pleasant evening.’
They came to another corner and Felicia blindly changed direction, heading—she hoped—towards the hotel. Simple courtesy demanded that she say she had also enjoyed the evening. But for her it had been too emotionally charged.
She quickened her pace, and suddenly the road disappeared into an unlit alleyway. She stopped abruptly, and felt Joshua’s presence at her back, not quite touching her. ‘We’ve taken a wrong turning,’ she said.
‘Maybe.’
‘We’ll have to go back to the main road.’
As she made to retrace their steps, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. ‘But there’s light through there, and another road, see?’
She peered into the dimness, and saw at the end of the alley people passing back and forth, and a road with traffic, bicycles.
‘Never go back,’ Joshua suggested, ‘unless there’s no other way out.’
Felicia shrugged. There was something to be said, she grudgingly supposed, for having a male companion. Sensible women automatically avoided lonely, dark streets. She let him lead her forward.
One side of the alley was lined with dozens of bicycles standing silent and gleaming side by side in the gloom. On the other side were closed back doors.
Then quite quickly the alleyway emerged into a broad street, and she recognised that they were close to the hotel.
When they reentered the lobby a few minutes later it seemed very bright and spacious.
‘A nightcap?’ Joshua suggested. ‘The bar’s still open.’
‘Not for me,’ Felicia decided. ‘Thank you for your company.’ She had to get away from him to sort out the confusion of her feelings.
Joshua ignored the hand she held out. ‘I don’t want to drink alone. I’ll be going up to bed too. Tomorrow it’s the Great Wall, isn’t it? Stamina may be required.’
There weren’t many people about and they had the elevator to themselves. When the doors slid open at Felicia’s floor, Joshua surprised her by taking her shoulders and turning her gently but firmly to face him.
She hardly had time to register the taut, questioning look on his face, the deep light in his tigerish eyes, before he bent his head and pressed a warm, insistent, exploratory kiss against her mouth.
Taken unawares, she felt her lips quiver and part under his before she could stop herself.
Then she was free, and he had raised a hand to hold the door for her. She stepped back, staring at him, and heard him say, ‘Good night, Felicia,’ before the doors closed and she was left blinking at the bright red arrow above her.
‘... the only man-made structure visible from outer space.’
Felicia stood on the Great Wall, only half listening to the rapid-fire statistics Jen was giving the group huddled around her. ‘Two thousand, one hundred and fifty miles long... three hundred thousand workers...’
Hundreds of tourists of various nationalities milled about, climbing the worn steps and squinting at the farther reaches of the wall where a shifting tide of people thinned as it receded into the distance.
A hand on the hard stone parapet, Felicia gazed at the desolate, rock-strewn countryside. She’d read the figure, but none of them had prepared her for the feeling of actually being here—for the sense of the toiling of time, of generations that had lived and died and loved and been forgotten since the building of the wall had begun.
‘And this is only a remnant,’ Joshua’s voice said beside her. ‘Pretty impressive, isn’t it?’
‘Awesome,’ Felicia agreed. She had to force herself to look at him, the sound of his voice bringing back a vivid memory of that brief, unexpected kiss last night.
Not quite meeting his eyes, she gave him a quick smile and moved to merge into the group following Jen along the top of the wall.
She had the feeling that he remained staring after her for a few seconds before he joined them, but by that time she was walking with Maggie, successfully ignoring him.
Suzette unwittingly assisted her to do so for the rest of the day, attaching herself to Joshua’s side and making sure that whatever attention he could spare from sightseeing was directed to her. Felicia ought to have been grateful. Instead she found herself harbouring uncharitable thoughts about both of them—Suzette for her blatant man-chasing, and Joshua because of his air of amused tolerance. Patronising, she labelled it caustically.
It occurred to her that she was being a dog in the manger, and the thought only made her more irritated. Her muddled feelings were a hangover, she had decided last night, gazing into the sleepless darkness of her room, residual emotion from her early adolescence, when she’d thought Joshua was the handsomest, most romantic man on earth.
Face it, she told herself brutally as she changed for dinner back at the hotel after their return from the Great Wall. He was your first crush, your puppy-love, and despite everything that happened, somewhere deep down traces of those feelings are still buried in your subconscious.
That was why she had found his casual kiss last night so disturbing. At thirteen she’d at least had enough sense to know that a grown man like Joshua Tagget wasn’t going to be interested in a barely pubescent girl. She had been happy to abet his love affair with Genevieve—a form of transference, she now supposed.
