Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dear Reader

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Copyright

Indiscretions
Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

When I was asked to write a book for the BRIDE’S BAY RESORT series I was flattered and aware that I should say no, as I don’t write about places I’ve never been to. However, second thoughts prevailed. As my husband, Don, and I were going to be in North America that summer it was easy enough to add on a side trip to South Carolina.

We loved it. The hospitality was superb, the food magnificent and the scenery with its intricate blending of land and sea reminded me just a little of home. It was the first time I’d been to the South; I suspect I may have left a small corner of my heart there. I hope you enjoy Indiscretions as much as I enjoyed exploring this delightful area of America.

Yours sincerely,

Robyn Donald

ROBYN DONALD

has always lived in Northland in New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty, where she lives today with her husband and an ebullient and mostly Labrador dog. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romance novels more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.

CHAPTER ONE

“I THOUGHT YOU’D BE interested.”

Wide blue eyes shaded with cynicism, Mariel Browning lifted her brows at the bartender. “Why?”

“Well, they are fellow countrymen of yours. You can’t meet many of them—didn’t you tell me there are only three million of you?”

“I did, but at least half of those are overseas at any one time.”

She grinned at the look he sent her over the top of his spectacles. Desmond was too good a bartender to show any disbelief, but she’d met him several times over the past year and was beginning to be able to read his expressions. This one said, Pull the other leg!

“Well, that’s the way it seems,” she amended, her smile and tone edging into irony. “I trip over New Zealanders all the time. They’re everywhere. When their kids grow up the first thing they want to do is fly away from those three little islands at the furthermost ends of the earth and see what the rest of the planet is like. In any group of more than five people anywhere in the world, you can be sure that one of them is a New Zealander.” She smiled to soften the stiffness in her tone. “Yes, even here in South Carolina, where most people don’t know New Zealand exists, and those few who do think it’s part of Australia.”

The middle-aged black man, who had been one of the latter, gave her a stately smile as he set the tall glass of gently fizzing mineral water in front of her. “But these are important New Zealanders,” he said seriously.

“The Minister of Trade, no less, here to talk business with his Japanese counterpart. Big deal,” she said lightly, hiding a tiny niggle of unease with a dazzling smile. Where there were politicians intent on conferring there would also be diplomats, discreetly powerful, unobtrusive and necessary.

Until her arrival on Jermain Island, one of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, she’d believed she was going to be interpreting for a group of businessmen. Noted for her fluency in Japanese and her ability to navigate flawlessly through the ideographs of its written language, Mariel always enjoyed coming to Bride’s Bay Resort. However, had she been told this was a diplomatic occasion, she’d have looked for some excuse to stay away.

She had reason, she thought with a twist of her full mouth, to be wary of diplomats.

The cool mineral water slid down her throat as she looked appreciatively around Desmond’s domain. Some forty years ago the bar had been planned to reflect the stately, country-house sophistication of an English gentleman’s club. Mariel had never been in an English club, but she thought the designer had produced a very pleasant atmosphere.

But then, the hotel was noted for its beauty and refined ambience. That was one of the reasons it was so popular with high-powered groups of businessmen and diplomats for semiofficial meetings like the one ahead.

After a moment she said restlessly, “I don’t know that I count as a Kiwi anymore—I’ve been away for the past ten years.” Ever since she was eighteen.

And I didn’t enjoy it much while I was there, she added silently. Hated it, in fact.

“You’ve still got an accent,” Desmond said, looking past her as a man entered the room and sat at one of the tables. Moving toward the newcomer, he said professionally, “Good afternoon, sir. What can I get for you?”

“Weak whiskey and soda, please.”

In spite of herself, Mariel’s head turned. Although the newcomer’s deep textured voice invoked an involuntary feminine response, it was the accent that caught her attention most. Far from a conspicuously antipodean drawl, the unmistakable intonation and rhythm nevertheless proclaimed his antecedents.

Definitely one of the New Zealand party.

And a diplomat to boot.

Certainly not a politician. For a start, he was too young. Thirty-four at the outside, showing a smooth elegance that hinted of a lifetime accustomed to the confidence and privileges that only social position and money can buy.

Some of that money, Mariel decided, covertly evaluating him with an eye honed in embassies as a child, had been spent on an exclusive London tailor.

Not that his clothes made him. Oh, he certainly wore them well, his suit clinging lovingly to broad shoulders and long limbs, but there was much more to the man than excellent tailoring. Shocked, she registered a subtle tug at her senses, more antagonism than excitement, as her eyes lingered on the play of muscle when he stretched his legs and picked up a newspaper from the rack beside his chair.

And then, as if he’d known all along of her sideways scrutiny, he looted directly at her, all icy appraisal. It hit her like a blow. Mariel knew she was no raving beauty, but perhaps she had become too accustomed to the involuntary homage most men paid to red-brown hair and ivory skin and large blue eyes with enough turquoise in them to make them intriguing.

Not, however, this man, this New Zealander. The only emotion in his expression was an uncompromising assessment, calculating and studied, that flicked her self-esteem.

He thinks I’m trying to pick him up, she realized. The nerve of the man! What conceit!

Forgetting her normal caution, she allowed an amused, condescending curve to widen her soft lips. David had told her often that when she smiled like that, the tiny creases at the corners of her mouth deepened, giving her a smile of sultry aloofness that both beckoned and discouraged. For some reason she hoped David had been right. Coolly, with measured, leisurely deliberation, she looked the newcomer over from beneath dark lashes, keeping her eyes steady, almost placid.

He suffered her scrutiny with an impervious, bored selfassurance, his only measurable response being the slight narrowing of pale eyes that gave him the concentrated, vigilant stare of a hunter.

An atavistic fear shivered through Mariel, but pride kept her head high, kept that small, provoking smile pinned in place as she ran her gaze across the arrogant features of the newcomer’s face. And it was pride that lifted her shoulders—although nobody would ever be able to say for sure that she’d shrugged as she turned away. Yet even as she presented her back to the newcomer, she felt the lash of his glance. Adrenaline surged through her, tightening her skin, hurrying her breath. Fool, her brain said. Fool, fool, fool…

It would have been more sensible to suffer that antagonistic glance passively, because beneath the newcomer’s instant hostility she discerned another, equally potent response. In the first few seconds of that intent, wordless communication, senses older and more primitive than the five most obvious had homed in on his interest. And she was experienced enough in the battle between the sexes to understand that a dangerous combination of pique and reluctant interest had driven her to issue a challenge.

Sexual attraction was a wild card, ungovernable, a matter of dangerous chemistry. It could play the very devil with your life, which was why she refused to allow it any place in her emotions, let alone her career.

Yet that primal call of male to female had goaded her into flinging his barely concealed antipathy back in his face. And although he had immense mastery over his expression so that not a muscle moved, not an eyelash flickered, no color licked along the prominent cheekbones, he hadn’t been able to hide his sharp, fierce reaction. She could smell it, she thought, forcing herself to lift her glass to her mouth, feel it like the crackle of electricity against suddenly sensitized skin.

And she brought it on herself, behaving like a cheap idiot in a singles bar. Over the years she had evolved rigid rules. She had just overturned one of the most important: Never get involved with a client.

So it was alarming that one glance from a total stranger should propel her over the invisible line of demarcation.

Even more alarming was the fact that every cell in her body was still caressed by a purring, lazily feminine satisfaction that had nothing to do with the normal rules of daily life and everything to do with the man who sat so silently a few yards away.

Desmond delivered his drink and came back to the bar. It was the slack time of day, when he ran the place by himself for an hour. Without being obvious he turned up the Mozart on the tape.

