“You have a natural sexiness.”

Sam leaned a little closer, capturing her gaze with his, and continued, “You are a real woman, Kim.”

She scooted away from him into the corner of the sofa, half scared, half amused. Her heart was racing, yet she wanted to laugh about the absurdity of it all. “Don’t play games with me.”

He took her hand. “But you’re my wife.”

His tone was light, yet for a fraction of a second she caught a glimpse of something dark and smoldering in his eyes. And her heart made a nervous leap.

Ever since KAREN VAN DER ZEE was a child growing up in Holland she wanted to do two things: write books and travel. She’s been very lucky. Her American husband’s work as a development economist has taken them to many exotic locations. They were married in Kenya, had their first daughter in Ghana and their second in the United States. They spent two fascinating years in Indonesia. Since then they’ve added a son to the family as well and lived for a number of years in Virginia before going on the move again. After spending over a year in the West Bank near Jerusalem, they are now living in Ghana again, but not for good!

Hired Wife
Karen Van Der Zee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEDROOM door creaked softly and Kim stirred in the big bed. Through half-opened eyes she saw the man enter—a dark, floating shape in the moon-shadowed room, mysterious, undefined. Outside the open window, palm fronds rustled in the cool sea breeze and she could hear the gentle rushing of the waves lapping onto the beach.

The door closed behind him and he moved toward the bed, soundlessly. She caught a glimmer of white, a dress shirt? Slowly she began to see more. He was tall and she could see the outline of strong, square shoulders. His face was in darkness. She willed her eyes to see, to focus. She noticed the movements of his arms and hands as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. The moonlight silvered over his broad, bare chest.

She could not see his face.

It did not matter. She closed her eyes, waiting, smiling in the dark, wondering where she was. An island?

The breeze floated over the bed, stroking her face, and naked shoulders, carrying the scents of sea and sand and some exotic night-flowering bloom. The sheets were cool against her skin. A slow, languorous sigh escaped her. She felt blissful, sleepy soft, the beginnings of a delicious warmth stirring in her blood.

Waiting, wanting, drifting.

She felt him beside her, felt his body against hers, warm and hard and strong. He put his arms around her and she nestled into his embrace. He was so big and she was so small; he nearly swallowed her.

Happiness suffused her. She belonged in these arms, sheltered, safe. At the center of her, desire stirred. The scent of him filled her and her blood began to tingle through her body as if it were champagne.

“Hello, Kim,” he whispered near her ear.

“Hi,” she whispered back, heady with his nearness.

He began to kiss her, tender kisses by her right ear, her temple, her closed eyes, her cheek. He had reached her mouth. “You smell delicious,” he murmured against her lips, his voice deep, intoxicating.

His hands joined in the caressing and her body sang with his touch. A yearning, deep and real, captured her heart and soul and body—a yearning to love him, this man in her bed, to hold him and cherish him and never let him go.

He whispered something magical and secret she did not understand.

She looked up at his face. It was still hidden in the darkness. Reaching up, she traced her fingers along his hard square jaw, newly shaven, and along his cheeks and nose and wide forehead—a strong, manly face, she knew. She touched her fingertips to his mouth.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

Floating out of darkness into light, bright light, Kim moaned in protest. She wanted to slip back into the velvety darkness, a darkness full of sensuous delights and pleasures.

The sounds of New York City traffic, muffled, familiar, insinuated themselves into her consciousness. She buried her face in the pillow. She wanted the sounds of the waves washing ashore, the sound of whispered words of love, the exquisite sensation of his hands stroking her body. Slowly she inhaled the air, her eyes closed, willing herself to smell the sea breeze, the scent of the man who shared her bed. Nothing.

Surfacing. She struggled against it, not wanting to leave behind the magic of the night, but knowing she had to.

A police car, the siren going full blast, shrieked down a nearby street, shredding the last of the veil of sleep. Kim sighed. There was no denying it; she was awake, totally completely awake. And sadly aware of the cold reality that there had been no lover in her bed last night.

It was the third time in two weeks that she’d had the dream. It was a wonderful dream, no question, but what was the meaning of it? Who was the man? It was a tad disturbing, really, making love with a man she didn’t know. Shame on her! Still, in some mysterious way he seemed familiar, as if she knew him somehow.

She hoisted herself up into a sitting position and with both hands wiped the hair out of her face, over her shoulders. It was a mess; she couldn’t even get her fingers through it.

It didn’t make sense for her to be having a dream like this, especially now. She was fed up with men, at least for the moment.

For a while she wanted no more love and romance to complicate her life. Men demanded so much attention and coddling and ego-stroking; she really was quite tired of it and felt in need of a well-deserved man rest. Now if only Tony would quit bothering her she might find a little peace.

She’d met him at a party three weeks ago, and it hadn’t taken long to realize that the only topic of conversation of interest to Tony, was Tony. Much to her despair, he had taken an immediate fancy to her and was now making a nuisance of himself by devising various crazy schemes to gain her interest.

She was not interested.

Amused, maybe, but not interested. He did have a sense of humor, she had to give him that. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and grinned, thinking of the hideous painting of a half-dead weeping willow he’d sent her as a joke two days ago, accompanied by a poem—something impressively maudlin about how he wept like the willow for being unable to gain her love. Last week he’d sent her reservations on a love boat cruise through the Caribbean. She’d returned them, of course—not that she didn’t want to go on a cruise, but she wasn’t for sale.

Cruise. Islands. Palm trees. She was thinking about the unknown lover in her bed again, the feel of his naked body against hers. She groaned. Stop it, she told herself. Stop it! She struggled to her feet, swaying a little, feeling a distinct lack of energy. The dream sure had taken it out of her.

In the bathroom she turned on the shower and gingerly tested the temperature of the water. Jason, who shared her spacious loft apartment with her, liked his water frigidly cold—some torturous regimen to keep him awake so he could work on his doctoral dissertation, something excruciatingly brainy to do with statistics. She adjusted the temperature and stepped into the warm spray. No more men for a while. She’d concentrate on her career. She was twenty-six and she had plenty of time for them later. No, not them, she corrected herself. She wanted just one man: the right man. And children, too, of course. She’d teach them how to bake cookies and paint and sculpt and sing and dance waltzes. They’d have a blissfully happy, creative, colorful family…

Later.

She turned off the water, dried herself and went back to her bedroom.

She slipped into a long, slim skirt with an exotic, multicolored design and topped it with a white silk T-shirt. Humming a little tune, she brushed her hair until she’d tamed it into some sort of order and tied it back with a scarf the color of sandalwood. When at work she needed to keep her hair out of her face, constrained in a scrunchy or a scarf, or it would end up in a bright halo of out-of-control curls, which made her look even younger than she already did. Blond hair and big blue eyes were the stuff of baby dolls. She made a face in the mirror, then put on some makeup and a pair of long, artsy earrings to add a touch of sophistication.

In the kitchen area she made coffee and contemplated the view from the window—an untidy design of brick walls and rooftops adorned with antennae, water tanks and chimneys. Here and there hopeful souls had created what looked like small gardens of potted plants.

Maybe she needed a change of scenery, to do something different, go somewhere else, get away from the men in her life.

Now where had that thought come from? Why would she even think about a change? She was happy. She loved her work and her roomy loft, she loved New York, and her friends. What else could a person want?

