скачать книгу бесплатно
“Yes,” she said huskily, trying not to swallow.
Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug, but she knew he’d noticed her response. However, his voice was almost indolent, as he said, “You’re the right build and height to be of German descent. Although your coloring looks more Norse.”
Of course he wasn’t so crude as to scrutinize her tall, longlimbed body. Nevertheless, although his dark lashes hid his eyes, she felt exposed to the naked force of his interest, and to her horror her skin pulled tight and an unfamiliar sensation prickled in her breasts. Appalled, she wondered how the mere sound of a man’s—a stranger’s—voice could produce such a violent and unwanted physical response.
“It was,” she returned dismissively, “just a family story, and almost certainly untrue. Families get the weirdest ideas about their antecedents.”
“Ah, all those ancestors who were supposed to be descendants of kings and turn out to have worked as swineherds on the royal estates,” he said, a note of irony coloring the deep voice. “It’s a natural human instinct, I suppose, to put the best gloss on one’s circumstances.”
Once more her eyelids flew up. She met a gaze that was cool and glinting, a face that was a subtle challenge. He must know, she thought dazedly.
No, he couldn’t!
Dry-mouthed, she grabbed for equanimity. “I suppose it is. What did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Leigh?”
He waited until the waitress had departed, then said, “What is wrong with the New Zealand interpreter? And please call me Nicholas, as I fully intend to call you Mariel from now on.”
She drank some mineral water, grateful for its cold fizz and soothing passage down her raw throat. “What made you think there was something wrong?” she countered, unsure of the correct way to deal with this.
“Your face and my own instinct. If I hadn’t been sure of it, that swift glance you exchanged with your Japanese counterpart would have convinced me.”
Dismayed, she said, “You can’t have seen anything in my expression!”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure no one else did. As I said, I happened to be wondering already, and your face was too still. You looked as though you were urging him on, mentally helping him.”
She blinked. This man was dangerously observant, and astute enough to understand what those keen eyes saw. Choosing her words with caution, she said, “There’s nothing wrong with his work. He’s a perfectly competent—”
“At this level,” he interrupted ruthlessly, “competence is not good enough, as you are well aware.”
Of course she was.
“Very well,” she said steadily. “He’s missing nuances.”
“Right. I’ll tell the minister.”
That inconvenient curiosity drove her to ask, “Where do you fit into this?”
His wide, sensuously molded mouth moved in a smile that curled her toes. “I’m a diplomat,” he said, the words almost a taunt.
“Your letter didn’t sound as though—” She stopped and drew in a startled breath. God, how could she have said that? But he didn’t seem like the diplomats she’d known. He stood out, elemental and untamed as a wolf amongst wellfed, domesticated lapdogs. She began again. “I thought you were a businessman.”
His lashes were long and thick and dark, darker even than hers. They drooped for a second, then rose to reveal a cool, unreadable stare. “I have an interest—purely advisory—in a trust that deals with venture capital for ideas, some of which are exported.”
She met the challenge of his glance with a glinting, blue-eyed one of her own. “What will happen to the interpreter? Will he be sacked?”
Unhurriedly he drank some of the whiskey, his expression guarded but assured. In his dinner jacket he was the epitome of elegance, perfectly at home in this luxurious place. “I doubt it very much,” he said with an indifference that came close to being insulting. “He’ll just get extra training. However, that’s not the point. This is an important meeting, and we need the best. You can take his place.”
“No!” The word was out before she was able to stop it.
“Why not?” he asked, that concentrated gaze speculative as he studied her face.
Resisting the compulsion of those gleaming eyes, she parried, “How do you know I’m any better?”
“Just before I came down to dinner I got a fax from Tokyo congratulating me on getting a Japanese secretary,” he said dryly. “That’s good enough for me.”
Any further objection would have been suspicious; it might even give rise to questions. And although eight years ago when she’d done her first job for the hotel the security check had turned up nothing, she wasn’t perfectly safe. She never would be. She knew, none better, that every new person who checked it could turn up a small piece of information that would, if followed through, eventually damn her.
But she said feebly, “I’m hired by the hotel.”
His hard, beautifully chiseled mouth curved into a mirthless smile. “Somebody will contact the hotel management,” he said smoothly.
Neither Liz Jermain, the manager, nor her formidable grandmother would refuse his request. The hotel’s reputation had been built on just such extra services. And that, she told herself sternly, was what she was there for, after all—to make sure that everything went perfectly.
“Well, I was hired as a backup, so it will be all right,” she said, trying not to sound as reluctant as she felt. “I was a bit worried about the other guy. He’s good, but just not quite good enough. I wouldn’t like anything I did to lose him his job.” She stole a sideways glance, wondering whether she had appeased the curiosity her first instinctive refusal must have aroused.
It was impossible to tell. Although he smiled, no warmth reached his eyes, and there was an air of calculation about him that chilled her.
“Nothing you did would lose him his job,” he said enigmatically. “If that happens—and it seems highly unlikely because good Japanese interpreters are fairly thin on the ground in New Zealand—it will be his own inadequacy that does it. So forget about him and think of this as your patriotic duty.”
Did he see the tiny, momentary flicker of pain in her eyes, the sharp, deep inner reaction to his words? “What did Edith Cavell say just before she was shot? ’Patriotism is not enough.’ I prefer to think I owe my loyalty to humanity.”
“Naturally. However, it’s almost impossible to grow up without feeling some sort of emotion for the country one was born in. Especially one as beautiful as New Zealand. How old were you when you left?”
“Eighteen.”
“And where did you go then?”
“To Japan to teach English for a year.”
He gave her another of those assessing glances. “That’s 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 for a cup of tea had long since departed, and she ached with the deep, languid weariness of exhaustion.
“I’m tired, I’m afraid,” she said, smiling, her eyes and face as candid as she could make them. “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you now. Stay and finish your drink,” she concluded as he rose with automatic courtesy. Hastily she leapt to her feet—-too hastily, for she swayed slightly and must have lost color.
Instantly he was beside her, his hand a hard support against her back. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
No, she was not; her head was spinning, and she wished she could blame lack of food. Biting her lip, she drew away as quickly as she could, her nostrils flaring at the faint, barely discernible scent of him, an insidious, inciting mix of musk and salt.
“I’m fine,” she said steadily. “Just tired.”
He made a swift sound of irritation. “You haven’t had dinner, have you?”
“I had a substantial snack before drinks. I’m not in the least hungry,” she told him, hoping that her words convinced him. If anyone presented her with food she might well throw up, because her stomach was churning with something that definitely wasn’t hunger.
His expression unreadable, he looked keenly into her face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was totally inconsiderate of me. I’ll order you a bar meal.”
Something of her revulsion must have shown in her face, for before she could answer he said autocratically, “Then I’ll see you to your room.”
She shook her head. “I sleep in the staff quarters, a hundred yards or so away.”
“I’ll see you there.”
“Mr. Leigh—Nicholas—there is no need. The security here is watertight.”
“My mother,” he explained calmly, “would never forgive me. She had few rules, but those she had were cast in iron and drummed into me as a child. One of them was that when you’ve bought a drink for a woman you see her to her door. And you should know by now that security is never watertight.”
