One Night Stand Read online

  Step by step, she found herself back in the indigo room. She flicked on a switch; a spotlight beamed down to highlight the photograph of Red Beach. She stared at it longingly and wondered what he might be doing.

  She thought of the time difference. Presently, it would be one in the morning in Washington, D.C.

  Or he could still be in Auckland, in which case it would be morning the following day, her time.

  She allowed her mind to conjure images of him at work. He looked like a lawyer. Perhaps he goes into one of those sexy glass and chrome structures in the city.

  Then she remembered his calloused hands. No, she surmised, he isn’t a lawyer. Maybe a police officer or a detective.

  Then she remembered the educated inflexion of his intonation and the cultured way in which he spoke. The sharpness of his wit, and his wicked sense of humour. Maybe he’s an educator—English Literature Professor, or Philosophy or perhaps Ancient History.

  In the end, she decided that if in fact, she was pregnant with his child she wouldn’t mind it at all. Then she thought with hilarity what her dear mother would think of it. She laughed out loud imagining her mother’s facial expression. Lips slightly parted, and Botox-ed forehead frozen in place.

  But as life would have it, the very moment she accepted the possibility of carrying Mr Indigo’s child, she felt her period come. Strangely enough, a smidgen of disappointment coloured her emotion.

  There was nothing else to do but prepare to get a little sleep.

  HAVING TAKEN A CATNAP in the late afternoon, Red struggled to find sleep. He decided to take advantage of his last few nights of relative freedom. Once Operation Snag Abdul is in full swing, his only constant companion would be caffeine and an earwig.

  He walked out of the hotel room in search of a decent pub, of which there would be several within a half a mile radius of his current accommodation.

  The minute he stepped on the footpath he sensed his shadows following. There had always been two of them tailing him constantly; he had learned to ignore them, but it took some doing. It used to irritate the hell out of him. He used to try to shake them off, but he had gotten tired of that now. The game got old.

  He found a watering hole he liked the look of only two blocks from his hotel. He ordered beer in a bottle and sat among the crowd. He listened to conversations, picking up words and gestures as he flitted his attention from one person to another. He couldn’t help it. Since training to become a Secret Service Agent, he had evolved into someone too observant.

  He found that he excelled at people-watching. Sometimes, just to amuse himself, he would focus on individuals a short distance from him and discreetly try to read their lips, a skill he had been training himself in on the quiet.

  A young lady sidled next to him, a little too close for comfort. Their knees touched. He glanced at her. She was hardly wearing a thing. Could something the size of his handkerchief be called clothing? She was ideally proportioned, with very long legs on six-inch stilts. He had to admit she was gorgeous in all that worldly sense.

  She smiled; he nodded. One thing he always looked at in a woman was her eyes. This girl’s eyes were glazed over, as though she was just an empty shell. He returned to his bottle, uninterested.

  She soon lost interest in him, too, turning instead to the guy on her right who was more than happy to be her entertainment.

  After a bottle of beer, he got tired of the whole scene and decided to call it a night. His shadows would no doubt be delighted. He gave them a subtle wave of the hand to let them know he knew they were around.

  THE NEXT MORNING THE property agent called.

  ‘Hey, it’s Miranda McPherson. Are you ready to move in?’

  ‘More than you know,’ he said, excited at the prospect of finally settling into his personal space.

  ‘Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘At the apartment would be fine. Eleven-thirty, if that suits.’

  ‘Eleven-thirty is fine.’

  IZZY HAD WRESTLED WITH sleeplessness until three in the morning. At eight, she was awakened by the concierge of a limousine company.

  ‘What time would you like the chauffeur to come by?’

  She thought about it for a moment and said, ‘Eleven-thirty, please.’

  That should give her plenty of time to check-in and have a proper meal at the British Airways Terraces Lounge. With any luck, she might also bump into Red Ngata-Rhodes.

  Would be nice to have a face to go with the name.

