Fantasy Unlimited

by Claire Harrison

  FANTASY UNLIMITED

  Claire Harrison

  It was a perfect setting for romance...

  But Samantha Lorimer couldn't care less. She was a hardworking New York City lawyer, intent on enjoying her holiday in the sun. She'd taken this Greek Island cruise for relaxation, not romance, although Samantha's unconventional grandmother had her own ideas about that....

  Samantha just wasn't interested in a shipboard romance, not even with Josh Sinclair--especially not with the handsome and charming Josh Sinclair.

  But despite her intentions, Samantha found herself falling in love with him. And that was something she had to avoid--because she suspected that Josh Sinclair had been hired to seduce her. Hired by her own grandmother....

  CHAPTER ONE

  Samantha Lorimer gazed uneasily at her grandmother, who sat in the chair opposite her. As usual, the old lady stuck out like a sore thumb in the elegant morning room with its carved antiques, its Picassos, its luxury and its general air of money spent without any thought to expense. Margaret was wearing one of her typical outfits, her tiny form clothed in frayed designer jeans and a smock with two missing buttons. On her feet were white socks and an old pair of men's brown leather slippers. Around her forehead was a red, white and blue striped jogger's headband, and her hair had been pulled back into a white and untidy bun. Her only concession to her wealth and position was the double strand of pearls around her neck and the six rings that adorned her paint-stained fingers. Their diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires glittered at Samantha as Margaret poured herself a cup of steaming, fragrant tea.

  'Now,' she said, giving Samantha a severe look over her pince-nez glasses, 'it's time to get down to business.'

  'Business?' Samantha asked warily.

  'Yes, business—you. You're vegetating, if we don't do something you're going to be as petrified as the Petrified Forest. It's got to come to a stop. I refuse to have a granddaughter who's permanently stuck into frump!'

  'Grandma, I...'

  'Margaret. Call me Margaret.'

  Samantha had forgotten the recent edict that Margaret had laid down to the family. All grandchildren beyond the age of consent were no longer to call her by that childish epithet. The name 'Grandma', she had proclaimed, when spoken by a grown-up grandchild, sounded ridiculous and made her feel ancient, and if there was one thing that Margaret Lorimer didn't feel, it was her age. She was a tiny, wrinkled woman with a fierce spirit, crackling blue eyes and a face whose former beauty could still be found in her high cheekbones and delicately cleft chin. Margaret, now in her seventieth year, had outlived three husbands and grown more eccentric with each passing decade.

  'Margaret,' Samantha said carefully, 'I'm fine. Really.'

  Her grandmother gave an unladylike snort. 'I'm neither blind nor senile, young lady.'

  'I love my job, my apartment, my...'

  Another snort. 'Working yourself into an absolute frazzle! That law office hasn't done you an ounce of good. All it's done is keep your nose pressed sharply to the grindstone.'

  To Samantha this was familiar ground. She and Margaret had tussled over it before, their separate philosophies crashing head-on. Margaret had never been able to understand the enjoyment Samantha got out of poring through large, dusty tomes and spending long hours in abstract thinking. '1 like practising law,' she said firmly. 'There's nothing else I'd rather do.'

  Margaret, as she was apt to do, ignored her. 'And take a good look at you!' Samantha glanced uneasily down at her plaid skirt, crossed knees, stockinged calves and sensible black pumps. 'Prim and proper like some Victorian virgin. Ten pounds overweight. A hairdo that would look good on a eighty-year-old.'

  'Ouch!' said Samantha, wincing. In addition to all her other peculiar characteristics, Margaret Lorimer was blunt.

  'Well, you're not denying any of it, are you?'

  'I'm on a diet, and I have an appointment at the hairdresser's. It's just that I've been too busy to get my hair cut, and I grab food when I can. I do try to exercise, but there's never enough time and...'

  'And sex? What about that?'

  Samantha was halted in her tracks. 'Sex?'

  'Hmmph!' Margaret snorted triumphantly. 'I knew it! Barely knows what the word means.'

  'Margaret, I...'