Had he ever divined her own feelings—that excruciating blend of half-understood, heavily romanticised sexual awakening and blind hero-worship? God, she hoped not! She grew hot at the thought, suddenly reverting to uncomfortable adolescent self-consciousness.
Tonight everyone was dining in the hotel because they were scheduled to attend a performance of acrobatics afterwards in the city. Safety in numbers, Felicia promised herself. She needn’t share a table with Joshua again.
Dead wrong, as it turned out. When she entered the dining room it was to find nearly all her tour companions gathered around two large tables, and Maggie saving her a seat. Which left two at Felicia’s other side empty. Those were the only chairs available when Joshua and Suzette entered together a little later, and Felicia watched with a sense of inevitability as he seated his companion and then took the chair next to hers.
‘Hi,’ he said in her ear.
Felicia half turned her head. ‘Hi,’ she acknowledged, and returned to studying the menu in front of her.
‘Why don’t we order a selection of dishes for the table?’ someone suggested. ‘We can all share, and have a taste of everything.’
After a minimum of discussion the plan was approved, and the menus removed.
The meal became a friendly free-for-all of passing, tasting, dipping and enthusiastic recommendations. Chopsticks were wielded with varying degrees of expertise and success, and as Felicia dexterously transferred a few pork balls from the serving dish to her plate Joshua commented, ‘You’re pretty damn good at that.’ It had taken him several attempts to get a firm grip on one of the sauce-covered morsels.
‘I often eat in Chinese restaurants.’ She turned to Maggie. ‘Would you like some of these?’
‘If you’ll kindly get them for me,’ Maggie replied, waving her own chopsticks. ‘I still haven’t got the hang of these danged things.’
One of the children in the party, sitting on the other side of Maggie, piped up, ‘You’re holding them wrong. See, try like this!’
It was all very relaxed and sometimes hilarious. ‘Group bonding,’ Joshua murmured once, slanting a glance towards Felicia. ‘How about it?’
‘What?’ She had to look at him, finding his eyes darker than usual, questioning her. Curious, perhaps.
‘There was more than one wall out there today,’ he said quietly, his voice covered by a burst of laughter from across the table as someone accidentally dropped a prawn into their drink. ‘And this one’s still intact.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ Felicia looked down at her plate, toying with a grey, semi-transparent slice of sea cucumber and wondering if she really needed to eat it.
‘We’re all going to be together for a while, and a friendly atmosphere can help things along considerably. I thought last night...’
‘What did you think?’ she asked, more sharply than she meant to.
He was looking at her with a baffled expression. ‘Was it the kiss?’ he asked bluntly. ‘Should I apologise?’
It had hardly been anything to make a fuss about, except for its unexpected effect on her. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she said hastily. ‘As kisses go, it scarcely rated, after all.’
A tight grin came and went on his mouth. ‘Is that meant to be an insult?’
‘I don’t go around insulting perfect strangers.’
His brows twitched. ‘Yow! A double whammy.’ He glanced round the table. ‘Look, it was an impulse, a nice way to end the evening, I thought. And...’
‘And?’ She looked up at him in challenge.
‘And... I wanted to know whether you’d reciprocate. It seemed to me I had reason to hope for it. If I offended you, I’m sorry.’
‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ she assured him with spurious earnestness. ‘It was totally unmemorable.’ And she turned away to speak to Maggie.
She could feel him seething beside her, even as his deep voice answered something that Suzette said. Well, OK, she thought defiantly. He’d asked for it, and he’d got it—in spades. That should ensure that he stayed away from her for the rest of the trip. Only she wished she didn’t feel so sick, as if she’d just done something peculiarly horrible.
Within days the tour group had developed a camaraderie that boded well for the rest of their time together. They’d visited temples and gardens, and most of them had ventured to the Chinese department stores and the street markets.
Joshua seemed popular, although when the group was taken to the Friendship Store where foreigners were encouraged to buy souvenirs, he had instead gone off somewhere on his own. Even Suzette didn’t know where.
They were flown to Xian to visit the famous terracotta army and other archaeological sites, and travelled by rail and road to Qingdao on the Yellow Sea, through vast areas of cultivations and scattered pink-walled villages. Water buffalo plodded patiently along dusty raised roads by narrow canals, and in some places it seemed that the countryside had been unchanged for centuries.