“Know him?” he asked softly.

A spot between her shoulder blades prickled. She shook her head. “Never seen him before,” she said, easing her dry throat by swallowing half her drink.

“Well, he looks as if he finds that red hair and those long legs mighty interesting” Desmond said neutrally.

Resisting the impulse to lift her heavy, shoulder-length tresses clear of her neck, Mariel tilted her glass, keeping her eyes on the bubbles fizzing up through the clear liquid. “He’s a guest,” she muttered.

As well as clients, guests were out of bounds. And she had just stepped over those bounds. Still angry with herself—and the unknown man with the unsettling glance—she asked, “When does the rest of the diplomatic party arrive?”

Desmond knew everything about the hotel, including, rumor had it, the identity of the man who was the lover of Liz Jermain, the resort manager.

“They’re meeting the launch at four o’clock,” he told her, “so they’ll be here in a couple of hours. The New Zealanders, that is. The Japanese arrive forty minutes later by helicopter.”

Mariel had been at the hotel for no more than an hour herself, just time to unpack in the small room she’d been allocated in the staff quarters, put out the items that made each impersonal room a temporary home and order the flowers she always needed to sustain the illusion.

She drained her glass. “Thanks, Desmond. That saved my life.”

“You should eat more,” he said disapprovingly. “Languages are all very well, but they don’t put meat on those thin bones. And you’ve got shadows under your eyes, too. I thought I told you last time—”

“Tell the people I work for,” she said, smiling. “They’re the ones who drag me out of bed to translate and interpret, and keep me working all night.”

“But you like it.”

“Wouldn’t do anything else. See you later—I’d better go and talk to Elise.”

He nodded, looking sober. “Poor girl,” he said.

“Is her husband still giving her a hard time?”

Desmond frowned. “Something is,” he said, exercising his famous discretion.

“I’d better go. See you later.”

Still acutely conscious of the man who sat apparently intent on the newspaper, Mariel walked with brisk steps across the room. Intuition warned her that the stranger was aware of every footfall. I hope he hates it as much as I do, she thought, trying to smooth away the raw patch his instant contempt had left on her psyche.

She turned away from the foyer, its cool elegance warmed by great jardinieres filled with the flowering azaleas that were nature’s tribute to spring. Ahead lay the hotel’s business center, set up with the latest in equipment. Elise Jennings, who ran it and organized the staff necessary to deal with anything a diplomat, industrialist or business leader might need, had been going through a particularly difficult time. Her marriage had broken up messily, and she’d been forced to sell her home on the mainland and move into staff quarters with her seven-year-old daughter.

Normally a quiet, reserved person, Elise had wept on Mariel’s shoulder the last time she’d been at Bride’s Bay, and they’d talked for hours. This time, however, although the older woman looked just as tired and heartsick, she greeted Mariel with pleasure.

“Good to see you again. How’s New York?”

“Noisy,” Mariel said, adding delicately, “How’s Caitlin?”

Elise frowned. “Just the same. Very dependent,” she said briefly.

“Are you still living in the staff quarters?”

“Yeah, and she still wants to go to California to be with Jimmy. I can’t convince her that she’s better off here with me—she thinks she’d be able to go to Disneyland every day.”

“Poor kid.”

“I know.” Looking down at the sheaf of papers in her hand, Elise said bitterly, “You remember I told you last time I thought he was up to something? Well, my noble Jimmy decided he wasn’t going to share any of his hard-won assets, so he declared bankruptcy. Caitlin and I have nothing.

Appalled, Mariel asked, “Can he do that?”

The older woman gave her a cynical smile. “Honey, if you’ve got a good enough lawyer, you can do just about anything. Oh, I can understand it. He grew up on the island here—in a little house down by the fishing wharf—and he had nothing. It was sheer guts and working his butt off for years that got him where he is. He isn’t about to share any of it. Well, he lost, too, because I’ve got custody, and there’s no way I can afford to fly Caitlin and me out to California. And I’m not letting her go without me.”

The telephone interrupted her. Elise picked it up and said, “Yes, sir, we can do that right away.” When she’d replaced the receiver she said, “Mariel, you’re needed in room 27. The guy wants a document translated from English to Japanese.”

“I thought the New Zealand lot weren’t coming until four,” Mariel complained mildly, getting to her feet. “Oh, well, no rest for the wicked.” With her luck it would be the antagonistic stranger in the bar who wanted her.

“An eager beaver,” Elise said. “Learned any new languages lately?”

Mariel grinned. “Basque. It’s supposed to be the most difficult language in the world.”

“Is it used much?”

“Almost never.” Mariel met her surprised gaze with a slow twinkle. “Only six hundred thousand or so people speak it.”

“Then why learn it?”

“The challenge,” Mariel said cheerfully as she turned to go. “I can’t resist a challenge.”

“Hey, how much do you know?”

“I can say ’good morning’ and ’good evening,’ and I think I might have a handle on ’goodbye.’ Beyond that it’s a mystery.”

She left the room to laughter and went swiftly up the gracious sweeping staircase, trailing her fingers over the elegant curves of the banister, worn smooth by thousands of hands over the years. There was nothing in New Zealand to match this, she thought with enormous contentment. Nothing at all.

The Sea Islands had waxed rich for generations, first on indigo, then on cotton, and always on the efforts of slaves. This glorious building was the original Jermain plantation house, its white pillars like an evocation of the Old South. After the Civil War the family and the plantation had fallen on hard times, until Liz Jermain’s grandmother scraped up the money to join the two flanking buildings to the main house and transform it into a hotel.

Outside room 27 Mariel took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders before knocking. The door opened immediately, and yes, it was the man from the bar.

His eyes, so pale a green they were almost colorless—except for glints of gold blazing through a matrix of jadeheld hers for a moment before the professional politeness in his expression changed to cold aloofness. But he couldn’t prevent a flicker of elemental response.

Shockingly, an inchoate flutter of anticipation in Mariel’s stomach burned suddenly into excitement.

“Good afternoon,” she said, her formal smile hiding a perilously balanced composure. “You want a document translated, I believe.”

His lashes half covered his eyes, intensifying that disturbing glitter. “Yes, from English to Japanese. Can you do it?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Here,” he said curtly, “in this room.”

She did not want to sit at the charming desk beside the magnificent four-poster bed and work while he watched her, and she certainly didn’t care for his implied mistrust. With out thinking, she shook her head. “I use a computer”

“A portable, surely?”

Lord, but her wits had gone begging. “Yes,” she said woodenly. “But—”

“This is confidential, Ms…”

The keen eyes had missed nothing, certainly not the absence of rings on her long slender fingers. “Browning,” she said stiffly.

“How do you do, Ms. Browning. My name is Nicholas Lee.”

Automatically she took the hand he held out. Although his grip was firm it wasn’t painful, but an instant sizzle of electricity made her draw a sharp breath into her lungs. Without thinking, she jerked her hand away.

Damn, the man was dynamite, and he had to know it.

However, nothing of that recognition showed in the hard, handsome face nor in the green-gold eyes, although some foolish, hidden part of her preened at the quick tightening of his mouth and the way his eyes narrowed even further, giving him a hooded, menacing look.

He said smoothly, “I’m afraid I must insist that you work here, Ms. Browning.” He added with an undertone of mockery that whipped across her confidence, “If you wish, I can leave the door open.”

Color heated the soft ivory of her skin. He saw too much. “That won’t be necessary, sir,” she said, striving for the right touch of amusement, the note of casual sophistication that would put him in his place. “I’ll get my computer.”

