The weather forecast is high-tech to sci-fi quality, like everything else in Singapore. But Harris can do as good as the models. It's going to be either hot or a little hotter than hot. Thankfully, Ablaze picked a meticulously climate-controlled Cloud Forest Conservatory for their meeting.

He's looking at its humped glass silhouette while walking from his hotel with longing. It isn't just the heat that makes him hurry. The clouds overhead are growing darker with every passing second. The air thickens. A storm is gunning for Singapore.

Something like a dull needle pierces Harris's heart. Rain won't keep Ablaze away. She'll come, won't she? It's just rain. The needle doesn't dislodge itself. If someone told him a week ago she's going to marry Oliver, he wouldn't have believed it either. Now she is engaged. He's terrible at predicting her.

He enters the glass building built around a hollow mound and glances at the time. Damn. His answers will have to wait.

It's cooler inside, but misty, so he dabs more sweat off his face. Greenery feels the flowerbeds so tight, the glass walls are all but invisible. Maybe a gleam here and there, like in the alcoves for the benches. They're swarmed with the preschoolers in lime-green sun hats.

As pretty as this is, he marches past the flowerbeds, the trees and the preschoolers. Then he marches past the treetops, since Ablaze said she'd wait for him by the cave and the waterfall near the top of the structure.

Apart from the school groups, the tourists flow down the footpaths. They're like him. But also not like him. Despite the magic of the gardens and the biotech-miracle of a 100-feet waterfall, he's here only for the girl. Once she comes. Surely, she'll come.

The waterfall takes up the whole side of the artificial mountain. It fills the building with the stirring noise of rushing water. It's right there! It's everywhere. But to get to its source, the place where Ablaze said she'd be waiting, he has to finish a skywalk loop. Then he has to navigate a fake cavern. His pounding heart isn't a tribute to the designers—he's arrived.

A semicircular walkway high above the ground affords a marvelous view. Gallons and gallons of water run down the shaggy structure into a pool well below. It's a good location, because the noise will cover up their conversation.

All he needs is for her to show up.

Goosebumps rise on his neck, as if someone tickled him with a tuft of grass. He whirls around on a slip-safe walkway. His heart hitches for a split second.

All he needs is her. Ablaze. She came.

She appears out of the mist and tropical foliage. Her dress is simple beige linen, belted at the waist, with two pockets on the full skirt. Her hands are stuffed way deep into those pockets. She should be slouching because of it, but she isn't. There is a cutout pattern around the square collar, with a rough weave. And that's it.

Yet, she must have recognized him with his back to her, because a smile is curving her lips. Not a smile reserved for strangers. No, it's a glad smile. It's for him.

Harris closes the distance between them in two, three flying strides.

She yanks the sunglasses off her nose, to reveal a pair of shining eyes. No red tint in them today, just their natural light-brown. To Harris, it's the prettiest eye color there is. Her hair is knotted loosely, low at the back of her head.

He can't see if it's a messy bun or a ponytail, but he likes how it puffs up behind her ears. He loves everything about how she looks. Everything. He catches the hands she's already extending to him and squeezes them. They are lithe, but real. He didn't dream her up. Wouldn't have been able—for she is too perfect for his imagination to conjure.

"I missed you," he confesses. "How I missed you!"

He's planned to talk about Mrs. Ang, but his thoughts are tangling. Messy thoughts... He grins like a moron, because she smiles at him, breathes in her perfume—jasmine with something—and he grins. He can't order his lips to straighten. Or move. The joy of seeing her at last is headier than the floral smell of her.

This isn't how a passing acquaintance meets a woman engaged to marry another. This isn't how a messenger with grave news behaves. This is how a hopeful lover acts. He darts a look around—nobody is looking, at least not this very second. So, he steps up and lowers his head over her face.

His eyes close, so he doesn't know if she'll meet him half-way until her lips are on his. And this knowledge—she was dying to kiss him the same as he was dying to kiss her—once gained, this knowledge brings an exhale out of his chest.

His tiny 'ah!' is swallowed by the splashing of the waterfall before he's kissing her again. Both of their lips were misted at their first contact. And cool. But as soon as they part under sweet pressure, the warmth of her pours into his mouth. No more than one sip, though.

In Singapore, it's illegal to chew gum.

