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Kim’s heart turned over and she didn’t hear Marcus’s voice anymore.
“Sam?” she echoed. “You mean Samiir?”
CHAPTER TWO
EVEN after all those many years, just hearing his name was enough to set Kim’s pulse racing. She amazed herself. How ridiculous could a person be? She swallowed hard. Sam, short for Samiir, the Arab sheikh of her fanciful girlish dreams. She hadn’t seen him in close to eleven years, not since she was fifteen and had been hopelessly, embarrassingly in love with him. He’d been twenty-three. Oh, Lord, she’d made such a fool of herself then.
Sam was Marcus’s college friend and Marcus had brought him home for weekends and holidays when they’d been in graduate school. She’d been in awe of his dark, handsome looks and his calm, self-possessed manner; mesmerized by his enigmatic dark eyes that held a wealth of intriguing secrets and deep passions. He was so…mysterious.
Sam was in reality no sheikh but a full-fledged, passport-carrying American citizen whose Jordanian father and Greek mother had emigrated to the United States when he was ten.
“You remember Samiir, don’t you?” Marcus asked.
She sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah, vaguely,” she said casually.
Marcus gave a hearty laugh. “Sure, sure.”
He wasn’t deceived, of course. Unfortunately Marcus had been keenly aware of her amorous adoration of his friend, but not, she sincerely hoped, of her secret fantasies about him.
A hopelessly romantic girl with a fertile imagination, Kim had often envisioned Sam in long flowing white robes and a cloth covering his head. She’d made up elaborate scenarios of being lost in the desert and being rescued by Sam on a camel, who then brought her back to his tent, full of beautiful rugs and copper pots and large platters of sugary sweets and fresh figs. He always, of course, fell passionately in love with her.
Sam, however, had assured her once, when she had asked, that he had never owned any white robes or worn a cloth on his head. He had smiled magnanimously. “I was ten when I left Jordan, Kim. I wore jeans and T-shirts.” Then he’d laughed. “Don’t look so disappointed, kiddo.”
Kiddo. He’d called her kiddo. She’d been crushed. Well, what could she expect? She was fifteen and looked twelve. She was short and skinny and wore braces on her teeth, and she was his friend’s little sister.
Kim relaxed her fingers around the receiver and tried to focus on the conversation at hand. What had Marcus been saying? She wished her silly heart would calm down.
“What did you say about Sam being in New York?”
She’d heard little about Sam in the past eleven years; Marcus had once told her that he roamed the globe working for his family’s international electronics company.
“He’s here just for a month or so. Rasheed’s Electronics is setting up another manufacturing company on Java and he’s going to live there for who knows how long. He wants someone to get him a house and furnish it and hire servants and that sort of thing.”
“Doesn’t he have a wife to do that?”
“No wife,” said Marcus. “Too much trouble, I think. All the demands she’d make on his time…and then she’d want children, just imagine.” Kim heard the humor in his voice. Marcus was quite happily married himself with four-year-old twin boys, terrors, and the new baby was due soon.
“Anyway,” he continued, “he mentioned Java and I thought of you, how you’ve always wanted to go back. You could do the job easily and you’d be really good, too. I don’t know how much time you’d have for your own artistic and professional pursuits, but you could negotiate an arrangement, I’m sure.”
The Far East. The island of Java.
Sam.
Setting up house for Sam.
Was this a fortuitous opportunity or a temptation to withstand?
A fortuitous opportunity, surely. Kim preferred to look on the bright and positive side of things; it made life so much more exciting. And hadn’t she wondered, a couple of days ago, if she should have a change of scenery? A foreshadowing thought, of course. She believed in omens, in dreams, in intuition.
“He’s coming to my office later this afternoon,” she heard Marcus say. “We have some business to discuss. Why don’t you come by here, say…six? I’d make it dinner, except he has to be somewhere else, so that’s out.”
“Six,” she repeated. “Okay, I’ll be there.”
“She’s perfect,” said Marcus, looking at Kim and then back at Sam, who stood casually by the large window of Marcus’s plush office, suit jacket open, hands in his pockets, radiating masculine appeal. He was observing her closely, seriously doubting her perfection, she was sure.
He was even more handsome than she remembered; older, more mature, his face all hard angles, his body lean and muscled under the expensive suit. He’d briefly taken her hand and smiled politely when she’d come in. “Well, hello, Kim,” he’d said. “What a pleasant surprise to see you.”
“It’s nice to see you, too,” she’d replied, her heart about to jump out of her chest. She was grateful he hadn’t mentioned how she was all grown-up now and not the little girl he remembered.
“She’s absolutely perfect,” Marcus emphasized.