“You understand that I’ll expect you to translate into Japanese symbols?”

“My computer is quite capable of doing that, and so, Mr. Lee, am I,” she said in what she hoped was a repressive tone.

When she’d arrived back he handed her a letter from a Japanese businessman, one of the country’s most forward-looking industrialists.

“This is the letter I’ve answered,” he said. “You might find it helpful to read it first so that you know what I’m talking about.”

Apparently he had an interest in some new invention. Well versed as she was in the subtleties of Japanese business language, she realized that the industrialist had written to him as an equal.

So he had power.

Well, she didn’t need a letter to tell her that. He reeked of it, she thought snidely; power and the personality to make use of it oozed from every pore of his tall, graceful body.

Doing her best to ignore his potent male presence, she got to work. His name, she realized, looking at the slashing black signature, wasn’t Lee; it was Leigh.

It figured. She wasn’t surprised that his name should have the more complex spelling; he was complex. Not to mention prejudiced, she thought with irritation. He didn’t know her, and yet he had presumed to judge her, and that before she’d been stupid enough to issue her own version of a sexual challenge.

Perhaps he had something against tall redheads who drank mineral water in bars.

Fortunately, because he was having an unsettling effect on her nerves, she had long ago perfected the skill of complete concentration. She needed it now. He’d given her a fairly complicated document which took some time to translate, but eventually she was able to say, “Here you are, sir, it’s finished,” and lay the three sheets down on the gleaming desk.

Clearly he shared her gift of losing herself in work, because she had to speak twice before he looked up from the sheaf of papers he was studying, black brows knotting as those disturbing eyes focused on her face.

“Read it to me, please. In Japanese.”

Too well trained to ask why, she obeyed, her voice slipping through the liquid syllables with confidence.

“You have an excellent accent,” he observed when she’d finished. “You must have learned to speak the language as a child.”

Mariel returned impersonally, “Yes, sir.”

“I see,” he said, a dry note infusing his voice.

She asked, “When did you learn?”

And could have kicked herself. Normally she’d have stopped at a simple thank-you; natural caution should have overridden an unsuspected desire to learn more about him.

Although his brows drew together above the blade of his nose, he said mildly enough, “In my teens. I can speak the language fluently, and to a certain extent read it, but I can’t write it and I’ll never lose my accent.”

Shrewdly Mariel surmised that this would always be a source of irritation to him. He would demand perfection from himself, as well as others—the very worst sort of man, totally impossible to live with.

She wasn’t going to have to live with him. However, she was going to have to work with him, and that meant that from now on she was going to be resolutely, professionally, implacably aloof.

With a touch of brusqueness he resumed speaking. “Thank you, you’ve done a good job. I’ll order tea. I assume you are a tea drinker? Most New Zealanders are, especially at this time of the afternoon.”

No, he didn’t miss anything. As well as keen eyes, he had keen ears. Although her American colleagues invariably picked up the trace of an antipodean accent in her speech, any New Zealanders she’d met during the past few years usually assumed she was American.

Mariel looked at her watch. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said without expression, “but I need to be free when the other members of the delegation arrive.” She gave him a businesslike smile, carefully not quite meeting his eyes, and as she got to her feet said in the same collected tone, “It was kind of you to think of it. Thank you.”

He waited until she had packed up her computer and printer and was halfway to the door before saying, “I am not kind, Ms. Browning. I do, however, appreciate efficiency and intelligence.”

Delivered in a cool, inflexible tone, the words sounded almost like a warning.

MARIEL SAW Nicholas Leigh again that night at the inaugural dinner. According to Liz Jermain, the purpose of the conference was to conduct a high-level but informal discussion of trade patterns.

Known worldwide for its exclusivity and superb service, the resort, with its health club and golf course and rifle range, its banquet rooms and world-class restaurant, its proud history of discretion and opulence, was the perfect place for such occasions.

However, in spite of the official lack of ceremony, someone had decided that these proceedings should begin with a dinner. Although both parties had brought their own interpreters, Mariel, clad in a black dress so circumspect it almost rendered her invisible, presented herself at the small lounge off the reserved dining room to mingle and make herself useful, which she did, stepping in when conversations stuttered and died, acting as a sort of subsidiary hostess, smoothing the diplomatic pathways.

Apart from a middle-aged woman with shrewd, worldly eyes and two extremely elegant women of about Mariel’s age—all New Zealanders—the room was filled with the dark elegance of about twenty men in good-quality evening clothes. Most were comparatively young; only a couple were the same age as her parents would have been had they still been alive.

Deep inside her, a barely discernible foreboding faded to quiescence.

As always she eschewed alcohol; this time she chose club soda and lime. While she was thanking the waiter for making a special trip to get it, she looked up to see Nicholas Leigh talking to one of the younger women, a very attractive person with smoothly coiffed hair the color of newly minted copper. The woman’s fine, patrician features were lit by a composed, gracious smile, but there was nothing composed about the swift glance she sent him from beneath her lashes.

Dumbfounded as a hitherto cloaked emotion flared abruptly and painfully into life, Mariel thought, I’m jealous!

And the vivid sexual awareness that had sprung so unexpectedly to life in the bar a few hours earlier began to assume a much more sinister aspect.

Sharply she turned her head away, glad when her glance fell on a middle-aged Japanese man smiling at a younger New Zealander, who looked to be at a loss. She set her jaw and made her way toward them.

The older man was too sophisticated to reveal any sign of relief when she joined them and introduced herself with a deprecating remark, but the younger man greeted her with a frown. He turned out to be Peter Sanderson, a career diplomat. Short and blocky, his expression pugnaciously intense, he had narrow, suspicious eyes that flicked hastily from person to person as though he was terrified of missing something. However, after the first irritated glare at Mariel, his brows straightened, and he smiled at her with overbold interest.

She didn’t like him, she thought when he asked her where she was from.

“New York? You don’t sound like a native of the Big Apple,” he said, watching her as though he suspected her of lying.

She smiled. “I’m a New Zealander, Mr. Sanderson.”

“But you’re not one of our party,” he said, his brows meeting.

“I’m an interpreter and translater,” she told him, smiling to take away the edge in her voice.

The older man interposed politely, “With an excellent grasp of Japanese.”

Transferring the smile to him, she bowed. “You honor me too much.”

After waiting impatiently for the formalities to be over, Peter Sanderson asked, “How long have you been living in America?”

Trying to hide the wariness in her voice, she told him. He continued asking questions, cloaking them with a veneer of politeness too thin to hide his determination to get answers. His tenacity made Mariel uneasy; she didn’t like the way he watched her, as though assessing her value as a pawn to be played in some game she didn’t understand.

She suspected that his attitude wasn’t personal—he was probably the sort of person who valued people only for thenuse to him—but she had to struggle to maintain her aplomb.

Five minutes later she felt someone behind her and turned, her eyes meeting with a small shock those of Nicholas Leigh. The redhead was still with him, and for a moment a purely feminine challenge crystallized in the woman’s pale gray eyes as they met Mariel’s.

Nicholas made the introductions; the woman was Susan Waterhouse, an aide to the New Zealand minister of trade. Perfectly pleasant and charming, she was nevertheless blanketed by an aura of detachment—neither aloof nor indifferent, yet oddly uninvolved—except when she looked at Nicholas.

In spite of its resemblance to a social occasion, this event was business; Mariel was merely a necessary adjunct, like a computer or a printer. In fact, her profession meant that she should try to be as inconspicuous as possible. Yet she couldn’t repress a spurt of indignation when Susan Water-house’s eyes rested for sizzling seconds on Nicholas’s arrogant, hard-edged countenance.

