Wife for a Week by Kelly Hunter

Author:Kelly Hunter [Hunter, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The restaurant was nothing more than daytime pavement converted by plastic tables and chairs into a night-time eating area. Large bins of live crabs, their pincers tightly tied, lined one side of the makeshift square, bamboo growing in tubs lined another. The shopfront made the third side of the square. The fourth side was the gutter. It was badly lit, full of people, had no tablecloths whatsoever, and, more importantly, loads of paper napkins.

A ragged waiter hurried over to greet them and escorted them to a vacant table only to discover the tabletop sticky with beer. He skirted around it with an apologetic smile and showed them to an adjacent table. Bottled water arrived not thirty seconds later, along with cups for everyone. Chopsticks and crab-claw crushers appeared in front of each person. There was no menu. The restaurant served crab; that was all it served.

‘Cooked any way you like,’ the waiter assured them.

They ordered a chilli crab platter along with beer and white wine, and Hallie sat back to wait while her stomach growled and her mouth watered with every fragrant, steaming platter that emerged from the shopfront doorway.

‘You’re drooling,’ said Nick. ‘A good husband would point this out to his wife.’

‘I am not drooling,’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m embracing the atmosphere.’ As for him being a good husband…Ha! She wasn’t even going to start thinking along those lines. As soon as this week was over she’d probably never see him again. She would do much better to think about that.

Another waiter emerged from the doorway, steaming crab platter in hand, and wove his way towards them, turning at the last minute to deliver the tray to the people who’d arrived just after them and been seated at the sticky table. ‘Damn,’ she muttered. ‘So close and yet so far.’

‘You’re really not a half measures kind of girl, are you?’ Nick was looking at her with a sort of wry resignation.

‘Er, no. Is that a problem?’

‘Not exactly.’

Hallie watched the activity at the next table as the waiter deftly served the topmost whole crab to a dark-haired European man and then distributed various bits and pieces of crab to his Asian companions.

‘The first serving always goes to the honoured guest,’ said Jasmine, noticing her preoccupation. ‘It is the best.’

Hallie nodded. The Chinese were one of the most widespread and successful cultures on earth and force had nothing to do with it. Why use force when flattery and business acumen worked better? Only this time the flattery didn’t seem to be working well at all. The dark-haired European was making strange choking noises and his face was turning an unnatural shade of purple. His hands were clutching at this throat; his eyes were glassy with tears.

‘Just how hot is the chilli crab?’ she whispered to Jasmine.

‘Not that hot,’ whispered Jasmine as the man toppled to the floor, foaming at the mouth, his chair sliding out from beneath him to ram into a half-full tub of crabs and knocking it over.

The rest was chaos.

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