  She hadn’t initially wished to meet her tenant. That only happened when she found out about his exotic name, which kind of suggested he might be a nice person to get to know. She did try to Google him. With such a unique moniker, she thought she could easily find a whole heap of hits on him, but surprisingly there was none.

  She showered, changed and then had a tub of strawberry yoghurt for breakfast, the last edible item from her fridge.

  She gave her apartment a complete once over, making sure nothing personal had been left behind in her haste to pack. She touched the walls, making sure that the paint was dry. She smiled to herself when she admitted that she hadn’t done too badly for herself.

  At eleven-twenty-five, there was a faint knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ she said from the kitchen.

  She heard the door open followed by the sound of heels on the wooden floor and a fainter sound of softer, measured, footfalls.

  She hastily walked to the living room with a glass of water in hand.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling.

  Head and shoulders above Miranda MacPherson was a man she had thought of a lot, for weeks on end. The world froze for a second, as did her smile. She heard her heart thump.

  His indigo eyes locked with her green ones, the pair that were as vibrant as they were fearless.

  Miranda MacPherson turned to Red to do the introduction but was soon asking, ‘Are you okay?’

  He nodded.

  She turned to look at Izzy, then back at Red. ‘Do you two know each other?’

  ‘Sort of,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘It’s alright. We’ll take it from here.’

  Miranda glanced at Izzy, who acquiesced.

  ‘In that case, I’ll be going,’ Miranda said, a tad puzzled by the turn of events. They didn’t hear her leave. One second, she was there. And then she was not.

  Red walked over to her, extended a hand.

  ‘Isabel Caine, please to meet you.’

  She reached to touch his hand. ‘Please to meet you, too, Red.’

  She felt electricity move up along her arm, jolting her. A shock strong enough to awaken the dead. But before either of them could say another word, someone was knocking on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ she called, thinking it was Miranda.

  A chauffeur, resplendent in his uniform appeared in the living room.

  ‘Miss Caine, it’s time.’

  And without being prompted, he bent over to pick up her two suitcases standing by the door and proceeded to walk out of her apartment.

  She gazed into Red’s eyes but said nothing. His senses were heightened. He saw her back, and then the pixie blonde hair disappeared behind the door. He heard the soft sound of the door closing.

  Click.

  There she was, gone.

  Again!

  7: At Crossed Purposes

  IT TOOK JUST HALF A SECOND after the door closed for Red’s brain to snap into action. Determined, and without reservation, he took a step to follow her when his cell phone rang. He stopped briefly to answer it, knowing only one person would call him on his work phone on his day off, his boss, Louie Jamieson.

  ‘Talk to me,’ he said as he opened the door and raced down the steps, eager to catch up to Izzy.

  Louie went straight for the jugular.

  ‘They’re on the move, Red.’

  ‘One week early?’ He asked incredulously. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His brain went ballistic.

  Not fucking now, he kept thinking in protest.

  He reached the footpath just as Izzy climbed into the back seat of a tinted-glass limousine. She watched him rock on his heels, looking undecided, but hopeful that he was indeed trying to catch up to her. But, at that very instance, Louie was ordering Red back to HQ.

  ‘ASAP.’

  Isabel turned on her knees in the back seat like a little girl, watching him through the darkened rear window with hopeful expectation. She was utterly crushed when he went the other way instead.

  The limousine driver, who was looking at her through the rear-view mirror, asked, ‘Shall we?’

  She turned around in her seat, smiled tightly and said, ‘Yes, thanks. Let’s go.’

  PROFESSIONAL TRAINING had kicked in big time. This operation had consumed all but his soul. It had taken all his waking hours and sometimes his dreams.

  For security reasons, he had parked a block away from his new abode, something any half-decent agent would do. He ran to his Audi, clicking on the fob as he promised to throttle Abdul when the time came. Not only for trying to ruin the American economy but for getting between him and the woman with hazel eyes.