Distastefully ignoring the scuttling, furtive envy that crawled across her heart, Mariel looked away. The unaccustomed strength of her reaction added to her troubled apprehension. Within a few minutes she made her excuses and left them.

As with most diplomatic affairs the evening was run with slightly soulless efficiency. Exactly enough time had been allocated for two drinks, so just as Mariel finished her second glass, a concerted movement propelled her toward the dining room.

She sat in an alcove to one side of the main table, waiting in case she was needed and trying unsuccessfully to keep her gaze firmly directed away from where Nicholas Leigh sat, charcoal hair wanned with a sheen of bronze by the lights, the poised head held confidently high, features sculpted in angles and planes that were at once fiercely attractive and invulnerable.

Handsome didn’t describe him exactly, she thought, catching him as he smiled at the middle-aged woman beside him. Handsome was too effete, too ordinary. He had the disciplined, inborn grace of a predator—judging by the letter she’d translated that afternoon, a very intelligent, clear-minded predator. His classical good looks, based on coloring and bone structure, were overshadowed by an effortless, supremely well-controlled strength and authority.

Just what was his position in this high-powered group of politicians and diplomats?

He sat at the main table, which meant he had influence.

Surely too much power and influence for a man of his age?

The skin along her cheekbones tingled. Steadfastly she kept her eyes on the two ministers at the center of the table, but as plainly as if she was staring at him she knew that Nicholas Leigh was looking at her. And even from that distance the impact of his elemental magnetism flared through her, heating her skin and churning her stomach and melting the vulnerable base of her backbone.

At last the head of the Japanese mission rose; his interpreter, a slim, bespectacled man, stood to one side. Mariel settled herself to listen intently and professionally.

He was good, but the New Zealand interpreter who followed was not. Technically, she thought objectively, he had the words, but he was missing the nuances. Once she exchanged a glance with the Japanese interpreter, a splitsecond communication in which neither face moved a muscle, but both understood perfectly.

When she looked away her gaze was captured and held by Nicholas Leigh’s half-closed eyes. Carefully she gave him a small, meaningless smile and returned her attention to the speaker, but that hard, searching, far-too-perceptive glance set her heart thudding disconcertingly against her ribs.

At eleven o’clock the dinner broke up to mutual expressions of immense esteem. Mariel waited until everyone had gone before sliding out of her chair. One of the least enjoyable aspects of occasions such as this was watching others eat delicious meals, but because she never knew when she’d be called on, she preferred to eat offstage, so to speak. The sandwich she’d eaten before coming down had been enough to satisfy her, but she could, she thought with anticipation, enjoy a good cup of tea right then.

The door of the dining room closed behind her; she relaxed and had begun to head off for the staff cafeteria when a voice from behind said, “Ms. Browning.”

Not now, she thought, forcing her features into a mask of composure before turning. “Mr. Leigh?”

“I’d like to buy you a drink, if I may.”

This was definitely not a part of her job description. Sedately she responded, “I’m afraid I’m not encouraged to socialize with guests, sir.”

A spark of temper lit his eyes to pure, flaming gold, but was instantly curbed. “I need your professional opinion, and I need it tonight.” When she still hesitated he said levelly, “We can do it like this, or I can insist on a formal meeting.”

He didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t have to. An implacable note in the even tones made itself more than obvious. Involuntarily Mariel looked across the foyer to where Mr. McCabe, the New Zealand trade minister, was standing with a small group of men. As if summoned, he glanced their way, his shrewd eyes going from her face to Nicholas’s. The minister’s gaze returned to her countenance, and he nodded with an air of authority.

“Very well,” she said, surprising herself with her acquiescence, and in case he got the wrong impression, added a fraction of a second too late, “sir.”

Heavy lids hooded his eyes. He said quietly, “Thank you, Ms. Browning.”

CHAPTER TWO

HE TOOK HER to Desmond’s bar, seated her in one of the wing chairs and ordered the mineral water she asked for, deciding on another weak whiskey and soda for himself.

While the waitress went off to get the drinks, he asked unexpectedly, “What’s your first name?”

She bristled, but told him in a level voice.

Black brows climbed. “Where does it come from?”

“It’s a derivative of Mary,” she said. “A family name. My m-mother used to say it came from a princess a long way back in the family tree who was born in what is now Bavaria. Apparently she was a bit of a handful, so her longsuffering family married her off to a Viking. Eventually some of their descendants took the name with them to England.”

“I’m almost certain Mariel is a place in Cuba. I wondered whether it had sentimental associations for your parents,” he said blandly, “but it’s unlikely any Westerners would have been there when you were conceived.”

Her heart slammed to a halt. Before she could stop herself she shot a glance at him, her pulse kicking into overdrive when she met the elongated slivers of pure light that were his eyes.

“Yes,” she said huskily, trying not to swallow.

Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug, but she knew he’d noticed her response. However, his voice was almost indolent, as he said, “You’re the right build and height to be of German descent. Although your coloring looks more Norse.”

Of course he wasn’t so crude as to scrutinize her tall, longlimbed body. Nevertheless, although his dark lashes hid his eyes, she felt exposed to the naked force of his interest, and to her horror her skin pulled tight and an unfamiliar sensation prickled in her breasts. Appalled, she wondered how the mere sound of a man’s—a stranger’s—voice could produce such a violent and unwanted physical response.

“It was,” she returned dismissively, “just a family story, and almost certainly untrue. Families get the weirdest ideas about their antecedents.”

“Ah, all those ancestors who were supposed to be descendants of kings and turn out to have worked as swineherds on the royal estates,” he said, a note of irony coloring the deep voice. “It’s a natural human instinct, I suppose, to put the best gloss on one’s circumstances.”

Once more her eyelids flew up. She met a gaze that was cool and glinting, a face that was a subtle challenge. He must know, she thought dazedly.

No, he couldn’t!

Dry-mouthed, she grabbed for equanimity. “I suppose it is. What did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Leigh?”

He waited until the waitress had departed, then said, “What is wrong with the New Zealand interpreter? And please call me Nicholas, as I fully intend to call you Mariel from now on.”

She drank some mineral water, grateful for its cold fizz and soothing passage down her raw throat. “What made you think there was something wrong?” she countered, unsure of the correct way to deal with this.

“Your face and my own instinct. If I hadn’t been sure of it, that swift glance you exchanged with your Japanese counterpart would have convinced me.”

Dismayed, she said, “You can’t have seen anything in my expression!”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure no one else did. As I said, I happened to be wondering already, and your face was too still. You looked as though you were urging him on, mentally helping him.”

She blinked. This man was dangerously observant, and astute enough to understand what those keen eyes saw. Choosing her words with caution, she said, “There’s nothing wrong with his work. He’s a perfectly competent—”

“At this level,” he interrupted ruthlessly, “competence is not good enough, as you are well aware.”

Of course she was.

“Very well,” she said steadily. “He’s missing nuances.”

“Right. I’ll tell the minister.”

That inconvenient curiosity drove her to ask, “Where do you fit into this?”

His wide, sensuously molded mouth moved in a smile that curled her toes. “I’m a diplomat,” he said, the words almost a taunt.

“Your letter didn’t sound as though—” She stopped and drew in a startled breath. God, how could she have said that? But he didn’t seem like the diplomats she’d known. He stood out, elemental and untamed as a wolf amongst wellfed, domesticated lapdogs. She began again. “I thought you were a businessman.”

