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felt the urge to draw a sharp little breath at the exciting nearness of him, she bit her lip. ‘Why is that?’ His strange eyes held hers.
    ‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘it’s a long time since a man last deemed it necessary to open a car door for me. That, I think, puts you in the velvet hatbox type category. You're also very clever.’ Opening her bag, she took out her sunglasses and then, behind their tinted lenses, felt less exposed to his scrutiny. She did not want him to see that she was excited by his strong dark looks and the magnetism of his sea-green eyes.
    ‘In what way?’ he asked, before starting the car.
    ‘You’ve succeeded in manoeuvring me into accepting a lift from a stranger in a strange country, and I’m not sure I like that.’
    After a moment he said, ‘About your remark concerning the car door. I do not suffer bad manners gladly and for this reason I prefer to open doors—and to close them. It is as simple as that. That is, I think, a clumsy word, no? Manoeuvre? It means, if my memory serves me correctly, a deceptive movement ... a skilful planning, on my part. I have given you my credentials. I am a friend of Nicole de Speville. There is nothing deceptive about that.’ He started the car and reversed out of the parking lot and soon they were passing through a succession of settlements, which seemed to teem with life of all descriptions—dark-skinned people in colourful attire, goats, fowls, skinny dogs and even pigs and piglets. By a coincidence, the mini-bus followed. The Indian who was driving it was using his hooter constantly and it surprised Jade when Laurent Sevigny began to do the same thing, scattering people and animals to one side of the road. Suddenly she laughed, shaking her head in wonderment.
    ‘You make James Bond look tame,’ she commented.
    Turning to look at her, he sounded puzzled when he queried, ‘James Bond?’
    ‘Yes—you know, Ian Fleming’s character. You must have seen the films, surely?’
    ‘Of course.’ She watched him lift one tanned hand from the wheel. ‘James Bond. Playing that character placed the star in question among the biggest money-earning stars in cinema history, I should imagine. Now, to what do you refer? My driving? Or the fact that I am in the company of a dazzlingly, beautifully thrown-together girl?’ He turned to look at her again and his eyes went over her briefly before he gave his attention to the road.
    Overall was magnificent scenery. Canefields, islets and glittering water. Suddenly Jade caught her breath as the mini-bus overtook them and narrowly missed a head-on collision with a huge truck which had loomed up from apparently nowhere.
    Covering her mouth with her fingers, she exclaimed, ’Whew!’
    ‘It's all a case of making decisions,’ he told her easily, as if nothing had happened. ‘Either I blow my horn or I run people down. Here in Mauritius it is expected of a driver to constantly sound it. In fact, a driver is despised, almost, if he does not perform this ritual on the road. If I had to slacken speed every time a person or an animal got in my way we would make little headway in Mauritius.’
    ‘I can see that,’ she admitted.
    Pink hibiscus and scarlet poinsettia hedged the roads, clashing beautifully with the unique mountains, in the distance, which were mostly of dark lava rock, rising up in strange shapes.
    ‘You have an unusual name,' he said, his voice at his most formal.
    ‘Yes—don’t ask me why. It must have been because my parents met in Singapore. My mother was very romantic.' She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘When I say your name in my mind I visualise a white jade phoenix bird.' She liked the way he turned to look at her, those strange dark sea-green eyes on her lips before they went to the hollow in her throat.
    ‘Do I remind you of a phoenix bird?' she asked, laughing a little.
    ‘Yes. I own a white jade phoenix and it is extremely beautiful.’
    ‘I see.' She stopped laughing and bit