Paradise Island (7)
“Miss Tan, please come with me.”
After dinner, Tan Guhong followed the server to her room. Xingzhou City offered both sea-view and city-view rooms, and she had chosen a garden-view room near the rooftop sky garden. After all, she had spent two whole months looking out at the sea through a window. It was time for a change of scenery.
Just as the elevator doors were about to close, someone suddenly spoke from outside:
“Wait.”
Hearing this, the server hurriedly pressed the elevator’s open button and nodded to the man who stepped inside.
“Mr. Luo.”
Tan Guhong raised her eyes, and their gazes met.
“Miss Tan, heading back to your room?”
“Yes. And you, Mr. Luo?”
“Going to the rooftop garden for a walk.”
“A walk after dinner is good for your health.”
“Yes.”
After the polite yet distant exchange, he stood beside her.
No one spoke again in the enclosed space. The elevator slowly ascended, the sensation of weightlessness growing stronger. Their shoulders brushed against each other almost imperceptibly, and for a moment she almost felt that the entire world had been reduced to the sound of her own pounding heartbeat.
Ding. The fiftieth-floor rooftop had arrived.
Luo Jingming courteously stepped aside to let her out first. Tan Guhong smiled and nodded, then followed the server out of the elevator, walked down the long corridor, and arrived outside her room.
The server handed her a wristband engraved with the words “Xingzhou City.”
“Miss Tan, would you like tomorrow’s breakfast delivered to your room, or would you prefer to come downstairs to eat?”
The hotel was equipped with intelligent electronic management throughout. This was a smart wristband specially made for the hotel, exactly the same as the one worn by the man who had kidnapped her.
“Can I make reservations directly on this?” She fiddled with the display on the wristband. “I understand. I’ll think about it. Thank you.”
“Of course. If you need anything, you can call me directly with the wristband. I won’t disturb your rest any longer. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Tan Guhong watched the server leave, until his figure completely disappeared at the end of the corridor.
“Miss Tan.”
A familiar voice sounded behind her. She turned around to see Luo Jingming leaning casually against the window. He nonchalantly raised a hand and loosened his tie, revealing a small patch of collarbone, and said with an ambiguous smile:
“Can I borrow a light?”
Tan Guhong’s heartbeat inadvertently skipped a beat. She lowered her eyes and said calmly:
“Sorry, I don’t smoke, but there might be one in the room.”
“Then I’ll trouble you.”
“No problem.”
So, under his unwavering gaze, she turned around and calmly opened the door and entered the room. He naturally followed behind her.
Click. A faint sound, almost imperceptible, and the door locked.
Using the faint light coming through the window, she reached for the switch for the corridor light on the wall. But the next second, her entire body was pressed against the door, and a scorching kiss came down impatiently.
“Mmm... wait, don’t...”
She found it a little amusing. How long had they been apart? Six hours, or eight? Why did it feel as though they had gone through heaven and hell, life and death itself?
He let her lips go, but continued kissing down her neck, asking in a low voice:
“Why did you leave without saying a word, hmm?”
She tilted her head back helplessly and said between breaths:
“Didn’t you say that as long as I wanted to end it, I could get off the ship whenever I wanted? Mm...”
She bit her lip and swallowed the moan that had nearly escaped, unable to stop herself from pinching him around the waist.
“Gentler!”
She did not want any suspicious marks appearing on her neck tomorrow.
“Is that really so?” He lightly bit her collarbone.
She paused, then sighed softly.
“Monica sent people to kidnap me and bring me here.”
He raised his head and kissed her eyes.
“I know.”
He knew his grand-aunt’s personality better than anyone. So the moment he received the news, he had rushed over.
“What about the Queen Anne?”
“The ship departed on schedule. It should have already passed through the Strait of Malacca by now.”
“You just abandoned such a huge cruise ship of your own and left it unattended?”
“It won’t get lost, no matter what...” He smiled. “Besides, according to the original plan, I was going back to Singapore next week to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday.”
She froze when she heard this. Of course. It was the eightieth birthday of the Old Master Liang. How could he, as his grandson, possibly not attend? She should have realized it sooner.
She pushed him a little farther away and stared steadily into his eyes. In the darkness, neither of their expressions could be seen clearly. Yet it also left nowhere for so many truths of their hearts to hide.
She slowly spoke: “You should know that at the time, the cruise ship had only just reached Hawaii.”
So, had he already been prepared to disembark next week and end this journey?
In the faint light outside the window, the man standing so close before her had a face of such deep, sharply chiseled handsomeness, his features seeming carved by knife and axe. He gave a soft laugh, neither confirming nor denying it, and said leisurely:
“Weren’t you... planning from the very beginning to disembark in Shanghai, Miss Accusing-the-Other-Person-First?”
She was momentarily at a loss for words. The defense that was almost out of her mouth was swallowed back down by sheer force of will.
