people. He could defend himself against the Siamese crocodile and the armed bandits who sometimes roamed the Golden Triangle. He knew when the king cobra was in season and how to avoid the fifteen-foot-long, lightning fast serpent with its fatal bite. He understood it was a gross insult to point his toe at someone, according to Thai thinking, and that the national pastime was gambling, whether it was on a cockfight or a boxing match.
As a boy, he had once searched out the source of the Mississippi: Lake Itasca. As a man, he had gone in search of something more elusive. What he had discovered was a simpler time and place, and a people who hadn’t changed in hundreds of years.
What he had found, Simon reflected, was himself.
“Must be the alcohol making me wax philosophical,” he said by way of an explanation, gazing down into the dregs of his drink.
There was an insistent tug on his sleeve. “Hey, boss, you want another beer?”
Simon turned his head. A boy of eight or nine was standing beside him.
He didn’t want another drink, but there was something about the kid, something about his eyes.
“Sure.” Simon flipped him a coin. “And keep the change.”
The small face broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, boss. Beer right away.”
Maybe the hardest lesson he’d had to learn in the past year was that he couldn’t rescue everyone like this street kid. So he did what he could.
“Which isn’t very much, is it, Hazard?” he acknowledged as the boy set the glass down, brown liquor sloshing over the sides, and took off with his newfound wealth.
He couldn’t do anything about the boy, but he could—and would—do something about the woman.
Simon watched as the redhead approached the man behind the bar. Damn, if there wasn’t something familiar about her. He had the strongest sensation that he’d seen her before.
He stared unabashedly. Why not? Everybody else in the Celestial Palace was. Not that it seemed to bother her. She appeared oblivious to the stares and the whispers. This was a woman, he realized, who was used to being noticed, who expected to be noticed.
She slid her sunglasses up into her hair and looked directly at the bartender. The noise level dropped off for an instant and Simon clearly heard her say, in a voice that sent cool shivers down his spine, “Perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for someone.”
The man answered in accented English, “Looking for who, lady?”
The din of voices, clinking glasses and a crooning Elvis Presley picked up again. She leaned over the counter and said something Simon couldn’t make out.
The bartender raised his hand and pointed. He was pointing in the direction of Simon’s table.
She turned. Without the sun at her back, without the dark glasses obscuring her features, Simon saw her clearly for the first time. She was stunning, but not in any conventional sense of the word. Her hair was too red. Her eyes were too green. Her cheekbones were too prominent. Her nose was too aristocratic. Her mouth was almost too perfect.
He had seen that face before.
His gaze dropped to her slender shoulders, her generous breasts, her slim waist, her long, long legs.
He had seen that body before. He could swear it.
She walked toward him, stopped in front of his table and looked down her nose at him. “Are you Simon Hazard?”
He refused to alter his expression. “What if I am?”
“I believe we have an appointment, Mr. Hazard.”
“An appointment?”
“For three o’clock.”
He resisted the urge to glance at his watch. “Is it three o’clock already?”
“Five minutes past,” she said, consulting the slim gold band on her wrist.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he muttered dryly.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” He snorted and drained his glass to the last drop. “Having fun?”
Apparently, she chose to ignore his attempt at making a witticism. “Are you Simon Hazard?”
He might as well confess. “The one and only.”
She thrust out her right hand. Simon wondered if he was supposed to shake it or kiss it. “I’m Sunday Harrington,” she informed him.
Sunday. He supposed, with a name like that, she’d heard them all.
Sunday, fun day.
Sunday in the park with George.
Solomon Grundy buried on Sunday.
Sunday afternoon.
Sunday school.
Sunday’s child.
Never on Sunday.
“Sunday Harrington?” The name rang a bell. He studied the initials on her handbag: a stylized, intertwining S and H. Then it suddenly dawned on him. “S. Harrington stands for Sunday Harrington.”
“Brilliant deduction.”
He bit off a brief and rather crude expletive. The legs of his chair hit the floor of the Celestial Palace with a resounding thud. “I assumed the S stood for Sidney or Sheldon or Stanley.”
“You assumed incorrectly.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not a man.”
She seemed to be biting the corners of her mouth. “I’m not a man. I would think that was obvious, even to you.”
It was.
“You’re my client.”
“I’m your client.”
Bloody hell, she was his client.
That’s when he recalled reading in the newspapers—it had been a few years ago now—about a fashion model who always dressed in pink or purple or red, despite conventional wisdom that redheads should avoid those colors.
That’s when Simon Hazard remembered the last time he’d seen this woman. She had been larger than life, literally, and she had been wearing several tiny scraps of purple material that left little, if anything, to the imagination.
Simon blew out his breath expressively. As a matter of fact, the first and last time he had seen Sunday Harrington, she had been wearing next to nothing....
Two