A sexy lover.

“No, I don’t,” she said out loud, glancing up at the sound of a door opening. Jason emerged from his room, dressed in gray sweatpants and a blindingly white undershirt. He was tall, blond and handsome like a Viking, but he had no social life to speak of. Why he hid his drop-dead gorgeous self from the world was anybody’s guess.

“Good morning,” Kim said cheerily, pouring him a cup of coffee. He looked bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and in need of some serious fortification.

“Thanks,” he muttered, taking the coffee from her and leaning his hip against the counter to drink it.

“Sit,” she suggested.

He raked his free hand through his thick hair. “I’ve been sitting all night.”

While she’d been dreaming of her secret lover making passionate love to her in a moonlit room, he’d been conquering the universe of numbers, or whatever genius thing it was he did.

“When you dream,” she asked on impulse, “do you ever have the sense that there’s a message in it?”

“I don’t dream,” he said.

“Everybody dreams,” she returned. “You just don’t remember them necessarily.”

“Which relieves me of the worry of interpreting them.” There was a flicker of humor in his deep blue eyes.

Kim sighed. “I keep dreaming the same thing over and over again and it’s beginning to be a bit…concerning.”

“What type of dream?” he asked. “Is someone chasing you? Are you falling down a bottomless hole?”

“No. It’s more of a…romantic variety. A man I don’t know comes into my bedroom while I’m in bed. He takes off his clothes—”

“You don’t need to go into detail,” Jason said, taking a gulp of coffee.

Kim laughed; she couldn’t help it. She’d done it on purpose, wondering at what point in the story he was going to stop her. “Haven’t you ever had a really wonderful romantic or erotic dream, one that—”

“I told you, I don’t dream.” His face was expressionless. “I’ve got to go back to work.”

She watched his broad, retreating back and grinned.

The dream would not leave her alone; images of lovemaking floated into her mind as she worked, discussing the designs for a line of lamps she had created for a small, exclusive interior decorating firm, which was going to have them manufactured in Honduras.

How many tall, broad-shouldered men were there in Manhattan? Kim had never paid any attention or kept count, but now she saw them everywhere—walking in the streets, sitting in restaurants, riding in elevators, smiling down at her from billboards. She imagined them slipping into her room at night, getting into bed with her, stroking her. She couldn’t help herself; it was embarrassing; it was awful.

The dream followed her as she rode home in a taxi, and stayed with her as she worked at her computer all afternoon. She kept seeing the tall dark man, kept feeling his tender touch, tasting his kisses. And the magic word he’d whispered, sounds that had no meaning to her, floated on the edges of her consciousness—tantalizing, mysterious.

She was going nuts. When a friend called and suggested meeting for dinner, she was so relieved with the distraction that she found herself leaning weakly back in her chair, gulping for air.

“Girl,” she muttered, “get a grip on yourself.”

Coming home later that night, Kim found a message from her brother, Marcus, on the answering machine. He had something of interest to discuss with her, he informed her, and suggested she call him at his office the next morning. In the grip of curiosity, Kim reached for the phone, hesitated and glanced at the clock. No, it was too late to call him at home. His wife Amy, heavily pregnant with their third child, would be asleep already and might wake up. Loving kindness won out over selfish curiosity and Kim put the receiver down with a sigh. The suspense was killing her.

Interesting. What could he possibly mean?

She got ready for bed, stumbling clumsily over her shoes, wishing she knew what Marcus wanted to tell her. At least she didn’t have a boring life. She had a weepy stalker who sent her poems, a secret lover who visited her at night and now a brother with a surprise. She smiled as she rolled into bed. Life was pretty good.

She adjusted the pillow under her head, closed her eyes and felt herself sinking like a rock into sleep.

Again that night the man came softly into her room, took his clothes off and slipped into bed with her. Again, she could not see his face.

“Hi,” she murmured, burrowing into his embrace. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yes,” he whispered, and kissed her deeply.

Outside the window, the palm fronds stirred in the sea breeze.

“Bahibik,” he whispered, a mere breath of sound feathering against her cheek, bewitching her.

She could not see his face, his eyes. With her hands she touched the familiar outline of his cheeks and chin and nose, traced his mouth with her fingers.

“Who are you?” she asked.

She could feel him smile. “You know who I am, Kimmy, you know.”

Kim got Marcus on the phone at ten minutes before eight the next morning. He was always early at his office.

“Kim, remember you’re always saying you want to go back to the Far East one day? To work, for artistic inspiration?”

Kim sighed longingly. “Yes, of course.” If only she could figure out how to do it—find a job over there, inherit some money, win the lottery. The family had lived on the island of Java, Indonesia, for four years and had returned to New York when Kim had been fifteen. She had loved the Far East, loved the international school she had attended and the lush, tropical beauty of the island. She had vowed she would go back when she grew up, to study maybe.

“I’m waiting to win the lottery,” she said to Marcus.

“Well, maybe you won’t need to. Sam’s back in New York, getting organized for…”

Kim’s heart turned over and she didn’t hear Marcus’s voice anymore.

“Sam?” she echoed. “You mean Samiir?”

CHAPTER TWO

EVEN after all those many years, just hearing his name was enough to set Kim’s pulse racing. She amazed herself. How ridiculous could a person be? She swallowed hard. Sam, short for Samiir, the Arab sheikh of her fanciful girlish dreams. She hadn’t seen him in close to eleven years, not since she was fifteen and had been hopelessly, embarrassingly in love with him. He’d been twenty-three. Oh, Lord, she’d made such a fool of herself then.

Sam was Marcus’s college friend and Marcus had brought him home for weekends and holidays when they’d been in graduate school. She’d been in awe of his dark, handsome looks and his calm, self-possessed manner; mesmerized by his enigmatic dark eyes that held a wealth of intriguing secrets and deep passions. He was so…mysterious.

Sam was in reality no sheikh but a full-fledged, passport-carrying American citizen whose Jordanian father and Greek mother had emigrated to the United States when he was ten.

“You remember Samiir, don’t you?” Marcus asked.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah, vaguely,” she said casually.

Marcus gave a hearty laugh. “Sure, sure.”

He wasn’t deceived, of course. Unfortunately Marcus had been keenly aware of her amorous adoration of his friend, but not, she sincerely hoped, of her secret fantasies about him.

A hopelessly romantic girl with a fertile imagination, Kim had often envisioned Sam in long flowing white robes and a cloth covering his head. She’d made up elaborate scenarios of being lost in the desert and being rescued by Sam on a camel, who then brought her back to his tent, full of beautiful rugs and copper pots and large platters of sugary sweets and fresh figs. He always, of course, fell passionately in love with her.

Sam, however, had assured her once, when she had asked, that he had never owned any white robes or worn a cloth on his head. He had smiled magnanimously. “I was ten when I left Jordan, Kim. I wore jeans and T-shirts.” Then he’d laughed. “Don’t look so disappointed, kiddo.”

Kiddo. He’d called her kiddo. She’d been crushed. Well, what could she expect? She was fifteen and looked twelve. She was short and skinny and wore braces on her teeth, and she was his friend’s little sister.

Kim relaxed her fingers around the receiver and tried to focus on the conversation at hand. What had Marcus been saying? She wished her silly heart would calm down.

