The Maddening Model
The Maddening Model
Suzanne Simms
Hazardous DutyMountain guide Simon Hazard couldn't believe Sunday Harrington was his latest client. She'd probably never hiked one day of her privileged life! But it was Simon who had sweaty palms and palpitations. And they had nothing to do with roughing it in the jungle, and everything to do with Sunday's long, long legs… . Dangerous Curves Sunday wasn't about to give Simon the satisfaction of proving she was all body and no brains. Men like him were all alike - uncivilized and very dangerous. And if she wasn't careful, they'd wind up exploring a lot more than their lush little paradise!
The Maddening Model
Suzanne Simms
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one is for Jayne Ann Krentz,
whose friendship through the years
has been worth more to me than
diamonds or emeralds, rubies or sapphires.
Contents
One (#ua1fd9387-efef-5102-8b15-63047beae451)
Two (#u5549097a-40bd-5267-a468-0c8420e8e500)
Three (#u21e56902-2592-500c-8c15-4e57d0b22416)
Four (#u0b52c12c-bcf5-54c7-a96a-d158b1432442)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
A Word About Rubies (#litres_trial_promo)
One
She stuck out like a sore thumb...from the tips of her three-hundred-dollar handmade Italian leather sandals to the top of her very red head.
The essence of casual chic, she was dressed in pink silk trousers and a pink silk shirt. A designer handbag was tossed over one shoulder—he couldn’t quite make out the initials embossed on the front—and a pair of designer sunglasses were perched on the end of her nose.
Her sunglasses probably cost more baht than the average Thai worker made in a year, Simon Hazard judged as he leaned back in the rickety chair, balancing his weight on its rear legs.
Legs.
Hers were long and lean and lithe. He could tell that much from the way she walked.
Every eye in the Celestial Palace was on her. Little wonder. It wasn’t every day that a six-foot-tall amazon with hair the color of a blazing sunset sauntered into the back-street Bangkok bar.
What in the bloody hell was a woman like that doing in a place like this?
Simon shook his head, picked up the glass of beer in front of him and took a drink. It was none of his business. She was none of his business. He was here to meet a client. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Pushing his cap back off his face—the USN printed across the front identified it as one left over from the days when he’d served in the United States navy for Uncle Sam aboard a nuclear-powered sub—he took another swig of his beer. It was a local brew—strong, pungent, dark in color and served at room temperature. Unfortunately, it was the hot season in this part of the world and the crowded bar was like a steam bath.
An ice-cold beer on a sweltering hot day was one of the things he genuinely missed about the States, Simon reflected as he looked around the pub.
A trio of noisy sailors had bellied up to the bar and were egging one another on as they downed straight shots of Russian vodka. There were two suspicious-looking characters hunched over a nearby table, arguing in a language he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Thai or Chinese or Malay, and it certainly wasn’t English, the four principal languages spoken in this country once known as Siam. Bar girls of every size and shape, most of them dressed in cheap, skintight dresses and teetering on three-inch high heels, were serving watered-down drinks to the customers. An ancient jukebox in the corner was blaring the same tune over and over again. It was a young Elvis Presley singing about a “fool such as I.”
Simon stared bemusedly into his beer. Maybe, just maybe, the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was alive and well and living somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan the way the tabloids claimed.
Or maybe Simon was losing the last remnants of his sanity.
He must be. Here he was, sitting in a seedy bar in the red-light district of a city known for its sex and sin, a compact revolver on the inside of his belt and a small but very sharp stiletto tucked into his right boot, waiting for some damned fool who’d gotten it into his head that he wanted to see the high mountain country between Thailand and what was once called Burma and was now known as Myanmar.
Answer a fool according to his folly.
Simon took another swallow of tepid alcohol. Which one of them was the greater fool? His client, the mysterious Mr. S. Harrington, or himself?
“As long as you’re playing Twenty Questions, what the hell are you doing half a world away from home, you crazy son of a bitch?” Simon muttered under his breath.
But he knew the answer to his own question. He was on the job. For a nominal fee, he would drive his beat-up Range Rover and its passengers anywhere and everywhere they wanted to go.
Although he hadn’t always been a glorified guide/hired driver in a third world country, of course.
One morning, over a year ago, Simon Hazard had awakened in his penthouse apartment overlooking Minneapolis on one side and the mighty Mississippi River on the other, and realized that he was burned-out on his business, on what passed for pleasure in his life and on life itself. It had not, as he recalled, made for a great thirty-first birthday.
So he had packed his bags and gone off to “get in touch with his feelings,” as the pop psychologists labeled it.
He’d spent one entire year wandering among the saffron-robed Buddhist monks, the ancient temples and the golden spires of the Lotus Kingdom: Thailand. He’d made friends with the hill tribes of the North, lived in a primitive hut with a thatched roof, eaten food cooked over a fire fueled by dried water-buffalo dung and learned to use a machete like an expert.
He now spoke the language, knew the customs, was beginning to understand the people. He could defend himself against the Siamese crocodile and the armed bandits who sometimes roamed the Golden Triangle. He knew when the king cobra was in season and how to avoid the fifteen-foot-long, lightning fast serpent with its fatal bite. He understood it was a gross insult to point his toe at someone, according to Thai thinking, and that the national pastime was gambling, whether it was on a cockfight or a boxing match.
As a boy, he had once searched out the source of the Mississippi: Lake Itasca. As a man, he had gone in search of something more elusive. What he had discovered was a simpler time and place, and a people who hadn’t changed in hundreds of years.
What he had found, Simon reflected, was himself.
“Must be the alcohol making me wax philosophical,” he said by way of an explanation, gazing down into the dregs of his drink.
There was an insistent tug on his sleeve. “Hey, boss, you want another beer?”
Simon turned his head. A boy of eight or nine was standing beside him.
He didn’t want another drink, but there was something about the kid, something about his eyes.
“Sure.” Simon flipped him a coin. “And keep the change.”
The small face broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, boss. Beer right away.”
Maybe the hardest lesson he’d had to learn in the past year was that he couldn’t rescue everyone like this street kid. So he did what he could.
“Which isn’t very much, is it, Hazard?” he acknowledged as the boy set the glass down, brown liquor sloshing over the sides, and took off with his newfound wealth.
He couldn’t do anything about the boy, but he could—and would—do something about the woman.
Simon watched as the redhead approached the man behind the bar. Damn, if there wasn’t something familiar about her. He had the strongest sensation that he’d seen her before.
He stared unabashedly. Why not? Everybody else in the Celestial Palace was. Not that it seemed to bother her. She appeared oblivious to the stares and the whispers. This was a woman, he realized, who was used to being noticed, who expected to be noticed.
She slid her sunglasses up into her hair and looked directly at the bartender. The noise level dropped off for an instant and Simon clearly heard her say, in a voice that sent cool shivers down his spine, “Perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for someone.”
The man answered in accented English, “Looking for who, lady?”
The din of voices, clinking glasses and a crooning Elvis Presley picked up again. She leaned over the counter and said something Simon couldn’t make out.
The bartender raised his hand and pointed. He was pointing in the direction of Simon’s table.
She turned. Without the sun at her back, without the dark glasses obscuring her features, Simon saw her clearly for the first time. She was stunning, but not in any conventional sense of the word. Her hair was too red. Her eyes were too green. Her cheekbones were too prominent. Her nose was too aristocratic. Her mouth was almost too perfect.
He had seen that face before.
His gaze dropped to her slender shoulders, her generous breasts, her slim waist, her long, long legs.
He had seen that body before. He could swear it.
She walked toward him, stopped in front of his table and looked down her nose at him. “Are you Simon Hazard?”
He refused to alter his expression. “What if I am?”
“I believe we have an appointment, Mr. Hazard.”
“An appointment?”
“For three o’clock.”
He resisted the urge to glance at his watch. “Is it three o’clock already?”
“Five minutes past,” she said, consulting the slim gold band on her wrist.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he muttered dryly.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” He snorted and drained his glass to the last drop. “Having fun?”
Apparently, she chose to ignore his attempt at making a witticism. “Are you Simon Hazard?”
He might as well confess. “The one and only.”
She thrust out her right hand. Simon wondered if he was supposed to shake it or kiss it. “I’m Sunday Harrington,” she informed him.
Sunday. He supposed, with a name like that, she’d heard them all.
Sunday, fun day.
Sunday in the park with George.
Solomon Grundy buried on Sunday.
Sunday afternoon.
Sunday school.
Sunday’s child.
Never on Sunday.
“Sunday Harrington?” The name rang a bell. He studied the initials on her handbag: a stylized, intertwining S and H. Then it suddenly dawned on him. “S. Harrington stands for Sunday Harrington.”
“Brilliant deduction.”
He bit off a brief and rather crude expletive. The legs of his chair hit the floor of the Celestial Palace with a resounding thud. “I assumed the S stood for Sidney or Sheldon or Stanley.”
“You assumed incorrectly.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not a man.”
She seemed to be biting the corners of her mouth. “I’m not a man. I would think that was obvious, even to you.”
It was.
“You’re my client.”
“I’m your client.”
Bloody hell, she was his client.
That’s when he recalled reading in the newspapers—it had been a few years ago now—about a fashion model who always dressed in pink or purple or red, despite conventional wisdom that redheads should avoid those colors.
That’s when Simon Hazard remembered the last time he’d seen this woman. She had been larger than life, literally, and she had been wearing several tiny scraps of purple material that left little, if anything, to the imagination.
Simon blew out his breath expressively. As a matter of fact, the first and last time he had seen Sunday Harrington, she had been wearing next to nothing....
Two
She’d made a mistake.
A big mistake.
A huge mistake.
“There must be some mistake,” she said, swallowing hard.
A small, mocking smile appeared on the man’s lips. “You can say that again.”
“But you’re a—” She was too polite, Sunday reminded herself, to say he was a two-bit cowboy, an unshaven slob, a disreputable character and very possibly a drunkard, besides. She took a deep breath. “But you’re an American.”
He flashed her that smile again. “Born and raised in the heartland of the U.S.A.—Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
“You’re not Thai.”
“I would think that was obvious, even to you,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.
Sunday stood a little straighter, not that she had ever been one to slouch. “I assumed you would be Thai.”
“You assumed incorrectly.”
The situation was getting awkward. “I thought my secretary made my requirements clear. I want someone who speaks the language, understands the customs and knows his way around this country.” The man just sat there. “What I want, Mr. Hazard,” she said, no longer mincing words, “is the best.”
There was a flash of straight, white teeth. “Lady, that’s what you’ve got—the best.”
What she had, Sunday realized, was a problem. And a big problem, at that. From where she stood—and he sat—it was apparent that Simon Hazard was tall, well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged and handsome as sin...if a woman was partial to the rugged he-man type, which, thankfully, she was not.
He stuck out like a sore thumb from the tips of his scuffed cowboy boots to the top of his head. His hair was blue-black and long at the nape; it was damp from the heat and formed dark curls that brushed against the collar of his denim shirt every time he moved his head. She wondered when he had last had a haircut.