  '... and practically non-existent in your case, I'd say. Oh, I know there's been the odd man hanging around. An occasional lover.' Samantha opened her mouth and then closed it; with Margaret, discretion was the better part of valour. 'But that isn't enough. Not for a Lorimer woman.' Margaret leaned forward and gave Samantha a piercing look. 'You need a man, my dear, a red-blooded man. Someone who will remind you that you're a woman.'

  'I'd rather not...'

  The blue eyes above the prince-nez glasses glittered frostily at her. 'Samantha, I won't put up with it any more.'

  Samantha blinked. 'With what?'

  'With you and the way you treat yourself.' She put up a gnarled hand to stop Samantha's objections. 'I've made my decision.'

  'Grand... Margaret, except for the ten pounds, I'm happy the way I am.'

  'Hmmph!'

  'I have a very full and very satisfying life.'

  'Is there a man in it?'

  'Well, not exactly, but...'

  'Hmmmph!' And this 'hmmmph' was accompanied with action. Margaret stood up, grabbed Samantha by the elbow so that she was forced to stand as well, then marched her over to the full-length mirror in the hallway. 'There,' she added triumphantly, 'what do you see?'

  Samantha stared and tried to see herself through her grandmother's eyes. What she saw was a woman, dressed like all the other women lawyers in her office, in a blazer, blouse and skirt, an outfit that was conservative and concealing. She had an oval face, a delicate nose and lips that curved into a small smile, putting a dimple in each cheek. Her hair was a rich dark brown, shoulder-length, parted in the middle and pulled back on each side behind ears which were small and adorned with tiny pearl earrings. Her eyes were wide and blue but hidden by gold-rimmed glasses. There was, Samantha saw, nothing special about the woman in the mirror. She was average in every respect; average in height, in weight, and in looks.

  'Well,' she said hesitantly, 'it looks like me.'

  Her grandmother's reflection glared at her. 'That, my dear, is the problem we have to face.'

  'It is?'

  'There is no reason why you have to look like a woman lawyer who needs a jazzy wardrobe, or up-to-date haircut, a diet and a good healthy dose of hanky-panky.'

  'Grandma!'

  'Margaret, and don't interrupt me now. Cassie!'

  Cassie arrived in the hallway, grinning from ear to ear and bearing two large manila envelopes in her hands. She was the same age as Margaret, a tall angular woman who had kept her Irish brogue although she had left Dublin for New York half a century ago.

  'Is the lass ready?' she asked Margaret.

  'She'll never be ready, Cassie,' Margaret said severely. 'This isn't one of those things I could lead her into gently. We're going to have to push her full speed ahead, spoon-feed her, so to speak.'

  'Now, Margaret,' Samantha began, 'what on earth are you talking about?'

  But Margaret refused to answer and beckoned Samantha to follow her back into the morning room.

  'All right,' she said as they sat back down in the winged chairs. 'Envelope number one.'

  Cassie handed a thick envelope to Samantha with a wide smile. 'It'd do ye a world of good,' she said.

  Samantha turned the envelope over in her hand and gave it a distrustful glance. It had nothing written on it except her name in large block letters. She looked at her grandmother. 'What is it?' she asked.

  'Open it, and you'll find out.' Margaret was also smiling and sitting
on the edge of her chair.

  'Will it explode?' Samantha asked teasingly.

  'Open it, you obstinate child?'

  Samantha tore open the end of the envelope, turned it upside down and let a mass of papers and brochures tumble out. Glossy pictures of rocky islands set against the turquoise backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea lay in her lap. A PanAm ticket lay on top of a cheque for several thousands of dollars. A neatly typed itinerary had fallen to her feet.

  She gave Margaret a look of surprise. 'It's... it's a trip,' she said at last.

  'Not just a trip,' Margaret said smugly. 'A vacation. Three days in Athens and a two-week cruise through the Greek Islands on the Princess Marguerita. There can't be anything wrong with a ship with a name like that, eh, Cassie?'

  'Heavens, no. She'll be a honey of a ship.'

  'Plus a little spending money and, if you look a bit deeper, you'll find a Miracle Morning at Elizabeth Arden's and a membership of a health club uptown. I don't want you going away on a trip ten pounds overweight with your hair looking like something the dog dragged in.'

  'Margaret, I don't believe... why, this is...'