“What did you say about Sam being in New York?”

She’d heard little about Sam in the past eleven years; Marcus had once told her that he roamed the globe working for his family’s international electronics company.

“He’s here just for a month or so. Rasheed’s Electronics is setting up another manufacturing company on Java and he’s going to live there for who knows how long. He wants someone to get him a house and furnish it and hire servants and that sort of thing.”

“Doesn’t he have a wife to do that?”

“No wife,” said Marcus. “Too much trouble, I think. All the demands she’d make on his time…and then she’d want children, just imagine.” Kim heard the humor in his voice. Marcus was quite happily married himself with four-year-old twin boys, terrors, and the new baby was due soon.

“Anyway,” he continued, “he mentioned Java and I thought of you, how you’ve always wanted to go back. You could do the job easily and you’d be really good, too. I don’t know how much time you’d have for your own artistic and professional pursuits, but you could negotiate an arrangement, I’m sure.”

The Far East. The island of Java.

Sam.

Setting up house for Sam.

Was this a fortuitous opportunity or a temptation to withstand?

A fortuitous opportunity, surely. Kim preferred to look on the bright and positive side of things; it made life so much more exciting. And hadn’t she wondered, a couple of days ago, if she should have a change of scenery? A foreshadowing thought, of course. She believed in omens, in dreams, in intuition.

“He’s coming to my office later this afternoon,” she heard Marcus say. “We have some business to discuss. Why don’t you come by here, say…six? I’d make it dinner, except he has to be somewhere else, so that’s out.”

“Six,” she repeated. “Okay, I’ll be there.”

“She’s perfect,” said Marcus, looking at Kim and then back at Sam, who stood casually by the large window of Marcus’s plush office, suit jacket open, hands in his pockets, radiating masculine appeal. He was observing her closely, seriously doubting her perfection, she was sure.

He was even more handsome than she remembered; older, more mature, his face all hard angles, his body lean and muscled under the expensive suit. He’d briefly taken her hand and smiled politely when she’d come in. “Well, hello, Kim,” he’d said. “What a pleasant surprise to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” she’d replied, her heart about to jump out of her chest. She was grateful he hadn’t mentioned how she was all grown-up now and not the little girl he remembered.

“She’s absolutely perfect,” Marcus emphasized.

Kim felt like a piece of merchandise and suppressed a grin. She tried to look serious and dignified, which wasn’t easy. Being serious and dignified did not come to her naturally. She wished she hadn’t worn the purple dress she had on, even though it was one of her favorites; it was too frivolous and too short and now that she sat there in Marcus’s sumptuous office, facing the sophisticated Sam she wondered what had possessed her to wear it.

“I am,” she said, summoning confidence, looking right into Sam’s eyes. “Absolutely perfect.” Her heart was doing a little dance of excitement. She wanted the job. She wanted to go to the Far East again. She wanted…

“She speaks Indonesian,” Marcus went on. “How perfect can you get?”

“That’s certainly an important asset,” Sam acknowledged calmly. He looked so cool and composed, everything she was not. She pushed a curl behind her ear, wishing she had twisted her hair up in some elegant style instead of having it hanging loose in all its wild and untamed glory.

“And she’s very good with people,” Marcus continued. “She can even cook! Imagine a nineties’ woman who can actually cook real food.”

“Impressive, indeed.” Sam’s mouth quirked up at the corners as he met Kim’s eyes. “Do you do windows?”

“No, but I can type,” she said with mock seriousness.

“She’s being modest,” Marcus commented. “She knows computers, word processing, how to find her way in cyber space, all that stuff. Very useful in case of an emergency.”

Sam’s left eyebrow arched up slightly. “Really?”

Kim nodded. “Really.” He must be finding it hard to believe that the dizzy little blond thing he had known eleven years ago was capable of anything so complicated as operating a computer.

Marcus leaned back in his leather chair. He was enjoying himself. “And she knows how to entertain. She gives fabulous parties,” he boasted. “People even pay her sometimes to throw parties for them.”

“And I can fix things around the house,” she supplied. “Leaky faucets, electrical plugs, that sort of thing. I’m a handy person.”

“She’s not afraid of snakes and cockroaches, either,” Marcus added.

“I’m a true Renaissance woman.” She smiled brightly into Sam’s face.

Sam was smiling now, and Kim’s heart turned a somersault, much to her annoyance. Why was she reacting this way? He wasn’t her type. She liked the more casual, easygoing type of man, the kind of man who wore jeans and sweaters.

But here he was, in his impeccable suit, his dark eyes mesmerizing her, and she felt fifteen again. She was an idiot.

“I’m impressed,” he said. His voice was deep and resonant, a wonderful voice, that would wrap itself around your heart and give you warm fuzzy feelings. Actually maybe even more than warm fuzzy feelings. Oh, shut up, she said silently to herself. He’s not your type. He’s too cool, too self-contained.

“And she comes cheap,” her brother was saying, as if he were selling her off like a slave trader, he a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Kim glared at him. “I am not cheap,” she countered. “I insist on being paid fairly for my services.” She groaned inwardly as she heard her own words. She sounded like a call girl. This whole exchange was beginning to have farcical overtones, which was not a good omen. She needed to present herself as serious, efficient and competent if she wanted to have any chance with the imposing Sam, the successful international business executive.

The problem was that, although she was perfectly efficient and competent, she simply didn’t look it. Curly blond hair, big baby blue eyes and dimples just didn’t add up to a serious appearance. She had trouble sitting still and she laughed too much. And nature had given her full breasts that were hard to hide. The truth was that efficiency and competency weren’t qualities that came to men’s minds when they first met her. It was a cross to bear sometimes.

Sam glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to think about this,” he said noncommittally.

He was not a man of many words, obviously; he hadn’t been eleven years ago. Whatever he was really thinking now, he wasn’t telling. Kim was annoyed. She liked people who were easy to read, easy to know. People who were not afraid of saying what they meant or felt. Sam was not one of these people.

What had she expected? That he’d say, Excellent! You’re exactly the person I’ve been looking for! I’ll have someone get your tickets tomorrow, and let’s talk, you and I, over dinner tomorrow.

No, he was still the same introverted, reticent person, with those same eyes that often seemed impenetrably black, but sometimes glowed with sparks of secret amusement. He did have a sense of humor; he was just so…quiet about it. Often his face gave nothing away. You’d just have to guess what went on in his mind. She didn’t like all that still, deep water stuff.

But when he smiled at her—not the most exuberant smile she’d ever seen, but a smile nonetheless—her heart flipped.

“I have to go now,” he said. “It was a pleasure seeing you again after all these years, Kim.” It sounded sincere enough.

Two days later Kim still hadn’t heard from him. All she had thought of for the last forty-eight hours was Indonesia, the job, feeling suddenly hungry for adventure. Ah, to eat nasi-goreng again, to hear gamelan music, to see the emerald rice paddies!

And she’d thought about Sam.

This was a mistake, of course, she was well aware. In spite of her teenage crush, in spite of the fact that he was stunningly handsome, not to speak of successful and well-manicured, he was not her type. He was too serious, too formal. And it took him much too long to get back to her with an answer. She was beginning to feel nervous and irritable. How long did it take to make a simple decision?

