by JoAnn Ross
“Well, yes,” K.J. admitted.
Don’t admit to a thing, her inner scold advised sternly.
Realizing that she’d made a major mistake by speaking up in the first place, K.J. tried to follow that admonition. “But it’s not as if—”
“You actually know Alec Mackenzie?” The editorial director cut off K.J.’s planned demurral.
“We’ve met,” she admitted reluctantly. Nervous at even the most remote prospect of seeing Alec again, K.J. began toying with the monogrammed sterling silver Mont Blanc pen she’d received from her grandmother when she’d graduated from Sarah Lawrence eight years earlier.
“I thought you said you two had become friends,” Molly said.
“That’s not exactly right,” K.J. hedged.
“Friendly enough that he might agree to a request from you?” the editorial director asked.
“I don’t know.” K.J. drew in a halting breath as her mind whirled frantically, trying to decide exactly how much she’d have to admit to. “I suppose I could try,” she said without enthusiasm.
I can’t believe you said that!
The alarmed voice reverberated around inside K.J.’s head like ricocheting bullets. The top came off her pen, allowing the spring to fly across the room. With all eyes on her flushed face, no one seemed to notice. Indeed, it would have been possible to hear a paper clip drop in the hush that had come over the conference room at that declaration.
“So you really are friends?” the marketing woman asked incredulously.
“Of sorts.” That was such an out-and-out lie. K.J. could almost envision her Scots Calvinist ancestors spinning in their graves. “Friends” was definitely not the way to describe her relationship with Alec Mackenzie. Not in the beginning and definitely not now.
“Good enough friends that you can track him down?” the editorial director asked, not bothering to hide her skepticism.
K.J. was wishing the man’s name hadn’t come up in the first place. But she could have just denied having ever met Alec. And there was no reason why she’d needed to imply they had any type of relationship.
Well, this certainly isn’t the first time you’ve behaved impulsively where that man is concerned.
Unfortunately, she thought with an inner groan, that was too true. Now the only thing left to do was to brazen it out.
Besides, she thought with a sudden burst of pent-up temper, Alec owed her. And if she could get him to agree to take part in the charity event, she might even be promoted to a senior slot. Which would, in turn, make her less likely to spend every weekend reading through the slush pile.
Not that she really minded reading all those unsolicited manuscripts that flooded into the offices every day; after all, it was thrilling when you stumbled across a sparkling diamond among all those lumps of coal. But it would be nice to have a little free time to work in her darkroom for a change.
Although photography had always been her first love, her paternal grandmother, with whom she’d gone to live after her parents’ death when she was nine, had not been at all encouraging about K.J. following in her father’s career footsteps. Helen Campbell, whose husband’s family had made a fortune on Wall Street buying up stock for pennies on the dollar after the crash of 1929, had died last year in her sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-nine.
Before her death, she’d never missed an opportunity to remind K.J. that her father’s inappropriate passion for photography had gotten not only himself killed on Mount Everest, but his wife, as well. That tragic avalanche was how the orphaned K.J. had ended up living with the woman George Campbell had been estranged from for nearly two decades before his untimely death.
From the first day she’d arrived at the Campbell Long Island estate, K.J. had done her best to please her rigid grandmother. She’d traded in her ragged, comfortable sneakers for black patent-leather Mary Janes, watched her beloved T-shirts and blue jeans being boxed away for Goodwill, and even silently submitted to having what her grandmother referred to as her “wild hooligan” hair coated with rotten-egg-smelling junk that turned it as straight as rainwater every six months. Only when she’d escaped to college had it been allowed to grow back into its riotous mass of light auburn curls.
She’d majored in English on a whim, since her grandmother refused to pay for photography classes and K.J. had always enjoyed reading. The fact that her mother had been an editor—indeed, the editor who had first discovered, then married, photographer George Campbell—made her feel closer to the parent she’d never stopped loving.
After graduation, K.J. had taken the job at the romance publisher, planning to stay only a few months, until she could support herself with the photographs she’d actually begun to sell.
A self-taught photographer who’d inherited her father’s talented eye, she lacked the connections to the top galleries. Which was why, since she had an unfortunate addiction to eating at least one meal a day, she’d moved onto the editorial track.
Which wasn’t all that much of a sacrifice, she reminded herself now. After all, most days she enjoyed her work. And after the art director had introduced her to a few of the photographers who shot the romance novel covers, some of them had invited her to Saturday morning shoots. K.J. willingly volunteered to change film, move light screens, anything to gain the technical skills she lacked. Recently, she’d even had a couple of minor showings, where colorful photographs of city street scenes had sold out.
“I suppose I could try to track Alec down,” she agreed now with more enthusiasm than she was feeling.
That was all it took. The decision to have K.J. Campbell track down Alec Mackenzie and request that he take part in their anniversary bachelor auction was unanimous.
You’ll be sorry, girl.
As they moved on to other new business, K.J. didn’t hear another word of the meeting. Her internal scold’s warning had her wondering what on earth she’d gotten herself into. She also had the strangest feeling she could hear her boisterous father laughing at her predicament.
