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