His lashes were long and thick and dark, darker even than hers. They drooped for a second, then rose to reveal a cool, unreadable stare. “I have an interest—purely advisory—in a trust that deals with venture capital for ideas, some of which are exported.”

She met the challenge of his glance with a glinting, blue-eyed one of her own. “What will happen to the interpreter? Will he be sacked?”

Unhurriedly he drank some of the whiskey, his expression guarded but assured. In his dinner jacket he was the epitome of elegance, perfectly at home in this luxurious place. “I doubt it very much,” he said with an indifference that came close to being insulting. “He’ll just get extra training. However, that’s not the point. This is an important meeting, and we need the best. You can take his place.”

“No!” The word was out before she was able to stop it.

“Why not?” he asked, that concentrated gaze speculative as he studied her face.

Resisting the compulsion of those gleaming eyes, she parried, “How do you know I’m any better?”

“Just before I came down to dinner I got a fax from Tokyo congratulating me on getting a Japanese secretary,” he said dryly. “That’s good enough for me.”

Any further objection would have been suspicious; it might even give rise to questions. And although eight years ago when she’d done her first job for the hotel the security check had turned up nothing, she wasn’t perfectly safe. She never would be. She knew, none better, that every new person who checked it could turn up a small piece of information that would, if followed through, eventually damn her.

But she said feebly, “I’m hired by the hotel.”

His hard, beautifully chiseled mouth curved into a mirthless smile. “Somebody will contact the hotel management,” he said smoothly.

Neither Liz Jermain, the manager, nor her formidable grandmother would refuse his request. The hotel’s reputation had been built on just such extra services. And that, she told herself sternly, was what she was there for, after all—to make sure that everything went perfectly.

“Well, I was hired as a backup, so it will be all right,” she said, trying not to sound as reluctant as she felt. “I was a bit worried about the other guy. He’s good, but just not quite good enough. I wouldn’t like anything I did to lose him his job.” She stole a sideways glance, wondering whether she had appeased the curiosity her first instinctive refusal must have aroused.

It was impossible to tell. Although he smiled, no warmth reached his eyes, and there was an air of calculation about him that chilled her.

“Nothing you did would lose him his job,” he said enigmatically. “If that happens—and it seems highly unlikely because good Japanese interpreters are fairly thin on the ground in New Zealand—it will be his own inadequacy that does it. So forget about him and think of this as your patriotic duty.”

Did he see the tiny, momentary flicker of pain in her eyes, the sharp, deep inner reaction to his words? “What did Edith Cavell say just before she was shot? ’Patriotism is not enough.’ I prefer to think I owe my loyalty to humanity.”

“Naturally. However, it’s almost impossible to grow up without feeling some sort of emotion for the country one was born in. Especially one as beautiful as New Zealand. How old were you when you left?”

“Eighteen.”

“And where did you go then?”

“To Japan to teach English for a year.”

He gave her another of those assessing glances. “That’s a long way from home and a totally different culture. Were you homesick?”

“Not really,” she said cautiously. “I was lonely, though, for a while.”

“You were an adventurous eighteen-year-old.”

“No more so than most.” She stopped. “You can’t be interested in this.”

His smile had a spark of self-derision in it. “Oh, I’m always interested in a beautiful woman.”

“Then you’re lucky, because there are several in this room who seem more than interested in you,” she said calmly, picking up her bag as she rose to her feet. She’d been conscious of those looks, some surreptitious, more quite open, since she’d been in the bar. For some reason they set her teeth on edge. It must have been this that added the sting to her tone as she went on, “Each one is much more beautiful than I am, I assure you.”

“Sit down.” He didn’t touch her, didn’t even move, but for a moment the breath stopped in her throat. “That was crass,” he said stiffly. “I’m sorry.”

He even looked sincere. Why, then, was she almost certain that he was lying, that his remark had been made intentionally?

It was impossible to imagine him being so insensitive unless he did it deliberately. Behind the spectacular face was a cold, incisive brain, and for some reason he was trying her out.

“Let’s start again,” he said. “What happened after your stay in Japan?”

She could walk away. It would be immensely satisfying, but it would be overreacting, and it would be stupid. Whoever Nicholas Leigh was, he was a guest.

And the resort paid her extremely good money to give the guests what they wanted. If he’d been rude or suggestive, Liz would have been the first to expect her to leave, but he hadn’t.

Silently acquiescing, Mariel resumed her seat and gave herself time to calm down by picking up her drink and sipping it. She was being too sensitive, foolishly so.

“I joined a hotel chain as a management trainee,” she said. “But when they discovered I had a talent for learning languages, they decided I should be an interpreter.”

“Do you do a lot of traveling?” he asked.

Her shoulders moved slightly. “Yes, although not as much now as I used to.”

“Where else have you been?”

“Oh, I had a wonderful six months in Paris honing my French accent, then I spent a couple of years in a Beijing hotel. I’ve been in Malaysia and Russia and Germany, but I’m based in America now.”

“A well-traveled woman,” he observed dryly, his eyes resting on her mouth for a heart-stopping second before flicking up to capture her gaze. “Where do you live?”

“In New York.”

“Why there? I’d have thought Washington was a lot closer, and there’d be more call for your services there surely.”

Lacking the rude intrusion of Peter Sanderson’s earlier catechism, he sounded no more idly interested, yet she was sure he was by far the more dangerous of the two.

“I like New York,” she said defensively. “And I deal mostly with business matters, not the diplomatic service.” Impelled by the need to stop this inquisition, she said, “Where do you live?”

“In London at the moment. Why are you wearing a color that doesn’t suit you?”

Startled, she flashed him an indignant look. “I’m paid to fade into the wallpaper,” she said, then wondered whether perhaps she shouldn’t have admitted her reasons for dressing badly.

Somehow it seemed to give him an advantage she sensed he wouldn’t hesitate to exploit.

“So you wear clothes that make that glorious ivory skin sallow and drain those astonishing teal blue eyes and red-brown hair of color.”

Although his tone was detached, almost indifferent, she detected strong emotions smoldering beneath his elegant, sophisticated exterior. She fought down a keen curiosity, a fierce, consuming awareness that fretted her nerve ends and eroded her hard-won self-sufficiency.

That, of course, was what had caused her first instinctive reaction when he’d suggested she interpret for the New Zealand party. She’d been afraid that if she became more intimately involved with the delegation, she would see too much of him for her peace of mind.

That was what she was still afraid of. The last thing she wanted was to get tangled up with Nicholas Leigh, who was all man and too clever by half.

And a diplomat.

Mutinously she kept silent, relaxing by force of will the hands that gripped her bag.

His glance lingered on the white knuckles as he asked casually, apparently giving up on the previous subject, “So what part of New Zealand did you grow up in?”

“A small town,” she said evenly, trying not to sound evasive, adding, when it was obvious he wasn’t satisfied, “in the King Country.”

“You have family there still?”

“No. My family are all dead.”

“I’m sorry.” Oddly enough he sounded it.

She shrugged. “I’m sorry, too, but it happened a long time ago.”

“So you are entirely alone?” His tone made it a question.

The temptation to invent a lover was almost irresistible, but the hard-won knowledge, gained over the years, that the fewer lies she told the less likely she was to be caught out, stopped such a panicky decision. “Yes,” she said remotely.

He didn’t pursue it. “Do you enjoy your job?”

“Very much. I’ve met some fascinating people, I work in very luxurious surroundings, and I get paid well.”