“OKAY, SHOOT,” Molly demanded. It was after work and the two friends were having an early dinner in a Chinatown restaurant. “Why did you get so upset when I brought up you having met Alec Mackenzie?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” K.J. slid her chopsticks out of their paper wrapper.
“You went so pale your freckles showed. We’ve been best friends for six years,” Molly reminded her. She began spreading hot mustard on an egg roll. “There’s something you haven’t told me about the guy, isn’t there?”
Stalling for time, K.J. picked up a piece of sesame chicken and popped it into her mouth. It was her favorite item on the menu. Tonight it tasted like dust. What in the world had she gotten herself into?
“You’re right,” she said with a sigh when she’d finished chewing.
She put her chopsticks down and rubbed her temples, where a headache that began as a twinge during the fateful meeting was now reaching blinding proportions. She could almost imagine some maniacal midget inside her head, pounding a huge brass gong like the one that took up most of the small entry at the front of the restaurant.
“I should have told you. It’s just that it’s a bit complicated. ”
“The best things in life often are.”
The topic, along with her friend’s probing look, had made her mouth go dry. K.J. took a long drink of wine, hoping it would help. It didn’t.
“Okay, you’re right. I did meet him last year. At that writers’ conference in Las Vegas. The one you were scheduled to attend before you came down with that horrible cold.”
“My ears were so stuffed up I was afraid they’d explode before the plane hit cruising altitude.”
“Well, if you’ll recall, I spoke on the larger-than-life attributes of a romance hero. Alec was scheduled to give a workshop on research methods, but it was a huge conference, and since he arrived too late to make the welcoming cocktail party, we didn’t actually run into each other until the closing banq
uet.”
Molly was looking at K.J. over the rim of her wineglass, openly transfixed. “If this were published by our romance company, sparks would have started flying the minute you met.”
“It was more than sparks.” K.J. sighed again and shook her head, which only made it ache more. “Actually, it was more of a nuclear explosion. I have no memory of leaving the banquet. All I remember was being excruciatingly bored while politely listening to a play-by-play account of an autobiographical romance between a butcher and the ghost of a supermarketproduce-department manager who’d tragically died in the store’s juicing machine—which, of course, the would-be author assured me would be a bestseller. I happened to glance across the room and find the most intensely passionate man I’d ever seen standing in the doorway of the banquet room.”
“You could tell he was passionate from all the way across the room?” Molly asked disbelievingly.
“Absolutely.” Even after all these months, K.J. felt the fire flare in her blood at the memory of that riveting moment when her entire world had tilted so dangerously on its axis. “And I realize it sounds like some fictional reaction from one of our books, but I swear, when his eyes met mine, I felt shivers all through my body.”
“They always turn the air-conditioning down too low in hotels.”
“But I wasn’t cold. In fact, as I stared at the fire in his gray eyes as he walked toward me, I felt as if I were about to burst into flames. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even think. Which I suppose helps explain why, when he took hold of my hand as if he had every right to, I walked out of that ballroom with him.”
That was your second mistake. Your first was not running the first time you saw that treasure-hunting rogue.
Molly refilled both their glasses. Her intelligent eyes widened as comprehension dawned. “Are you telling me that you—a woman who could easily be the poster girl for safe sex—actually slept with Alec Mackenzie?”
K.J. closed her blue eyes and held the glass against her throbbing temple. “That’s precisely what I’m telling you,” she murmured reluctantly. “I did sleep with Alec. But only after I married him.”
2
Somewhere in the jungles of South America
“YOU KNOW WHAT YOU NEED?” the deep male voice inquired out of the blue.
“No. But I expect you’re going to tell me,” Alec muttered as he studied the ancient piece of parchment.
“You need to get laid.”
That claim garnered his reluctant attention. Alec lifted his eyes to his best, and, when you came right down to it, his only friend, who was seated across the rickety wooden table from him. “That’s your opinion. Actually, what I need is a dowser.”
“And what is that?”
“A guy with a pointed stick who finds water.”
“This adventure has already extended into the monsoon season,” Rafael Santos noted. “I would think you already have more water than you know what to do with.”
Alec scowled at that idea as the ancient generatorrun paddle fan over his head, which was actually working today, turned lazily, doing little to cool the moisture-laden air. The plan had been to find the barge before the rainy season turned the entire jungle to mud. Unfortunately, he’d learned the hard way that expeditions didn’t always work out as planned.
“It’s not water I’d want him to find.”
“Ah.” Rafael nodded. “These dowsers can also find gold?”
“Not that I know of. But there’s damn well gotta be a first time.”
Alec glared back down at the ancient map he’d run across in a little shop in Barcelona specializing in old books. It had been in a leather-bound log allegedly belonging to a Spanish ship captain who’d returned from the New World with a fantastic tale of a barge loaded with Inca gold lost in the Andes.
According to the log, a landslide caused by the drenching rains had killed most of the conquistadors on the expedition. And buried a king’s ransom in stolen booty.