  'And,' said Margaret with a final flourish, 'I've arranged for you to see my optometrist. Those glasses of yours have got to go. I want you to get contact lenses.'

  Samantha smiled at her grandmother and decided not to tell her that she'd never been able to tolerate contact lenses. She simply leaned forward and kissed Margaret's wrinkled cheek. 'It's wonderful,' she said. 'Truly wonderful.'

  Margaret beamed: Cassie beamed.

  'But I... I can't go.'

  The beams ceased and were replaced by frowns.

  'Are ye crazy?' Cassie asked.

  'Why not?' demanded Margaret.

  'Because I have such a heavy work schedule and there's a trial coming up in a month just when you've scheduled the trip and...'

  'Nonsense,' Margaret said with sniff. 'Horsefeathers.'

  'But I really appreciate it. I love the idea. It's a wonderful, thoughtful and...'

  'I called your office, spoke to your boss—a dear man, by the way—and arranged for you to have a holiday.'

  Samantha sat back. 'You did what? How did you ever...?' She was trying to imagine her gruff and quick-tempered boss, Tom, as a 'dear man'.

  'I practised the Lorimer charm on him,' Margaret explained with satisfaction, 'and told him that his law firm was driving you into an early grave. Samantha, my dear, according to his records you haven't taken a vacation in over a year and a half. He quite agreed with me that you were as stale as a doughnut left out overnight.'

  Samantha couldn't help wincing at the idea of Tom and Margaret having a cosy discussion over her physical and mental state, but she did have to acknowledge the fact that she was tired, run-down and in desperate need of some rest and relaxation.

  'So ye'll go?' asked Cassie.

  Samantha looked up into her worried, angular face, realised how much this gift meant to both of them, and knew she couldn't refuse. 'Of course,' she said. 'I don't think I can resist.'

  'Good,' said Margaret. 'Cassie, envelope number two.'

  'You mean there's more?' Samantha asked as she took the second envelope.

  'This is the best part,' said Margaret, and Samantha could see that this was true. The gift of a cruise, spending money, hairdresser, contact lenses and membership of a health spa was nothing compared to what was coming up. Both Margaret and Cassie had lit up like two overcharged light bulbs.

  'The envelope was thin and, when Samantha opened it, only one piece of paper fell into her hands. She gingerly unfolded it and then stared at its brief message. The letterhead had one name on it, 'Fantasy Unlimited', and a small black and white logo of a plump, grinning genie rubbing a tiny Aladdin's lamp. Below that was a single sentence: 'In compliance with your own private fantasy, a shipboard romance in the Greek Islands.'

  Samantha read it once, read it again, then stared at it with disbelieving eyes. Finally she looked up to meet Margaret's avid gaze. 'What in God's name is this?'

  'Just what it says,' Margaret said gleefully.

  'A shipboard romance?' Samantha glanced back at the paper. 'Your own private fantasy. Did you,' she said to Margaret in slow and carefully enunciated words, 'pay this... this company, Fantasy Unlimited, for me to have a shipboard romance on my cruise to the Greek Islands?'

  'Isn't it a marvellous gift?'

  'With some paid gigolo!'

  'Now, hold your horses. It's an escort service. You know, a handsome man will be at your side, join you for dinner, dance with you under the moonlight- that sort of thing.'

  'That sort of thing,' Samantha echoed coldly.

  'And if that sort of thing turns into another sort of thing... well,' Margaret gave an eloquent shrug, 'who's to know?'

  'Do you think I'd go to bed with a man who's been paid to provide me with a... a...' Samantha was stammering now with a suppressed fury, 'a stud service?'

  It was Margaret's turn to wince and she looked at Cassie. 'Definitely stuffy,' she commented.

  'No one's forcing ye into anything, lass. We just wanted you to have a wee bit of fun.'

  'And I'm fully capable of finding my own men, thank you!'

  'We know you are, dear,' Margaret said soothingly, 'but we just thought we'd help nature along.'

  Samantha stood up. 'I won't go,' she said. 'Thank you for everything, but I absolutely will not go if some man is going to be hanging around me earning his living by pretending to find me romantic and attractive.'

  Margaret sighed. 'All right,' she said.