“You don’t look like a cat,” he said, smiling as she stared at him. It was a subtle smile, complex and enigmatic, and she didn’t know how to deal with it, especially when he went on, “Oh, you move well, but your body is more athletic than sinuous, and the faint hint of intransigence about you is not the smug, slightly taunting feline variety—it appears to be the result of your Viking ancestry.”

“So why a cat?” she asked steadily.

His eyes, his face, his voice, issued a challenge. “Because you sound like one. That’s what a cat asks—comfort, a few novelties to tease the brain, and security. And I doubt if a cat cares who provides for its wants.”

It was an oddly intimate conversation, and he was frighteningly percsptivs. Mariel smiled ironically as she raised her brows. “My looks must be deceiving,” she said lightly. “I don’t think I’m in the least intransigent—”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he interrupted, mocking her.

She’d had enough. Any desire for a cup of tea had long since departed, and she ached with the deep, languid weariness of exhaustion.

“I’m tired, I’m afraid,” she said, smiling, her eyes and face as candid as she could make them. “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you now. Stay and finish your drink,” she concluded as he rose with automatic courtesy. Hastily she leapt to her feet—-too hastily, for she swayed slightly and must have lost color.

Instantly he was beside her, his hand a hard support against her back. “Are you all right?” he demanded.

No, she was not; her head was spinning, and she wished she could blame lack of food. Biting her lip, she drew away as quickly as she could, her nostrils flaring at the faint, barely discernible scent of him, an insidious, inciting mix of musk and salt.

“I’m fine,” she said steadily. “Just tired.”

He made a swift sound of irritation. “You haven’t had dinner, have you?”

“I had a substantial snack before drinks. I’m not in the least hungry,” she told him, hoping that her words convinced him. If anyone presented her with food she might well throw up, because her stomach was churning with something that definitely wasn’t hunger.

His expression unreadable, he looked keenly into her face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was totally inconsiderate of me. I’ll order you a bar meal.”

Something of her revulsion must have shown in her face, for before she could answer he said autocratically, “Then I’ll see you to your room.”

She shook her head. “I sleep in the staff quarters, a hundred yards or so away.”

“I’ll see you there.”

“Mr. Leigh—Nicholas—there is no need. The security here is watertight.”

“My mother,” he explained calmly, “would never forgive me. She had few rules, but those she had were cast in iron and drummed into me as a child. One of them was that when you’ve bought a drink for a woman you see her to her door. And you should know by now that security is never watertight.”

Mariel cast him a wary, exasperated glance. Although he was smiling there was a determination in his expression that told her it was no use; this man would do what he wanted regardless of how she felt.

“Very well then” she said coldly, walking out before him.

The staff who lived on-site were housed in the old stables, which had been converted into a neat complex behind the main hotel. At the end of a wide pathway that curled away beneath magnolia and live oak, the old brick building was sheltered behind a low wall. Between the hotel and staff quarters was a formal garden, where beds of azaleas bloomed beneath the still flowerless branches of crepe myrties. It was April and, while winter had barely loosened its grip on New York, here the night air was cool, but the days were warm and getting warmer.

“A pretty setting,” Nicholas said, looking around.

Pretty? Compared to some of the quarters Mariel had slept in, the compound was palatial! “The owner’s husband is a keen gardener,” she said quietly.

Perhaps Nicholas Leigh was right; perhaps she did like her creature comforts too much. Surely anyone who’d been brought up in comparative luxury, then faced at the age of eight with a sudden descent into poverty and austerity, could be excused for enjoying such beautiful surroundings.

The gentle hush of waves on the beach backgrounded Nicholas Leigh’s voice as he said, “This reminds me a little of Auckland. The same scent—salt and flowers and green growing things.”

“And humidity?”

“You don’t like the Auckland climate?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never lived there.”

“And you never want to.” He let that sink in before asking, “Is it just Auckland you dislike or New Zealand as a whole?”

The words were delivered mildly, but she felt the taunt as clearly as though he’d snarled at her. “There’s nothing for me there now,” she said dismissively, glad they had reached a door of the middle block. “This is as far as you are allowed, I’m afraid,” she said, and held out her hand.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, smiling narrowly.

She shivered, wincing at the spark of electricity that flashed between them again, fierce and fathomless. It took willpower to retrieve her hand without jerking it from his.

“It’s a damned nuisance, isn’t it?” he said almost conversationally. “However, I’m sure we’re both strong-minded enough to resist it.”

She stared at him.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what it is.” An oblique smile barely disturbed the corners of his mouth. “You felt it the moment I did.”

“I did not!” And then, because her indignant response had given her away, she said angrily, “Look, I’m not interested—”

“You challenged me,” he said with a forbidding curtness, “and you knew you were doing it. I could be tempted to take you up on it, but I don’t think it would be sensible.”

There was contempt in his voice, contempt, she realized, directed not only at her. Nicholas Leigh saw this attraction as a weakness and despised himself for it.

Wordlessly she turned, her emotions perilously close to the surface, and slipped through the door, closing it behind her. His frankness had shocked her, and yet a dangerously capricious part of her heart thrilled, because he, too, had no defense against the overwhelming intensity of that physical reaction.

Damn, she thought, Nicholas Leigh was turning out to be a real threat to her peace of mind. Fortunately she was only here for four days.

Nothing could happen in four days.

As she took out her room key, Elise hurried past. “Have you seen Caitlin?” she demanded.

Mariel brought her head up sharply. There had been a real note of fear in the woman’s voice. “No. Why?”

“Oh, God. I’ve looked and looked and looked for her, but she’s not here. One of the housemaids said she saw her hanging around outside. I think she might have run away.”

“Run away?”

Elise drew in a deep breath and calmed down. “To her father. I’ll have to go and look for her.”

“Just wait a moment while I change my shoes and I’ll come and help.”

Mariel came back outside in time to hear Elise say in carefully controlled tones, “Yes, honey, I know you don’t like living here much, but we have to stay here for a while.”

Caitlin’s voice, the whine not entirely hiding her real un-happiness, floated on the humid air. “If you let my daddy come back, we could live in our old house.”

“Oh, darling, we can’t ever go back.”

“We can go and live with him!” Caitlin shouted. “He said so. I heard him. I don’t want to live here, I want to go to California to live with Daddy.”

Mariel hesitated, then, her heart aching for them both, went into her room. Poor Elise was going to have to deal with this herself.

BY THE TIME she arrived at the main building the next morning, the New Zealand interpreter had been shipped out. Mariel was told by Liz Jermain that she was to do whatever was required of her.

After stashing her computer in the business center, she walked briskly along to the room that had been set aside for the delegation to breakfast in, and suffered with as much composure as she could the introductions Nicholas Leigh made. Mr. McCabe, the trade minister, received her with professional affability, and the aides and various other underlings accepted her presence without much comment. Susan Waterhouse gave her a cool nod. Peter Sanderson watched her with an avidity she found both irritating and upsetting.

The morning, she discovered as Nicholas handed her a cup of coffee, was to be spent on the golf course, and as the Japanese interpreter was busy with documents she was on duty.

Nicholas was also a member of the golfing group. He played well, she decided acidly, keeping her eyes away from the controlled line of shoulder and thigh, the smooth skill and grace with which he swung. He certainly had excellent rapport with the Japanese trade minister and his aides, one of whom asked Mariel if she played.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, meeting Nicholas’s eyes without a blink. She most emphatically did not want to displays her mediocre golfing skills in such company.

“A pity,” the man said, smiling.

From then on she took care to stay as far out of the way as she could. She didn’t need the attention.

