by Penny Jordan
He let his arm drop back to his side. From what Monty, his best friend and business manager, had said in his call from California yesterday, Zack was only a few weeks away from taking that last crucial step into the light. He didn’t really need any distractions right now.
But with his dream about to be realised, why did he still feel as jaded as the city he had come to despise?
After his run-in with the feisty, fascinating Kate Denton and her big mouth, it occurred to him that fulfilling his long-term business plans was only going to solve part of the problem. His personal life needed a makeover too. During the last ten years he’d allowed himself to drift through a series of lazy and unfulfilling affairs. What was that old saying about all work and no play? He had a few days off for the first time in, well, for ever. Surely there’d never be a better time to play.
Zack turned to stare at the empty chair opposite his desk. Yeah, Kate Denton would be one heck of a distraction. But she’d also be a challenge. And he always thrived on challenges.
As Zack picked up the phone, he pictured her captivating face, the wild blonde hair, those striking sky-blue eyes, her plump, kissable Cupid’s bow mouth, and didn’t try to deny the sharp tug of sexual desire.
Volatile or not, she’d be worth the effort, he’d lay odds on it.
As he tapped out the concierge’s number Zack let the heady mix of adrenaline and arousal pulse through his veins. Damned if he didn’t feel better already. More alive, more excited than he had in years.
They might only have a couple of days to enjoy each other, but he planned to see a whole lot more of Miss Kate Denton and her ‘proper knickers’.
CHAPTER TWO
CONTRARY TO POPULAR opinion, Kate didn’t believe crying ever made anyone feel better. In her experience, crying made you feel rubbish—and look even worse—and now she had conclusive proof, staring back at her out of the bathroom mirror.
Dabbing at her puffy, red-rimmed eyes with a damp tissue, Kate willed the tears to stop. She’d been at it for over twenty minutes and it was giving her a blistering headache. She wasn’t even sure what she was crying about any more.
Yes, Andrew had been a creep, but she should have seen that one coming. She’d convinced herself his interest in her had stemmed from admiration and mutual respect. But she should have known better. Since when did guys admire and respect women like her? Women who had an opinion and voiced it. She should have guessed something was wrong as soon as Andrew said he liked her sassiness. No man ever had before, starting with her father.
Kate watched her brow furrow in the mirror, felt the wave of sadness and inadequacy that always accompanied thoughts of her father.
James Dalton Asquith III had only wanted her mother for one thing—and he’d certainly never wanted a daughter. When he’d been forced to take her in after her mother’s death, Kate had tried desperately to please him, to be who he wanted her to be. At seventeen she’d finally accepted the truth—that the fault lay with him, not her—which made it all the more galling that in some small, forgotten corner of her heart his rejection still hurt.
Running away from home all those years ago had been the smartest thing she’d ever done. A liberating experience that had made her realise she didn’t need her father’s approval, or his charity. She took a slow, calming breath and gave her cheeks one last swipe with a fresh tissue from the vanity unit.
Finally figuring out what a heel Andrew was could well be the next smartest. She breathed out again, glad not to hear a single hitch. She’d cried her last tear over Andrew Rocastle—and her father for that matter.
She screwed the tissue up and shoved it in the pocket of the bathrobe. Flushing the toilet, she walked out into the living area of the suite. Her stomach knotted as she spotted the soft leather sofa where Andrew had been sitting when she’d walked out of the bathroom in her underwear.
Surprise had quickly given way to fury when she’d discovered what Andrew had in mind for their so-called business trip. Didn’t she realise where their relationship was leading? he’d said. As if she’d been a party to his ridiculous fantasies. Frankly she’d been more turned on by one look from Zack Boudreaux, the hotel tycoon from planet sexy, than she had by all Andrew’s attention in the last few weeks. He’d accused her of sending him mixed messages. Tears of humiliation clogged up her throat as she recalled how he’d shoved her out of the suite while she’d been giving him another message entirely, at top volume.
Kate sniffed the tears back and gave a weary sigh, pushing the aggravating memory to the far reaches of her mind. She had other, more pressing problems to deal with now. She was back at square one, right where she’d been when she’d walked out on her father and his indifference ten years ago—broke and ‘scrubbing johns’ for a living. Except this time she was doing it thousands of miles from home with a distinct lack of clothing.
