Twelve Hours of Temptation by Shoma Narayanan Read Free Book Online Page A

grabbed the shirt instinctively, but for a few seconds couldn’t help gawking at him. His body more than lived up to expectations—in running shorts and nothing else he was all muscular chest and six-pack abs, and he looked like her favourite Bollywood star, only more real. When he frowned at her, she hastily pulled the shirt on.
    Far from being ‘a mess’, the shirt smelt of clean male sweat and salt water, and the sudden intimacy made her hormones go into overdrive. She had to look away for a few seconds to get her unruly pulse under control. The shirt was big on her, flapping damply around her thighs, but at least she no longer looked like Silk Smitha.
    The boys were nearer the water now, and even though she was decently covered Melissa couldn’t help wondering how she’d explain Samir’s suddenly shirtless self and her own in-the-sea costume change.
    ‘Maybe we should take a walk down the seashore,’ Samir suggested, ‘and head back to the hotel after the sun sets?’
    ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ Melissa said, hoping her dusky skin concealed the rush of colour to her cheeks.
    ‘Have you spoken to your relatives yet?’ he asked as they walked a little farther down the beach.
    He was feeling intensely aware of her nearness and the unconsciously sexy picture she made in her tiny denim shorts with her damp hair tumbling over her shoulders. He could understand the Portuguese sailors who’d landed on the Goa coast centuries ago and then stayed, beguiled by the beauty of the Goan women they’d met there. It was a fanciful thought, but maybe one of Melissa’s ancestors had been among those women.
    ‘I didn’t carry my phone onto the beach,’ Melissa said, and it took him a few seconds to connect her reply with the rather banal question he’d asked a few seconds earlier.
    ‘You could go and meet them if you want,’ he said. ‘I have a car booked, but I’m not likely to use it. There’s some stuff that’s come up at Maximus that I need to sort out.’
    ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know if I manage to get in touch with them.’
    She had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but there was no point getting into a lengthy and possibly boring explanation of how things actually stood between her and her family.
    ‘Looks like someone’s decided to get married on the beach,’ Samir said a few minutes later, touching her lightly on the arm.
    Melissa turned to look. It was a rather impressive tableau against the setting sun—the bride in a perfectly stunning off-the-shoulder wedding gown, with a train that dragged along the sand, and the more casually dressed groom in a white linen shirt and pale dress jeans. The only other people with them were a bridesmaid, a priest and a photographer. The photographer and the priest were Indian; the couple and the bridesmaid could have been American or European—it was difficult to tell.
    It had been two years, Melissa thought, but she still hadn’t got over that initial jolt whenever she saw a blond male in his twenties. The groom wasn’t Josh, but for a second she’d thought he was, and her heart-rate had tripled. Even now she couldn’t help stopping to look, just to make sure that it wasn’t him.
    ‘I don’t think we should stare,’ Samir prompted. ‘It’s a rather private moment, don’t you think?’
    By then Melissa had got her wits about her, and she managed to retort, ‘It’s not very private if they’ve decided to get married on a public beach, is it? It’s like deciding to hold a Kuchipudi performance on Flora Fountain and then getting offended if people don’t pay for tickets.’
    ‘Kuchipudi? Why Kuchipudi?’ Samir was saying in bemused tones when the bridesmaid came running across to them.
    ‘Hey, guys...if you’ve got a minute...Brenda and Mark just got married, and it’d be lovely if you could come across and share some champagne. Oh, I’m Sarah by the way—so nice to meet you!’
    Sarah was definitely American,