Nevertheless, the fact that the New Zealand trade minister spoke no Japanese at all meant she had to be close by all the time. Indeed, she found the morning intriguing. The ministers and their aides discussed almost everything but the subject of free trade, which was what had brought both parties here.

Obviously these were just the preliminaries during which each party sized up the other.

Why was she needed at all when Nicholas spoke fluent Japanese, and the Japanese minister equally fluent, if heavily accented, English? Protocol, probably, and the desire not to lose face, and also because a lot could be riding on these preliminaries.

After lunch they spent several hours with the ministers and their cohorts on the rifle range. Nicholas was there, too; he shot well. No doubt he did everything well, she thought, firmly squelching an image of him making love, that lean body poised over hers…

Heat shimmered through her, sweet as honey, draining her of energy and common sense.

“No,” she muttered, earning herself a startled look from a small, exquisitely dressed Japanese gentleman.

“I wonder what other sports they intend to try?” she said, smiling.

He bowed. “I believe we ride horses,” he said politely.

“Oh.” She shrugged. “I don’t ride,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

They smiled at each other.

Golf had at least been comparatively quiet, and the links were beautiful—if one excepted the occasional alligator lurking in the ponds. And they were quiet. In spite of the earmuffs they all wore, the rifle range was noisy. Riding, however, threatened to be painful. She was wondering cynically whether she could claim danger pay when Nicholas said, “Clay pigeons next.”

Starting, because he’d come up behind her, she met his mocking eyes directly. He couldn’t possibly have recognized her boredom because she was an expert at hiding it, so he was just taunting her, seeing how she’d react.

I’ll fix him, she thought, and gave him a dazzling, excited smile before obediently accompanying the group to yet more fusillades of noise.

When at last they stopped shooting and returned to the hotel, she had several discussion documents to translate and type while everyone else went to their rooms. Grateful for the reprieve from one particular man’s company, she made for the office.

“At least I have reasonable hours”, Elise said with commiseration, looking up from her work as Mariel got up and stretched her fingers and back.

“Oh, I get paid well for it. How’s Caitlin today?”

“All churned up. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with her.” The older woman put down the sheets of paper she was sorting and pressed her fingertips to her forehead, smoothing out the frown lines toward her temples. “She swears she’s going to run away to her father. Says he’s going to come and meet her.”

Mariel asked tentatively, “Could he be putting ideas in her head?”

“Not as far as I know,” Elise said. Looking away, she said bitterly, “She got so upset after he called her the first few times that I told him I wouldn’t let her talk on the phone to him anymore because she was unbearable afterwardtan trums and yelling and then crying fit to break her heart.”

Preventing any communication at all didn’t seem to Mariel to be a good idea, but after a glance at Elise’s bleak face she held her tongue. Elise knew her daughter.

The older woman said abruptly, “She still cries in the night and says she’s going to see him soon. She misses him, I guess.”

“Is she going to spend the holidays with him?”

Elise’s mouth clamped shut. “He can’t look after her. He’s getting a new business off the ground—he’s got no time to spend with her. He only sued for custody to teach me a lesson for daring to leave him. It’s so typical of him to just go bullheaded for what he wants and never give a thought to how his actions affect anyone else.”

“Is he fond of her?”

Elise shrugged. “Yeah, he’s fond of her. He even says he loves her, but if loving means you want the other person’s happiness above your own, Jimmy’s only ever loved himself. The counselor said Caitlin just doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that her daddy’s left her, so she blames me for it. She hates me working, but she’s quite happy staying after school with Saranne Beamish in the village. She likes Saranne’s kids. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“A marriage breakup is always hard on the children, but they get over it,” Mariel said soothingly.

From behind came a man’s voice, deep and cool and curt. “Have you finished those documents, Mariel?”

She jumped, but not as high as Elise, whose audible gasp sounded loudly in the room.

“No,” Mariel said, turning swiftly to shield the older woman from Nicholas’s too-observant eyes.

“We need them now,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ll bring them up to Mr. McCabe when they’re done.”

“Thank you.”

After he’d left, Elise said, “God, he’s gorgeous, isn’t he? But his eyes send shivers down my spine. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him. Jimmy only bruised my heart. That guy could scar you for life.”

“I’m sure he’s not violent,” Mariel said, shocked.

“There are different sorts of violence,” Elise said wearily. “I don’t think Tall-dark-and-handsome’s cruel by nature, but I’ll bet he could be if he was provoked enough. You’d better get on with that work.”

The documents were broadly based, without specificsmere lists of suggestions. After translating them, Mariel took them up to the minister’s suite, where she read them through to him, Nicholas and a couple of other men. The older one she recognized with a clutch of foreboding to be a senior diplomat, now retired, whose speciality was Asian affairs. Although he would have known her parents, he showed no signs of identifying her.

That evening each mission was eating separately, no doubt discussing tactics, so her services weren’t required. After dinner and a swim in the pool, she spent a couple of hours or so in her room trying to relax, but the shadowy phantoms of her past pressed closer and closer, robbing her of any hope of rest, let alone sleep.

Finally she gave up the effort and crossed to her window and looked out. The moon hung half-blown in the sky, shedding a pale, hazy sheen over the grounds; lights blazed forth from the hotel, but although the paths were still lit by fairy lamps, no one trod between the trees.

She chose tan slacks and a cool cream T-shirt, slipped a soft cream-and-tan sweater over her shoulders and pulled espadrilles onto her feet, then walked outside, wondering just what restless compulsion drove her into the scented darkness.

Urged on by something primal and heartfelt, an unknown goad, she headed toward the beach, remembering other beaches she’d seen, other coasts, other seas far removed from this—seas that beat against rockbound coasts in Norway, seas that lapped blinding coral sands in turquoise lagoons off Fiji, the wild west coast of New Zealand where waves had half the world to gather and build before they fell savagely onto the cliff-bound rim of land.

Odd that New Zealand should come to mind when usually she avoided all thoughts of it.

Well, no, not odd; the image of a face, all aggressive angles, and a lean, disciplined body that moved with predatory grace had been hovering just behind her eyes ever since she’d first seen Nicholas Leigh.

Even as she shivered he appeared, coalescing out of the darkness on the edge of the woods, his head turned to watch her arrive. Not for a moment did she mistake him for anyone else; she had the unsettling feeling that he had brought her there, called her with a primitive, magical lure that had nothing to do with the mundane.

He didn’t make any of the usual greetings. As though he had expected her, he held out his hand, and as though he had the right, she gave him hers, this time braced for the jolt of pure awareness that raced through her at his touch.

“You can’t see the Southern Cross from here,” he said.

“So?”

She caught the quick flash of white as he smiled.

“I was born under the Southern Cross,” he said. “I hope to die under it one day.”

“Born under it literally?”

“Literally. My parents were sailing when I arrived, too suddenly for them to get back to land. My mother insisted on being on deck. My father said that I looked at the sky as I was born.”

Fascinated, she said, “Perhaps you were imprinted like a baby bird.”

He laughed softly. “Perhaps. Where were you born, Mariel?”

“In Kashmir,” she said, and gave a startled little laugh. “Oddly enough, on a houseboat. I was a month premature.”

She kept her eyes on the beach that spread out before them, white in the vaporous moonlight, but she felt his gaze, keen and piercing as a lance of crystal. It kindled an untamed exultation because his reaction was written in his features, and it was just as helpless, just as wild, as hers.

“So you were born on a boat, too.”

“Quite a coincidence.” Following his lead, she strove to sound matter-of-fact, repressing the astounded excitement that made her feel her whole world was tumbling, racing, shattering, and all she could call on to protect her were the small weapons of her character and willpower.