She decided to call him, which was easier said than done, but eventually, after verbally wrestling herself past a series of receptionists, secretaries and assistants, she got the busy man on the phone.

Her heart was beating fast. “Good morning, Sam,” she said, trying to sound businesslike. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you’d had time to consider giving me the job. You’re leaving soon and it would be good to get started on some preliminary work as soon as possible.”

A silence ensued. A short but noticeable one.

“Good God,” he said then, “you weren’t serious, were you?”

Her heart began a nervous rhythm. “Oh, yes, very,” she said in as solemn a tone as she could muster. He thought they’d been joking. Well, she could hardly blame him, considering the way the conversation had developed, and the fact that he’d probably never taken her seriously in the first place. To him she was just Marcus’s silly little sister who’d had a crush on him. Oh, Lord, she hoped he didn’t remember the stupid, naive things she had done to get his attention, all those years ago.

“You want to come all the way to Java to set up house for me? Buy pots and pans, arrange furniture?” he asked, as if he were talking about scrubbing public toilets and mucking out pigsties.

“Yes, I would love to.” She bit her lip.

Another brief silence as he was digesting this. “I don’t believe that that would be what they call ‘a positive career move’ for you.”

“I’m known for my bad career moves,” she said impulsively. “Just ask my poor suffering father.”

“Ah,” he said succinctly, meaningfully.

“But somehow they always work out very well for me,” she explained. “When I make decisions I use my intuition, my creative instincts, rather than my rational mind.”

“And that is supposed to reassure me?” he asked with dry humor.

She kicked herself mentally. “I suppose not. I imagine your life is ruled by logic, reason, common sense and intellect.”

“Employing those tends to work to my advantage, yes.”

Kim made a face at the receiver. He had to be the most boring person in the universe, no matter how handsome he was.

“Well, don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “I know exactly what I want and—”

“This is craziness, Kim,” he said, interrupting her. “I’m not going to facilitate one of your harebrained schemes. I’ll hire someone locally.”

Kim grew hot with sudden anger. He was talking to her as if she were a child, not a grown woman who could make good decisions for herself.

“Sam, I’m not fifteen anymore,” she asserted tightly, trying to control her anger. “This is not a harebrained scheme. I know what I want, and I want to go to Java and—”

“Kim, I have no time for this nonsense. I have a meeting to go to.”

“Sam! I—”

“I must go,” he argued. “Please, do excuse me.”

And the busy man hung up.

Kim was so angry, she could scream. Who did he think he was to hang up on her? To not take her seriously? How dare he!

And who did he think he was going to hire locally? she thought later that day. The frustrated wife of an American contractor or consultant maybe. Someone with time on her hands because she couldn’t get a work permit and have a job of her own. Somebody with no taste and no sense of design, Kim thought, sulkily, who’d cover the walls and beds and furniture with purple cabbage roses and put gaudy plastic flower arrangements everywhere and choose frilly pink lampshades and ruffled pink pillowcases. It would serve him right.

She visualized Sam’s dark, manly head lying on a frilly pink pillow. In spite of her anger, Kim laughed.

Somehow she had to get Sam’s attention. Kim lay in bed, wide-awake, staring up into the dark rafters, plotting, just as she had done when she was fifteen.

Phoning wouldn’t work; he’d just find an excuse to end the conversation. She had to do it face-to-face, with no other people around to distract him or to use as an excuse to get away from her.

She’d ask him out to dinner.

Brilliant!

Not too forward a gesture, really. After all, she was no stranger. He knew her family well, had enjoyed much hospitality in her parents’ house. He would be too much of a gentleman to refuse her invitation, surely? And once she held him captive, eating dinner in a public place, he wouldn’t have any choice but to listen to her. She would be very professional and businesslike and convince him he wanted her to do the job.

The next morning she once again managed to get Sam on the phone, telling the slew of secretaries that she was his sister, Yasmina, calling internationally from Jordan on urgent family business.

“Sam, all I want is a moment of your time,” she said hastily as he answered the phone.

“Kim,” he stated, unsurprised. “I thought you were my sister, Yasmina.”

“You don’t have a sister, Yasmina,” she informed him.

“Yes, I know,” he said dryly.

“But that army of people you’ve got protecting you from the vultures preying on your precious time, don’t know that,” she continued smugly.

“I must speak to them.” His tone held humor, which was reassuring. She didn’t want anyone fired.

She sucked in a deep breath, fortifying herself with oxygen. “Sam, I’m calling to invite you out to dinner.” So there, she’d done it, brazen woman that she was. “Any night this week, whenever it’s convenient for you.”

There was only the slightest of pauses. “I’d be delighted to have dinner with you,” he said then, “but on one condition.”

Her heart sank. He was going to tell her not to discuss the job. “What condition?”

“That you’ll allow me to take you to dinner.”

She laughed, relieved. “Sam—”

“I know what you’re going to say, but let’s not have a big argument over it, shall we?”

“Okay,” she said obediently. It didn’t matter to her who took whom. What mattered was that they sat at the same table and that she had his undivided attention.

“Excellent,” he said. “How about tonight?”

Tonight. He wasn’t wasting any time. “Tonight is good,” she said.

His sister, Yasmina, indeed. Sam grinned as he put down the phone, still hearing the echo of Kim’s bright, singsong voice. He’d known it was her, of course—Marcus’s gregarious sister with the wild blond curls, the Renaissance woman who was comfortable in cyber space, who was not afraid of snakes and who could cook “real” food. And, reckless and impulsive as ever, she wanted to come to Java and set up house for him.

It wasn’t going to happen.

He glanced down at the file on the desk in front of him and couldn’t for the world remember what he had been doing before her call had come through.

Ever since he’d seen her in Marcus’s office a few days ago, she’d been on his mind, which he’d found distracting in the extreme. He was busy and it had interfered with his concentration. When she’d called the first time, asking about the job, he’d been short with her, mostly because he’d been irritated with himself for his inability to stop thinking about her.

And now she had called him again and he knew he wasn’t going to get her out of mind.

Marcus’s lovable, feisty little sister, all grown-up.

It hadn’t taken great powers of observation to see she hadn’t changed much. Spontaneous, vivacious and as charming as ever.

And tonight he was having dinner with her. It would certainly be interesting.

Kim stood in front of her bedroom closet and scrutinized the kaleidoscopic contents in despair. Her clothes were all so hopelessly unsuitable, but she had no time to run out and buy something new.

She loved clothes, but not the formal variety, which were fortunately not required for her work as a freelance commercial designer. She preferred fun, casual clothes, bright colors, playful designs. But for dinner tonight she needed something seriously sophisticated. She groaned with frustration as she rummaged frantically through the hangers hoping to find something halfway acceptable.

And there it was, in the very back: a neat little black suit—sober, proper, bought for the funeral of Great-Uncle Amos last year. She lunged for it with a sigh of relief and put it on the bed. From the back of the closet she excavated a pair of black pumps. Her jewelry box yielded simple gold earrings and a matching chain necklace, a birthday present from her conservative father. She was set.

Now her hair. She’d wear it up, out of her face. She grinned at herself. Boy, was she going to impress Mr. Samiir Rasheed with her businesslike image!

He came for her in a long, sleek limousine.