Kim felt like a piece of merchandise and suppressed a grin. She tried to look serious and dignified, which wasn’t easy. Being serious and dignified did not come to her naturally. She wished she hadn’t worn the purple dress she had on, even though it was one of her favorites; it was too frivolous and too short and now that she sat there in Marcus’s sumptuous office, facing the sophisticated Sam she wondered what had possessed her to wear it.
“I am,” she said, summoning confidence, looking right into Sam’s eyes. “Absolutely perfect.” Her heart was doing a little dance of excitement. She wanted the job. She wanted to go to the Far East again. She wanted…
“She speaks Indonesian,” Marcus went on. “How perfect can you get?”
“That’s certainly an important asset,” Sam acknowledged calmly. He looked so cool and composed, everything she was not. She pushed a curl behind her ear, wishing she had twisted her hair up in some elegant style instead of having it hanging loose in all its wild and untamed glory.
“And she’s very good with people,” Marcus continued. “She can even cook! Imagine a nineties’ woman who can actually cook real food.”
“Impressive, indeed.” Sam’s mouth quirked up at the corners as he met Kim’s eyes. “Do you do windows?”
“No, but I can type,” she said with mock seriousness.
“She’s being modest,” Marcus commented. “She knows computers, word processing, how to find her way in cyber space, all that stuff. Very useful in case of an emergency.”
Sam’s left eyebrow arched up slightly. “Really?”
Kim nodded. “Really.” He must be finding it hard to believe that the dizzy little blond thing he had known eleven years ago was capable of anything so complicated as operating a computer.
Marcus leaned back in his leather chair. He was enjoying himself. “And she knows how to entertain. She gives fabulous parties,” he boasted. “People even pay her sometimes to throw parties for them.”
“And I can fix things around the house,” she supplied. “Leaky faucets, electrical plugs, that sort of thing. I’m a handy person.”
“She’s not afraid of snakes and cockroaches, either,” Marcus added.
“I’m a true Renaissance woman.” She smiled brightly into Sam’s face.
Sam was smiling now, and Kim’s heart turned a somersault, much to her annoyance. Why was she reacting this way? He wasn’t her type. She liked the more casual, easygoing type of man, the kind of man who wore jeans and sweaters.
But here he was, in his impeccable suit, his dark eyes mesmerizing her, and she felt fifteen again. She was an idiot.
“I’m impressed,” he said. His voice was deep and resonant, a wonderful voice, that would wrap itself around your heart and give you warm fuzzy feelings. Actually maybe even more than warm fuzzy feelings. Oh, shut up, she said silently to herself. He’s not your type. He’s too cool, too self-contained.
“And she comes cheap,” her brother was saying, as if he were selling her off like a slave trader, he a graduate of Harvard Business School.
Kim glared at him. “I am not cheap,” she countered. “I insist on being paid fairly for my services.” She groaned inwardly as she heard her own words. She sounded like a call girl. This whole exchange was beginning to have farcical overtones, which was not a good omen. She needed to present herself as serious, efficient and competent if she wanted to have any chance with the imposing Sam, the successful international business executive.
The problem was that, although she was perfectly efficient and competent, she simply didn’t look it. Curly blond hair, big baby blue eyes and dimples just didn’t add up to a serious appearance. She had trouble sitting still and she laughed too much. And nature had given her full breasts that were hard to hide. The truth was that efficiency and competency weren’t qualities that came to men’s minds when they first met her. It was a cross to bear sometimes.
Sam glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to think about this,” he said noncommittally.
He was not a man of many words, obviously; he hadn’t been eleven years ago. Whatever he was really thinking now, he wasn’t telling. Kim was annoyed. She liked people who were easy to read, easy to know. People who were not afraid of saying what they meant or felt. Sam was not one of these people.
What had she expected? That he’d say, Excellent! You’re exactly the person I’ve been looking for! I’ll have someone get your tickets tomorrow, and let’s talk, you and I, over dinner tomorrow.
No, he was still the same introverted, reticent person, with those same eyes that often seemed impenetrably black, but sometimes glowed with sparks of secret amusement. He did have a sense of humor; he was just so…quiet about it. Often his face gave nothing away. You’d just have to guess what went on in his mind. She didn’t like all that still, deep water stuff.
But when he smiled at her—not the most exuberant smile she’d ever seen, but a smile nonetheless—her heart flipped.
“I have to go now,” he said. “It was a pleasure seeing you again after all these years, Kim.” It sounded sincere enough.
Two days later Kim still hadn’t heard from him. All she had thought of for the last forty-eight hours was Indonesia, the job, feeling suddenly hungry for adventure. Ah, to eat nasi-goreng again, to hear gamelan music, to see the emerald rice paddies!
And she’d thought about Sam.
This was a mistake, of course, she was well aware. In spite of her teenage crush, in spite of the fact that he was stunningly handsome, not to speak of successful and well-manicured, he was not her type. He was too serious, too formal. And it took him much too long to get back to her with an answer. She was beginning to feel nervous and irritable. How long did it take to make a simple decision?