There was at least a two day’s growth of beard on his chin. His jaw was chiseled granite and decidedly uncompromising. His nose—possibly his best feature—was a throwback to some patrician ancestor. His eyes were dark, somewhere between brown and black. They were bright, intelligent and unclouded by the alcohol he had consumed.
Unfortunately, his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them, and there was no doubt he had an attitude. His body, his face, his expression, his eyes all spelled one thing: danger.
Sunday’s heart sank.
“I don’t think this is going to work, Mr. Hazard.” She permitted herself a small sigh. “You can simply return my deposit and we’ll go our separate ways.”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Drank it.” He indicated the glass of brown liquor on the table in front of him. “Beer.”
“You drank the entire deposit?” She was shocked, and she made no attempt to hide it. “But I sent several hundred baht with the messenger only this morning.”
His eyes narrowed. “It seems you haven’t done your arithmetic, Ms. Harrington. A hundred-baht note is the equivalent of only four American dollars.”
Sunday didn’t know what to say. “Oh—”
“And, in case you also didn’t notice, the prices around here are inflated for a farang.“
She still didn’t know what to say to him. She finally managed to inquire, “A farang?“
“A stranger.” Simon Hazard leaned back in his chair again and balanced his weight on the spindly rear legs. “Besides, you won’t find anyone better.”
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“That is a matter of fact.” He stroked his jawline. “Tell me something.”
She waited for him to go on.
“Why would a woman like you want to travel into the hinterlands of Thailand, anyway?”
“Business,” she said.
“Business? What kind of business?” Suspicion was thick in his voice. “It better not have anything to do with the poppy.”
Sunday drew a blank. “The poppy?”
“Opium.”
Her mouth dropped open, whether in surprise or outrage, she wasn’t sure. “You think I’m involved with drugs?”
“I don’t know what to think, do I?” He gave her a stony stare. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“I assure you, Mr. Hazard, my business is strictly legitimate,” she retorted, bristling.
He shrugged but said nothing.
Her temper flared. “Keep the damned deposit, then. I’ll find someone else.”
“No.”
“No?”
“We’ve got a deal, Ms. Harrington. Signed, sealed and delivered. You pay. I guide.”
He was right. She had received an agreement through the mail and she’d signed it.
Sunday permitted herself another small sigh. If she wanted to do business, if she wanted to see the crafts produced by the hill tribes, if she wanted to visit the City of Mist, if she wanted to experience the closest thing to heaven on earth, it was, apparently, going to be in the company of this cowboy.
“All right, we still have a deal, Mr. Hazard,” she said, holding out her hand.
He moved surprisingly fast for a big man. His chair was upright and he was on his feet, pumping her arm, before she knew it. “Business is business,” he said.
Sunday looked around the bar. “Is this where you usually conduct your business dealings?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the Celestial Palace,” he countered in a hard, dry voice.
As if on cue, a fight broke out between two sailors at the bar. There was the sound of breaking glass and voices raised in anger. The bartender shouted, “Stop! Stop!” and pounded the bar with his fist, but no one paid him any heed. Somewhere, a girl let out a shriek.
“The Celestial Palace isn’t exactly a slice of heaven,” Sunday observed judiciously.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Where are we going?” she inquired as he took her by the elbow and steered her toward the door.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course, it matters.”
“We’re going someplace where we’re less conspicuous. Someplace where we can talk and not have half the people in the room eavesdropping on our conversation. You never know who might be in a watering hole like this. Thieves. Smugglers. Pickpockets.”
With long-legged strides, Simon Hazard took off down the street. Sunday was nearly running to keep up with him. “I thought you said there was nothing wrong with the Celestial Palace.”
He threw her a sharp glance. “‘Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.’”
“I beg your pardon.”
“‘The road up and the road down is one and the same,’” he stated cryptically.
Sunday’s handbag—one of her own popular designs—slipped off her shoulder. She pushed the leather strap up her arm and kept going. “What does the road have to do with anything?”
“‘Answer a fool according to his folly.’”
“I’d settle for a simple, straightforward answer,” she muttered under her breath.
“‘It is not every question that deserves an answer.’”
“Tell me, wherever did you—”
“Monks.”
“Monks?”
“I spent my first year in Thailand—in Prathet Thai—with Buddhist monks,” he told her as if that would explain everything.
It explained nothing.
He hailed a passing samlor, a three-wheel taxi that was a common sight in Bangkok, and gave instructions to the driver in Thai. Then, off they went through a labyrinth of narrow streets, dodging people, animals and other vehicles alike.
Simon Hazard leaned toward her and remarked conversationally, “Bangkok—Krung Thep—is a paradox.”
Bangkok wasn’t the only paradox, Sunday thought.
He went on. “It is both ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, sacred and profane. Skyscrapers have grown up alongside buildings of traditional Thai architecture. Contemporary shops of every type and description are next to the famous Floating Market, its boats bobbing on the khlongs, or canals, as they have for centuries.” He pulled the bill of his hat down to shade his eyes from the tropical sun. “Bangkok is a city of six million souls. It is a city teeming with myriad sights, sounds and smells.”
“Krung Thep means ‘City of Angels,’ doesn’t it?” she said, recalling what she’d read in her Fodor’s Guide to Thailand.
“That’s the shortened version. Bangkok has the longest place name in the world. The literal translation is ‘Great City of Angels, Supreme Repository of Divine Jewels, the Great and Unconquerable Land, Grand and Illustrious Realm, Royal and Delightful Capital City...’” His voice trailed off. “There’s more, but I think you get the idea.”
“Yes, I think I do,” she said, sitting back in the taxi. “How long have you been in Thailand, Mr. Hazard?”
“Simon. A little over a year. And you?”
“Three days.” She took a silk fan from her handbag, opened it and wafted it back and forth in front of her face. “I confess, most of that time has been spent in my hotel room recovering from jet lag and trying to adjust to the heat.”
“This is the hot season.” Something flickered behind the man’s eyes. “The good news is it’s cooler up in the hills where we’re going.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The central plain of Thailand lies within the ‘rain shadow’ of the Burmese mountains.”
“Meaning—”
“It’s wet.”
Sunday tried not to wrinkle up her nose. “Wet?”
“It rains a lot.”
“I’m not made of spun sugar, Mr. Hazard. I won’t melt.”
“Simon,” he reminded her.
“Simon.”
He seemed to be choosing his words with care. “Then there’s the king cobra.”
Sunday cast him a sidelong glance. “What about the king cobra?”
“It can grow to be eighteen feet long—” Simon spread his arms wide “—and weigh twenty pounds.”
She shrugged. “In other words, it’s a big snake.”
“The largest of all venomous snakes. Fortunately, the king cobra doesn’t like to be around people.”
“Lucky for us.”
“As a matter of fact, very few cobra bites are reported,” he assured her.
“More good news,” she said happily.
Simon’s expression was deadpan. “Probably because none of the victims survived for more than an hour unless they were treated with antivenin.”
Sunday wasn’t about to be frightened off. “I promise I’ll be very careful where I step.”
There was a short pause. “I feel it’s also only fair to warn you about the elephants.”
“They’re big, too, aren’t they?”
Simon didn’t appear to be amused. “If four tons of enraged animal—ears flapping, trunk raised, tusks aimed at your breast—charges at an unexpected sprint, you won’t be making jokes, Ms. Harrington.”
“Sunday.”
“Sunday.” His mouth curved humorlessly. “You haven’t seen rage until you’ve seen an elephant in musth.“
She had to ask. “What is musth?“
“It’s a state of sexual arousal in male elephants that can last for days, sometimes weeks or even months. The bull’s testosterone level may increase sixtyfold.”
Sunday was nonplussed.
Simon continued. “The first rule of the forest is never take an elephant for granted.”
It seemed like a reasonable rule to her.
“Then there’s the dung,” he added.
“Dung?”
“Elephant manure.”
She made an impatient noise. “I know what dung is.”
He arched one dark eyebrow. “An elephant defecates as often as twenty-eight times a day.”
She hadn’t known, of course. It wasn’t the kind of information considered useful in the fashion world. “It must make for a great deal of dung.”
“Unflappable,” Simon announced.
“What is?”
“You are.”
She stopped fanning herself for a moment and knitted her eyebrows. “Was this some kind of test?”
“You might call it that.”
“I take it I passed.”
“With flying colors. Like I said, you’re unflappable.”
“Not unflappable. Determined.” She folded her lips in a soft, obstinate line. “It’s the only way I know how to be. It’s got me where I am today.”
“Which is where?”
“Successful beyond my wildest dreams.”
He stared at her intently. “What brought you to Thailand, Sunday Harrington?”
She told him the truth. “I want to see the City of Mist.” She met and held his gaze. “What brought you to Thailand a year ago, Simon Hazard?”
“I was looking for something.”
So was she.
“Have you found it?” she inquired.
“Yes.” The samlor came to a halt. “We’re here,” he informed her.
“Where?” she asked as she took his proffered hand and stepped out of the taxi.
“Wat Po.”
Three
“The Temple of the Reclining Buddha,” Simon translated as they entered the grounds near the Grand Palace with its complex of exotic buildings, dozens of pagodas and distinctive gilded spires.
Sunday stopped, put her head back and stared up at the colossal golden Buddha resting on its side. “Why, it’s...it’s...huge!”
“One hundred and fifty feet long, and fifty feet high,” Simon informed her.
Sunday had never seen anything like it before. “It’s magnificent!” she exclaimed.
He agreed. “Yes, it is. There are nearly four hundred Buddhist temples in the city of Bangkok, and countless statues of the Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is the most revered. The Golden Buddha is the most valuable—it’s solid gold and weighs more than ten thousand pounds. But the Reclining Buddha is the most unusual.”
Sunday was no expert, but she’d done her reading before traveling to Thailand. “I thought the Buddha was always depicted in a meditative sitting position.”
“Usually, but not always. That’s the primary reason the Reclining Buddha is considered unique.” Simon reached for a stick of incense and lit the end in a brazier at the base of the statue. A thin trail of scented smoke spiraled up from the altar toward the ceiling. “The statue is gold leaf over plaster. The feet are inlaid with gemstones representing the one hundred and eight attributes of the Buddha. And why the reclining position? It’s the final stage of the Buddha’s passage to nirvana.”
“To heaven,” Sunday murmured.
“To heaven,” he echoed.
They stood in silence for several minutes, and then left the temple to stroll among the guardians—huge stone warriors standing at attention before the royal buildings—the saffron-robed Buddhist monks, those who had come to offer their prayers and homage, the merely curious and the tourists.
Sunday glanced at Simon out of the corner of her eye. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I told you. I wanted to take you someplace where we were less conspicuous.”
She snorted softly. “There isn’t anyplace where a man like you and a woman like me are going to be inconspicuous.”
“You have a point,” he conceded.
