The perfume of love (rain-bi)

chapter 15

He was not as bad as she expected. neither as old or as vulgar nor as overtly lecherous in his manner towards her sister as jenna's worrying preconception of him.

in reality the yacht's owner was a burly man in his middle fifties, carrying a good deal of superfluous weight round his middle but otherwise healthy and active looking in his younger days his hair must have been as fair and thick as hers. now what remained was still fair with some grey around his ears.

she liked his sense of humour. it was difficult to dislike anyone whose eyes twinkled as often and who laughed as readily as joon Dennison.

she soon realised that the image of a rather crude and unpleasant self-made man which she had had in her mind was an inaccurate picture. perhaps he was ruthless, even unscrupulous, in his business dealing.... and she didn't yet know how he had amassed the fortune which enabled him, on a whim, to buy a multi-million-dollar vessel.... but in private life he was one of the most cheerful, relaxed men she had ever met.

they did not, as she expected, dine on board but at a restaurant called Pineapple Hill, which was close to the eighteen-hole Arnold Palmer championship golf course where joon spent most of his time. tonight he had invited two more of his golfing acquaintances and their wives to be his guests. to make the number even, jung jihoon had been asked to join them.

the other golfers were sharing one of the golf villas on the seven hundred and fifty-acre Kapalua Bay resort complex. they had been able to walk to the restaurant which was situated at the end of a mile-long drive bordered by tall Norfolk Island pines.

joon and his party had arrived by car. had they gone in a taxi, probably jihoon would have sat infront with the driver and jenna would have shared the back seat with her sister and her host. but it seemed that wherever they berthed for any length of time, he always rented a car in which to get about on shore. with him at the wheel and hana beside him, jenna had found herself sharing the back seat with jihoon.

tonight he was wearing a civilian clothes. but the fact that his long legs were hidden by tropic- weight trousers and his sinewy forearms by the sleeves of a silk tweed blazer had not made her less aware of the powerful masculine body sitting beside her as they retraced the route to the airport and then drove beyond it into a part of the island she hadn't seen before and where she had her first sight of a low growing spiky grey-green crop which she realised were pineapple plants.

throughout the meal she had been separated from jihoon by the two golfers and their wives, both of whom piled him with many questions about other parts of the pacific.

at times the three of them were having a separate conversation from the three other men and the kim girls. glancing down the table now and then, jenna noticed that jihoon wasn't merely answering the two women's enquiries. he was exerting himself to be pleasant. turning on the charm, was the phrase which came into her mind; and surprisingly potent charm it was, she realised, seeing his white teeth flash as he smiled at the elder of the wives, a rather plain, dowdy person at least twenty years his senior.

although seated far beyond the range of his smile, jenna was startled to find it had an effort on her.

she found herself wondering what her reaction would be in the most unlikely event that he should smile directly at her, all the coldness swept from his face by the sudden warm, friendly grin.

perhaps with people he liked he wasn't the sardonic autocrat he had seemed to her so far.

it was on the way back to Lahaina that, after chaffing hana about her resistance to any form of physical exertion, joon said, over his shoulder, "how about you, jenna? are you as lazy as this sister of yours? or are you into exercise?"

"at home i usually went for a fairly energetic walk every morning before breakfast" she answered.

"you can do that here, if you get up before the sun's up. jihoon jogs around town every morning. he'll take you over with him if you want to keep up your walks."

"Oh, no..... it isn't important.... here i'll be swimming instead" she said hurriedly. she felt sure jihoon didn't want to be forced to ferry her ashore with him.

"swimming is good exercise, but it doesn't have the same cardio-vascular benefits as brisk walking or running" was his unexpected comment.

"you're welcome to come ashore with me if half-six isn't too early for you.... and you're punctual" he added.

"it isn't too early.... but are you sure you don't mind?" she said doubtfully.

"Not at all" he said politely.

later before turning out her reading lamp, jenna set the alarm on the digital clock to wake her at half past five.

she was ready and waiting when jihoon appeared and said, "good morning."

his strong chin which, late last night, had begun to show a dark shadow where his beard grew,(AN: i know rain oppa doesn't have a beard but i like beard so i put it here) was now smooth from recent shaving. he was wearing a lightweight navy track top with white shorts, tennis socks and running shose. he had a small terry towel with him.

beyond exchanging the time of day, they had no conversation going ashore.

"i run for thirty minutes. I'll be back here at seven-fifteen." he told her. at the small boat harbou, as he unzipped his top and left it with the towel in the dinghy.

she watched him stride off and soon break into a lope which became a run before he was out of sight. stripped to the waist, his body was even more impressive. yet for a tall, powerful man he looked very light on his feet, springing along with a lithe easy rhythm very different from the ungainly gait of some of the early morning joggers she had passed on the towpath in seoul.

the main part of the town was on flat ground. she decided to explore the area behind front. street.

as she walked up and down quiet side streets laid out more or less on a grid pattern, several people at work in their gardens gave her friendly smiles. every garden had beautiful shurbs and one had a hedge which was a mass pale blue plumbago flowers.

although it wasn't as hot as it would be as soon as the sun rose, the early morning temperature and the humidity level were enough to make jenna's T-shirt cling damply to her back by the time she returned to the hardour.

However, when jihoon reappeared her sticky condition was nothing to the state he was in. hia face and body gleamed with sweat, emphasising the play of muscle under his smooth brown skin. as he came to a halt she could see rivulets trickling down his face from his now damp and tousled hair. but he seemed to have enjoyed himself. before he picked up the towel and began to mop his glistening neck and shoulders, he actually smiled at her.

as she smiled back, she was uneasily aware that, if he chose to be nice to her, she could learn to like this man a lot more than she would have thought possible on the day of her arrival, or during the early hours of the following day when he had told her off for swimming at night.

it wasn't the whole man who was beinning to appeal to her; merely his body and his face. about the workings of his mind... by far the most important part of anyone... she had almost no knowledge at all.

none of the serious topics which united people or divided them, such as political, religious and racial attitudes, had been touched on in the short time she had known him.

how could you like a man when you didn't begin to know what he thought about any of the issues which cemented or prevented friendship. the one thing she did know for certain was that he despised her sister. which, even though secretly she agreed with him in deploring hana's lifestyle, put them on different sides of an irremovable barrier.