‘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,’