“I had to face facts a long time ago,” she admitted to him. “I wasn’t going to be cute.”
“Did you want to be cute?”
“Yes. For a week or two, anyway.” She laughed at the short-lived girlhood dream. “But I quickly realized I was never going to be cute or dainty, petite or fragile. I was never going to pass unnoticed in a crowd. I was always going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
She knew Simon was watching; she could feel his eyes on her. “How old were you when you reached this conclusion?” he asked.
“Thirteen.”
He grimaced. “An awkward age.”
“Especially awkward for a girl who stood a head taller than anyone else in her class at school,” she related with an emotional detachment that had come with experience and maturity.
“So—” he shrugged “—you were tall.”
“It was more than that,” she confessed. “I had the neck of a giraffe. My shoe size was a ten, extra narrow. And I was covered from head to toe with freckles.”
“You may have been an ugly duckling, but you turned into a swan in the end,” he said appreciatively.
She deftly changed the subject. “When did you realize you were different?”
“Am I?”
She laughed out loud again. “Of course, adolescent boys want to tower over everyone else, don’t they?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t what?”
“I didn’t realize I was different.”
“Why not?”
“My family.”
“Explain.”
“All the Hazard men—that adds up to nearly a dozen if we count uncles, cousins, nephews and brothers—are tall.”
They both knew there was more to it than height. It was height and a commanding presence.
She was genuinely curious. “Don’t you have any women in your family?”
Simon frowned. “Only those we’ve convinced to marry into the clan.” He went on. “My nephew, Jonathan, married a brilliant Egyptologist just before I left the States.”
Surely any nephew of this man’s would still be a boy. “Your nephew would be how old?”
He thought for half a minute. “Thirty-seven. Maybe thirty-eight by now.”
Sunday was baffled. “How...?”
“It’s one of those generational-gap things,” he said inconclusively.
She arched one eyebrow. “What is a generational-gap thing?”
Simon lifted his massive shoulders, and then dropped them again. “My father married five times and had five sons. Avery is the oldest. I’m the youngest. There’s a thirty-year gap between us. Avery’s two sons, Jonathan and Nick, are both older than I am.”
“I see.”
They walked past another group of delicately carved pagodas, a traditional Thai garden with immaculately trimmed trees and shrubs, huge stone urns of colorful flowers and life-size statues of elephants and water buffalo.
“As a matter of fact, it’s thanks to Jonathan that I’m in Thailand,” he said at last.
“Did he vacation here, and then entice you with tales of his travels?”
“Not exactly.”
She waited, assuming he would tell her more.
He did.
“I don’t know the whole story,” Simon began. “I don’t think anyone does, with the exception of Jonathan, and he’s real closemouthed about it. All I heard is that his old nemesis finally caught up with him in a back alley here in Bangkok several years ago. Jonathan was fished out of the khlongs the next morning by a friendly local, and spent a month in the hospital recuperating from his dip in the canals.”
Sunday was stunned. “Someone beat him up?”
“Somebody beat him to a bloody pulp.” Simon paused and stared off into the distance. There was something implacable about the way he stood there, something unnerving in his eyes and in the square set of his jaw. She wouldn’t want to be this man’s enemy. She wouldn’t want to be Jonathan Hazard’s old nemesis, if Simon ever caught up with him. “Not literally to a bloody pulp,” he said finally. “There wasn’t a visible scratch on him. All his injuries were internal.”
She tried to swallow and found it impossible. “He must have been badly hurt.”
“He was half-dead.” Simon shook his head from side to side. “Make that closer to three-quarters.”
“Is Jonathan all right now?”
“Good as gold. Right as rain. Has been for ages.”
She was relieved.
“Anyway, what impressed him about Thailand was the warmth and hospitality of its people. He wasn’t used to that in his line of work.”
Sunday’s hand fluttered to her breast. “Is Jonathan—” she lowered her voice to a whisper “—a spy?”
“Was.” Simon walked on. “At least, that’s the rumor.”
“He’s your nephew and you don’t know for certain.”
“I never asked. He never said.”
“Men!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Even if she tried to explain it, he would never understand. Sunday threw up her hands. “Men!”
* * *
Simon wasn’t sure when he first became aware that they were being followed. It had started with a slight niggling sensation at the back of his neck, a mere pinprick of awareness.
Instinct.
The men in his family had an instinct for trouble. It was a kind of sixth sense, an inexplicable talent for spotting a disaster before it happened. Maybe it was the reason so many of them had made danger their business.
By the time they’d left the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Simon was certain.
Three paces behind them.
Small wiry man.
Thai.
Dressed in dark trousers, white shirt, brown sandals.
Black hair. Black eyes. Nondescript features. Nevertheless, Simon had seen him somewhere before.
The Celestial Palace.
“Damn!” he swore, making a production of removing his hat, taking a linen handkerchief from his back pocket and mopping the perspiration from his forehead.
“It’s hot, isn’t it?” Sunday remarked, retrieving a tissue from her handbag and blotting her upper lip.
“Yes. Let’s grab some shade,” he suggested, reaching for her hand and urging her toward a stone bench beneath a copse of trees. He wanted to see what the man shadowing them would do next.
“I thought I knew everything there was to know about what heat and humidity can do to a woman’s disposition, but I was wrong,” Sunday said, taking a silk fan from her handbag.
She waved the fan back and forth in front of her. It created a slight breeze that carried her scent to his nostrils.
Simon breathed in deeply. Sunday Harrington smelled of exotic incense, tropical heat, warm silk and...roses, of all things. It took a great deal of self-control—more than he thought he had, for a minute—not to bend over and nuzzle her neck, or to bury his face in the inviting cleavage between her breasts.
Son-of-a-gun! Maybe he’d been gone from home too long. Maybe his vow of celibacy, however temporary or sensible under the circumstances—he was living like a Buddhist Monk—was backfiring after more than a year. One thing was certain: he’d better get a grip on himself.
“I promise it will be cooler up in the mountains,” Simon said, clearing his throat.
“I hope so.”
He was aware that she sat there quietly, calmly, observing everything around her. She had the ability to sit utterly still, to simply be. It wasn’t a trait he often saw in Westerners.
He was also aware of their shadow. The man had paused some twenty feet away and was making a pretense of studying the rock garden.
“It’s very peaceful here,” Sunday finally said.
“Beneath the noise, the pollution, the traffic of Bangkok, there is a sense of serenity. Most people believe it’s the calming influence of Buddhism.” Simon removed his cap again and ran his fingers through his hair. “However, appearances can sometimes be deceiving.”
“Everything isn’t always what it seems to be.”
“Or everyone,” he suggested.
“You mean like the man who’s been tailing us since we left the Celestial Palace?”
He was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“For our own safety, we women have had to develop a sixth sense about that kind of thing,” she said. “I must say, he looks harmless enough. I wonder what he wants.”
“Probably your handbag.”
“I can’t imagine why. It doesn’t match his outfit,” she teased, flashing him a smile.
“Here he comes. I’ll do the talking. You keep an eye on your purse,” Simon warned.
“I hardly think a purse snatcher would try to strike up a conversation first,” she said.
The man halted several feet from them. He bowed politely and said to Simon in excellent English, “If you were guests in my humble home, I would offer a glass of water to you and to your lady.”
“A glass of water would be greatly appreciated,” Simon responded with the same excruciating politeness.
The newcomer’s expression was enigmatic. “‘The man who possesses a good wife, possesses a good thing.’”
Simon looked at him with steady eyes. “The lady is not my wife.”
He tried again. “‘The man who has good health is young.’”
Sunday leaned toward him and murmured in his ear, “Are you healthy?”
Talking out of the side of his mouth, he said to her, “As a horse.” He turned his full attention back to their shadow.
“‘A coward turns away, but a brave man’s choice is danger,’” the man said this time.
“‘A living dog is better than a dead tiger,’” Simon responded with the same degree of inscrutability.
“‘The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.’”
Beside him, Sunday made an impatient sound. “Don’t tell me this man spent a year living with the monks, as well.”
The Thai gentleman turned to her and responded, “Indeed, I did, gracious lady. It is our custom.”
“Almost all Thai males spend at least part of their adolescence in a Buddhist monastery, taking vows of celibacy and poverty,” Simon explained. “Some decide it is their karma. They end up becoming monks. The rest return to the outside world.”
“Do you all learn to speak in proverbs?”
Simon ignored her.
But the stranger answered, “Truth is truth.” Then he lifted his hands beseechingly, with the palms up, and continued pleading his case. “You must understand, sir, that I have a wife and five children to feed and clothe.”
Simon put his hands together and interlaced his fingers. “You have many responsibilities.”
“A great many responsibilities. So many that I cannot leave my family and journey to the north.”
“It is a long journey, and the road leading up the mountains is difficult.”
“Just a little while ago, you said the road up and the road down are one and the same,” interjected Sunday.
Simon didn’t look at her, but he said through clenched teeth, “It has also been said that there are two days when a woman is a pleasure—the day one marries her and the day one buries her.”
That had the desired effect. It shut Sunday up.
“I regret that my station in life—I am but a lowly clerk—prevents me from giving it to you as a gift,” the man stated.
Simon was very careful not to react.
The Thai gentleman went on. “It is said that you were a stranger among us. Yet you learned to speak our language and understand our ways. You are no longer a farang.“
“Thank you.”
“You are a businessman.”
“I am a businessman.”
“Then you will not miss the few insubstantial baht that I must regrettably ask in exchange. It is worth a fortune to one who is enterprising.”
He was enterprising, all right.
“Only a few men see the world that can be theirs for the asking. You are one of these men, are you not, sir?”
Simon inclined his head slightly. Flattery: a very old and useful tool in negotiations.
The man stepped into the shade of a tree, dived into his pocket and brought out a small silk pouch. He carefully opened the top and withdrew a piece of paper which appeared to be old and yellowed.
Simon was curious, in spite of himself. “What is it?”
“It is a riddle. It is a map.”
“Where will this map lead me?”
“It will lead you to happiness and riches.”
Simon didn’t move a muscle. “Could you be more specific?”
“It will take you to the Hidden Buddha of the Heavenly Mist,” the map seller claimed.
Simon allowed his skepticism to show. “I have not heard of this hidden Buddha.”
An inscrutable smile surfaced on the man’s ageless features. “Then it is well named, is it not?”
Simon was far from convinced. “Possibly.”
Reassurance was immediately forthcoming. “All that I have said is true.”
Simon rubbed his hand back and forth along his chin. “I will give you one hundred baht for the piece of paper.”
The man appeared stunned. “But it is worth many times that, and I have a wife and six children to feed and clothe.”
“I thought you said you had five children.”
The man became animated. “There is my sister’s son who came to visit my home a year ago and now will not leave. I did not count him before.”
“Two hundred baht.“
“My eldest daughter is of marriageable age. I must be able to afford the temple offerings and the wedding feast.”
“Three hundred.”