  Isabel Caine. What a beautiful name.

  He jumped into his car. With well-practised efficiency, he pulled away from the curb and drove off in the general direction of Montgomery Street. He was now single-minded in his pursuit of Abdul and Co., determined to unravel their criminal enterprise.

  IN THE MEANTIME, IN a building across the street from Red’s apartment, a couple of men had moved in. It was the only one available that was close, more importantly, it had a direct line of sight to their Tango’s new place of residence.

  His shadows had no furniture. So, in their individual backpacks were clothes and inflatable beds and other survival gear. With their inventories, they looked set to go camping. Only, instead of the wilds, they were camping in a one-bedroom old style, unfurnished apartment.

  One of the men, a lean and mean killing machine, set up a long-range, high-definition telescope that had views of the interior of the dining room through the floor-to-ceiling windows. They would be able to see Red every time he walked past.

  His partner asked, ‘Niko, how is it?’

  ‘Clear as, bro,’ Niko replied, ‘but I doubt we’d be seeing him much.’

  The bigger man, called Tamati, peered into the telescope. He was happy with the visual but then said they needed ears in there, too.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘Never more,’ he said. He grabbed his tool bag.

  Niko followed with hesitation, thinking that “breaking and entering” into the house of a Secret Service Special Agent was asking to be renditioned.

  ACROSS TOWN, IZZY CHECKED-in with British Airways then waited for her London-bound flight at the BA members’ lounge. She had an hour to kill. She sighed as she sat on her lonesome, nursing a glass of ginger ale.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t help but keep going back to that image of Red running in the other direction in such a hurry. She tried her hardest not to dwell on it, but it kept intruding. Perhaps he was running late for a date, she concluded.

  She only stopped thinking of him when she spotted her ex-fiancé with a gorgeous woman on his arm, her replacement.

  Typically, a man who had ditched a fiancée wouldn’t be seen within a hundred metres with another woman, but not Richard. He spotted her, too, and had no qualms about it.

  He walked towards her with a smile a mile wide, as though they had no shared history. She swallowed and braced herself for the most awkward encounter of her life. They stood around her while she refused to get up from her comfortable, leather-upholstered armchair. She fell deeper into its softness and leaned her head on its backrest and tilted her head just so.

  ‘Izzy, fancy meeting you here,’ he said.

  She smiled at him, then her. She crossed her arms, resisting the temptation to deck him right there and then. Richard didn’t seem to get the body language, or else was just trying to ignore it.

  ‘Karla, this is Izzy Duncan, an old friend. Izzy, this is Karla Myers.’

  Miss Myers extended an elegant, manicured hand, which Izzy accepted out of good breeding.

  Fortunately, that was the extent of it. They moved away to a quiet corner to be by themselves. Karla Myers. Maybe, if he had known that I, too, am an heiress, we would still be together.

  He was clearly on the prowl to get onwards and upwards.

  They had met at work in her capacity as a Fraud Investigator for Caine Insurance, and he was the lawyer for the other party.

  She had applied for her entry-level position and was accepted on merit using a false name and so no one, least of all Richard, knew she was a Fairbanks-Caine. The offspring of two old-money families.

  Only one person knew who she truly was: Anton Duncan, the mail sorter who had been with the company for thirty-five years.

  She used to go on rounds with him, floor by floor, room by room, delivering correspondence in his mail buggy as a three-year-old. They did this together whenever she visited until she turned eight; then she stopped going. It was no longer fun, and besides, there were Nintendo and Xbox to occupy her time on school holidays, not to mention horseback riding and sailing.

  Upon her return to the company ten years later, none of the past employees, bar Anton Duncan, remained. They seemed to have gone along with the typewriters, the dot matrix printers, and the rotary dial telephones.

  She smiled to herself as she recalled rushing down to the basement where Anton still sorted letters to this day.

  ‘Anton, I got the job!’

  Anton, who was now totally white-haired, and arthritic had said, ‘What job?’