She plumped herself down on the sofa.
At least she’d learned something from this situation. Never trust anyone, and don’t kid yourself. If something looks too good to be true, it is.
Picking up the TV remote she switched on the huge plasma screen that took up the opposite wall of the suite.
Perma-pressed chat show hosts and adverts for haemorrhoid cream flicked by as she trolled through the channels. Her thumb stopped dead as a raunchy scene in a daytime soap opera flashed onto the screen. A buxom blonde appeared to be Unibonded to a hairless muscle-bound male torso. Kate tilted her head, trying to figure out where the chest ended and the blonde began.
‘For Pete’s sake, isn’t that a bit much for ten in the morning?’ she said out loud as the camera lifted and the couple proceeded to suck each other’s faces off.
Then the guy came up for air. He droned a series of banal lines but all Kate noticed was the jewel-green tone of his eyes. It reminded her of someone.
She tucked her legs up under her, refusing to acknowledge the tingling sensation between her thighs. Her thumb jerked down on the channel-change button, but not before she’d had the errant thought that Zack Boudreaux’s eyes were a much more compelling shade of green and that she’d bet her knickers the hotel tycoon had hair on his chest.
Of course, once she’d conjured up the picture of Boudreaux’s naked torso in her mind she couldn’t get it out again. No matter how many channels she surfed through.
Eventually she gave up and turned the telly off. Throwing the zapper down on the glass-topped coffee-table, she grasped her ankles and willed herself to calm down. Hadn’t she just promised herself she wasn’t going to put herself at the mercy of any man again, especially not a man like Zack Boudreaux? The guy had testosterone oozing out of his pores. Not only that, but she’d spent all of twenty minutes in his company and it had taken her about two seconds to realise he was exactly the sort of guy any woman with a single independent thought should stay well away from. A man like him would trample all over you without even realising he was doing it.
Stop thinking about him right this instant, she told herself sharply. Now if she could just get rid of the warm, liquid and completely unprecedented feeling that had settled between her thighs…
Kate’s head snapped up at the sharp knock on the door.
‘Hi, I’m Michelle.’ The pristine young woman standing in the corridor had one of those megawatt sales assistant’s smiles pasted on her face. ‘I’m from Ella’s Boutique downstairs. Mr Boudreaux asked us personally to bring up a selection of clothes for you to look at.’
Kate cursed the guilty flush that spread up her neck at the mention of his name. ‘He did?’
‘Yeah, he did.’ The young woman beamed back and then shuffled into the room wheeling a portable garment rail behind her. A profusion of colours and fabrics hung from it. ‘He said for you to pick out as many outfits as you need for your stay with us.’
‘Oh.’ Kate didn’t know what else to say. She’d expected a pair of hotel overalls or something, not a selection of the latest catwalk fashions.
‘Would you like me to l
ay them out for you?’
Kate stared at the rail. ‘Um.’ She bit her lip. ‘No, don’t bother.’
Silk dresses vied for position with designer jeans, cashmere sweaters, a Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt. Kate rubbed a satin top between her thumb and forefinger. The cloth was a deep vivid purple, cool and whisper smooth to the touch. Lifting it off the rail, she studied the perfect stitching, the delicately beaded neckline, the way the cloth draped in shimmering waves. She’d never owned a piece of clothing this gorgeous in her life. Or, she imagined, this expensive.
‘Why don’t they have any price tags?’ Kate asked, hooking the purple blouse back onto the rail.
‘Oh, well.’ The girl’s smile faltered as she hesitated. Obviously her customers didn’t usually concern themselves with something as mundane as prices. ‘You don’t need them, ma’am,’ she said, brightening again. ‘Mr Boudreaux said to charge everything to the hotel.’
Kate gaped at the girl, momentarily struck dumb by Boudreaux’s generosity. Then reality intervened. That was ridiculous—he couldn’t possibly have intended to give her hundreds of dollars worth of clothing. The boutique staff must have misunderstood. He had probably intended for them to charge the clothes to Kate’s hotel room.
‘I’d still like to know the prices,’ she said, trying not to sound ungracious.
The girl looked confused. ‘I guess I could call down to the boutique and get Monica, my supervisor, to itemise them once you’ve made your selection.’