“A sign, do you think?”

Her attempt at a laugh was blocked somewhere in the region of her heart. “Of what?” she asked. “Careless parents?”

Beneath the amusement in his answering laugh prowled an elemental possessiveness that sent a shiver down her spine. “Perhaps,” he said. “A link, anyway.”

And because she couldn’t allow this, couldn’t let him forge connections between them, she said briskly, “Well, both events occurred a long time ago. I’m more interested in the present. Tell me, what happens tomorrow morning? Any possibility of a few exchanges of opinion about trade or barriers or tariffs? I thought they’d be settling into earnest discussions by now.”

“Let’s sit for a while,” he suggested, turning off the hard-packed strand onto the soft powdery sand by the low dunes.

Relieved, she removed her hand from his to sit down, and by doing so felt that in some symbolic way she’d regained a fraction of her autonomy.

Perhaps recognizing the small declaration of independence, he didn’t attempt to touch her; instead, he leaned back and looked at the stars. “This is just a preliminary sortie. It’s possible that nothing important will actually be discussed this time.”

Although he’d followed her change of subject, Mariel detected a note of indulgence in his words, as if he had consciously decided to allow her a breathing space.

“Then why are you all here?” she asked. “This holiday is costing each country a fortune, and all the ministers are doing is running around showing off to each other!”

His smile was brief and ironic. “Both of these men are new to their jobs—they haven’t met before. As they’re going to be working together, it will make things much simpler if they understand how the other thinks.”

“So that’s why all the macho posturing,” she said with exasperation. “Golf and target shooting. Honestly, when are you men going to give over the world to women and spend all your time playing your childish games without having the affairs of the world hinge on them? That way you wouldn’t do nearly so much damage.”

To her astonishment he laughed again. “Oh, I agree heartily, but diplomacy is conducted along different lines.”

With eyes adjusted to the night, Mariel looked at him shrewdly. “You don’t sound as though you buy into the ethos.”

His smile remained, the amusement in his expression didn’t alter, but she knew as plainly as if she’d seen it that her words had struck some hidden tender spot.

“I’m a diplomat, so I must,” he said evenly. “I agree it can be slow and sometimes infuriating, but often it works. Building a personal bridge can help.”

Recognizing the evasion, she decided to pin this irritatingly elusive man down. “What exactly is your part in all this posturing?”

“My area of expertise is trade.”

Of course, he was a diplomat, and they were experts at avoiding the issue. “So what,” she demanded, “beyond finding out that Mr. Watanabe is the better golfer and Mr. McCabe the better shot, do any of you expect to learn from this expensive exercise?”

“I don’t expect to learn anything,” he said calmly. “I am a mere cog in the wheel, the lowliest of the low.”

She laughed, she couldn’t help it, the sound clear and low and warm in the salty air. “You don’t look the sort of man to indulge in mock humility,” she retorted.

“Mock humility I can manage,” he assured her. “I have been told that the real stuff is beyond me.”

A note in the deep voice snagged her attention. Whoever had told him that had been a woman. Stung, she said mordantly, “I believe it,” as she got to her feet.

With the automatic courtesy she was beginning to expect, he rose, too. In the shifting veils of moonlight his eyes glinted, and she thought with a sudden chill that trading insults with this man could be a dangerous pastime.

“I’d better go back,” she murmured.

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that you’re not expected to mingle with the guests.”

“Well, the resort doesn’t pay me to sit around discovering the inner workings of the diplomatic mind,” she retorted crisply.

“Don’t they allow you time off?”

“Of course they do, but I’m still on the other side of the divide.”

“Are you an employee?”

He’d have found out all about her before recommending that she take the other interpreter’s place, so why the questions? She sent him a swift sideways glance, but his face was unreadable.

“No, free-lance. An agency in New York organizes my jobs for me.”

“And you enjoy your work?”

“Love it,” she said firmly.

“You’re extremely good at it. You have both McCabe and Watanabe eating out of your hand.”

How did he do it? He wasn’t even looking at her, yet her skin pulled tight and she had the unnerving sensation of being totally, completely scrutinized—absorbed, taken in, everything about her measured and assessed.

“They both have a charming, old-fashioned courtesy,” she said dryly.

“The Japanese say you speak their language like a native.”

To satisfy his probing curiosity she said serenely, “When I lived in Tokyo my parents sent me to a Japanese school. In a situation like that you learn fast, believe me. Of course, the year I spent back in Japan when I was eighteen helped refine my accent.”

“And did you live in China and France as a child?”

She smiled, striving so hard for a casual unaffected air that her throat ached. “Hong Kong,” she said. “And for a while I had a French governess who was forbidden to speak English to me.”

“Peripatetic parents”, he said, his lashes drooping to hide his thoughts.

“Very,” she returned steadily. “Nomads”.

Just how nomadic their life had been she hadn’t realized until she went back to New Zealand, a shocked, bewildered eight-year-old plunged into the narrow, restrictive society of a small, unsympathetic country town. Two things had saved her—a kindly neighbor who provided her with uncritical affection, and an extremely good language teacher at the local high school who had seen her talents and helped her regain the languages she had almost lost.

“If I’m to be any good tomorrow I’d better go now,” she said, infusing her voice with a brisk, no-nonsense tone.

“Very well, then.” He sounded amused, as though he recognized her retreat but was prepared to allow her to run from him for the time being, because the result was never in doubt.

CHAPTER THREE

HE WAS TOO BLOODY ARROGANT for his own good, she thought confusedly as she paced along the sand beside his tall presence.

As they were crossing the low band of scrub and palmettos that bordered the beach, something rustled in the bushes. Nicholas moved instantly, sidestepping swiftly so that he was between her and the noise.

“It’s nothing,” she said, surprised. “Perhaps a squirrel.”

“There are snakes here.”

She laughed. “And like all New Zealanders you’re paranoid about them. Don’t worry, the night is cool enough to keep them fairly lethargic. It’s not likely to be an alligator, either. They prefer the golf course. It could be a raccoon.”

His eyes gleamed as he looked down at her. “Snakes don’t worry you?”

“No, I’m used to them.” He didn’t deny his attitude, which secretly impressed her. But then he wasn’t the sort of man whose self-esteem demanded that he pretend invulnerability; he didn’t need the false confidence of bravado.

He kept walking, but she noticed that he stayed alert until they got back to the staff quarters. There he smiled at her and said, “Sleep well.”

She willed herself to relax, but that tingling in her skin and the sensitive reaction between her shoulder blades told her that he watched her until the door closed behind her.

Damn, she thought. He was curious, and for a moment her heart quailed. Then she straightened and went to her room. It was stupid to get into a tizz; he was probably just

interested because she was a New Zealander.

Was he security? No, he was too obvious. Security mem tended to be inconspicuous, part of their usefulness being their ability to fade into the background. Nicholas Leigh, she thought grimly, would fade into no background; there was something about him that made everyone notice him. When he walked into a room people looked, their attention caught whether they wanted it to be or not.

And she didn’t. She might be so attracted to him that her body sang when he was near, but she couldn’t afford to let anything happen. Ah, well, just another three days…

But that night she dreamed of him—explicit, erotic dreams that shocked her and made her feel as though another woman inhabited her skin, a woman whose fantasies had taken over her sleep. Even in her one serious relationship she had never dreamed like that, and David had been a good lover, thoughtful, tender and gentle.

Unfortunately gentleness had played no part in her dreams, and she awoke with the appalled realization that some hitherto unsuspected part of her had recognized and responded to an elemental savagery in Nicholas Leigh.

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