TENDER DECEIT (Mystery Romance): The TENDER Series ~ Book 1 Read online

  “Once we have completed the autopsy and any other necessary forensic examinations, then you’ll be able to claim your father’s body.”

  “How much longer is that going to take?” Leah asked, wondering if she would have to contact her office back in London and ask for more leave.

  “A few more days, hopefully, no more.” Inspector Ravi gave an apologetic smile. “Things have been delayed as we’ve had an unusually hectic time lately with several homicide cases coming up simultaneously.”

  “The body of the woman they found in the Singapore River?” Leah said, remembering the newspaper headline she had seen on her flight.

  He grimaced. “That is one of the cases, yes.”

  “I used to live in Singapore,” Leah said. “I remember everyone telling me that there was practically no crime here. I guess things have changed.”

  “We still have one of the lowest crime rates in the world,” he said stiffly. “This is just an unusual coincidence.”

  “What happened to the woman in the river?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the case,” he said. “But you need not worry about your safety. That was a particular situation which would not apply to most people. Singapore is still a very safe city.”

  Wondering what he meant by “particular situation”, Leah stood up and obediently followed him back to the outer reception. As they passed a counter on the way, Inspector Ravi paused and retrieved a transparent zip-lock bag filled with various items.

  “Your father’s personal effects. These were the things he had on him that night,” he said, handing the bag to her. “Forensics have finished with them for now, so they can be released to you. But please do not discard any of these things for the time being.”

  Leah nodded and took the bag in a slight daze. At the front door, the inspector bade her farewell with grave courtesy and Leah let herself out of the building. She stood in front of the huge Police Cantonment Complex, feeling at a loss. It was dusk already and the street lamps were casting yellow pools of light along the sidewalk. Seeing a small park across the street, Leah wandered across and sat down on a bench underneath a large rain tree. The items in the plastic bag rattled against each other as she sat down. She stared at the bag on her lap. The two mobile phones lay next to each other.

  Toran had lied to her. The thought kept reverberating inside her head. She had thought that she could trust him. She had trusted him. And all along, he had been lying to her. The taste of betrayal was bitter on her tongue.

  She thought of the time they had spent together earlier that day. She thought of that kiss and her face flamed with humiliation. What a fool he must have thought her—so easy to seduce and placate! Here she was imagining romantic motives for his words and actions and he had simply been using her all along. Just like Warne’s men, his real interest was in getting hold of the evidence that her father had hidden.

  Leah clasped her hands together so tight that they hurt. She had never felt more alone. She wanted to curl up into a ball; Toran’s betrayal felt like a physical pain that wracked her body. But she didn’t. Instead, she stood up and straightened her shoulders. So she was alone. Fine. She had been alone a long time. She knew how to live with that. And she knew what to do now.

  She got up and walked to the edge of the road, where she hailed a passing taxi to take her back to her hotel.

  CHAPTER 13

  Leah woke up the next morning well before the alarm. The room was in darkness and she lay for a moment, struggling to reorientate herself and remember where she was. Then the events of the day before came rushing back, including Toran’s betrayal.

  Leah turned over and hugged the pillow to her cheek. The pain was just as fresh as it was yesterday. Worse still was the way her mind kept replaying parts of their time together—the way he had smiled at her, the warmth in his eyes, the feel of his lips on hers…

  Leah stiffened. She would be a liar if she didn’t admit that she had been waiting for that kiss. Ever since seeing Toran again, a part of her—a part she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge—had been yearning to know what it would feel like to be kissed by him again. She had wanted to recapture the magic of that first kiss from so many years ago, when Toran had taken her tenderly into his arms.

  Instead, he had been angry and brutal and nothing like the boy who had haunted her dreams. Leah squeezed her eyes shut as the memories swirled around her and she was taken back to another time, another first kiss…

  ***

  Leah had expected her fourteenth birthday to come and go quietly. Now that they were in Eighth Grade, they had more homework, more exams, more extra courses—and class field trips were a rare luxury. She wondered whether Toran would still remember her birthday; they had hardly spoken to each other after that day in the principal’s office and hadn’t seen each other at all over the summer. Although they were in the same class again, he had barely acknowledged her since the first day of term and she stopped looking across the classroom in the hope that she might catch his eyes on her again.

  So the rose was a complete surprise. One single, long-stemmed rose, its dark red petals still almost tightly closed in bud, lying diagonally across her desk as she came into school on the morning of her birthday. Leah saw it and her heart began thudding hard in her chest. She darted a look across the room in Toran’s direction. He had his head down, carefully making notes in a textbook, completely ignoring her.

  “Oh my God, Leah, who gave you the rose?” Julia squealed as she arrived at the desk next to Leah’s.

  “I don’t know,” murmured Leah, picking it up and fingering the delicate leaves and stem. She touched the rose to her lips. The petals were velvety soft and a sweet fragrance drifted upwards.

