this time, again without result. Pressing his ear to the door, Luke could have sworn he heard a guttural snoring coming from Guy’s room. So Katrin had been right; she had nothing to fear from Guy. Not tonight, anyway.
He’d make double sure of that. Taking a piece of paper from his pocket notebook, Luke scrawled a very succinct message on it, knelt down and inserted it under the door, and then headed upstairs to his suite.
Guy wouldn’t be telling the management or the media anything tomorrow. Not if he valued his own skin.
If only he, Luke, could fix the turmoil in his gut as easily. Or did he mean his heart, not his gut?
Back in his own bedroom, he packed quickly, then went to stand by the window, gazing out over the black waters of the lake. If this were a story, and not real life, he’d be at the airport right now. That would be a tidy finish to an episode that had totally unsettled him. Unfortunately real life required him to get up in the morning, go to breakfast, say goodbye to his cohorts, including Guy; and face Katrin again.
Luke knew a good many swearwords, having grown up in a rough and tumble mining town in the bush. Not one of them seemed remotely adequate to his feelings. All he hoped was that he wouldn’t dream about her again. That would really be the final straw.
Luke did dream, tangled and distorted dreams in which Katrin, in a ridiculously ruffled wedding dress and her ugly glasses, was arm in arm with his father, who was equipped with snorkel gear and the financial section of the newspaper. Then Katrin and Guy were out on the tarmac accompanied by a trio of Icelandic ponies draped in peasant skirts. Katrin was jeering at Luke as he boarded his plane. He woke with that ugly laughter echoing in his ears.
He rubbed his eyes. At least she’d been wearing clothes; another night of erotic dreams would have finished him off. He had no idea what the dream was trying to tell him, or why Guy was in it. But he’d stake his bottom dollar that Guy was nothing to Katrin. She was genuine, every emotion she’d ever shown Luke coming straight from her heart.
Not that this made any difference.
Luke climbed out of bed, restlessly working the muscles in his bare shoulders. The best thing in this whole mess was her advice. Forget me, she’d said. And he had every intention of doing so, just as soon as he could.
If he pushed it, he could leave the resort in an hour and a half. Go for it, Luke, he thought, and headed for the shower. He checked out on his way to the dining room, leaving his bag at the front desk, and took his seat at the table. The young man called Stan was pouring Rupert’s coffee. With an uncomfortable mingling of relief and pure rage, Luke saw that Katrin was taking someone’s order over by the far wall.
She’d gotten her tables changed so that she wouldn’t have to talk to him.
We’ll see about that, thought Luke, and asked for black coffee. When he’d finished eating, he said a quick round of goodbyes and crossed the width of the room. Katrin was gathering the used dishes from one of her tables. He stopped beside it, aware that several people were within earshot, and said pleasantly, “I just wanted to say goodbye, Katrin, and thank you for everything you’ve done all week.” A statement that should leave plenty to her imagination.
She straightened, holding a heap of dirty plates; she looked as though she’d had as little sleep as he had. She said politely, “Goodbye, sir. Have a safe journey.”
Her eyes didn’t look polite. Far from it. He said, “I’ve already told you you’re wasted as a waitress—you’re far too intelligent. You should leave here, go to a city and get a job more suited to your IQ. Go to New York, for instance. Or to San Francisco.”
Her breath hissed between her teeth; her fingers tightened around the pile of plates. He added softly, “I dare you. To throw them at me, I mean.”
“That might jeopardize my tip, sir,” she said, giving him a brilliant, insincere smile. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
“Goodbye, Katrin,” Luke said; and heard, to his inner fury, the edge in his voice. The hint of rawness that said, more clearly than words, that this was no ordinary goodbye.
He turned on his heel, nodded at a couple of Italians and left the dining room. It was an anticlimactic ending to an episode as inconclusive as it had been unnerving: his last contact with a woman who had aroused him sexually and emotionally in ways he could only deplore.
Temporary madness. That’s all it was. And the cure? To get as far away from here as he could and never come back.
To forget Katrin Sigurdson. Her beauty and laughter, her adventurous spirit and her independence. Her body. Her unspoken secrets.
To get his life back on track. Where it belonged.
Luke picked up his bag from the front desk and went outdoors to the parking lot. As he drove toward the road, his back to the resort and the glimmering lake, he told himself he was glad to be leaving. Of course he was.
He’d worked very hard to construct his life. He wasn’t going to allow a blue-eyed blonde, no matter how beautiful, to disrupt it.
And that was that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FIVE days after he’d left the resort, Luke parked his sleek silver sportscar in the garage of his ultramodern house in Pacific Heights, and went inside. As always when he’d been away, he was struck by how impersonal and stark the rooms were, with their angled white walls, designer furniture, and the cold gleam of highly polished parquet. Not for the first time, he thought he should sell the house.
What had possessed him to buy it in the first place?
To show that he’d arrived, he thought dryly. That Luke MacRae from Teal Lake had a prestigious address in San Francisco, a city many considered America’s most beautiful. And, of course, to cut any last ties with Teal Lake. No one from there would have lived in a cement and glass box painted white and trimmed with metal.
He’d outgrown the house; which had nothing to do with its vast floorspace. What he should do is purchase some land outside the city and build a house out of cedar and stone, with a view of the beach and the rolling surf of the Pacific. Yeah, he thought. He might just do that. He’d check out the acreages that were available, and find an architect who dealt in anything other than postmodern.
Luke opened the mail, turned on his computer to scan his emails, and listened to the four messages on his telephone; three were from women he’d dated. Then he wandered over to the huge expanse of plate glass in the living room and gazed out. Another reason he’d bought the house was for the spectacular view of the city. Sailboats dotted the turquoise waters of the bay; the distant hills were a misty, cloud-shadowed blue. It was midafternoon. He should go to his office headquarters, housed in the elegant spire of the Transamerica Pyramid. Show his face and make sure everything was ticking over the way he liked.
There’d been no messages from Katrin.
How could there be? For one thing, she didn’t have his address; for another, she had no reason to get in touch with him and every reason not to.
So far, he hadn’t succeeded in forgetting her.
He’d gone out with two different women in New York, both ambitious and successful women, each of whom had let him know she’d be happy to warm his bed.
He