She was waiting outside the door to her building. The ancient cage elevator was out of order and she wanted to spare him climbing the stairs to the top floor.

The uniformed driver held the door open for her with a flourish and she slipped in beside Sam, taking in the television, computer, phone, fax machine, refrigerator and bar. A company vehicle, designed so the busy executives could continue doing their business while being transported from airports to offices to hotel suites, or perhaps their girlfriends’ apartments.

“Hi,” she said, trying not to sound too bright and peppy. Wearing conservative tan slacks and a deep blue blazer, he managed to look stunning, setting all her nerve endings atingle. She imagined that Sam would look stunning no matter what he wore.

She was sitting close enough to see the fine lines next to his eyes, to notice that his square chin was freshly shaven. Close enough to see sparks of mirth in the depth of his dark eyes.

“I hardly recognized you,” Sam said. “You, in black.”

“Actually I hardly recognized myself.” Kim smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “I only wore this suit once, to a funeral and—” She stopped herself, and heard him laugh.

“A funeral? I hope wearing it now is not an indication of how you feel about having dinner with me.”

“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I hardly ever feel funereal about anything. It’s too depressing.”

“And you’re not a depressed sort of person,” he commented. “At least you weren’t as a girl.”

“No.” This was dangerous territory. She didn’t want him to think of her as the silly girl she’d been, the naive girl madly in love with him. That girl would no doubt have worn red tonight. Kim had the perfect dress in her closet—a deep, rich passionate red to express her real feelings about having dinner with Samiir Rasheed, the man who gave her foolish little heart the flutters, the man who rescued her from a tragic death in her fantasies. Of course they’d never been out to dinner together then, not just the two of them. They’d hardly ever been alone together anyplace, except that one time, in the garden of her parents’ house, at night.

Not a good train of thought. She pushed it aside and glanced out the window at the neon lights, the billboards, the buses and taxis and people rushing along, all of it like a silent movie behind the dark glass of the air-conditioned limousine. An oasis of calm in the turmoil of the city.

Only she didn’t feel calm. She had never before been aware of the power of the past, the pull of memories. It made her angry with herself. She’d been a stupid teenager, for Pete’s sake! What she had been feeling then had no relevance to the present; she was no longer the same person. She was a grown woman now and she was not romantically interested in this cool, enigmatic man in his expensive clothes—no matter how drop-dead attractive and sexy he appeared. At the time Sam had been exotic to her, a volcano of controlled passion, ready to erupt….

She was aware of the faint scent of his aftershave, aware of sitting very close to him. It would be so easy to touch him—his arm, his hand, his thigh. Oh, good Lord what was she thinking? He was just another rich, workaholic businessman, a man who only knew about making money and had no talent for warm, intimate relationships with friends and lovers. He was most likely just a boring human being, a man without a wife and without a social life. He probably played solitaire at night while watching the stock market news on CNN.

Sure, a little voice teased her.

Mercifully it was not a long drive to the restaurant, a very upmarket place she’d never had the good fortune to visit.

“This is great,” she said, studying the wonderful modern decor, the interesting art on the walls. The aromas wafting around were promising; the menu alone was a piece of art.

A waiter in a black suit came to take their drink orders. He talked with a French accent, a real one even.

Kim requested Chardonnay, and caught the dark gleam in Sam’s eyes.

“Ah, yes,” he said evenly, “it’s legal for you to drink now.”

She knew instantly what he was referring to. She’d been well underage when she’d known him, which hadn’t kept her from secretly partaking of a couple of glasses of champagne at her father’s fiftieth birthday party. And Sam had been there. It took an effort to force down the heat of embarrassment that threatened to flush her face.

The champagne had made her brave and wanton. She’d more or less lured Sam into the garden, behind the big hemlock tree, and thrown herself at him, or tried anyway. She wasn’t very practiced at that sort of thing. It was mortifying even to remember it.

However, she was no longer a silly teenager. She was twenty-six, a mature adult, and she had to convince Sam of that so he’d give her the job.

“That was eleven years ago,” she said with a dismissive little shrug, fiddling with her napkin so she didn’t have to look at him.

“Indeed,” he said smoothly, not pursuing the matter like a true gentleman. “So tell me, what has happened with you in these past eleven years, apart from the obvious?”

“Oh, well, in a nutshell?” She laughed. “I argued with my father a lot, went to art school anyway, argued some more, went to graduate school, argued some more and then got a terrific job with an advertising agency until I got bored working on soap campaigns and decided to go freelance to have more artistic freedom.” She stopped to take a breath. “My father keeps thinking that I’m never going to have a real career, but all in all I’m doing quite well, and I enjoy my work. I’m good at what I’m doing and I’ve gotten great contracts. I’m working with architects and artists and interior decorators and—” She was off and rolling, telling him about her work, and every time she wanted to stop, for politeness’ sake—after all he had to get bored just listening to her—he kept asking more questions.

“And now,” he said finally, “you’re ready to give all this up to come to Java for a temporary job finding me a house, buying bath mats and hiring servants?”

“Oh, but it’s so much more than just that.” It could be, anyway. “You make it sound so…prosaic.”

“Setting up house usually is.” No inflection in his voice.

She took a sip of wine and put the glass down. “You told Marcus you wanted a home. You said you wanted something more than just a place to live. That you’re tired of sterile hotel rooms and impersonal furnished apartments.”

He scowled down at his glass. “Yes. I’ve been living like a damned nomad for the last ten years.”

Not in a lean-to or a tent, she was sure. No doubt he’d resided quite comfortably in expensive surroundings. But not in places he’d considered home apparently. It was hard to imagine. Even the shabby little apartment she’d had before she’d been lucky enough to get the loft, had been home. She’d simply made it that way, even buying in the beginning secondhand furniture. It had taken time and effort, but it had still been home—her things, her colors, her decorations and her choice of art on the walls.

“How long will you be living in Indonesia?”

“Five years, probably. Perhaps longer. And this time I’ve decided to get myself a place I can call home, not to rent someone else’s house with someone else’s furniture.”

Only he did not have the time to invest in doing what was necessary—find a house, furniture, servants— Marcus had told her. Setting up a new company, managing and staffing it was going to take all his energies.

What he really needed was a wife, but Kim decided not to point this out to him; it might not be news to him.

So here she was in a classy restaurant in her funeral dress, trying to convince Sam that, since he didn’t have a wife, she was the next perfect person for the setting-up-house job. She stared at his tie, a very nice one, thinking she might as well go straight for it. Just as she was about to launch into her appeal, the waiter came to take their order.

They ordered a first course, something duck-liverish that was artfully arranged on a big white plate and garnished elegantly.

“Food as art, I love it,” Kim said. “It’s almost too beautiful to eat—but I will!” She put her fork in the culinary art piece carefully and took a delicate little bite. It was delicious.

“Okay,” she said, having finished it a while later, “give me the job and I will find you a wonderful house with a great veranda and furnish it and decorate it to your taste and specifications. I will hire you the perfect servants. And if you wish, I will even put on a big dinner or cocktail party when it’s all done so you can show off your new home to your business connections and friends. I will do a fabulous job for you. I am very good at this sort of thing.”

