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