Sunday opened her handbag and dug around for a moment. Simon assumed she was searching for another tissue. Instead, she brought out a fistful of money and said to the man, “I will give you one thousand baht for the map.”
His eyes darted from Simon to Sunday and back again. “But...”
Simon heaved a sigh of defeat and indicated his consent. “One thousand baht it is, then.”
The small man handed over the map and accepted his money in exchange. He bowed several times and intoned, “May enlightenment be yours, most generous lady, and yours, sir.”
Then he turned and quickly disappeared into the crowd.
“You paid too much,” Simon told her.
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“The paper is worthless.”
“Very probably.”
He knew she was no fool. “Then why give the man a thousand baht for it?”
“For the same reason you were going to give him three hundred,” Sunday answered.
He sat and he waited.
She went on to explain. “Maybe the man really does have a wife and five children to feed and clothe.”
Simon crossed his arms and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Six. Don’t forget his sister’s son.”
Sunday lifted the weight of her hair off her neck in a graceful motion that caught—and held—his attention. “Let’s look at what we got for one thousand baht, shall we?”
He grunted. “Why not?”
The scrap of paper was carefully unfolded and smoothed out flat on her lap. “It’s appears to be a map.” She pointed to the bottom of the page. “And these are some kind of symbols.”
“The man said it was a map and a riddle.” Simon studied the crude drawing first. “I believe I recognize this area.” He indicated a serpentine line down the middle.
Sunday’s red eyebrows, the same color as her hair, drew together. “What is it?”
“The river Pai.”
She raised her eyes to his; they really were the most incredible shade of green he’d ever seen. “And where is the river Pai?” she asked.
He concentrated on his answer. “In the north.”
“Anywhere near where we’re headed?”
“Yes.”
“How near?”
He wouldn’t lie to her. He wasn’t sure he could. “Very near. Not far from Mae Hong Son.”
She wrinkled up her forehead again. “Mae Hong Son?”
“The City of Mist.”
She gnawed on her lower lip. “That is amazing.”
“Amazing,” he repeated, unable to keep the sardonic tone from his voice.
Her chin came up. A faint color rose in her cheeks. Perhaps her skin had once been covered with freckles, but it was like peaches and cream now. “You sound a little...skeptical.”
He was more than a little skeptical; he was a lot skeptical. “That’s because I am.”
“Why?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“What is?”
Simon raised his eyes upward in a silent plea for patience. “We’re headed for the City of Mist. A stranger appears out of nowhere and offers to sell us a map that will lead to great riches. And, lo and behold, it just happens to be of the area around the City of Mist.” He unfolded his arms and pushed himself up straight on the bench. “The man must have heard us talking back at the Celestial Palace, Sunday, and then decided which of his many maps to try to sell us.” He gave a smirk. “Nice little racket he’s got going.”
“You think the map is a fake.”
“I know it’s a fake.”
She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “I might agree with you, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“We never spoke of the City of Mist until after we’d left the bar. So how did the man know which map to offer us?”
How was he supposed to know? Maybe it had been sheer dumb luck.
If he was smart, Simon realized as he sat there, he would return the woman’s deposit now and save them both a whole lot of aggravation.
“I don’t know. And frankly I don’t care.” He got to his feet. “It’s time to escort you back to your hotel, Ms. Harrington. You’ll want to make an early night of it.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ll be making an even earlier morning of it tomorrow.”
“How early?”
“Six o’clock.”
He could tell she wasn’t thrilled by the news.
She folded the silk fan and returned it to her handbag, along with the map. “I assume—” she sniffed “—you mean I should request a six o’clock wake-up call.”
“Nope.”
Her head came up. “I have to be ready at six?”
“Ready and waiting outside your hotel with the one suitcase you’re allowed to bring along.”
That definitely got her attention. “One suitcase?”
Simon realized he was almost enjoying himself. “And you’d better be able to carry it, yourself. There won’t be any porters handy where we’re going. By the way,” he asked as he hailed a passing samlor, “what hotel are you staying at?”
“The Regent.”
He should have known. “Only the best, huh?”
“Only the best,” she said, as if she was measuring out her words.
A half hour later, the taxicab pulled up in front of the most luxurious hotel in Bangkok. As she stepped from the small three-wheeled vehicle, it finally dawned on Simon where he had seen Sunday Harrington before. He snapped his fingers together. “Now I know.”
She hesitated, and glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Now you know what?“
“Where I’ve seen you before.” The details came to him. About seven years ago. Her likeness, purple bikini and all, had been splashed across every newspaper, television show and billboard, nationwide. Record sales had been set. For a week or two, there had been talk of little else. “The cover of Sports Illustrated, swimsuit edition.”
“You have a good memory for faces,” Sunday said as she disappeared into the Regent.
It wasn’t only her face that Simon remembered.
Four
The past had caught up with her.
Sooner or later, it always did. She just hadn’t expected it to be here or now.
She hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.
She refused to apologize, of course, for what she’d done, what she’d been. And she didn’t explain. There was no reason to. She’d had an incredibly successful career as a model, and for that she would always be thankful.
But she was not a “babe,” and she was not a “bimbo.” She was not a body and a face without a brain. She was not a piece of meat. She was not a “loose woman.”
She was a talented designer, a business owner and a mature woman of thirty. Yet, to most people—men, in particular—she would always be the girl in the sexy purple bikini.
“That darn swimsuit is going to haunt me forever,” Sunday muttered under her breath as she crossed the lobby of the Regent and headed for the elevators.
Simon Hazard was right about one thing: she had been an ugly duckling. Gangly, buck-toothed, freckled, self-conscious, awkward and uncoordinated—that described her perfectly at the age of fifteen.
At sixteen, miraculously, she’d blossomed. As a result, she had signed a lucrative contract with the biggest modeling agency in New York. While everyone else in her high school class back in Cincinnati was worrying about what to wear to the prom, Sunday had been in Paris, modeling haute couture for the most expensive and prestigious French designers. She had gone full steam ahead from that day on, and she’d never looked back.
Not once.
From the beginning, she’d insisted on wearing only three colors: pink, purple or red. The look became her trademark, and was soon heralded as one of the cleverest marketing tools in the industry.
At the age of twenty, she’d graced the covers of every major fashion publication from Elle to Vogue. She had been making the incredible sum of fifty thousand dollars a day.
At twenty-two, she’d been chosen to appear on the cover of the annual swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Sunday and her tiny bikini would go down in history. It became the most talked-about and the bestselling edition of the magazine, ever. For a while, no matter where she turned, Sunday saw herself in those three ridiculously tiny triangles of purple spandex.
She’d gone into modeling with her eyes wide open, but she hadn’t counted on the insatiable appetite of the paparazzi and the tabloid press. Any supermodel-cum-celebrity was considered fair game by one and all. Without her consent—even without her knowledge—her life became an open book. One reporter had tracked down some of her former classmates from high school. After all, inquiring minds had wanted to know.
“Sunday Harrington? We called her The Giraffe.”
“Sunday Harrington? Isn’t she dating some rock star now?”
“Of course, I know Sunday Harrington. We’ve been the best of friends since the third grade,” declared a girl whose name Sunday didn’t even recall.
“Sunday was in love with me for years. Probably still is,” claimed Brad Peterson, captain of the football team, whose glory days had ended with graduation.
Enough was enough. At twenty-three she had retired.
“So much for my fifteen minutes of fame,” Sunday said to herself as the elevator doors closed behind her.
Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what she’d asked for and that’s what she’d gotten for five years. Although enough of the fickle public remembered her name, her face, her penchant for pink, purple and red for her to make the transition from ex-model to fashion designer two years ago after finally graduating from college.
Only the most exclusive department stores carried Sunday’s upscale, expensive line of signature items. She did a little bit of everything from jewelry to belts, from scarves to handbags. All in pink, purple or red. All imprinted with her initials: a stylized, intertwining S and H.
In fact, it was her fashion design business that had brought her to Thailand. She was going to look into doing something with silk for the first time, and where better to learn about silk than in the country where the textile industry had been revolutionized by another American. Before his mysterious disappearance over a quarter of a century ago, Jim Thompson had made Thai silk famous.
When she opened the door of her suite, a welcome blast of cool air hit Sunday square in the face. She closed the door behind her, turned the lock and went straight through to the bedroom. Dropping her handbag onto the dressing table, she kicked off her sandals, slipped out of her silk shirt and pants and stretched out on top of the bed covers. She was hot and tired and hungry, but dinner could wait. A nap was at the top of her list.
Sleep did not come easily; niggling thoughts did.
What was she doing half a world away from home? And what was she doing about to head up into the rugged mountains of northern Thailand with a two-bit cowboy?
But she knew the answers to her own questions. She was on the job. She was searching for inspiration and direction as a designer. Besides, Simon Hazard wasn’t really a two-bit cowboy. He was an enigma. He was certainly different from the men she usually met.
Despite her age—her thirtieth birthday had been several months ago—and despite the reputation fostered in the gossip columns, Sunday’s experience with the male of the species was far more limited than anyone would guess.
At first she’d been too young, too unattractive and too self-conscious. Then she’d been too famous and too well chaperoned. Plus, the men of her acquaintance seemed to be either married photographers on the make, or effeminate designers who weren’t.
Now she was too successful.
And too old.
“You’re only as old as you feel,” Sunday muttered as she put her head down on the pillow. “Which, at the moment, is somewhere between ninety-five and one hundred.”
For some time, she drifted between wakefulness and sleep. Often, her best ideas occurred to her when she was in that twilight state. This afternoon was no exception. Images came and went. Saffron-robed monks. The scent of exotic incense. Golden Buddhas and teak forests, mangoes and creamy coconut-milk sauces. Great carved elephants. Hot and sour, sweet and salty foods. Classical Thai dancers with their elaborate headdresses, bare feet and long nails. Wind chimes and tinkling bells and brass cymbals. Golden spires and mirrored pagodas. Bamboo. Brown rivers. Black panthers.
Sights, sounds, smells, impressions sifted through Sunday’s mind. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she found what she was looking for. She would design a whole collection in silk. The colors would be the colors of Thailand: brown, green and, of course, saffron. She would call the collection Siam.
* * *
The past had finally caught up with him.
Sooner or later, he’d known it would. He just hadn’t expected it to be here and now.
He hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.
Somebody back at headquarters had made a botch of it. He’d only been informed a month ago that another Hazard—Jonathan was just one of many, it seemed—was in Thailand. Since then, he’d been doing his homework on the man.
What he had found out about Simon Hazard didn’t make any sense. The bloke was a millionaire. He had his own company, his own penthouse apartment, even his own tropical island. Why would a man like that be in Thailand driving a bunch of bloody tourists around in a beat-up Range Rover?