He observed her with a kind of curious speculation. “And your instincts tell you that leaving behind what you’ve built up in New York and trotting off to do this job for me will somehow further your career?”

“I never trot,” she said, “But to answer your question, yes, in a way it will.”

“In a way?” One eyebrow cocked, suspicions raised.

She fiddled idly with the little hoop earring in her left ear. “I have ulterior motives,” she said with a bit of drama.

“Ah,” he said meaningfully. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

So she told him how much she wanted to go back to the Far East, how she loved Java, how there was nothing on earth greener than rice paddies, nothing better than… She went on for far too long, and he was quiet, listening intently as she told him of the wonderful art, the batik of Solo, the carved wood of Jepara, the fascinating wayang plays that went on all night, the delicious food. She explained how good for her creativity it would be to live there, how much inspiration she would get. And when she finally stopped, she could feel her face, flushed and warm, and knew she must look like an excited child. She tucked a loose curl behind her ear and glanced down at her food, as yet uneaten. She felt his dark gaze on her as if it were a touch.

“Fascinating,” he said.

She glanced up and saw him smile.

“All right,” he said, “you’ve got the job.”

Kim locked the door behind her and made a triumphant little dance through the living room. She’d done it! She waltzed into the bedroom and began to undress. And tomorrow she would see Sam again. They’d made plans for her to meet him at his office at six, since she’d be right in the area, and together they’d go to her loft, so he could see what she had done with the decorating and to discuss things further.

She caught her smiling reflection in the mirror. And she had suggested, since it was evening, that he might as well stay and she’d cook them some dinner.

Too excited to sleep, Kim prowled around the living room in her peacock colored kimono, replaying the evening with Sam in her head as if it were a movie, recounting the conversation, seeing Sam’s handsome face in her mind’s eye.

“Why did you never settle down?” she’d asked. He didn’t even own an apartment in New York, but lived in the company penthouse when in town.

“There was never much point,” he’d said with a faint shrug of his shoulders. “I was free to do the work overseas, and most of the time I enjoyed the experience. There was never a reason to stop.”

He had no brothers and sisters, she knew, and when his parents died when he was twenty, he’d lost his parental home. Kim remembered her mother being impressed by Sam’s courteous appreciation of their welcoming him into their home during weekends and holidays, how he’d always brought a thoughtful little gift for her mother to thank her for her hospitality. Kim hadn’t realized it then, but now, as she paced restlessly around the loft, she wondered if Sam had been lonely. Lonely for family and companionship.

And she wondered if he was lonely now, living like a global nomad.

Except for the widowed uncle who ran the company in New York, and one married Greek cousin, all his extended family lived in Jordan and Greece. Although he’d been thoroughly Americanized during his high school and college years, in his younger years he had lived and been educated in Jordan, but spending much time in Greece as well with his mother’s family.

“I don’t have a very strong sense of really belonging anyplace,” he’d said over dinner, and his dark eyes had suddenly been full of shadows. She’d wondered what had been hidden in those shadows. Loneliness? It was an odd thought to have about Sam, who had always seemed so self-reliant, so…together. Yet who could tell what dwelled in the deepest part of people’s souls?

Kim gave a little shiver. How awful it must be to not feel you belonged somewhere, to feel so rootless, to not even have a place to really call your own.

And now he wanted a house that was his, with everything in it belonging to him. A home.

And she was going to help him get it.

They met the next evening at Sam’s office to discuss the job in more detail, then headed home to Kim’s loft so she could show him what she’d done with her own place.

A clown in full circus costume was sitting on the doorstep when Kim and Sam arrived at her building. A sad clown, mouth curved downward, big fat tears painted on his face. He held a bouquet of huge rainbow-colored balloons. Several children had congregated and were laughing and teasing him.

It didn’t take long to figure out what he was doing there and it wasn’t a gig at a children’s birthday party. I Adore You, Kim! one of the balloons read. Please Be Mine, was on another.

“Kim!” he called out as she emerged from the limousine. “Oh, please, Kim, listen to me, my heart is breaking!”

Hers was sinking, like a ton of cement. She was aware of Sam next to her, tall, silent, observing the spectacle. She didn’t need this. A clown was not part of the plan.

“Tony,” she said coldly. “This is enough, d’you hear? It’s not funny anymore. Will you please just stop it?”

He began to sob, big, noisy, wet clown sobs. The children cheered.

“She doesn’t love me!” he wailed between convulsions of grief. “I’m going to die of a broken heart!” The children laughed harder.

Kim took her key and pushed it into the lock, saying no more. She felt Sam behind her, knew he was wondering who Tony was. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” she said casually, loud enough for Tony to hear. “He’s my stalker.”

“Your stalker?”

They got into the elevator. “It’s the newest craze, haven’t you heard?” she asked breezily.

Sam frowned. “Who is this guy? What does he want?”

“I met him at a party three weeks ago, and he sort of trapped me in the corner of a room and bored me with endless self-involved stories about how he is misunderstood as an artist and an actor and how the world owes him respect and admiration. I found it a little hard to take, but I was trying to be nice and I tried to listen, and I think he thought I was…eh—”

“Charming?”

She made a face. “Something like that. I didn’t want to charm him at all. What I really wanted to do was to get away from him.”

“You’re not having a lot of success,” Sam said dryly. “So what else does he do besides play the clown?”

She shrugged carelessly. “Oh, harmless stuff. He sends me things—flowers, paintings, poems, love boat tickets. He leaves sappy messages on my answering machine, nothing dangerous. He’s basically a frustrated, out-of-work, aspiring actor in need of a cause.”

“And he sends you cruise tickets?”

“He has a rich daddy.”

The clanging elevator struggled its way to the top floor. She wondered what Sam was thinking of the rattling old contraption, what he would think of her rather unusual living quarters.

She’d spent the morning housecleaning, shopping for food and getting ready for Sam’s visit. Her plan was to cook something simple yet delicious, not wanting to overdo things by offering him something extravagantly expensive and ostentatious. Simple, yet elegant was the key. She’d made a cold sauce of olive oil, Gorgonzola, prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, to be tossed with hot pasta and lots of parsley and chopped walnuts. It was ready apart from cooking the fettuccini and assembling the salad. The washed greens were in the crisper, the lemon-ginger dressing was made.

She opened the door to the loft, looking forward to a nice evening, and stopped dead in her tracks. A man lay sprawled on her sofa, asleep—or dead, or in a coma, you couldn’t tell by the way he lay there—lifeless, motionless, his mouth slack, one arm dangling off the side.

CHAPTER THREE

IN STUNNED silence, Kim took in the man’s appearance, all thoughts of a nice dinner with Sam fading into the distance. He looked like something that had crawled out of a swamp with his long, unkempt hair, his wild, woolly black beard, his old, ragged jeans. His shoes were off, muddy hiking boots the size of ocean liners. A bulky backpack, worn and faded, lay on the floor with half of its filthy contents spilling out onto her lovely Navajo rug.

She did not know this man.

Sam stood beside her in the door, calmly surveying the scene. For some reason she couldn’t make herself speak. This was the moment for comic relief, to say something witty, something clever, something…anything.

“And who is this one?” asked Sam casually, as if he were already resigned to the fact that her life was littered with weird men, and that here was yet another specimen.

She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she answered, tonelessly.

