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