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Suzanne Simms
Hazardous DutyMountain guide Simon Hazard couldn't believe Sunday Harrington was his latest client. She'd probably never hiked one day of her privileged life! But it was Simon who had sweaty palms and palpitations. And they had nothing to do with roughing it in the jungle, and everything to do with Sunday's long, long legs… . Dangerous Curves Sunday wasn't about to give Simon the satisfaction of proving she was all body and no brains. Men like him were all alike - uncivilized and very dangerous. And if she wasn't careful, they'd wind up exploring a lot more than their lush little paradise!
The Maddening Model
Suzanne Simms
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one is for Jayne Ann Krentz,
whose friendship through the years
has been worth more to me than
diamonds or emeralds, rubies or sapphires.
Contents
One (#ua1fd9387-efef-5102-8b15-63047beae451)
Two (#u5549097a-40bd-5267-a468-0c8420e8e500)
Three (#u21e56902-2592-500c-8c15-4e57d0b22416)
Four (#u0b52c12c-bcf5-54c7-a96a-d158b1432442)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
A Word About Rubies (#litres_trial_promo)
One
She stuck out like a sore thumb...from the tips of her three-hundred-dollar handmade Italian leather sandals to the top of her very red head.
The essence of casual chic, she was dressed in pink silk trousers and a pink silk shirt. A designer handbag was tossed over one shoulder—he couldn’t quite make out the initials embossed on the front—and a pair of designer sunglasses were perched on the end of her nose.
Her sunglasses probably cost more baht than the average Thai worker made in a year, Simon Hazard judged as he leaned back in the rickety chair, balancing his weight on its rear legs.
Legs.
Hers were long and lean and lithe. He could tell that much from the way she walked.
Every eye in the Celestial Palace was on her. Little wonder. It wasn’t every day that a six-foot-tall amazon with hair the color of a blazing sunset sauntered into the back-street Bangkok bar.
What in the bloody hell was a woman like that doing in a place like this?
Simon shook his head, picked up the glass of beer in front of him and took a drink. It was none of his business. She was none of his business. He was here to meet a client. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Pushing his cap back off his face—the USN printed across the front identified it as one left over from the days when he’d served in the United States navy for Uncle Sam aboard a nuclear-powered sub—he took another swig of his beer. It was a local brew—strong, pungent, dark in color and served at room temperature. Unfortunately, it was the hot season in this part of the world and the crowded bar was like a steam bath.
An ice-cold beer on a sweltering hot day was one of the things he genuinely missed about the States, Simon reflected as he looked around the pub.
A trio of noisy sailors had bellied up to the bar and were egging one another on as they downed straight shots of Russian vodka. There were two suspicious-looking characters hunched over a nearby table, arguing in a language he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Thai or Chinese or Malay, and it certainly wasn’t English, the four principal languages spoken in this country once known as Siam. Bar girls of every size and shape, most of them dressed in cheap, skintight dresses and teetering on three-inch high heels, were serving watered-down drinks to the customers. An ancient jukebox in the corner was blaring the same tune over and over again. It was a young Elvis Presley singing about a “fool such as I.”
Simon stared bemusedly into his beer. Maybe, just maybe, the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was alive and well and living somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan the way the tabloids claimed.
Or maybe Simon was losing the last remnants of his sanity.
He must be. Here he was, sitting in a seedy bar in the red-light district of a city known for its sex and sin, a compact revolver on the inside of his belt and a small but very sharp stiletto tucked into his right boot, waiting for some damned fool who’d gotten it into his head that he wanted to see the high mountain country between Thailand and what was once called Burma and was now known as Myanmar.
Answer a fool according to his folly.
Simon took another swallow of tepid alcohol. Which one of them was the greater fool? His client, the mysterious Mr. S. Harrington, or himself?
“As long as you’re playing Twenty Questions, what the hell are you doing half a world away from home, you crazy son of a bitch?” Simon muttered under his breath.
But he knew the answer to his own question. He was on the job. For a nominal fee, he would drive his beat-up Range Rover and its passengers anywhere and everywhere they wanted to go.
Although he hadn’t always been a glorified guide/hired driver in a third world country, of course.
One morning, over a year ago, Simon Hazard had awakened in his penthouse apartment overlooking Minneapolis on one side and the mighty Mississippi River on the other, and realized that he was burned-out on his business, on what passed for pleasure in his life and on life itself. It had not, as he recalled, made for a great thirty-first birthday.
So he had packed his bags and gone off to “get in touch with his feelings,” as the pop psychologists labeled it.
He’d spent one entire year wandering among the saffron-robed Buddhist monks, the ancient temples and the golden spires of the Lotus Kingdom: Thailand. He’d made friends with the hill tribes of the North, lived in a primitive hut with a thatched roof, eaten food cooked over a fire fueled by dried water-buffalo dung and learned to use a machete like an expert.
He now spoke the language, knew the customs, was beginning to understand the people. He could defend himself against the Siamese crocodile and the armed bandits who sometimes roamed the Golden Triangle. He knew when the king cobra was in season and how to avoid the fifteen-foot-long, lightning fast serpent with its fatal bite. He understood it was a gross insult to point his toe at someone, according to Thai thinking, and that the national pastime was gambling, whether it was on a cockfight or a boxing match.
As a boy, he had once searched out the source of the Mississippi: Lake Itasca. As a man, he had gone in search of something more elusive. What he had discovered was a simpler time and place, and a people who hadn’t changed in hundreds of years.
What he had found, Simon reflected, was himself.
“Must be the alcohol making me wax philosophical,” he said by way of an explanation, gazing down into the dregs of his drink.
There was an insistent tug on his sleeve. “Hey, boss, you want another beer?”
Simon turned his head. A boy of eight or nine was standing beside him.
He didn’t want another drink, but there was something about the kid, something about his eyes.
“Sure.” Simon flipped him a coin. “And keep the change.”
The small face broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, boss. Beer right away.”
Maybe the hardest lesson he’d had to learn in the past year was that he couldn’t rescue everyone like this street kid. So he did what he could.
“Which isn’t very much, is it, Hazard?” he acknowledged as the boy set the glass down, brown liquor sloshing over the sides, and took off with his newfound wealth.
He couldn’t do anything about the boy, but he could—and would—do something about the woman.
Simon watched as the redhead approached the man behind the bar. Damn, if there wasn’t something familiar about her. He had the strongest sensation that he’d seen her before.
He stared unabashedly. Why not? Everybody else in the Celestial Palace was. Not that it seemed to bother her. She appeared oblivious to the stares and the whispers. This was a woman, he realized, who was used to being noticed, who expected to be noticed.
She slid her sunglasses up into her hair and looked directly at the bartender. The noise level dropped off for an instant and Simon clearly heard her say, in a voice that sent cool shivers down his spine, “Perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for someone.”
The man answered in accented English, “Looking for who, lady?”
The din of voices, clinking glasses and a crooning Elvis Presley picked up again. She leaned over the counter and said something Simon couldn’t make out.
The bartender raised his hand and pointed. He was pointing in the direction of Simon’s table.
She turned. Without the sun at her back, without the dark glasses obscuring her features, Simon saw her clearly for the first time. She was stunning, but not in any conventional sense of the word. Her hair was too red. Her eyes were too green. Her cheekbones were too prominent. Her nose was too aristocratic. Her mouth was almost too perfect.
He had seen that face before.
His gaze dropped to her slender shoulders, her generous breasts, her slim waist, her long, long legs.
He had seen that body before. He could swear it.
She walked toward him, stopped in front of his table and looked down her nose at him. “Are you Simon Hazard?”
He refused to alter his expression. “What if I am?”
“I believe we have an appointment, Mr. Hazard.”
“An appointment?”
“For three o’clock.”
He resisted the urge to glance at his watch. “Is it three o’clock already?”
“Five minutes past,” she said, consulting the slim gold band on her wrist.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he muttered dryly.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” He snorted and drained his glass to the last drop. “Having fun?”
Apparently, she chose to ignore his attempt at making a witticism. “Are you Simon Hazard?”
He might as well confess. “The one and only.”
She thrust out her right hand. Simon wondered if he was supposed to shake it or kiss it. “I’m Sunday Harrington,” she informed him.
Sunday. He supposed, with a name like that, she’d heard them all.
Sunday, fun day.
Sunday in the park with George.
Solomon Grundy buried on Sunday.
Sunday afternoon.
Sunday school.
Sunday’s child.
Never on Sunday.
“Sunday Harrington?” The name rang a bell. He studied the initials on her handbag: a stylized, intertwining S and H. Then it suddenly dawned on him. “S. Harrington stands for Sunday Harrington.”
“Brilliant deduction.”
He bit off a brief and rather crude expletive. The legs of his chair hit the floor of the Celestial Palace with a resounding thud. “I assumed the S stood for Sidney or Sheldon or Stanley.”
“You assumed incorrectly.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not a man.”
She seemed to be biting the corners of her mouth. “I’m not a man. I would think that was obvious, even to you.”
It was.
“You’re my client.”
“I’m your client.”
Bloody hell, she was his client.
That’s when he recalled reading in the newspapers—it had been a few years ago now—about a fashion model who always dressed in pink or purple or red, despite conventional wisdom that redheads should avoid those colors.
That’s when Simon Hazard remembered the last time he’d seen this woman. She had been larger than life, literally, and she had been wearing several tiny scraps of purple material that left little, if anything, to the imagination.
Simon blew out his breath expressively. As a matter of fact, the first and last time he had seen Sunday Harrington, she had been wearing next to nothing....
Two
She’d made a mistake.
A big mistake.
A huge mistake.
“There must be some mistake,” she said, swallowing hard.
A small, mocking smile appeared on the man’s lips. “You can say that again.”
“But you’re a—” She was too polite, Sunday reminded herself, to say he was a two-bit cowboy, an unshaven slob, a disreputable character and very possibly a drunkard, besides. She took a deep breath. “But you’re an American.”
He flashed her that smile again. “Born and raised in the heartland of the U.S.A.—Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
“You’re not Thai.”
“I would think that was obvious, even to you,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.
Sunday stood a little straighter, not that she had ever been one to slouch. “I assumed you would be Thai.”
“You assumed incorrectly.”
The situation was getting awkward. “I thought my secretary made my requirements clear. I want someone who speaks the language, understands the customs and knows his way around this country.” The man just sat there. “What I want, Mr. Hazard,” she said, no longer mincing words, “is the best.”
There was a flash of straight, white teeth. “Lady, that’s what you’ve got—the best.”
What she had, Sunday realized, was a problem. And a big problem, at that. From where she stood—and he sat—it was apparent that Simon Hazard was tall, well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged and handsome as sin...if a woman was partial to the rugged he-man type, which, thankfully, she was not.
He stuck out like a sore thumb from the tips of his scuffed cowboy boots to the top of his head. His hair was blue-black and long at the nape; it was damp from the heat and formed dark curls that brushed against the collar of his denim shirt every time he moved his head. She wondered when he had last had a haircut.
There was at least a two day’s growth of beard on his chin. His jaw was chiseled granite and decidedly uncompromising. His nose—possibly his best feature—was a throwback to some patrician ancestor. His eyes were dark, somewhere between brown and black. They were bright, intelligent and unclouded by the alcohol he had consumed.