So they kiss while holding hands, stretching out their necks, instead of sinking into the kiss to cleave from chest to toe. From the side, if anyone is watching, it should look like a lawn ornament of smooching sweethearts. The passersby can't be offended by that! And if they are, they can go and screw themselves as far as Harris is concerned. Call the police, whatever.

The Victorian nature of their first kiss fires him up more than he thinks is possible. His lips become so warm, the mist of the conservatory should turn to steam when touching them.

"Wait," he pleads, his eyes still closed when Ablaze drifts out of his reach. "Wait. Ablaze..."

Alas, she withdraws, though not completely. Only to stand next to him, her small hand tucked neatly into his.

"Harris." Her voice is barely audible with the waterfall's continuing song in the background. "Harris, why did you follow me all the way here?"

"For this," he replies simply.

She whimpers, clasping her free hand over his. Layered hands. He holds hers, she covers it. Just like in a children's game, but neither the intoxication inside him, nor its outwardly expression is for family viewing. With a titanic effort of will, he reigns in his fantasies. The body will follow the suit... hopefully. Walking around with a raging erection is uncomfortable.

"I'm afraid you're marrying Oliver under duress. I can't sleep when I think about it."

"I'm confused, Harris, so confused!" The tremors start in her hands, and only a second later she's trembling all over like the wide leaves when the water lands on them.

He wants to kiss her till she's okay, till she's happy again. Till he is happy too.

Alas, they have to press themselves to the railing to let a large group of tourists sail by them. They want to get their money's worth of the gardens en route to the top of the mountain. While they take selfies and make excited noises, there would be no kissing.

There are other things he can do. After all, he came here with a different purpose in mind. Kissing only sidetracked him.

"I talked to Mrs. Ang, the owner of the coffee-shop franchise he's bought. She's convinced he has links to organized crime. Here... " Harris rummages through his shoulder bag, to extract a folder. He's printed everything out, because he has a bad feeling about using electronic communication since Ablaze sent that 'can't talk right now' text. He wouldn't put it past Oliver to go through her cell-phone.

She takes the paper and walks with the flow of tourists to the top floor. There, under the glass dome, people sit around a pond with floating flower arrangements.

They walk in a circle. His gaze skims pretty leaves, flowers, wooden sculptures without fixing any of it in his memory.

"I need to explain who Oliver is, but I'm afraid you'll think me insane," she says after she walks out her shakes.

He lifts her hands to his lips. "I won't. He's a dangerous man."

"If only he was a man!" she sobs under her breath.

"Huh?"

"Harris, do you know why I traveled to Milwaukee?"

"Sausages?"

Despite the tension in the air between them and the dark clouds gathering above the glass roof, she spurts a laughter. "Good grief, Harris!"

"Sorry. I don't know why it popped out. I'm nervous around you. I'm... I think I'm in love with you." Which, of course, is an inappropriate thing to say to another man's fiancé. And a totally wrong timing. "Sorry."

She presses a finger to his lips. "Harris, I came to Milwaukee because I spent two years in a private mental health and addiction treatment center near the city. The facility is one of the best in the world for adolescents."

"Sam mentioned something like that." He just didn't mention it was in Milwaukee. While the dots don't connect yet, they at least appear before Harris.

"Sam... He doesn't know why."

"You don't need to tell me anything, if...." His voice breaks. "...if it hurts."

"I have to explain it, if you're to understand me." Her glance darts upward and she blanches.

He can hardly blame her. The skies above the dome are hellishly dark. They sap the cheerfulness, the color out of the garden. Out of the whole world, it seems. The conversations around them hush. Ablaze's every word would ring in this ominous silence.

He glances around, desperate for a seat on a bench away from other tourists. There's none.

"What is it with this city?" he hisses under his breath. "You're never alone here. Never."

If only he had the gall to ask her to his hotel. Even if their kiss already pushed them past the boundary separating the improper from proper, he can't—

"Let's..." He glances around in vain hope again.

There's still no respite from the strangers' ears. He starts on the pathways back to the waterfall's overlook, his hand clutching hers. "The cave?"

She nods with a faint smile. "The cave."

The humor doesn't escape him either. A man and a woman in a cave... a beginning. Though he wishes it was more akin to nature—darker, much darker. Then he could kiss her non-stop. Ablaze stops dead-center, with a robotic precision. She opens her mouth, sighs—and the story spills like the waters plunging next to her.