If the log entry was to be believed, and instinct, along with a lot of follow-up research, had assured Alec it could be, the landslide had also closed off the Amazonian tributary and covered the barge and its precious cargo with tons of mud and silt. Inevitably, the jungle had reclaimed the land and the gold. For now.
“Why don’t you give it a break?” Rafael asked, cast ing a glance across the cantina, which was little more than a lean-to surrounded by lush green plants and every species of tree known to man. “Sonia has been eyeing you all evening, and if she pulls that blouse down any lower, every man in the place is going to owe you a huge debt of gratitude.” He grinned. “Take the willing wench to bed, Alec. Work off your sexual frustrations. And perhaps, with your body satisfied and your head cleared, the answer to your puzzle will appear tomorrow.”
Alec looked at the voluptuous barmaid currently bent over a table, wiping away spilled beer. Her breasts were lush, golden and threatening to pop out of the top of her low-necked cotton blouse at any moment. “The idea’s admittedly tempting.”
Especially since Sonia had made it clear, from the first day he’d arrived in Santa Clara, that he would be more than welcome in her bed. Alec sighed and took a long pull on the brown beer bottle. “But in case you’ve forgotten, I’m a married man.”
“By law,” his friend conceded. “But as I’ve been telling you, it would be an easy enough matter to get an annulment.”
“And I keep telling you that an annulment isn’t an option.”
“One night of passion does not make a marriage,” Rafael argued, not for the first time. As an attorney, he knew his case law. “Besides, there are other grounds you could use besides nonconsummation. In case you’ve forgotten, your blushing bride lied through her pretty white teeth to you, then ran off.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything about that misadventure,” Alec grumbled.
Not that amazing, hit-by-lightning feeling he’d never believed in until he’d first seen Katherine Jeanne Campbell. Nor the hours they’d spent in the hotel bar, her seeming to hang on his every word as he’d gone on and on about this missing Inca gold he was determined to recover.
He certainly hadn’t forgotten their marriage, which may have taken less than ten minutes for the minister to perform, but had damn well been legal by all the laws of Nevada. He remembered in vivid detail every sensual moment of that long, love-filled night when he’d discovered, for the first time in his thirty-four years, the true meaning of passion.
Nor had he forgotten the furious argument the following morning. Or the words of goodbye his bride had written on hotel stationery and left on his pillow. Okay, admittedly he’d stormed out of the hotel room first. But she should have known that he had every intention of coming back once he’d cooled off. And given her time to see the light.
“What the woman did is, legally, abandonment, which is all you need to be a free man.” Rafael was still arguing his case when Alec dragged his mind back to the present.
“I′m not getting an annulment.”
Although he knew that Rafael—and anyone else who might hear the story of his ill-fated, too-brief marriage—would think him crazy, Alec remained convinced that one of these days Kate would come to her senses, realize her mistake, return to him, apologize for her hasty behavior and beg his forgiveness.
Oh yes, he thought as he took another, longer pull on the bottle, the idea of his red-haired bride on her knees was definitely an appealing fantasy.
When he realized that Sonia was smiling across the tavern at him, her lush ripe mouth sending a gilt-edged invitation, Alec tugged his rebellious lips from their unconscious grin back into his earlier scowl.
Sonia shook her dark head with obvious feminine pique and returned to scrubbing the table with more force than necessary, the action starting those magnificent breasts to swaying again in a way that had nearly every male in the cantina holding his breath. Every male but Alec.
Unfortunately, he thought with not a little regret, the provocative sight didn’t arou
se him in the least. Because his body—like his mind—had stayed focused on one woman all these months.
Oh yes, when their paths did finally cross again, he would benevolently forgive his wife. Then he had every intention of catching up for lost time by making mad passionate love to her until she was hoarse from screaming his name and limp and drained from countless orgasms.
And then, after he’d finally satiated his own gutgrinding need, he was going to let her experience exactly how it felt to be the one who was walked out on.
New York City
“MARRIED?” Molly stared at K.J. in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Believe me, there’s nothing funny about it.” Not now, and especially not then, K.J. thought glumly. “Well, there was one thing.”
“What?”
“We were married by Merlin.”
“Merlin?”
“You know, King Arthur’s magician.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“It’s true. The hotel was one of those theme things—a castle with moats and jesters and jousting knights. Apparently a lot of people find it romantic to exchange vows in the Camelot Cathedral dressed in medieval costumes.”
“The idea of Alec Mackenzie in a velvet doublet and tights is just too depressing to contemplate.”
“Oh, we didn’t wear costumes. But we showed up at the chapel right after a couple got in a fight over the groom losing all their honeymoon money at the blackjack table in the casino. She stormed out, and since the minister had an open slot, so to speak, we just sort of took it.”
“So you’re actually expecting me to believe that you and the publishing world’s answer to Indiana Jones— whom you’d just met—were married in Camelot by some spell-spouting wizard?”
K.J.’s lips curved into a faint smile at the memory of the courtiers trumpeting the recessional led by harlequin-suited jugglers and tumblers. And how later, back in Alec’s suite, they’d laughed about the ludicrous, but surprisingly romantic ceremony.