Unfortunately, his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them, and there was no doubt he had an attitude. His body, his face, his expression, his eyes all spelled one thing: danger.
Sunday’s heart sank.
“I don’t think this is going to work, Mr. Hazard.” She permitted herself a small sigh. “You can simply return my deposit and we’ll go our separate ways.”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Drank it.” He indicated the glass of brown liquor on the table in front of him. “Beer.”
“You drank the entire deposit?” She was shocked, and she made no attempt to hide it. “But I sent several hundred baht with the messenger only this morning.”
His eyes narrowed. “It seems you haven’t done your arithmetic, Ms. Harrington. A hundred-baht note is the equivalent of only four American dollars.”
Sunday didn’t know what to say. “Oh—”
“And, in case you also didn’t notice, the prices around here are inflated for a farang.“
She still didn’t know what to say to him. She finally managed to inquire, “A farang?“
“A stranger.” Simon Hazard leaned back in his chair again and balanced his weight on the spindly rear legs. “Besides, you won’t find anyone better.”
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“That is a matter of fact.” He stroked his jawline. “Tell me something.”
She waited for him to go on.
“Why would a woman like you want to travel into the hinterlands of Thailand, anyway?”
“Business,” she said.
“Business? What kind of business?” Suspicion was thick in his voice. “It better not have anything to do with the poppy.”
Sunday drew a blank. “The poppy?”
“Opium.”
Her mouth dropped open, whether in surprise or outrage, she wasn’t sure. “You think I’m involved with drugs?”
“I don’t know what to think, do I?” He gave her a stony stare. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“I assure you, Mr. Hazard, my business is strictly legitimate,” she retorted, bristling.
He shrugged but said nothing.
Her temper flared. “Keep the damned deposit, then. I’ll find someone else.”
“No.”
“No?”
“We’ve got a deal, Ms. Harrington. Signed, sealed and delivered. You pay. I guide.”
He was right. She had received an agreement through the mail and she’d signed it.
Sunday permitted herself another small sigh. If she wanted to do business, if she wanted to see the crafts produced by the hill tribes, if she wanted to visit the City of Mist, if she wanted to experience the closest thing to heaven on earth, it was, apparently, going to be in the company of this cowboy.
“All right, we still have a deal, Mr. Hazard,” she said, holding out her hand.
He moved surprisingly fast for a big man. His chair was upright and he was on his feet, pumping her arm, before she knew it. “Business is business,” he said.
Sunday looked around the bar. “Is this where you usually conduct your business dealings?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the Celestial Palace,” he countered in a hard, dry voice.
As if on cue, a fight broke out between two sailors at the bar. There was the sound of breaking glass and voices raised in anger. The bartender shouted, “Stop! Stop!” and pounded the bar with his fist, but no one paid him any heed. Somewhere, a girl let out a shriek.
“The Celestial Palace isn’t exactly a slice of heaven,” Sunday observed judiciously.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Where are we going?” she inquired as he took her by the elbow and steered her toward the door.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course, it matters.”
“We’re going someplace where we’re less conspicuous. Someplace where we can talk and not have half the people in the room eavesdropping on our conversation. You never know who might be in a watering hole like this. Thieves. Smugglers. Pickpockets.”
With long-legged strides, Simon Hazard took off down the street. Sunday was nearly running to keep up with him. “I thought you said there was nothing wrong with the Celestial Palace.”
He threw her a sharp glance. “‘Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.’”
“I beg your pardon.”
“‘The road up and the road down is one and the same,’” he stated cryptically.
Sunday’s handbag—one of her own popular designs—slipped off her shoulder. She pushed the leather strap up her arm and kept going. “What does the road have to do with anything?”
“‘Answer a fool according to his folly.’”
“I’d settle for a simple, straightforward answer,” she muttered under her breath.
“‘It is not every question that deserves an answer.’”
“Tell me, wherever did you—”
“Monks.”
“Monks?”
“I spent my first year in Thailand—in Prathet Thai—with Buddhist monks,” he told her as if that would explain everything.
It explained nothing.
He hailed a passing samlor, a three-wheel taxi that was a common sight in Bangkok, and gave instructions to the driver in Thai. Then, off they went through a labyrinth of narrow streets, dodging people, animals and other vehicles alike.
Simon Hazard leaned toward her and remarked conversationally, “Bangkok—Krung Thep—is a paradox.”
Bangkok wasn’t the only paradox, Sunday thought.
He went on. “It is both ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, sacred and profane. Skyscrapers have grown up alongside buildings of traditional Thai architecture. Contemporary shops of every type and description are next to the famous Floating Market, its boats bobbing on the khlongs, or canals, as they have for centuries.” He pulled the bill of his hat down to shade his eyes from the tropical sun. “Bangkok is a city of six million souls. It is a city teeming with myriad sights, sounds and smells.”
“Krung Thep means ‘City of Angels,’ doesn’t it?” she said, recalling what she’d read in her Fodor’s Guide to Thailand.
“That’s the shortened version. Bangkok has the longest place name in the world. The literal translation is ‘Great City of Angels, Supreme Repository of Divine Jewels, the Great and Unconquerable Land, Grand and Illustrious Realm, Royal and Delightful Capital City...’” His voice trailed off. “There’s more, but I think you get the idea.”
“Yes, I think I do,” she said, sitting back in the taxi. “How long have you been in Thailand, Mr. Hazard?”
“Simon. A little over a year. And you?”
“Three days.” She took a silk fan from her handbag, opened it and wafted it back and forth in front of her face. “I confess, most of that time has been spent in my hotel room recovering from jet lag and trying to adjust to the heat.”
“This is the hot season.” Something flickered behind the man’s eyes. “The good news is it’s cooler up in the hills where we’re going.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The central plain of Thailand lies within the ‘rain shadow’ of the Burmese mountains.”
“Meaning—”
“It’s wet.”
Sunday tried not to wrinkle up her nose. “Wet?”
“It rains a lot.”
“I’m not made of spun sugar, Mr. Hazard. I won’t melt.”
“Simon,” he reminded her.
“Simon.”
He seemed to be choosing his words with care. “Then there’s the king cobra.”
Sunday cast him a sidelong glance. “What about the king cobra?”
“It can grow to be eighteen feet long—” Simon spread his arms wide “—and weigh twenty pounds.”
She shrugged. “In other words, it’s a big snake.”
“The largest of all venomous snakes. Fortunately, the king cobra doesn’t like to be around people.”
“Lucky for us.”
“As a matter of fact, very few cobra bites are reported,” he assured her.
“More good news,” she said happily.
Simon’s expression was deadpan. “Probably because none of the victims survived for more than an hour unless they were treated with antivenin.”
Sunday wasn’t about to be frightened off. “I promise I’ll be very careful where I step.”
There was a short pause. “I feel it’s also only fair to warn you about the elephants.”
“They’re big, too, aren’t they?”
Simon didn’t appear to be amused. “If four tons of enraged animal—ears flapping, trunk raised, tusks aimed at your breast—charges at an unexpected sprint, you won’t be making jokes, Ms. Harrington.”
“Sunday.”
“Sunday.” His mouth curved humorlessly. “You haven’t seen rage until you’ve seen an elephant in musth.“
She had to ask. “What is musth?“
“It’s a state of sexual arousal in male elephants that can last for days, sometimes weeks or even months. The bull’s testosterone level may increase sixtyfold.”
Sunday was nonplussed.
Simon continued. “The first rule of the forest is never take an elephant for granted.”
It seemed like a reasonable rule to her.
“Then there’s the dung,” he added.
“Dung?”
“Elephant manure.”
She made an impatient noise. “I know what dung is.”
He arched one dark eyebrow. “An elephant defecates as often as twenty-eight times a day.”
She hadn’t known, of course. It wasn’t the kind of information considered useful in the fashion world. “It must make for a great deal of dung.”
“Unflappable,” Simon announced.
“What is?”
“You are.”
She stopped fanning herself for a moment and knitted her eyebrows. “Was this some kind of test?”
“You might call it that.”
“I take it I passed.”
“With flying colors. Like I said, you’re unflappable.”
“Not unflappable. Determined.” She folded her lips in a soft, obstinate line. “It’s the only way I know how to be. It’s got me where I am today.”
“Which is where?”
“Successful beyond my wildest dreams.”
He stared at her intently. “What brought you to Thailand, Sunday Harrington?”
She told him the truth. “I want to see the City of Mist.” She met and held his gaze. “What brought you to Thailand a year ago, Simon Hazard?”
“I was looking for something.”
So was she.
“Have you found it?” she inquired.
“Yes.” The samlor came to a halt. “We’re here,” he informed her.
“Where?” she asked as she took his proffered hand and stepped out of the taxi.
“Wat Po.”
Three
“The Temple of the Reclining Buddha,” Simon translated as they entered the grounds near the Grand Palace with its complex of exotic buildings, dozens of pagodas and distinctive gilded spires.
Sunday stopped, put her head back and stared up at the colossal golden Buddha resting on its side. “Why, it’s...it’s...huge!”
“One hundred and fifty feet long, and fifty feet high,” Simon informed her.
Sunday had never seen anything like it before. “It’s magnificent!” she exclaimed.
He agreed. “Yes, it is. There are nearly four hundred Buddhist temples in the city of Bangkok, and countless statues of the Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is the most revered. The Golden Buddha is the most valuable—it’s solid gold and weighs more than ten thousand pounds. But the Reclining Buddha is the most unusual.”
Sunday was no expert, but she’d done her reading before traveling to Thailand. “I thought the Buddha was always depicted in a meditative sitting position.”
“Usually, but not always. That’s the primary reason the Reclining Buddha is considered unique.” Simon reached for a stick of incense and lit the end in a brazier at the base of the statue. A thin trail of scented smoke spiraled up from the altar toward the ceiling. “The statue is gold leaf over plaster. The feet are inlaid with gemstones representing the one hundred and eight attributes of the Buddha. And why the reclining position? It’s the final stage of the Buddha’s passage to nirvana.”
“To heaven,” Sunday murmured.
“To heaven,” he echoed.
They stood in silence for several minutes, and then left the temple to stroll among the guardians—huge stone warriors standing at attention before the royal buildings—the saffron-robed Buddhist monks, those who had come to offer their prayers and homage, the merely curious and the tourists.
Sunday glanced at Simon out of the corner of her eye. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I told you. I wanted to take you someplace where we were less conspicuous.”
She snorted softly. “There isn’t anyplace where a man like you and a woman like me are going to be inconspicuous.”
“You have a point,” he conceded.
“I had to face facts a long time ago,” she admitted to him. “I wasn’t going to be cute.”
“Did you want to be cute?”
“Yes. For a week or two, anyway.” She laughed at the short-lived girlhood dream. “But I quickly realized I was never going to be cute or dainty, petite or fragile. I was never going to pass unnoticed in a crowd. I was always going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
She knew Simon was watching; she could feel his eyes on her. “How old were you when you reached this conclusion?” he asked.