  But Samantha was still infuriated and didn't catch her grandmother's words. 'I can't imagine anything more insulting, more demeaning, more disgusting than paying a man to make love to me! It's horrible, that's what it is, and...'

  Margaret had stood up and taken Samantha's hands. 'Sam dear, it's all right. I'll cancel Fantasy Unlimited.'

  Samantha blinked and looked down at her. 'You will?'

  'Of course. I don't want you to be unhappy, and I think you should take the trip.'

  'You promise that you'll cancel?'

  'Cross my heart.' And Margaret dramatically crossed her forearms over her tiny, meagre chest.

  Samantha gave her a suspicious glance. 'I don't know,' she said. 'You're not the world's most trustworthy person.'

  Cassie intervened, 'Don't worry your head about it. I'll make sure that she cancels.'

  Samantha glanced at Cassie. Where Margaret was flighty, eccentric and disorganised, Cassie was reliable, pragmatic and sensible. Margaret's promises were as ephemeral as the air: Cassie's words were as solid as the rock of Gibraltar. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll go-'

  'Good,' said Margaret with relief.

  'But,' Samantha added, shaking a finger at her, 'no more funny business!'

  Margaret gave her a reproachful look. 'Of course not!'

  'Okay,' Samantha agreed, 'but the two of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Really! What would people think if I told them that my grandmother had tried to buy me a lover?'

  'They'd think you were lucky,' Margaret said tartly. 'It's better man what most grandmothers give their granddaughters. Toaster ovens, ironing boards, knitted scarves, underpants.' Her already wrinkled face creased in disgust and she added with hauteur, 'At least I have some imagination!'

  Joshua Baxter Sinclair was sitting in front of the desk in his well-appointed office and staring down at the three files in front of him. One had to do with the acquisition of an office building on Lexington Avenue, another reflected the massive amounts of work already done about the purchase of a condominium complex in New Jersey, and the third one had his own name on it. This latter file had been pulled by his secretary and dropped on his desk with a brief and unrevealing memo attached to it that said, 'Brought to your attention at the request of your partners.'

  Josh stared at it, opened it and idly sifted through the papers inside. There were Internal Revenue Service forms, deduction slips, stock certificates and
bonus announcements. It was the sort of personal file that demonstrated in a cold and efficient fashion that J.B. Sinclair was a partner in Drexel, Ross, Beame and Sinclair Associates, that he'd been in the partnership for eight years, that he was thirty-nine years old and that he had no dependants. It also showed that since his arrival in the partnership, his annual income had quadrupled and was a combination of salary, commissions, stock options and bonuses. And, while none of the papers actually had anything to say about J.B. Sinclair's personality or temperament, it would have been clear to anyone reading it that to survive in the jungle that was Manhattan's real estate business, he was shrewd, patient, aggressive and hard-working. All in all, it was a very satisfactory file, and Josh couldn't imagine why his partners had had it sent to him this particular morning.

  Shaking his head in bewilderment, he turned to the two other files and immersed himself in them. He had a rough day ahead. There were meetings with three clients, two of whom were close to a major real estate agreement. He had a lunch date with a local politician who was in the powerful position of presiding over City Hall's committee on property re-evaluation and, because he was the one of the four partners considered to possess the most tact and charm, he'd been assigned the difficult task of meeting that evening with a Saudi Arabian prince who was looking into Manhattan real estate. It was a harder day than he usually had because it had begun at six in the morning when he'd got up and jogged, and it would continue on to all hours of the night, if rumours about the Prince were true. But Josh was used to working hard. An eighty-hour week was nothing new.

  He worked at the files until ten-thirty when his secretary put her head round the door and told him that coffee was arriving along with Bud Drexel. Josh stood up from his black leather chair, stretched a bit and walked over to the window where he looked down thirty storeys to the street below. Against the back-drop of the Manhattan skyline, he was a tall figure, broad-shouldered in his grey suit and dark-haired. He had a handsome face with deep-set brown eyes, a square chin, a wide forehead. It was the sort of face that looked lived-in; the kind that showed the imprint of many emotions. There were deep brackets by a mouth that could set itself at a severe angle when its owner was angry or upset. Yet it was also a mouth that could curve into a long, slow and lazy smile, the kind of smile that made women's heads turn and their hearts melt.