people began drifting toward the bar. Guy, however, was taking his time. As though he were waiting for everyone else to leave, Luke thought uneasily, and moved over to have one last chat with the Japanese delegation. Then he went back to the table and said with a friendliness he was far from feeling, “Come on, Guy, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I could tell you something,” Guy mumbled.
“Oh?” Luke said casually. “What’s that?”
Guy shot him a crafty look. “I’m going to tell her first,” he said, swaying on his feet.
“Her?”
“Our esh-esteemed waitress.”
“What about her?”
“Nope. Her first.”
Under cover of the hum of conversation and laughter, Luke said very quietly, “You leave Katrin alone, Guy. Remember what I said about Amco Steel?”
“Thish-this is for her own good,” Guy said, blinking owlishly.
“Then tell me about it.”
“Tomorrow. At breakfast.” Guy chuckled. “You’ll have to wait, Luke.”
“Fine,” Luke said, as though it were of no interest to him whatsoever. “Let’s go to the bar, that’s where the action is right now.”
For well over an hour, Luke wandered from group to group in the bar, never staying long, always trying to keep Guy in sight. But Andreas and Niko from Greece wanted to show him a fax they’d just received and when Luke looked up, Guy had vanished. He said, “Andreas, that’s good news. I think we should have a talk about this once I get back to San Francisco, can I call you? And now will you excuse me, I want to talk to Guy Wharton for a moment.”
When he questioned one of the waiters, the young man said he’d seen Guy heading for the side door of the resort. As Luke hurried along the corridor, he was stopped by an elderly statesman from Japan, who with impeccable courtesy wished him a protracted goodbye. Holding his impatience rigidly in check, Luke replied with equal good manners. Then, almost running, he headed outdoors.
The side door opened onto a walkway that split into two, one to the guest parking lot, the other to the staff lot. Trusting his intuition, Luke took the path to the staff area. To muffle his steps he kept on the grass, simultaneously wondering if he was overreacting. Was he really going to find Guy and Katrin together? He did know one thing: he didn’t trust Guy, sober or drunk. Especially not drunk.
Then he stopped in his tracks as he heard voices, Guy’s slurred, Katrin’s quiet, but edged with panic. So they were together. Although not, by the sound of it, from Katrin’s choice.
He was going to do his level best to protect her from whatever threat Guy posed.
But first he hoped to find out exactly what that threat was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUKE skirted the dogwood and tall shrub roses, whose scent teased his nostrils, and saw that Guy had cornered Katrin several feet away from the staff parking lot. Her back was to a clump of birch; Guy was looming over her, one hand clamped around her elbow. Although his stance was far from steady, he was talking with relative coherence.
“I e-mailed a friend of mine this afternoon,” he was saying. “Wanted to be sure of the facts before I said anything. It was a friend in San Francisco.”
Katrin flinched as though he’d physically struck her; with desperate strength she tried to tug her arm free. “I don’t want to hear this,” she said, “it’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Oh, yes, it does. We both know what I’m talking about.” He gave an uncouth burst of laughter. “A stain on your reputation. How’s that for starters?”
To Luke’s puzzlement, Katrin suddenly sagged against the white trunk of one of the birches. She looked defeated, he thought. Broken. What the hell was going on?
Guy laughed again. “I see you understand what I’m talking about. Well, I’ve got a little proposition for you. You come to my room, say in ten minutes, and we’ll forget the whole thing. But if you don’t, I’ll make sure before I leave here tomorrow morning that you don’t have a job—they wouldn’t want someone with your little secret working for them, now would they?”
Katrin said nothing. It wasn’t just defeat, Luke thought. It was despair. As though Guy had pushed her too far, to a place where she was defenseless. What was her secret? And why did she react like a startled deer whenever San Francisco was mentioned?
As though her silence infuriated him, Guy said nastily, “Room 334. In ten minutes—you be there, okay? If not, I’ll smear your name over every newspaper in Manitoba and you won’t get a job anywhere.”
He dropped her elbow and started weaving along the path toward the lodge. Luke sank back into the shadowed bushes, thorns scratching his neck and hands. Then he stayed very still, scarcely breathing. Guy stumbled past, never once glancing at the rosebushes. When he’d vanished around a bend in the path, Luke carefully extricated himself from the branches. His suit would never be the same again, he thought, and in a few long strides reached the woman who was still cowering under the birch trees.
“Katrin,” he said, “are you all right?”
She stared at him as though she’d never seen him before, as though he were some kind of apparition. She was trembling all over, Luke saw with a surge of compassion that rocked him to the roots. “What’s wrong?” he said gently, and reached out for her.
She shrank from him. “Don’t touch me,” she quavered, “I can’t stand it! Just go away. Please.”
“I can’t do that…you’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you? Tell me about it, and perhaps I can help.”
Help? he thought blankly. Get involved? Him? Normally he never got involved in the lives of others.
“No one can help,” Katrin said with such a depth of hopelessness in her voice that Luke was chilled to the bone.
“What was Guy talking about? What’s this secret all about?”
Her shoulders drooped. “So you heard him.”
“He let it drop after dinner that he had something to say to you. He’s a bad actor, we both know that. Hell, the whole conference knows it. So I followed him here.”
With none of her usual grace, Katrin pushed herself away from the tree. “Luke, this has nothing to do with you. Stay out of my life…I keep asking you, and you just don’t get it.”
“Are you going to his room?”
“So that’s what’s bothering you,” she flared. “If you can’t have me, then no one else can?”
Luke winced. Then he said in a hard voice, “Guy Wharton’s a sleaze. You can do better than him, Katrin…and no, I’m not referring to myself.”
“Oh, Luke, I’m sorry,” she cried, “I shouldn’t have said that. I hurt you, didn’t I? I know I’m doing this all wrong.