“Thirteen.”
He grimaced. “An awkward age.”
“Especially awkward for a girl who stood a head taller than anyone else in her class at school,” she related with an emotional detachment that had come with experience and maturity.
“So—” he shrugged “—you were tall.”
“It was more than that,” she confessed. “I had the neck of a giraffe. My shoe size was a ten, extra narrow. And I was covered from head to toe with freckles.”
“You may have been an ugly duckling, but you turned into a swan in the end,” he said appreciatively.
She deftly changed the subject. “When did you realize you were different?”
“Am I?”
She laughed out loud again. “Of course, adolescent boys want to tower over everyone else, don’t they?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t what?”
“I didn’t realize I was different.”
“Why not?”
“My family.”
“Explain.”
“All the Hazard men—that adds up to nearly a dozen if we count uncles, cousins, nephews and brothers—are tall.”
They both knew there was more to it than height. It was height and a commanding presence.
She was genuinely curious. “Don’t you have any women in your family?”
Simon frowned. “Only those we’ve convinced to marry into the clan.” He went on. “My nephew, Jonathan, married a brilliant Egyptologist just before I left the States.”
Surely any nephew of this man’s would still be a boy. “Your nephew would be how old?”
He thought for half a minute. “Thirty-seven. Maybe thirty-eight by now.”
Sunday was baffled. “How...?”
“It’s one of those generational-gap things,” he said inconclusively.
She arched one eyebrow. “What is a generational-gap thing?”
Simon lifted his massive shoulders, and then dropped them again. “My father married five times and had five sons. Avery is the oldest. I’m the youngest. There’s a thirty-year gap between us. Avery’s two sons, Jonathan and Nick, are both older than I am.”
“I see.”
They walked past another group of delicately carved pagodas, a traditional Thai garden with immaculately trimmed trees and shrubs, huge stone urns of colorful flowers and life-size statues of elephants and water buffalo.
“As a matter of fact, it’s thanks to Jonathan that I’m in Thailand,” he said at last.
“Did he vacation here, and then entice you with tales of his travels?”
“Not exactly.”
She waited, assuming he would tell her more.
He did.
“I don’t know the whole story,” Simon began. “I don’t think anyone does, with the exception of Jonathan, and he’s real closemouthed about it. All I heard is that his old nemesis finally caught up with him in a back alley here in Bangkok several years ago. Jonathan was fished out of the khlongs the next morning by a friendly local, and spent a month in the hospital recuperating from his dip in the canals.”
Sunday was stunned. “Someone beat him up?”
“Somebody beat him to a bloody pulp.” Simon paused and stared off into the distance. There was something implacable about the way he stood there, something unnerving in his eyes and in the square set of his jaw. She wouldn’t want to be this man’s enemy. She wouldn’t want to be Jonathan Hazard’s old nemesis, if Simon ever caught up with him. “Not literally to a bloody pulp,” he said finally. “There wasn’t a visible scratch on him. All his injuries were internal.”
She tried to swallow and found it impossible. “He must have been badly hurt.”
“He was half-dead.” Simon shook his head from side to side. “Make that closer to three-quarters.”
“Is Jonathan all right now?”
“Good as gold. Right as rain. Has been for ages.”
She was relieved.
“Anyway, what impressed him about Thailand was the warmth and hospitality of its people. He wasn’t used to that in his line of work.”
Sunday’s hand fluttered to her breast. “Is Jonathan—” she lowered her voice to a whisper “—a spy?”
“Was.” Simon walked on. “At least, that’s the rumor.”
“He’s your nephew and you don’t know for certain.”
“I never asked. He never said.”
“Men!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Even if she tried to explain it, he would never understand. Sunday threw up her hands. “Men!”
* * *
Simon wasn’t sure when he first became aware that they were being followed. It had started with a slight niggling sensation at the back of his neck, a mere pinprick of awareness.
Instinct.
The men in his family had an instinct for trouble. It was a kind of sixth sense, an inexplicable talent for spotting a disaster before it happened. Maybe it was the reason so many of them had made danger their business.
By the time they’d left the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Simon was certain.
Three paces behind them.
Small wiry man.
Thai.
Dressed in dark trousers, white shirt, brown sandals.
Black hair. Black eyes. Nondescript features. Nevertheless, Simon had seen him somewhere before.
The Celestial Palace.
“Damn!” he swore, making a production of removing his hat, taking a linen handkerchief from his back pocket and mopping the perspiration from his forehead.
“It’s hot, isn’t it?” Sunday remarked, retrieving a tissue from her handbag and blotting her upper lip.
“Yes. Let’s grab some shade,” he suggested, reaching for her hand and urging her toward a stone bench beneath a copse of trees. He wanted to see what the man shadowing them would do next.
“I thought I knew everything there was to know about what heat and humidity can do to a woman’s disposition, but I was wrong,” Sunday said, taking a silk fan from her handbag.
She waved the fan back and forth in front of her. It created a slight breeze that carried her scent to his nostrils.
Simon breathed in deeply. Sunday Harrington smelled of exotic incense, tropical heat, warm silk and...roses, of all things. It took a great deal of self-control—more than he thought he had, for a minute—not to bend over and nuzzle her neck, or to bury his face in the inviting cleavage between her breasts.
Son-of-a-gun! Maybe he’d been gone from home too long. Maybe his vow of celibacy, however temporary or sensible under the circumstances—he was living like a Buddhist Monk—was backfiring after more than a year. One thing was certain: he’d better get a grip on himself.
“I promise it will be cooler up in the mountains,” Simon said, clearing his throat.
“I hope so.”
He was aware that she sat there quietly, calmly, observing everything around her. She had the ability to sit utterly still, to simply be. It wasn’t a trait he often saw in Westerners.
He was also aware of their shadow. The man had paused some twenty feet away and was making a pretense of studying the rock garden.
“It’s very peaceful here,” Sunday finally said.
“Beneath the noise, the pollution, the traffic of Bangkok, there is a sense of serenity. Most people believe it’s the calming influence of Buddhism.” Simon removed his cap again and ran his fingers through his hair. “However, appearances can sometimes be deceiving.”
“Everything isn’t always what it seems to be.”
“Or everyone,” he suggested.
“You mean like the man who’s been tailing us since we left the Celestial Palace?”
He was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“For our own safety, we women have had to develop a sixth sense about that kind of thing,” she said. “I must say, he looks harmless enough. I wonder what he wants.”
“Probably your handbag.”
“I can’t imagine why. It doesn’t match his outfit,” she teased, flashing him a smile.
“Here he comes. I’ll do the talking. You keep an eye on your purse,” Simon warned.
“I hardly think a purse snatcher would try to strike up a conversation first,” she said.
The man halted several feet from them. He bowed politely and said to Simon in excellent English, “If you were guests in my humble home, I would offer a glass of water to you and to your lady.”
“A glass of water would be greatly appreciated,” Simon responded with the same excruciating politeness.
The newcomer’s expression was enigmatic. “‘The man who possesses a good wife, possesses a good thing.’”
Simon looked at him with steady eyes. “The lady is not my wife.”
He tried again. “‘The man who has good health is young.’”
Sunday leaned toward him and murmured in his ear, “Are you healthy?”
Talking out of the side of his mouth, he said to her, “As a horse.” He turned his full attention back to their shadow.
“‘A coward turns away, but a brave man’s choice is danger,’” the man said this time.
“‘A living dog is better than a dead tiger,’” Simon responded with the same degree of inscrutability.
“‘The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.’”
Beside him, Sunday made an impatient sound. “Don’t tell me this man spent a year living with the monks, as well.”
The Thai gentleman turned to her and responded, “Indeed, I did, gracious lady. It is our custom.”
“Almost all Thai males spend at least part of their adolescence in a Buddhist monastery, taking vows of celibacy and poverty,” Simon explained. “Some decide it is their karma. They end up becoming monks. The rest return to the outside world.”
“Do you all learn to speak in proverbs?”
Simon ignored her.
But the stranger answered, “Truth is truth.” Then he lifted his hands beseechingly, with the palms up, and continued pleading his case. “You must understand, sir, that I have a wife and five children to feed and clothe.”
Simon put his hands together and interlaced his fingers. “You have many responsibilities.”
“A great many responsibilities. So many that I cannot leave my family and journey to the north.”
“It is a long journey, and the road leading up the mountains is difficult.”
“Just a little while ago, you said the road up and the road down are one and the same,” interjected Sunday.
Simon didn’t look at her, but he said through clenched teeth, “It has also been said that there are two days when a woman is a pleasure—the day one marries her and the day one buries her.”
That had the desired effect. It shut Sunday up.
“I regret that my station in life—I am but a lowly clerk—prevents me from giving it to you as a gift,” the man stated.
Simon was very careful not to react.
The Thai gentleman went on. “It is said that you were a stranger among us. Yet you learned to speak our language and understand our ways. You are no longer a farang.“
“Thank you.”
“You are a businessman.”
“I am a businessman.”
“Then you will not miss the few insubstantial baht that I must regrettably ask in exchange. It is worth a fortune to one who is enterprising.”
He was enterprising, all right.
“Only a few men see the world that can be theirs for the asking. You are one of these men, are you not, sir?”
Simon inclined his head slightly. Flattery: a very old and useful tool in negotiations.
The man stepped into the shade of a tree, dived into his pocket and brought out a small silk pouch. He carefully opened the top and withdrew a piece of paper which appeared to be old and yellowed.
Simon was curious, in spite of himself. “What is it?”
“It is a riddle. It is a map.”
“Where will this map lead me?”
“It will lead you to happiness and riches.”
Simon didn’t move a muscle. “Could you be more specific?”
“It will take you to the Hidden Buddha of the Heavenly Mist,” the map seller claimed.
Simon allowed his skepticism to show. “I have not heard of this hidden Buddha.”
An inscrutable smile surfaced on the man’s ageless features. “Then it is well named, is it not?”
Simon was far from convinced. “Possibly.”
Reassurance was immediately forthcoming. “All that I have said is true.”
Simon rubbed his hand back and forth along his chin. “I will give you one hundred baht for the piece of paper.”
The man appeared stunned. “But it is worth many times that, and I have a wife and six children to feed and clothe.”
“I thought you said you had five children.”
The man became animated. “There is my sister’s son who came to visit my home a year ago and now will not leave. I did not count him before.”
“Two hundred baht.“
“My eldest daughter is of marriageable age. I must be able to afford the temple offerings and the wedding feast.”
“Three hundred.”
Sunday opened her handbag and dug around for a moment. Simon assumed she was searching for another tissue. Instead, she brought out a fistful of money and said to the man, “I will give you one thousand baht for the map.”
His eyes darted from Simon to Sunday and back again. “But...”
Simon heaved a sigh of defeat and indicated his consent. “One thousand baht it is, then.”