  “You lucky cow—you always have the most romantic things happen to you,” said Julia.

  Leah looked at her in surprise. Pretty, confident, and flirtatious, Julia was always surrounded by boys vying for her attention. Leah had never thought that she would have anything for her friend to envy.

  “So who do you think it is?” asked Julia, coming closer and lowering her voice. “Jenny told me that Alan Wong likes you, you know. His family own half the office blocks in the city. And I’ve seen Philip Souter looking at you as well—you know his father is really well connected…” She gave a coy smile and threw a quick glance in Toran’s direction. “I can’t imagine that he would have the money for a rose like that?”

  Leah tried to hide her surprise. She had never mentioned her feelings for Toran to anyone, not even Julia, and she had never told anyone what had really happened in the cable car last year. Somehow, it had felt like a private thing, to be kept between Toran and herself.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” She cleared her throat. “I have no idea who it might be.”

  Julia gave an impish smile. “I could ask each of the boys for you—force them to admit who left it.”

  “No!” Leah gave her a stern look. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Well, we can at least ask if anybody saw who left it,” said Julia.

  So they did and nobody had seen anything. It was as if the rose had just magically appeared on her desk that morning. Leah shrank from the envious attention of the other girls and was relieved when they eventually dropped the subject, but inside, she continued to wonder. She knew who she desperately wished had left it.

  She never found out and the term ended. Christmas came, New Year passed, and then the new term began. And now the thing topmost on most girls’ minds was Valentine’s Day. Officially, of course, it was against the school rules to celebrate it, but every year, there were squeals of delight on the morning of February the 14th as girls arrived in class to find a red or pink envelope tucked into their desk compartment.

  Of course, most of the cards were anonymous—the ultimate prize was to receive one where the boy had boldly signed his name. This, said Julia knowledgeably to the girls clustered around her, was a sign that he chose you and wasn’t afraid to show it.

  “What d
o you do if you get one of those?” asked one of the girls breathlessly.

  “Well, the tradition is, you have to meet the boy… and kiss him,” said Julia with dramatic flourish as various girls gasped and squealed and clutched their chests.

  Leah tried to ignore the lurch of her own heart as she listened to Julia. Her eyes strayed across the classroom to the dark-haired boy laughing with his friends in the other corner and she blushed as she wondered what it would be like to kiss Toran. It was something she had been thinking about more and more recently and the thought always filled her with both fear and excitement.

  It might have seemed silly to get so worked up about a kiss—Leah knew that teens in places like the United States and Britain had probably done a lot more than kiss by the age of fourteen. But things were different in Asia. With the culture so focused on academic study and the strict school and home environments, kids grew up slower and remained innocent for longer. Leah knew that she wasn’t the only one in class who was fairly naïve—even Julia, for all her confidence and bravado, had yet to experience her first kiss.

  Valentine’s Day arrived and Leah walked into class with hope forming a large lump in her throat. The memory of the rose waiting for her last time filled her with excited anticipation. She approached her desk, barely noticing that Julia was at her adjoining one already, and lifted the top with trembling fingers.

  Nothing. The compartment inside was empty.

  Leah hadn’t been prepared for the sharp disappointment that knifed into her stomach. Quickly, she dropped the lid, hoping that no one had noticed, and looked across at Julia. The Singaporean girl was sorting through five scarlet envelopes, tearing them open eagerly. Lurid red hearts and pink flowers were scattered across the fronts of the cards she pulled out. She opened the first and her face fell. She did this again with every card and each time, her face grew darker.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Leah.

  Julia tossed them aside. “Nobody signed their name.”

  “It’s still amazing to get so many cards,” Leah said wistfully. Across the room, she could hear a few squeals as other girls arrived and found cards waiting for them in their desks. She felt the sharp stab of disappointment again.

  Julia made a sound of frustration. “But I wanted to get one with a name. They’re all such cowards,” she said in disgust, pulling some textbooks out of her schoolbag and banging them on her desk.

  Leah sat down next to Julia and pulled her own books out of her bag, trying not to think about the empty space inside her desk compartment. She had been silly to think that there might be anything from Toran. Given his remoteness since the beginning of the year, what had made her think that he might send her a card? That rose probably hadn’t even been from him, Leah realised bleakly.

  The bell sounded, then the teacher entered the room. Julia leaned across and said teasingly, “Hey, don’t look so glum… I have a surprise for you.” She lifted the lid of her desk slightly, reached inside and pulled out a red envelope. Leah’s heart leapt as she saw her name written on the front.

  “I nicked it so I could see your reaction,” laughed Julia. “You’re always such an ice queen, Leah, but you don’t fool me! You were gutted when you didn’t get anything. Admit it, you’re just as into boys as the rest of us.”

  “Julia!” Leah said in exasperation, trying to grab the envelope.

  Her friend laughed again and waved the envelope out of reach, then finally let Leah have it. Glancing at the teacher, Leah quickly lowered the envelope out of sight behind her desk and carefully slid the flap open.

