Indiscretions

by Robyn Donald

  Compelled, charmed... and compromised!

  Mariel loved Bride’s Bay Resort, its Sea Island location, its friendly staff. She’d jumped at the offer to translate there again but soon wished she hadn’t. For one thing, working for a security-conscious delegation was no job for a woman with a past. For another, there was Nicholas Leigh, the most commanding, charismatic man Mariel had ever met and for her, the most dangerous!

  From the start a feral and magnetic attraction crackled between them. An affair with a delegate would be indiscreet enough. If Nicholas discovered her carefully covered past too, it would destroy both their lives. For his sake and for hers too, Mariel had to get out of this man’s life. But first she had to break the spell that bound them!

  Indiscretions

  ROBYN DONALD

  Harlequin Mills & Boon

  First published in Great Britain 1995

  Australian copyright 1995

  New Zealand copyright 1995

  Philippine copyright 1995

  © Robyn Donald. 1995

  ISBN 0 73350 906 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘‘ I thought you’d be interested.’’

  Wide blue eyes shaded with cynicism, Mariel Browning lifted her brows at the bartender. “Why?”

  “Well, they are fellow countrymen of yours. You can’t meet many of them—didn’t you tell me there are only three million of you?”

  “I did, but at least half of those are overseas at any one time.”

  She grinned at the look he sent her over the top of his spectacles. Desmond was too good a bartender to show any disbelief, but she’d met him several times over the past year and was beginning to be able to read his expressions. This one said, Pull the other leg!

  “Well, that’s the way it seems,” she amended, her smile and tone edging into irony. “I trip over New Zealanders all the time. They’re everywhere. When their kids grow up the first thing they want to do is fly away from those three little islands at the furthermost ends of the earth and see what the rest of the planet is like. In any group of more than five people anywhere in the world, you can be sure that one of them is a New Zealander.” She smiled to soften the stiffness in her tone. “Yes, even here in South Carolina, where most people don’t know New Zealand exists, and those few who do think it’s part of Australia.”

  The middle-aged black man, who had been one of the latter, gave her a stately smile as he set the tall glass of gently fizzing mineral water in front of her. “But these are important New Zealanders,” he said seriously.

  “The Minister of Trade, no less, here to talk business with his Japanese counterpart. Big deal,” she said lightly, hiding a tiny niggle of unease with a dazzling smile. Where there were politicians intent on conferring there would also be diplomats, discreetly powerful, unobtrusive and necessary.

  Until her arrival on Jermain Island, one of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, she’d believed she was going to be interpreting for a group of businessmen. Noted for her fluency in Japanese and her ability to navigate flawlessly through the ideographs of its written language, Mariel always enjoyed coming to Bride’s Bay Resort. However, had she been told this was a diplomatic occasion, she’d have looked for some excuse to stay away.

  She had reason, she thought with a twist of her full mouth, to be wary of diplomats.

  The cool mineral water slid down her throat as she looked appreciatively around Desmond’s domain. Some forty years ago the bar had been planned to reflect the stately, country-house sophistication of an English gentleman’s club. Mariel had never been in an English club, but she thought the designer had produced a very pleasant atmosphere.

  But then, the hotel was noted for its beauty and refined ambience. That was one of the reasons it was so popular with high-powered groups of businessmen and diplomats for semi-official meetings like the one ahead.

  After a moment she said restlessly, “I don’t know that I count as a Kiwi anymore—I’ve been away for the past ten years.’’ Ever since she was eighteen.

  And I didn’t enjoy it much while I was there, she added silently. Hated it, in fact.

  “You’ve still got an accent,” Desmond said, looking past her as a man entered the room and sat at one of the tables. Moving toward the newcomer, he said professionally, “Good afternoon, sir. What can I get for you?”

  “Weak whiskey and soda, please.”

