A Dark Beginning: A China Dark Novel Read Free Page B

so fit, so very confident. And then he turned his head slightly as he crossed the road and her heart almost stopped. The flash of emerald from under the jet-black fringe of hair. It was indeed the man she had seen on the tube yesterday. She forgot to breathe out for a while and her heart hammered insistently in her chest. He hadn’t seen her, that much was obvious, as he quickly crossed the road and walked on round the next corner.
    China sat confused. What was going on with her? This man could make her pulse race just by walking past, without even making contact with those cold, unflinching eyes. Flustered she threw the Kindle into her bag and jumped up leaving her coffee untouched. “What are you doing, China Dark?” she asked herself out loud as she strode swiftly across the street, not looking for traffic and drawing an angry response from a bike that nearly collided with her. She waved a half-hearted apology in the cyclist’s direction, ignoring the choice language that came from behind her, and rushed up to the corner that the stranger had just turned.
    She slowed down as soon as she reached that same corner and actually sighed with relief that he was still in sight. She felt like she was looking down a tunnel where only he was visible in the distance. Her eyes focused on every movement of his body as he strolled along the pavement. The slight swagger in his shoulders, the clearly defined flex of each buttock as he walked. She flushed and her cheeks felt hot as she realized she was staring at his bum. And yet she couldn’t stop herself from cautiously following him, she was mesmerized, a vixen following the scent of a male, unable to think of anything else but the magnificent vision before her.
    She kept a reasonable distance between them, not wanting the acute embarrassment of him turning around and seeing her. It was bad enough, no, simply mad, that she was following this young man like some kind of stalker. She convinced herself this was harmless but she knew that wasn’t the case. She was a married woman and here she was obsessing over, and insanely following, a man who wasn’t her husband. “Look, China, you just need to get this out of your system. Just see where he goes and that’s it, you’ll know enough about him to move on.”
    It was almost as if not knowing about this man would make him more desirable, more of an enigma, and therefore more likely to be a draw for her imagination. At least if she knew more about him she could tell herself that the enigma would be dispersed and then the draw of the unknown would just go away.
    A few minutes later the man turned into a public house called the Dog and Duck, on the corner of a quiet crossroads. China hesitated for a few moments before walking slowly past the pub windows. Glancing briefly sideways she saw the man she had followed standing behind the bar, happily talking to a customer. So he was a barman. Not very glamorous at all, she tried to convince herself.
    Suddenly rather embarrassed at her behaviour China flushed red and walked quickly back to the café. She hadn’t paid her bill, and although she knew Devak would be fine with her paying the next time she visited as she was there most days, she wanted to put this episode behind her and paying for her coffee felt like a way of making the recent interlude fade, as if it had never happened.
    When she took some money from her purse to give to Devak he gave her a concerned look, “Are you ok, sweet lady?”
    “Yes, I’m fine,” she said.
    “When a woman says she is fine, she is anything but,” he almost scolded, but there was that mischievous twinkle in his eyes again and she couldn’t help a small smile from emerging. Somehow Devak had made those recent minutes all but disappear and she relaxed a little. She was back on track. Looking at her watch she sighed as it was time to get back to work and forget about this lunchtime for good.

Chapter 4
    That evening, Philip and China shared a bottle of