She decided to call him, which was easier said than done, but eventually, after verbally wrestling herself past a series of receptionists, secretaries and assistants, she got the busy man on the phone.
Her heart was beating fast. “Good morning, Sam,” she said, trying to sound businesslike. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you’d had time to consider giving me the job. You’re leaving soon and it would be good to get started on some preliminary work as soon as possible.”
A silence ensued. A short but noticeable one.
“Good God,” he said then, “you weren’t serious, were you?”
Her heart began a nervous rhythm. “Oh, yes, very,” she said in as solemn a tone as she could muster. He thought they’d been joking. Well, she could hardly blame him, considering the way the conversation had developed, and the fact that he’d probably never taken her seriously in the first place. To him she was just Marcus’s silly little sister who’d had a crush on him. Oh, Lord, she hoped he didn’t remember the stupid, naive things she had done to get his attention, all those years ago.
“You want to come all the way to Java to set up house for me? Buy pots and pans, arrange furniture?” he asked, as if he were talking about scrubbing public toilets and mucking out pigsties.
“Yes, I would love to.” She bit her lip.
Another brief silence as he was digesting this. “I don’t believe that that would be what they call ‘a positive career move’ for you.”
“I’m known for my bad career moves,” she said impulsively. “Just ask my poor suffering father.”
“Ah,” he said succinctly, meaningfully.
“But somehow they always work out very well for me,” she explained. “When I make decisions I use my intuition, my creative instincts, rather than my rational mind.”
“And that is supposed to reassure me?” he asked with dry humor.
She kicked herself mentally. “I suppose not. I imagine your life is ruled by logic, reason, common sense and intellect.”
“Employing those tends to work to my advantage, yes.”
Kim made a face at the receiver. He had to be the most boring person in the universe, no matter how handsome he was.
“Well, don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “I know exactly what I want and—”
“This is craziness, Kim,” he said, interrupting her. “I’m not going to facilitate one of your harebrained schemes. I’ll hire someone locally.”
Kim grew hot with sudden anger. He was talking to her as if she were a child, not a grown woman who could make good decisions for herself.
“Sam, I’m not fifteen anymore,” she asserted tightly, trying to control her anger. “This is not a harebrained scheme. I know what I want, and I want to go to Java and—”
“Kim, I have no time for this nonsense. I have a meeting to go to.”
“Sam! I—”
“I must go,” he argued. “Please, do excuse me.”
And the busy man hung up.
Kim was so angry, she could scream. Who did he think he was to hang up on her? To not take her seriously? How dare he!
And who did he think he was going to hire locally? she thought later that day. The frustrated wife of an American contractor or consultant maybe. Someone with time on her hands because she couldn’t get a work permit and have a job of her own. Somebody with no taste and no sense of design, Kim thought, sulkily, who’d cover the walls and beds and furniture with purple cabbage roses and put gaudy plastic flower arrangements everywhere and choose frilly pink lampshades and ruffled pink pillowcases. It would serve him right.
She visualized Sam’s dark, manly head lying on a frilly pink pillow. In spite of her anger, Kim laughed.
Somehow she had to get Sam’s attention. Kim lay in bed, wide-awake, staring up into the dark rafters, plotting, just as she had done when she was fifteen.
Phoning wouldn’t work; he’d just find an excuse to end the conversation. She had to do it face-to-face, with no other people around to distract him or to use as an excuse to get away from her.
She’d ask him out to dinner.
Brilliant!
Not too forward a gesture, really. After all, she was no stranger. He knew her family well, had enjoyed much hospitality in her parents’ house. He would be too much of a gentleman to refuse her invitation, surely? And once she held him captive, eating dinner in a public place, he wouldn’t have any choice but to listen to her. She would be very professional and businesslike and convince him he wanted her to do the job.
The next morning she once again managed to get Sam on the phone, telling the slew of secretaries that she was his sister, Yasmina, calling internationally from Jordan on urgent family business.
“Sam, all I want is a moment of your time,” she said hastily as he answered the phone.
“Kim,” he stated, unsurprised. “I thought you were my sister, Yasmina.”
“You don’t have a sister, Yasmina,” she informed him.
“Yes, I know,” he said dryly.
“But that army of people you’ve got protecting you from the vultures preying on your precious time, don’t know that,” she continued smugly.
“I must speak to them.” His tone held humor, which was reassuring. She didn’t want anyone fired.
She sucked in a deep breath, fortifying herself with oxygen. “Sam, I’m calling to invite you out to dinner.” So there, she’d done it, brazen woman that she was. “Any night this week, whenever it’s convenient for you.”
There was only the slightest of pauses. “I’d be delighted to have dinner with you,” he said then, “but on one condition.”