  In spite of herself, Mariel’s head turned. Although the newcomer’s deep textured voice invoked an involuntary feminine response, it was the accent that caught her attention most. Far from a conspicuously antipodean drawl, the unmistakable intonation and rhythm nevertheless proclaimed his antecedents.

  Definitely one of the New Zealand party.

  And a diplomat to boot.

  Certainly not a politician. For a start, he was too young. Thirty-four at the outside, showing a smooth elegance that hinted of a lifetime accustomed to the confidence and privileges that only social position and money can buy.

  Some of that money, Mariel decided, covertly evaluating him with an eye honed in embassies as a child, had been spent on an exclusive London tailor.

  Not that his clothes made him. Oh, he certainly wore them well, his suit clinging lovingly to broad shoulders and long limbs, but there was much more to the man than excellent tailoring. Shocked, she registered a subtle tug at her senses, more antagonism than excitement, as her eyes lingered on the play of muscle when he stretched his legs and picked up a newspaper from the rack beside his chair.

  And then, as if he’d known all along of her sideways scrutiny, he looked directly at her, all icy appraisal. It hit her like a blow. Mariel knew she was no raving beauty, but perhaps she had become too accustomed to the involuntary homage most men paid to red-brown hair and ivory skin and large blue eyes with enough turquoise in them to make them intriguing.

  Not, however, this man, this New Zealander. The only emotion in his expression was an uncompromising assessment, calculating and studied, that flicked her self-esteem.

  He thinks I’m trying to pick him up, she realized. The nerve of the man! What conceit!

  Forgetting her normal caution, she allowed an amused, condescending curve to widen her soft lips. David had told her often that when she smiled like that, the tiny creases at the corners of her mouth deepened, giving her a smile of sultry aloofness that both beckoned and discouraged. For some reason she hoped David had been right. Coolly, with measured, leisurely deliberation, she looked the newcomer over from beneath dark lashes, keeping her eyes steady, almost placid.

  He suffered her scrutiny with an impervious, bored self-assurance, his only measurable response being the slight narrowing of pale eyes that gave him the concentrated, vigilant stare of a hunter.

  An atavistic fear shivered through Mariel, but pride kept her head high, kept that small, provoking smile pinned in place as she ran her gaze across the arrogant features of the newcomer’s face. And it was pride that lifted her shoulders—although nobody would ever be able to say for sure that she’d shrugged as she turned away. Yet even as she presented her back to the newcomer, she felt the lash of his glance. Adrenaline surged through her, tightening her skin, hurrying her breath. Fool, her brain said. Fool, fool, fool...

  It would have been more sensible to suffer that antagonistic glance passively, because beneath the newcomer’s instant hostility she discerned another, equally potent response. In the first few seconds of that intent, wordless communication, senses older and more primitive than the five most obvious had homed in on his interest. And she was experienced enough in the battle between the sexes to understand that a dangerous combination of pique and reluctant interest had driven her to issue a challenge.

  Sexual attraction was a wild card, ungovernable, a mat
ter of dangerous chemistry. It could play the very devil with your life, which was why she refused to allow it any place in her emotions, let alone her career.

  Yet that primal call of male to female had goaded her into flinging his barely concealed antipathy back in his face. And although he had immense mastery over his expression so that not a muscle moved, not an eyelash flickered, no colour licked along the prominent cheekbones, he hadn’t been able to hide his sharp, fierce reaction. She could smell it, she thought, forcing herself to lift her glass to her mouth, feel it like the crackle of electricity against suddenly sensitized skin.

  And she brought it on herself, behaving like a cheap idiot in a singles bar. Over the years she had evolved rigid rules. She had just overturned one of the most important: Never get involved with a client.

  So it was alarming that one glance from a total stranger should propel her over the invisible line of demarcation.

  Even more alarming was the fact that every cell in her body was still caressed by a purring, lazily feminine satisfaction that had nothing to do with the normal rules of daily life and everything to do with the man who sat so silently a few yards away.

