Indiscretions. Robyn Donald
something? Well, my noble Jimmy decided he wasn’t going to share any of his hard-won assets, so he declared bankruptcy. Caitlin and I have nothing.
Appalled, Mariel asked, “Can he do that?”
The older woman gave her a cynical smile. “Honey, if you’ve got a good enough lawyer, you can do just about anything. Oh, I can understand it. He grew up on the island here—in a little house down by the fishing wharf—and he had nothing. It was sheer guts and working his butt off for years that got him where he is. He isn’t about to share any of it. Well, he lost, too, because I’ve got custody, and there’s no way I can afford to fly Caitlin and me out to California. And I’m not letting her go without me.”
The telephone interrupted her. Elise picked it up and said, “Yes, sir, we can do that right away.” When she’d replaced the receiver she said, “Mariel, you’re needed in room 27. The guy wants a document translated from English to Japanese.”
“I thought the New Zealand lot weren’t coming until four,” Mariel complained mildly, getting to her feet. “Oh, well, no rest for the wicked.” With her luck it would be the antagonistic stranger in the bar who wanted her.
“An eager beaver,” Elise said. “Learned any new languages lately?”
Mariel grinned. “Basque. It’s supposed to be the most difficult language in the world.”
“Is it used much?”
“Almost never.” Mariel met her surprised gaze with a slow twinkle. “Only six hundred thousand or so people speak it.”
“Then why learn it?”
“The challenge,” Mariel said cheerfully as she turned to go. “I can’t resist a challenge.”
“Hey, how much do you know?”
“I can say ’good morning’ and ’good evening,’ and I think I might have a handle on ’goodbye.’ Beyond that it’s a mystery.”
She left the room to laughter and went swiftly up the gracious sweeping staircase, trailing her fingers over the elegant curves of the banister, worn smooth by thousands of hands over the years. There was nothing in New Zealand to match this, she thought with enormous contentment. Nothing at all.
The Sea Islands had waxed rich for generations, first on indigo, then on cotton, and always on the efforts of slaves. This glorious building was the original Jermain plantation house, its white pillars like an evocation of the Old South. After the Civil War the family and the plantation had fallen on hard times, until Liz Jermain’s grandmother scraped up the money to join the two flanking buildings to the main house and transform it into a hotel.
Outside room 27 Mariel took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders before knocking. The door opened immediately, and yes, it was the man from the bar.
His eyes, so pale a green they were almost colorless—except for glints of gold blazing through a matrix of jadeheld hers for a moment before the professional politeness in his expression changed to cold aloofness. But he couldn’t prevent a flicker of elemental response.
Shockingly, an inchoate flutter of anticipation in Mariel’s stomach burned suddenly into excitement.
“Good afternoon,” she said, her formal smile hiding a perilously balanced composure. “You want a document translated, I believe.”
His lashes half covered his eyes, intensifying that disturbing glitter. “Yes, from English to Japanese. Can you do it?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Here,” he said curtly, “in this room.”
She did not want to sit at the charming desk beside the magnificent four-poster bed and work while he watched her, and she certainly didn’t care for his implied mistrust. With out thinking, she shook her head. “I use a computer”
“A portable, surely?”
Lord, but her wits had gone begging. “Yes,” she said woodenly. “But—”
“This is confidential, Ms…”
The keen eyes had missed nothing, certainly not the absence of rings on her long slender fingers. “Browning,” she said stiffly.
“How do you do, Ms. Browning. My name is Nicholas Lee.”
Automatically she took the hand he held out. Although his grip was firm it wasn’t painful, but an instant sizzle of electricity made her draw a sharp breath into her lungs. Without thinking, she jerked her hand away.
Damn, the man was dynamite, and he had to know it.
However, nothing of that recognition showed in the hard, handsome face nor in the green-gold eyes, although some foolish, hidden part of her preened at the quick tightening of his mouth and the way his eyes narrowed even further, giving him a hooded, menacing look.
He said smoothly, “I’m afraid I must insist that you work here, Ms. Browning.” He added with an undertone of mockery that whipped across her confidence, “If you wish, I can leave the door open.”
Color heated the soft ivory of her skin. He saw too much. “That won’t be necessary, sir,” she said, striving for the right touch of amusement, the note of casual sophistication that would put him in his place. “I’ll get my computer.”
“You understand that I’ll expect you to translate into Japanese symbols?”
“My computer is quite capable of doing that, and so, Mr. Lee, am I,” she said in what she hoped was a repressive tone.
When she’d arrived back he handed her a letter from a Japanese businessman, one of the country’s most forward-looking industrialists.
“This is the letter I’ve answered,” he said. “You might find it helpful to read it first so that you know what I’m talking about.”
Apparently he had an interest in some new invention. Well versed as she was in the subtleties of Japanese business language, she realized that the industrialist had written to him as an equal.
So he had power.
Well, she didn’t need a letter to tell her that. He reeked of it, she thought snidely; power and the personality to make use of it oozed from every pore of his tall, graceful body.
Doing her best to ignore his potent male presence, she got to work. His name, she realized, looking at the slashing black signature, wasn’t Lee; it was Leigh.
It figured. She wasn’t surprised that his name should have the more complex spelling; he was complex. Not to mention prejudiced, she thought with irritation. He didn’t know her, and yet he had presumed to judge her, and that before she’d been stupid enough to issue her own version of a sexual challenge.
Perhaps he had something against tall redheads who drank mineral water in bars.
Fortunately, because he was having an unsettling effect on her nerves, she had long ago perfected the skill of complete concentration. She needed it now. He’d given her a fairly complicated document which took some time to translate, but eventually she was able to say, “Here you are, sir, it’s finished,” and lay the three sheets down on the gleaming desk.
Clearly he shared her gift of losing herself in work, because she had to speak twice before he looked up from the sheaf of papers he was studying, black brows knotting as those disturbing eyes focused on her face.
“Read it to me, please. In Japanese.”
Too well trained to ask why, she obeyed, her voice slipping through the liquid syllables with confidence.
“You have an excellent accent,” he observed when she’d finished. “You must have learned to speak the language as a child.”
Mariel returned impersonally, “Yes, sir.”
“I see,” he said, a dry note infusing his voice.
She