The small man handed over the map and accepted his money in exchange. He bowed several times and intoned, “May enlightenment be yours, most generous lady, and yours, sir.”
Then he turned and quickly disappeared into the crowd.
“You paid too much,” Simon told her.
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“The paper is worthless.”
“Very probably.”
He knew she was no fool. “Then why give the man a thousand baht for it?”
“For the same reason you were going to give him three hundred,” Sunday answered.
He sat and he waited.
She went on to explain. “Maybe the man really does have a wife and five children to feed and clothe.”
Simon crossed his arms and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Six. Don’t forget his sister’s son.”
Sunday lifted the weight of her hair off her neck in a graceful motion that caught—and held—his attention. “Let’s look at what we got for one thousand baht, shall we?”
He grunted. “Why not?”
The scrap of paper was carefully unfolded and smoothed out flat on her lap. “It’s appears to be a map.” She pointed to the bottom of the page. “And these are some kind of symbols.”
“The man said it was a map and a riddle.” Simon studied the crude drawing first. “I believe I recognize this area.” He indicated a serpentine line down the middle.
Sunday’s red eyebrows, the same color as her hair, drew together. “What is it?”
“The river Pai.”
She raised her eyes to his; they really were the most incredible shade of green he’d ever seen. “And where is the river Pai?” she asked.
He concentrated on his answer. “In the north.”
“Anywhere near where we’re headed?”
“Yes.”
“How near?”
He wouldn’t lie to her. He wasn’t sure he could. “Very near. Not far from Mae Hong Son.”
She wrinkled up her forehead again. “Mae Hong Son?”
“The City of Mist.”
She gnawed on her lower lip. “That is amazing.”
“Amazing,” he repeated, unable to keep the sardonic tone from his voice.
Her chin came up. A faint color rose in her cheeks. Perhaps her skin had once been covered with freckles, but it was like peaches and cream now. “You sound a little...skeptical.”
He was more than a little skeptical; he was a lot skeptical. “That’s because I am.”
“Why?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“What is?”
Simon raised his eyes upward in a silent plea for patience. “We’re headed for the City of Mist. A stranger appears out of nowhere and offers to sell us a map that will lead to great riches. And, lo and behold, it just happens to be of the area around the City of Mist.” He unfolded his arms and pushed himself up straight on the bench. “The man must have heard us talking back at the Celestial Palace, Sunday, and then decided which of his many maps to try to sell us.” He gave a smirk. “Nice little racket he’s got going.”
“You think the map is a fake.”
“I know it’s a fake.”
She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “I might agree with you, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“We never spoke of the City of Mist until after we’d left the bar. So how did the man know which map to offer us?”
How was he supposed to know? Maybe it had been sheer dumb luck.
If he was smart, Simon realized as he sat there, he would return the woman’s deposit now and save them both a whole lot of aggravation.
“I don’t know. And frankly I don’t care.” He got to his feet. “It’s time to escort you back to your hotel, Ms. Harrington. You’ll want to make an early night of it.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ll be making an even earlier morning of it tomorrow.”
“How early?”
“Six o’clock.”
He could tell she wasn’t thrilled by the news.
She folded the silk fan and returned it to her handbag, along with the map. “I assume—” she sniffed “—you mean I should request a six o’clock wake-up call.”
“Nope.”
Her head came up. “I have to be ready at six?”
“Ready and waiting outside your hotel with the one suitcase you’re allowed to bring along.”
That definitely got her attention. “One suitcase?”
Simon realized he was almost enjoying himself. “And you’d better be able to carry it, yourself. There won’t be any porters handy where we’re going. By the way,” he asked as he hailed a passing samlor, “what hotel are you staying at?”
“The Regent.”
He should have known. “Only the best, huh?”
“Only the best,” she said, as if she was measuring out her words.
A half hour later, the taxicab pulled up in front of the most luxurious hotel in Bangkok. As she stepped from the small three-wheeled vehicle, it finally dawned on Simon where he had seen Sunday Harrington before. He snapped his fingers together. “Now I know.”
She hesitated, and glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Now you know what?“
“Where I’ve seen you before.” The details came to him. About seven years ago. Her likeness, purple bikini and all, had been splashed across every newspaper, television show and billboard, nationwide. Record sales had been set. For a week or two, there had been talk of little else. “The cover of Sports Illustrated, swimsuit edition.”
“You have a good memory for faces,” Sunday said as she disappeared into the Regent.
It wasn’t only her face that Simon remembered.
Four
The past had caught up with her.
Sooner or later, it always did. She just hadn’t expected it to be here or now.
She hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.
She refused to apologize, of course, for what she’d done, what she’d been. And she didn’t explain. There was no reason to. She’d had an incredibly successful career as a model, and for that she would always be thankful.
But she was not a “babe,” and she was not a “bimbo.” She was not a body and a face without a brain. She was not a piece of meat. She was not a “loose woman.”
She was a talented designer, a business owner and a mature woman of thirty. Yet, to most people—men, in particular—she would always be the girl in the sexy purple bikini.
“That darn swimsuit is going to haunt me forever,” Sunday muttered under her breath as she crossed the lobby of the Regent and headed for the elevators.
Simon Hazard was right about one thing: she had been an ugly duckling. Gangly, buck-toothed, freckled, self-conscious, awkward and uncoordinated—that described her perfectly at the age of fifteen.
At sixteen, miraculously, she’d blossomed. As a result, she had signed a lucrative contract with the biggest modeling agency in New York. While everyone else in her high school class back in Cincinnati was worrying about what to wear to the prom, Sunday had been in Paris, modeling haute couture for the most expensive and prestigious French designers. She had gone full steam ahead from that day on, and she’d never looked back.
Not once.
From the beginning, she’d insisted on wearing only three colors: pink, purple or red. The look became her trademark, and was soon heralded as one of the cleverest marketing tools in the industry.
At the age of twenty, she’d graced the covers of every major fashion publication from Elle to Vogue. She had been making the incredible sum of fifty thousand dollars a day.
At twenty-two, she’d been chosen to appear on the cover of the annual swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Sunday and her tiny bikini would go down in history. It became the most talked-about and the bestselling edition of the magazine, ever. For a while, no matter where she turned, Sunday saw herself in those three ridiculously tiny triangles of purple spandex.
She’d gone into modeling with her eyes wide open, but she hadn’t counted on the insatiable appetite of the paparazzi and the tabloid press. Any supermodel-cum-celebrity was considered fair game by one and all. Without her consent—even without her knowledge—her life became an open book. One reporter had tracked down some of her former classmates from high school. After all, inquiring minds had wanted to know.
“Sunday Harrington? We called her The Giraffe.”
“Sunday Harrington? Isn’t she dating some rock star now?”
“Of course, I know Sunday Harrington. We’ve been the best of friends since the third grade,” declared a girl whose name Sunday didn’t even recall.
“Sunday was in love with me for years. Probably still is,” claimed Brad Peterson, captain of the football team, whose glory days had ended with graduation.
Enough was enough. At twenty-three she had retired.
“So much for my fifteen minutes of fame,” Sunday said to herself as the elevator doors closed behind her.
Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what she’d asked for and that’s what she’d gotten for five years. Although enough of the fickle public remembered her name, her face, her penchant for pink, purple and red for her to make the transition from ex-model to fashion designer two years ago after finally graduating from college.
Only the most exclusive department stores carried Sunday’s upscale, expensive line of signature items. She did a little bit of everything from jewelry to belts, from scarves to handbags. All in pink, purple or red. All imprinted with her initials: a stylized, intertwining S and H.
In fact, it was her fashion design business that had brought her to Thailand. She was going to look into doing something with silk for the first time, and where better to learn about silk than in the country where the textile industry had been revolutionized by another American. Before his mysterious disappearance over a quarter of a century ago, Jim Thompson had made Thai silk famous.
When she opened the door of her suite, a welcome blast of cool air hit Sunday square in the face. She closed the door behind her, turned the lock and went straight through to the bedroom. Dropping her handbag onto the dressing table, she kicked off her sandals, slipped out of her silk shirt and pants and stretched out on top of the bed covers. She was hot and tired and hungry, but dinner could wait. A nap was at the top of her list.
Sleep did not come easily; niggling thoughts did.
What was she doing half a world away from home? And what was she doing about to head up into the rugged mountains of northern Thailand with a two-bit cowboy?
But she knew the answers to her own questions. She was on the job. She was searching for inspiration and direction as a designer. Besides, Simon Hazard wasn’t really a two-bit cowboy. He was an enigma. He was certainly different from the men she usually met.
Despite her age—her thirtieth birthday had been several months ago—and despite the reputation fostered in the gossip columns, Sunday’s experience with the male of the species was far more limited than anyone would guess.
At first she’d been too young, too unattractive and too self-conscious. Then she’d been too famous and too well chaperoned. Plus, the men of her acquaintance seemed to be either married photographers on the make, or effeminate designers who weren’t.
Now she was too successful.
And too old.
“You’re only as old as you feel,” Sunday muttered as she put her head down on the pillow. “Which, at the moment, is somewhere between ninety-five and one hundred.”
For some time, she drifted between wakefulness and sleep. Often, her best ideas occurred to her when she was in that twilight state. This afternoon was no exception. Images came and went. Saffron-robed monks. The scent of exotic incense. Golden Buddhas and teak forests, mangoes and creamy coconut-milk sauces. Great carved elephants. Hot and sour, sweet and salty foods. Classical Thai dancers with their elaborate headdresses, bare feet and long nails. Wind chimes and tinkling bells and brass cymbals. Golden spires and mirrored pagodas. Bamboo. Brown rivers. Black panthers.
Sights, sounds, smells, impressions sifted through Sunday’s mind. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she found what she was looking for. She would design a whole collection in silk. The colors would be the colors of Thailand: brown, green and, of course, saffron. She would call the collection Siam.
* * *
The past had finally caught up with him.
Sooner or later, he’d known it would. He just hadn’t expected it to be here and now.
He hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.
Somebody back at headquarters had made a botch of it. He’d only been informed a month ago that another Hazard—Jonathan was just one of many, it seemed—was in Thailand. Since then, he’d been doing his homework on the man.
What he had found out about Simon Hazard didn’t make any sense. The bloke was a millionaire. He had his own company, his own penthouse apartment, even his own tropical island. Why would a man like that be in Thailand driving a bunch of bloody tourists around in a beat-up Range Rover?
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Suzanne Simms
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Hazardous DutyMountain guide Simon Hazard couldn′t believe Sunday Harrington was his latest client. She′d probably never hiked one day of her privileged life! But it was Simon who had sweaty palms and palpitations. And they had nothing to do with roughing it in the jungle, and everything to do with Sunday′s long, long legs… . Dangerous Curves Sunday wasn′t about to give Simon the satisfaction of proving she was all body and no brains. Men like him were all alike – uncivilized and very dangerous. And if she wasn′t careful, they′d wind up exploring a lot more than their lush little paradise!