  Desmond delivered his drink and came back to the bar. It was the slack time of day, when he ran the place by himself for an hour. Without being obvious he turned up the Mozart on the tape.

  “Know him?” he asked softly.

  A spot between her shoulder blades prickled. She shook her head. “Never seen him before,” she said, easing her dry throat by swallowing half her drink.

  “Well, he looks as if he finds that red hair and those long legs mighty interesting,” Desmond said neutrally.

  Resisting the impulse to lift her heavy, shoulder-length tresses clear of her neck, Mariel tilted her glass, keeping her eyes on the bubbles fizzing up through the clear liquid. “He’s a guest,” she muttered.

  As well as clients, guests were out of bounds. And she had just stepped over those bounds. Still angry with herself— and the unknown man with the unsettling glance—she asked, “When does the rest of the diplomatic party arrive?”

  Desmond knew everything about the hotel, including, rumour had it, the identity of the man who was the lover of Liz Jermain, the resort manager.

  “They’re meeting the launch at four o’clock,” he told her, “so they’ll be here in a couple of hours. The New Zealanders, that is. The Japanese arrive forty minutes later by helicopter.”

  Mariel had been at the hotel for no more than an hour herself, just time to unpack in the small room she’d been allocated in the staff quarters, put out the items that made each impersonal room a temporary home and order the flowers she always needed to sustain the illusion.

  She drained her glass. “Thanks, Desmond. That saved my life.”

  “You should eat more,” he said disapprovingly. “Languages are all very well, but they don’t put meat on those thin bones. And you’ve got shadows under your eyes, too. I thought I told you last time—”

  “Tell the people I work for,” she said, smiling. “They’re the ones who drag me out of bed to translate and interpret, and keep me working all night.”

  “But you like it.”

  “Wouldn’t do anything else. See you later—I’d better go and talk to Elise.”

  He nodded, looking sober. “Poor girl,” he said.

  “Is her husband still giving her a hard time?”

  Desmond frowned. “Something is,” he said, exercising his famous discretion.

  “I’d better go. See you later.”

  Still acutely conscious of the man who sat apparently intent on the newspaper, Mariel walked with brisk steps across the room. Intuition warned her that the stranger was aware of every footfall. I hope he hates it as much as I do, she thought, trying to smooth away the raw patch his instant contempt had left on her psyche.

  She turned away from the foyer, its cool elegance warmed by great jardinieres filled with the flowering azaleas that were nature’s tribute to spring. Ahead lay the hotel’s business centre, set up with the latest in equipment. Elise Jennings, who ran it and organized the staff necessary to deal with anything a diplomat, industrialist or business leader might need, had been going through a particularly difficult time. Her marriage had broken up messily, and she’d been forced to sell her home on the mainland and move into staff quarters with her seven-year-old daughter.

  Normally a quiet, reserved person, Elise had wept on Mariel’s shoulder the last time she’d been at Bride’s Bay, and they’d talked for hours. This time, however, although the older woman looked just as tired and heartsick, she greeted Mariel with pleasure.

  “Good to see you again. How’s New York?”

  “Noisy,” Mariel said, adding delicately, “How’s Caitlin?”

  Elise frowned. “Just the same. Very dependent,” she said briefly.

  “Are you still living in the staff quarters?”

  “Yeah, and she still wants to go to California to be with Jimmy. I can’t convince her that she’s better off here with me—she thinks she’d be able to go to Disneyland every day.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “I know.” Looking down at the sheaf of papers in her hand, Elise said bitterly, “You remember I told you last time I thought he was up to something? Well, my noble Jimmy decided he wasn’t going to share any of his hard-won assets, so he declared bankruptcy. Caitlin and I have nothing.”

  Appalled, Mariel asked, “Can he do that?”