A short, significant silence. “You don’t know?” he inquired, as if he found it hard to believe.

“No.” She didn’t dare meet his eyes. She kept staring at the huge man on her sofa. His chest was moving up and down, so he wasn’t dead. She supposed she should be grateful for small mercies.

So, what do I do now? she asked herself. What do you normally do when you come home and find a derelict passed out on your sofa? Call the police?

“How did he get in?” Sam asked practically.

She ventured a look at him. He looked very clean, very respectable, very…sexually appealing. Everything the comatose stranger was not. “I don’t know,” she said again.

“I think there’s someone else here, too.” Sam gestured casually toward the bathroom, where she now heard the noise of running water. A moment later the door opened and Jason emerged, naked apart from a blue towel wrapped around his hips. Water drops glistened on his manly shoulders. Apparently he’d just had one of his many showers to set him up for a night of serious brain work.

Jason was the only person she couldn’t blame for making an appearance while Sam was around—after all, he lived here. However, did he have to show up in all his half-naked glory?

Her hopes of making a dignified impression on Sam had been duly crushed. Why had she even thought she could pull it off, she who had such undignified friends, led such an undignified life? How could she possibly expect him to take her seriously now? She’d asked him to her apartment for a civilized visit and instead he’d found an idiot clown on her doorstep, a swamp creature passed out on her sofa and a naked Adonis in her bathroom. All she really wanted was the chance to go back to the Far East for a while. Was that too much to ask? Why were the gods playing games with her, first dangling the opportunity in front of her, then yanking it out of reach? It just wasn’t fair.

She didn’t normally indulge in self-pity, but now she was truly being tested. She had the momentary impulse to just crumple to the floor, curl up in a ball and cry her heart out like a little girl. But that would not improve matters. Nothing could.

And she was right. The situation did not improve; it got worse.

“I hope it was okay for me to let him in,” said Jason, indicating the inert body on the sofa. “He said he was your cousin.”

“My cousin?” She only had two male cousins. One was a balding accountant in New Jersey, the other a red-haired student in dental school. “This is not my cousin. I don’t know who he is.” There was a desperate little shrill in her voice that embarrassed her.

The stranger stirred and opened his eyes. He gazed around dazedly.

Kim took a step forward on wooden legs, fury rushing through her, hot and fast. She glared down at him. “Who are you?” she demanded sharply. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

He focused his eyes and a slow smile crept over his hairy face. “You know who I am, Kimmy, you know.”

She froze. There was something nightmarishly familiar about those words. And then it came to her.

The dream.

Her secret lover.

The stranger on the sofa reached out to her with his big hand, and she stepped back instinctively, nearly tripping over his boots. Boots like boats.

And then she knew.

Oh, God, she thought, it’s Jack! Jack with the big feet. A horrifying thought occurred to her. Had she been dreaming of Jack? Of this repulsive man on her sofa? Of course he hadn’t always been repulsive. He’d been clean and shaven once—seven, eight years ago when she’d been barely out of high school and hopelessly naive. She’d loved him for his charm and generosity, hoping marriage would change his excessive drinking and irresponsible behavior.

She closed her eyes. I can’t bear this, she thought. I want him out of here. Now.

He kept smiling his dim-witted smile at her. It was like some awful slow-motion film sequence. She saw Jason standing by the bathroom door in his towel, Sam in front of the bookcase, hands in his pockets of his trousers, silently observing the sorry scene, not interfering. And then the door flung open and the clown barreled in.

“Kim! I—” He glanced around the room, at the other men, then back at her, apparently stumped for words. Now all four were staring at her.

Jack shifted his big body on the sofa in an effort to sit up. He did not succeed and slumped back down. “Remember, Kim?” he muttered.

“No,” she said hotly. I’ll kill him if he says anymore, she thought wildly.

“We eloped, Kim. We eloped.”

Her heart could not sink any lower—there was no lower place to go. But then, it didn’t matter anymore. She’d had enough.

Kim gritted her teeth, took a deep breath and glared at Jack with all the ferocity she could muster.

“You’re drunk,” she said with disgust. “I want you out of here now, this minute!”

“Don’t you remember, Kim?” he went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “We eloped. Remember the island? It was so…the sea was so blue and the palm trees—” He stopped, as if talking was too much effort.

She didn’t want to hear anymore. Not about the sea or the palm trees, not anything to do with her lovely dream.

“I want you out of here,” she repeated. “Go home.”

“Home?” His face was all dull confusion. “I want you back, Kim,” he said plaintively. “I wanna be with you.”

She decided not to react to this. “I’m going to call you a cab and you can go to your mother’s house.” She’d run into his mother quite by coincidence a couple of weeks ago, in Macy’s, had chatted politely for a few minutes, gathering the news that Jack was on a trip around the world and was coming home soon. She’d never thought of it again. Thank you, thank you, she said to the gods, at least I know his mother is still around.

She made for the phone, only to find Sam was already doing the honors. He gazed at her as he was talking into the phone, ordering a taxi in a businesslike tone. His face was impassive, giving nothing away. She could only imagine what went on behind that inscrutable exterior, and it wasn’t good, she was sure. She clenched her hands and turned away, gathering strength.

One down, one more to go. She turned to Tony, who had taken off his orange wig. “And you!” she exploded. “I’ve had enough of you! If you don’t stop bothering me I’m calling the police, and I’ll call my uncle, who’s a pit bull lawyer, and you’ll wish you’d never met me! Go get yourself a job! Get yourself a life! Out!” She marched right up to him, as if to push him out through the open door. He didn’t budge, but gazed sadly down at her with his painted clown face.

“But you’re my life, Kim,” he pleaded.

“Get yourself a psychiatrist!”

He sighed. “I think I’ll go to Hollywood.”

“Now there’s a good idea!” She pointed past him out the door. “It’s that way.”

He turned and shuffled out and she slammed the door behind him. She drew in a deep breath. She felt energized. Ah, a little fury did a person good!

Jack had hauled himself up in a semierect position and buried his head in his hands.

“Put on your boots,” she ordered, pushing the offensive things closer to him with her foot.

He mumbled something inaudible and reached over to retrieve them. Jason came out of his room, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. She hadn’t realized he’d left the scene. He moved past her toward Jack.

“Let me get his gear.” Jason bent down, stuffed Jack’s filthy belongings back into the backpack and hauled it out the door.

She glanced around for Sam. He had opened the beeping microwave oven and had extracted a mug, which he was delivering to the mumbling Jack. Warmed-up leftover coffee, Kim guessed.

“Drink this and make it fast.” Sam’s tone was impressive, full of cold authority.

Jack took the cup and drank it obediently while Sam towered over him.

Ten minutes later peace of a sort had returned to the loft. Sam and Jason had dragged the stumbling Jack and his gear into the elevator and into a taxi. Back in the loft, Jason had retreated to his room and Sam was sitting in a chair, observing her calmly. She was overwhelmed with a mixture of embarrassment and despair, but fought not to show it.

“How about a drink?” she asked, seeking refuge in social graces, wishing he would just magically disappear from her loft.

“Thank you, yes.” Was there humor in his eyes? Surely she was mistaken.

“I have Chardonnay,” she offered. She’d bought it to have with dinner. She didn’t have anything else; she never drank the strong stuff.