At the beginning, she had indeed planned to disembark in Shanghai. It was just that, it was just that now...
“Forget it.”
Suddenly losing interest, she pushed herself out of his embrace and raised a hand to switch on the corridor light overhead. The glaring light instantly illuminated them both, and all the hazy ambiguity disappeared without a trace.
She walked straight toward the inner room, only to have him wrap an arm around her waist from behind.
“Are you angry?”
His warm breath brushed against her ear as he analyzed the situation for her in a somewhat innocent tone:
“Look, I planned to be in Hawaii next Sunday, and you planned to disembark in Shanghai next Monday. By any calculation, you’re still the one who wins. So if that isn’t accusing the other person first, what is it, hmm? You unreasonable little miss.”
First it was “accusing the other person first,” then it was “unreasonable.” Good grief, he had already piled a whole stack of labels onto her.
She gave a cold huff and retorted indignantly, “Where am I supposed to go to seek justice? You’ve taken all the justice for yourself, you sophistry-spouting Mr. Righteous!”
He chuckled under his breath and kissed her hair.
“Sharp-tongued Miss.”
“Silver-tongued Mr.!”
“Miss Who Can Argue Three Points Even When She Has No Case.”
“Mr. Who Won’t Let Up Even When He’s in the Right!”
The two of them went back and forth like this several times, until they could not help laughing at themselves. They were both well past childhood, so how had they ended up bickering like kindergarten children?
But after laughing, they fell silent again in unspoken accord.
Just like this, he held her from behind while she leaned lightly against his chest. Neither of them spoke, and neither of them moved.
An unavoidable question lay before them both:
Where should they go from here?
After a moment of silence, Luo Jingming suddenly asked:
“What time is it now?”
Tan Guhong was somewhat puzzled and instinctively raised her wrist to check her watch.
“10:47. Why?”
“What time zone is that?”
She was even more puzzled.
“UTC+8, Singapore time...”
“No...” He chuckled softly. “This isn’t Singapore time. It’s cruise-ship time.”
She froze for a moment before finally understanding what he meant.
While sailing on the open sea, a cruise ship could be said to be crossing time zones constantly. It was inconvenient to determine the time according to either its real-time location or the location of its port of call. In order to keep work and schedules on board operating according to a unified time, the Queen Anne had its own cruise-ship time. Cruise-ship time would generally try to align with the places the ship visited, but there could still be slight differences. Every day at noon, an announcement would be pushed through the app, and all passengers and employees would adjust their watches and phones accordingly.
The time on her watch at this moment was indeed still the Queen Anne’s cruise-ship time.
“So...”
“So, since we’re still on cruise-ship time, it’s basically as though we’re still aboard the ship, and we can continue maintaining our daily life on the cruise.” He coaxed her along patiently.
“Adjusting for the time difference?”
She could not help laughing and shook her head helplessly. “You really are good at... bewitching people.”
If this continued, perhaps she really would be dragged into the sea by this beautiful siren of a man, until not even her bones remained.
He chuckled and lightly nipped at the piercing in her right ear.
“So, did I succeed?”
She said nothing. After a long while, she drawled slowly:
“I have one condition.”
He understood immediately.
“You want me to continue pretending that we don’t know each other?”
She recalled his calm, composed performance at the Chinese restaurant just now, the way he and Huo Sixuan had stood around that antique emerald brooch, discussing and judging it together, without his gaze once sweeping toward her from beginning to end, as though the two of them were truly complete strangers.
If not for that chance encounter in Ecuador, perhaps their reunion ten years later really should have been like this.
It had even given her a momentary illusion that perhaps this was what their true lives were supposed to look like, each going their separate ways. That everything from Quito to San Francisco and then to the Queen Anne had merely been a long dream she had dreamed.
She smiled softly. “You played your part pretty well.”
He smiled too. “Likewise.”
“Please keep it up.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The two embraced silently for a while longer. She patted his hand.
“All right, you should go. A cigarette’s worth of time has long since passed. If you stay any longer, Monica will notice.”
He slowly said, “You think she hasn’t noticed?”
Tan Guhong froze, then turned around and looked at him in surprise.
“She already knows?”
Wouldn’t that be the same as the whole world knowing?!
“The two of us boarding the Queen Anne together to travel around the world was never something we could keep hidden in the first place. She may know, but not want to expose us. Or she may not know, but have her suspicions. Either way, you can rest assured. She likes you more than she likes me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What did you do to offend her?”
Presumably, it was more than simply stealing Zhong Yi’s chef.
“It doesn’t really count as offending her. But you should know that in this family, I’m an outsider who came later.” He smiled. “So if she says anything to you, you don’t need to take it too seriously.”
“Oh... Looks like someone is very afraid of having his secrets exposed!”
She looked at him teasingly.
“Perfect. Monica invited me to go shopping tomorrow. I’m definitely going to dig up some juicy dirt on certain people that no one knows about.”
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