  The older woman gave her a cynical smile. “Honey, if you’ve got a good enough lawyer, you can do just about anything. Oh, I can understand it. He grew up on the island here—in a little house down by the fishing wharf—and he had nothing. It was sheer guts and working his butt off for years that got him where he is. He isn’t about to share any of it. Well, he lost, too, because I’ve got custody, and there’s no way I can afford to fly Caitlin and me out to California. And I’m not letting her go without me.”

  The telephone interrupted her. Elise picked it up and said, “Yes, sir, we can do that right away.” When she’d replaced the receiver she said, “Mariel, you’re needed in room 27. The guy wants a document translated from English to Japanese.”

  “I thought the New Zealand lot weren’t coming until four,” Mariel complained mildly, getting to her feet. “Oh, well, no rest for the wicked.” With her luck it would be the antagonistic stranger in the bar who wanted her.

  “An eager beaver,” Elise said. “Learned any new languages lately?”

  Mariel grinned. “Basque. It’s supposed to be the most difficult language in the world.”

  “Is it used much?”

  “Almost never.” Mariel met her surprised gaze with a slow twinkle. “Only six hundred thousand or so people speak it.”

  “Then why learn it?”

  “The challenge,” Mariel said cheerfully as she turned to go. “I can’t resist a challenge.”

  “Hey, how much do you know?”

  “I can say ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening,’ and I think I might have a handle on ‘goodbye.’ Beyond that it’s a mystery.”

  She left the room to laughter and went swiftly up the gracious sweeping staircase, trailing her fingers over the elegant curves of the banister, worn smooth by thousands of hands over the years. There was nothing in New Zealand to match this, she thought with enormous contentment. Nothing at all.

  The Sea Islands had waxed rich for generations, first on indigo, then on cotton, and always on the efforts of slaves. This glorious building was the original Jermain plantation house, its white pillars like an evocation of the Old South. After the Civil War the family and the plantation had fallen on hard times, until Liz Jermain’s grandmother scraped up the money to join the two flanking buildings to the main house and transform it into a hotel.

  Outside room 27 Mariel took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders before knocking. The door opened immediately, and yes, it was the man from the bar.

  His eyes, so pale a green they were almo
st colourless—except for glints of gold blazing through a matrix of jade— held hers for a moment before the professional politeness in his expression changed to cold aloofness. But he couldn’t prevent a flicker of elemental response.

  Shockingly, an inchoate flutter of anticipation in Mariel’s stomach burned suddenly into excitement.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, her formal smile hiding a perilously balanced composure. “You want a document translated, I believe.”

  His lashes half covered his eyes, intensifying that disturbing glitter. “Yes, from English to Japanese. Can you do it?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Here,” he said curtly, “in this room.”

  She did not want to sit at the charming desk beside the magnificent four-poster bed and work while he watched her, and she certainly didn’t care for his implied mistrust. Without thinking, she shook her head. “I use a computer—”

  “A portable, surely?”

  Lord, but her wits had gone begging. “Yes,” she said woodenly. “But—”

  “This is confidential, Ms...”

  The keen eyes had missed nothing, certainly not the absence of rings on her long slender fingers. “Browning,” she said stiffly.

  “How do you do, Ms. Browning. My name is Nicholas Leigh.”

  Automatically she took the hand he held out. Although his grip was firm it wasn’t painful, but an instant sizzle of electricity made her draw a sharp breath into her lungs. Without thinking, she jerked her hand away.

  Damn, the man was dynamite, and he had to know it.

  However, nothing of that recognition showed in the hard, handsome face nor in the green-gold eyes, although some foolish, hidden part of her preened at the quick tightening of his mouth and the way his eyes narrowed even further, giving him a hooded, menacing look.

  He said smoothly, “I’m afraid I must insist that you work here, Ms. Browning.” He added with an undertone of mockery that whipped across her confidence, “If you wish, I can leave the door open.”

  Colour heated the soft ivory of her skin. He saw too much. “That won’t be necessary, sir,” she said, striving for the right touch of amusement, the note of casual sophistication that would put him in his place. “I’ll get my computer.”