Free Twelve Hours of Temptation by Shoma Narayanan

want to see my nephew.’
    ‘I can drop you,’ Samir offered. ‘Wherever you’re meeting them. And hang around if you need moral support.’
    He really seemed to have missed the point of a one-night stand, Melissa thought in exasperation. Moral support was so not part of the deal. It didn’t help that he was looking especially hot today, in a tailored jacket worn over an open-necked shirt and jeans that fitted his long legs and lean thighs like a second skin. Nor that the hotel had quoted her a perfectly outrageous rate for a cab to Panaji, where she was meeting Michael. A week’s salary for a ride in a smelly old cab versus a gratis trip to Panaji and back in Samir’s top-of-the-range roadster—she could be forgiven for giving in. Still, it was better to make some things clear.
    ‘What I said earlier, about getting you out of my system...’
    ‘You meant it. I know. And I’m sorry I said what I did—put it down to my ego not being used to a bruising.’ He gave her a quick smile. ‘We’ll stick to being just good friends, OK?’
    Impossible to tell whether he was serious or not, but Melissa decided she didn’t care. It was only by exercising super-human self-control that she was sticking to her self-imposed no touching policy with Samir. There was no point inflicting further torture on herself by refusing a simple lift.
    ‘Let’s go, then,’ she said, giving him a sunny smile in return.
    They were halfway to Panaji, and Melissa was just beginning to relax, when Samir spoke.
    ‘Are you meeting your father as well? Or just your brother’s family?’
    ‘Just my brother,’ Melissa said and sighed. ‘I don’t think I’m up to the strain of meeting my dad just yet.’
    ‘He seems quite a tyrant. What does he do?’
    ‘He owns a restaurant in North Goa,’ she said. ‘We all used to chip in: my mom, me, Michael and Cheryl—even my nephew used to hang around there the whole day. And when I finished college I started working there full-time. My dad was getting older, and we’d expanded a bit—he needed all the help he could get.’
    Samir shot her a quick look. She sounded wistful, and a little sad, as if she wasn’t quite as blasé about being cut off from her family as she pretended to be.
    ‘Your mother?’
    ‘She died six years ago,’ Melissa said.
    The words were matter-of-fact, but he could tell she was not over it yet.
    ‘A road accident.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Samir said.
    Melissa shrugged. ‘It was quick—that was a mercy. She didn’t suffer much.’
    Unlike her family, Samir thought, trying to imagine how tough it would have been for Melissa, losing her mother while still in her teens. She was staring out of the window unseeingly now, and he swiftly steered the conversation so that she started talking about her nephew. That cheered her up almost instantly, and by the time he dropped her off at Panaji, she was smiling again.
    He was deep in thought as he drove towards the waterfront. The Mandovi River passed right by Panaji, and after he’d parked the car he found a little restaurant that overlooked it. It was the first time in a long, long while that he’d been involved enough with a woman to worry about her. Not used to analysing his own feelings, he tried to tell himself that it was the natural result of the rushed relationship they’d had. One day they’d hardly known each other, the next they were having wild, passionate sex. And now they were acting out a ‘just friends’ charade that was a positive insult to his status as a red-blooded male.
    Samir’s phone rang when he was halfway through his dessert.
    ‘Can you come and pick me up?’ a quiet voice asked.
    Immediately he knew something was wrong.
    ‘Where?’ he asked, and she named a popular store on the main street.
    ‘I’m standing outside,’ she said.
    She looked positively woebegone when he drew up in front of her.
    ‘Everything OK?’ he asked gently, seeing how close to tears she was.
    ‘Justin didn’t