Qingdao dispelled that feeling. A sleepy fishing village until only a hundred years ago, it was now a sprawling, traffic-ridden, skyscraping metropolis that Jen called ‘... a small city... only seven million people.’
Coming from a country that boasted a population of three and a half million or so overall, Felicia was unable to suppress a choked little laugh. Turning away to try and hide it, she caught Joshua’s eyes, and an answering grin.
The first morning the group divided into those who wished to visit the Hi-Tech and Industrial Park and those who preferred a tour of specialty shops.
Relieved to find that Joshua had gone with the industrial tour, Felicia spent a relaxed morning with the bulk of the women browsing among a tempting array of embroidered silks, carved jade and cloisonné. It was difficult to limit her buying to a few irresistible pieces.
In the afternoon Maggie and several of the others declared they intended to spend the free time napping. Felicia welcomed the opportunity to take a walk on her own.
Strolling along the seaside promenade, where hundreds of Chinese holidaymakers and Japanese tourists enjoyed the broad beach a few feet below, she stopped to lean on the safety barrier, watching the swimmers and ball-players, and lifting a hand to her eyes to squint along the pier at the double-pagoda of the Rebounding Waves Pavilion.
Someone came to lean alongside her, and she felt the tightening of her skin that invariably told her when Joshua was near.
‘Isn’t this a bit silly?’ he said mildly.
‘What?’ She lowered her hand but didn’t take her eyes from the pavilion with the waves breaking gently around the rock on which it stood.
‘Not speaking,’ he said bluntly.
‘I am speaking to you.’
‘You avoid me at every opportunity.’
‘Actually there aren’t that many opportunities—’
The word fortunately hung in the air between them.
His hand on the rail beside her tightened. Then unexpectedly he laughed. Really laughed, with his head thrown back in genuine enjoyment. Watching him, she felt something clutch at her heart, and bit her lip, not wanting to recognise what had caused it.
The laughter was still in his eyes as he looked at her, shaking his head. ‘You never miss a chance, do you? Why do I keep asking for it?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Felicia straightened away from the railing and turned to resume her stroll.
‘I don’t believe that.’ He was walking beside her. ‘You strike me as a fairly intelligent woman.’
“Thank you. What does that have to do with anything?
‘Do I seem to you like the sort of man who enjoys hitting his head against a brick wall for the fun of it?’
‘Since you ask...’ Felicia allowed her voice to trail off delicately as she stopped to look at a display of freshwater pearls. Joshua shifted to stand half facing her.
The stall-holder smiled eagerly at Felicia. ‘Hello, hello! Real pearl, very nice.’
‘Very nice,’ she assented, lifting a strand of the small, oddly shaped beads.
Joshua remained at her side. ‘You want me to spell it out?’ he asked.
‘Are you a good speller?’ Felicia asked coolly.
‘Cheap,’ the stall-holder said anxiously as Felicia let the strand of pearls drop from her fingers.
‘Agreed,’ Joshua commented, shooting him a brief glance. To Felicia he said quietly, ‘I find you madly attractive, and I want to spend time with you. Now I’m wide open for the coup de grâce.’
‘Only t’ree hun‘red yuan!’ the stall-holder offered, adding with hardly a pause, ‘Two hun’red seven-five OK?
Felicia said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not interested.’
‘Two hun’red fifty!
the man offered as she began to move away. She smiled and shook her head.
‘Not interested?’ Joshua repeated softly. ‘You were tempted, though.’
‘Yes. I may change my mind later.’
‘I live in hope.’ There was laughter in his voice.
‘I was talking about the pearls.’
‘I wasn’t, and you know it.’
She looked up, ready to deliver a stinging retort, let him know once and for all that she wanted nothing from him but to be left alone. With any other man it would have been easy. She’d have been polite, firm, unequivocal, trying to leave his ego intact while giving him a clear message that his advances were unwelcome.
But then she met Joshua’s eyes and the words died on her tongue. He looked quite serious now, intense and determined, and she couldn’t look away from the glowing amber depths. Her own eyes dilated, she could feel it.
He halted, moving half in front of her, oblivious of the people walking around them. ‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘You’re not married, are you? Is there a man back home? Or has someone hurt you, made you afraid to step into the dark again?’
‘None of the above.’ With an effort she pulled herself together, forced herself to detachment. Perhaps she ought to claim a lover, a commitment. But instinct told her it wouldn’t make any difference. ‘I’m deeply flattered, of course, but—’ She shrugged, not quite apologetically.