  ‘Fraud investigator, and I’m Isabel Duncan, by the way.’

  ‘What do you mean, Isabel Duncan?’

  ‘I’m your quote-unquote daughter,’ letting her fingers do the emphasising.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Miss Caine.’

  So old school, calling her “Miss Caine.” She recalled smiling at him, and saying, ‘I’m Miss Duncan and don’t you forget it.’

  Her reverie was cut short when she heard the boarding call. She made a move, then saw from her peripheral vision Richard and Karla making a move, too.

  Good God, you’ve got to be kidding me.

  She had guessed before they boarded that they would be in First Class together. But then, it was alright in a way, something to get Red out of her mind.

  He’s probably got someone anyway. Only a man wanting to be someplace else would run like hell like that. How could I be so foolish as to think that one-night stand could be forever?

  RED REACHED HQ. SEVERAL agents were also arriving. Something was afoot, and it couldn’t have happened at a more unfortunate time.

  He sat in his car for a sec resisting the urge to use the United States’ Government database to search for information on Isabel Caine. That would be illegal and a sackable offence if discovered. He fired up his phone, and Google searched her instead. Nothing came up! He surmised, then, she couldn’t be that Caine or there would have been plenty of her on society pages.

  He gave up trying. At least, he knew her name and where she lived. He smiled at that thought. It would just be a matter of time.

  UNKNOWINGLY, WHILE he was feeling hopeful, Izzy was thinking of giving herself another chance at love. Except she was thinking: Maybe in London, I’ll find him. Preferably one with brown eyes, as I seem to be unlucky with blue.

  8: Plane Talking (Pun, Intended)

  THEY BOARDED THE AIRCRAFT, British Airway’s A-380. The double-decker flying machine accommodated over four-hundred passengers, but only fourteen could fly in first-class suites.

  Richard’s eyebrow lifted when they bumped into each other again and couldn’t resist making a remark.

  ‘I didn’t know Caine Insurance paid for employees to fly first-class. That’s generous of them,’ he said with unconcealed derision.

  Izzy smiled sweetly, then made a face as soon as Richard sat down. One of the flight attendants saw her, and they had a giggle. Izzy crinkled her nose; the female cabin crew member winked.

  Unfortunately, she was seated diagonally behind her despised ex. It was going to be a very long ten hours to London. It’s so unfair. She thought glumly with some degree of annoyance.

  Sure enough, it didn’t take long for public display of affection to commence! She felt very strongly that every passenger should be warned that canoodling on the plane isn’t permitted, and anyone who wouldn’t conform will be thrown out from thirty-five thousand feet. Alas, there was no such thing, so she was forced to sit through ‘show and tell’ by those two.

  Whatever, she thought to herself with an exaggerated eye-roll.

  But the thing was—and this was a revelation to her—she wasn’t jealous at all. Not one iota! The fact they had once been engaged should make her sad. Instead, if she had any feelings at all, it was a mixture of disbelief and relief: disbelief that she had fallen for him and relief that it didn’t go too far.

  Two hours later, unable to stand another minute of the Richard-and-Karla Show, she decided to ditch her first-class seat. She asked one of the cabin crew, whose name tag said “Terry” if there was a vacant seat in either Business or Premium.

  ‘I’ll find out for you,’ she said with a gracious smile. Moments later, she was back. ‘I’m sorry, the plane is full.’

  ‘Would you find someone to swap seats with me?’

  Terry was surprised.

  ‘Who wouldn’t want to swap? I’ll be right back.’

  It didn’t take long before she returned, advising that a lady in Business Class wasn’t feeling well and, yes, she would very much like an upgrade.

  ‘She said she’s coming down with something.’

  Izzy smiled, thinking, I hope it’s something that comes with projectile vomiting. She was amused when a vision of Richard covered in green vomit flashed in her mind. Yes, she mentally fists pumped. I hope she’s vegetarian!