“That will be fine.”

Happy to have something to do she rushed into the kitchen, got the bottle out of the refrigerator and managed to open it without breaking off the cork or crashing the whole thing to the floor.

She took out a wineglass and filled it. Knowing she was in a gulping state of mind, she poured herself a glass of mineral water. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and tried to look calm and in control as she handed Sam his glass.

“I’m sorry for the distraction,” she said lightly, as if she had merely dispensed with a minor annoyance.

He gave a crooked little smile. “There was always a lot of distraction when you were around. I seem to remember you were often surrounded by a retinue of odd-ball friends.”

“These guys are not my friends!” she said defensively.

“What about that Viking in there?” Sam gestured in the direction of Jason’s room. “He seems decent enough.”

“Oh, I never introduced you, did I?”

“It was a bit confusing, with your husband drunk on the sofa and him wearing a towel,” he said forgivingly.

Under other circumstances she might have laughed, but not now. She glared at him. She was trying to rescue the embarrassing situation, but he wasn’t going to let her. “Jack is not my husband and never was,” she stated, feeling defeated already. And we were never together on any tropical island, either, she wanted to add, but didn’t. They’d only looked at travel brochures and fantasized a lot.

Sam stretched out his long legs and made himself more comfortable in his chair. “He seemed to think you two had eloped.”

“We did.” Oh, God she didn’t even want to think about her stupidity. She gulped down some water.

“You did?”

“We started out eloping, we just didn’t finish.”

“Ah,” he said meaningfully. “What happened?”

She’d seen the error of her ways in the nick of time. Jack’s car had expired from old age in the middle of a small town in New Jersey. Stranded by the road without money, listening to Jack suggesting they steal the car parked nearby, she’d finally seen the light.

Kim decided to give Sam the short version.

“His car broke down, and I got a headache.”

He nodded understandingly. “That’ll do it.”

He was laughing at her. She’d had enough. Enough of him, enough of men in general. She came to her feet.

“You might as well go, too, Sam. There is no point in wasting your time here.”

“You promised me dinner.”

“I’ll give you money for a hamburger.” Her knees were trembling. She wanted him out. She wanted to be alone to lick her wounds in a dark corner.

One dark eyebrow lifted fractionally. “Why are you angry with me?”

“You’re laughing at me! I hate men,” she added to her own surprise. She had never said that before; it was a rather sweeping statement. “I’m going to ensconce myself in an ashram somewhere and learn to meditate and get in touch with my higher self and forget about men. No more men.”

“I thought you were coming to Java with me.” He took a leisurely drink of wine. He seemed so calm, so relaxed, she couldn’t stand it.

“I imagine you’re seriously regretting your decision, so I’ll let you off the hook.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. She wished he’d get up and leave. She was feeling dangerously fragile, as if she might break down any minute. It was not a good feeling.

He rose and stood in front of her. “I thought you wanted to go to Java,” he said quietly. “What’s going on here, Kim?”

It was the tone of his voice, the quietness that suddenly made her throat close. Tears pressed behind her eyes. She could not believe it; she wasn’t the weepy type. She hardly ever cried.

And she wasn’t going to do it now, not even standing in the rubble of her hopes. She swallowed the constriction in her throat, blinked her eyes, composed herself. Well, she tried.

“You don’t want somebody like me working for you. Somebody flighty and incompetent who holds company with clowns and derelicts.” To her horror, her voice shook. Then, to her surprise, she heard him laugh.

“Ah, the drama, Kim,” he said. “You didn’t come across as flighty and incompetent at all when you booted those two jokers out the door. That was quite an impressive performance.”

Well, it had been, actually, come to think of it. Her spirits lifted marginally.

Sam took her hand and smiled. “Fix me that dinner you promised me,” he said. “And afterward I’d like to talk about my house.”

For a moment her breath would not come. All she was aware of was his face and the warmth of his big hand holding hers, and his dark eyes as they gazed into hers.

I’m a fool, she thought. I’m such a fool.

“So, who shall we say I am?” she asked. “Your personal assistant? Your interior decorator? Your housekeeper?”

They were sitting on the sofa, drinking coffee. Kim was feeling better, much better. She’d cooked him her delicious little dinner, executed to perfection. He’d studied her portfolio, admired the decor of the loft and they’d discussed his requirements, likes and dislikes concerning dwelling places and their interiors. Her confidence had returned and she was beginning to feel like her normal happy self again.

“Somehow I don’t think anyone will believe that,” he said, giving her an amused look.

She could well imagine what people might think. Personal assistants, interior decorators and housekeepers were readily available locally and importing one from the other side of the world might raise questions. She smiled. “Saying I’m your sister, Yasmina, is not going to work, either.”

He laughed, reaching out to touch her hair. “Not with your coloring, no.”

He only barely touched her head and she hardly felt his hand, yet it seemed such an intimate gesture that her heart turned over in her chest and her breath caught in her throat. She looked into his eyes and couldn’t tear her gaze away. She couldn’t believe what was happening to her, she who had sworn off men.

“I suppose we could say you’re my mistress,” he said evenly, “which is not the truth, but they’d believe it.”

The devilish glint in his eyes belied his level tone and she knew he was playing a game with her.

“Mistress? Me? Not on your life. I’m not going to be a kept woman, not even a pretend one.”

He raised a brow in question. “Why not?”

“I find it distasteful,” she said loftily. “In the extreme.”

“Because it would imply you’d be having a sexual relationship with me?” He leaned back against the sofa cushions, apparently curious rather than offended.

Just like a man not to understand this. She sighed. “No.”

“Oh, good,” he said, quasirelieved. “I was beginning to think you found me unappetizing.”

Oh, sure, she thought, looking at his handsome face, seeing the faint smile.

“Why then?” he asked.

“Because,” she said patiently, “it would imply that I was getting paid or maintained in return for sexual favors.”

“Ah,” he said. “I understand. You have a high moral code.”

A high moral code. It sounded so saintly. She didn’t feel saintly in the least, but if he wanted to think that, okay, why not. She smiled breezily. “My mother taught me well,” she said for good measure.

He laughed. “Of course, I should have known.”

“However,” she went on, “since I’ll be looking for a house and furnishing it and doing all those cozy housewifely things, we could just tell them I’m your wife. It will simplify matters.” She could play the game, too. She smiled innocently.

His eyebrows shot up and she laughed. “Oh, don’t you worry,” she said sunnily, “I have no designs on you.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “That was eleven years ago. Boy did I have designs on you then.”

He nodded in agreement. “You owe me big,” he said with dry humor in his voice.

The answer was not what she had expected. “Owe you?”

“You tempted me mercilessly and I had to be good.”

“You had to be good?”

“You were my friend’s little sister and I was offered hospitality in your home, which was very valuable to me, since your mother was an excellent cook. Needless to say fooling around with you was not a good idea. Apart from the fact, of course, that you were a mere child.”

“And flighty and silly. Don’t remind me.”

“Okay,” he agreed magnanimously.

“Besides, that’s all in the past. It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” he said deadpan. “It would be very disappointing to discover you hadn’t fine-tuned your seduction techniques in the past eleven years.”

There had to be something clever to say to that, but her scrambling mind could not come up with it. Instead she shrugged lightly.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.