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