  “Oh.”

  She pulled out a pale cream card with a photograph of two white swans on the front. The swans were facing each other, their beaks touching, and their long, curved necks forming the shape of a heart. After the bright, garish images on Julia’s cards, this delicate picture was simple and beautiful.

  “Well, open it. Who’s it from?” demanded Julia in a loud whisper, peering over her shoulder.

  Leah knew who it was from. She opened the card to see the interior covered with firm, bold writing. She recognised the words. It was a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats:

  HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

  Enwrought with golden and silver light,

  The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

  Of night and light and the half-light,

  I would spread the cloths under your feet:

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

  Underneath the poem, he had written simply: “Toran”. Leah caught her breath, running her eyes over the poignant words again. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever read.

  Julia gasped and hissed, “He signed it!”

  Leah shut the card, then tucked it into the front of her textbook. Ignoring Julia’s heated whispers, she opened her notebook and began copying what the teacher was writing on the blackboard. Her mind, though, was churning as she tried to take in what the card was saying.

  He had signed his name. Toran was telling everyone that he chose her.

  Leah risked a glance across the classroom. Toran was facing forwards, intent on the teacher’s words. She was about to give up and look away when she saw his eyebrows twitch. Then he turned his head slightly and their eyes met.

  It was as if the rest of the classroom had receded and it was just the two of them. Leah caught her breath, feeling her heart pounding in her chest, the blood rushing in her ears. Even when Toran finally turned back to face the front, Leah found it hard to concentrate. She barely heard what the teacher said in the rest of that class and sat through the next class in an agony of impatience. Finally the bell rang. Mid-morning break. Fifteen minutes.

  Leah stood up from her desk, unsure what to do. Then she noticed that Toran had left the room already. Without realising what she was doing, she found her feet carrying her out of the class, down the corridors, and out towards the main school gates. Just inside the gates was a corner of lush, tropical garden, thick with palms and heliconias. It was really more of an ornamental feature for visiting parents and was rarely used by students. Leah wandered into the garden, hearing the sounds of shouting and talking and laughter fade away into the distance. Walking deeper into the dense foliage, she rounded the thick trunk of an old tembusu tree and found that the pathway ended at a little pond. Water lilies and ferns crowded the edge of the pond.

  “Leah.”

  She turned around. Toran was a few steps on the path behind her. They stood and looked at each other. Leah suddenly felt terribly shy. She hadn’t been alone with Toran since the cable car incident over a year ago and he had changed again.

  At fifteen, he was easily one of the tallest boys in class now, with a lean, toned physique that hinted of the potential still to come. His dark hair was cut shorter, but as unruly as ever, and his face had lost all traces of boyish softness, the jaw firm, the nose strong, the brows dark and straight above brilliant green eyes. Leah had heard the other girls talk about Toran a lot, raving about how “gorgeous” he was, and she had to admit that they weren’t exaggerating. Toran James was growing up into a devastatingly attractive man.

  And he’s come here for me, she realised with a rush of surprised delight. She took a step back, suddenly nervous about how she looked. She knew she lacked the curves that many of the other girls had developed in the past year and her long brown hair still hung unstyled in a tumble of waves down her back. She had learnt how to apply make-up, though, and she wished now that she had decided to break the school rules that morning and highlighted her face with some subtle colour.

  “Did you like the card?” He walked up and stopped in front of her.

  Leah kept her gaze on the ground. “Yes. It’s beautiful, especially the poem… Thank you.”

  Toran hesitated as she kept looking away from him. “Did you wish it had come from someone else?”


  “No.” Leah raised her head and met his eyes. Then she smiled shyly, remembering his own phrase from the cable car a year ago. “I was hoping it would be you.”

  His face softened and he moved towards her. Leah felt herself trembling. She took another step back and realised that she was at the edge of the pond.

  “Careful!” Toran reached out and grabbed her arm. He pulled her towards him, away from the pond, and swung her around so that her back was pressed against the trunk of the tembusu tree.

  His arms came around her. Slowly, he lowered his head towards hers and Leah closed her eyes, holding her breath. His lips were soft, tentative at first, then bolder as he kissed her deeper. She lifted her hands and placed them lightly on his shoulders, still shy, and felt him quiver at her touch. Leah realised that a part of him was just as nervous, just as uncertain as she was. She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him back with all the wild feeling that was in her heart.

  The bell rang shrilly and they broke apart. Toran smiled and tenderly brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for so long…” he said. “Maybe since the first day I met you.”

  Leah blushed. “You were only twelve then.”

  “There’s no law on when you can lose your heart.”

  “But… why have you been so cold to me all this time then?” asked Leah. “I thought after what happened in the cable car last year—”

  Toran hesitated. “It’s like it says in the poem. I have only my dreams to offer you, Leah. I’m not like the other kids at this school, with their fancy cars and designer clothes.”