‘All right,’ Kate said. Although it wasn’t all right. She’d much rather know the prices up front. As beautiful as the clothing was she didn’t want to be scrubbing johns in Mr Irresistible’s hotel for the rest of her life, which could very well happen if she picked the wrong thing. Most of this stuff would retail in the hundreds, possibly even thousands.
But at the same time Kate didn’t want to embarrass herself further by making a big deal of it, and she also didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Frankly, she’d been astonished when Boudreaux had offered to help her out in the first place, she didn’t want to press her luck.
She opted for the plainest pair of jeans she could find and a simple blue T-shirt with The Phoenix logo on it. At the bottom of the rail was a box with a selection of shoes. Once again, the designs, colours and craftsmanship had her controlling a whimper. She recognised a pair of Fendis and some Manolo Blahniks from the style magazines she loved to paw over at home. She turned to Michelle, who was busy boxing up her selections.
‘Do you have any trainers?’
‘You don’t like the shoes here?’ Michelle looked thoroughly crestfallen now.
‘Oh, no, it’s not that, they’re gorgeous. It’s just I need something less dressy.’
‘Dressy?’ The girl glanced at the shoes, her eyebrows lifting. She obviously considered five-hundred-dollar shoes perfectly acceptable for day wear, but to Kate’s relief she didn’t say it. ‘The sportswear store in the hotel forum sells Converse and Nike—is that what you mean?’
‘Perfect.’ Even with the hotel mark-up, she was sure she could find something for fifty dollars.
The girl’s eyes widened, but she nodded. Kate had no doubt at all the shop staff would soon be abuzz with gossip about the dotty English girl in the Sunset Suite with the dress sense of a teenage boy. She forced herself not to care. With the stuff she had she could at least leave the suite—and start work tomorrow—without being indentured for life.
The girl took her shoe size and promised to have a pair sent up to the suite. She wheeled her rail back out the door, but stopped when she got over the threshold. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Mr Boudreaux sent up a package for you.’ The girl unclipped a white hotel bag from the end of the rail with an envelope attached to the front. ‘I swear, I’d forget my head if it weren’t glued to my neck,’ she said, giving Kate a nervous smile.
Kate smiled back, or at least she tried to. Why would Boudreaux be sending her packages? Her hand shook ever so slightly as she reached for the bag. ‘Thank you.’
‘Well…’ The girl hesitated. Kate guessed she might be waiting for her to open the package. She wasn’t about to oblige. She had no idea what was inside, but the way her luck was going lately she thought it might be bad, like a demand to leave. Maybe he’d changed his mind about helping her out.
‘He brought it into the boutique and gave it to me specially,’ the girl continued, the awed tone of her voice making it sound as if she thought Boudreaux were the new Messiah.
Kate slung the package under her arm and rubbed her dampening palms on her hotel robe. ‘I really appreciate you going to all this trouble. Do tell your supervisor thanks from me, too,’ she said, as politely as possible.
Maybe the girl was waiting for a tip? If she was, she was going to be waiting a very long time.
The girl gave a slight hitch of her shoulders. ‘No problem, it’s all part of the service.’ Her eyes flicked to the package one last time. ‘Have a nice day.’ So saying Michelle took off down the corridor, the clothes-laden rail making a swishing sound on the carpet as she pulled it along behind her.
Kate closed the door and leaned back against it. Why did her knees feel wobbly? She glanced at the flimsy package, which she could have sworn was now throbbing under her arm like a ticking bomb. While she’d been standing in the doorway waiting for the girl to leave it had occurred to her just how dependent she was on Boudreaux’s largesse. Sucking in a deep breath, she walked into the room and flung the package on the coffee-table. The white envelope attached to the front had her name written on it in bold black ink. It had to be his handwriting, she thought. The large looping letters and the thick black line slashed under the words seemed to exude confidence, arrogance even—just as he did. She could imagine him writing it with the fountain pen he’d been tapping on his desk, his long tanned fingers moving quickly and efficiently across the paper.
She sighed and sat down. Oh, stop it, you dope. Just open the stupid thing and get it over with. If he’d asked her to leave, she’d leave. He’d honoured the promise about the clothes, which was the main thing. No reason why she couldn’t find a job in another hotel now, until she paid him back and earned her airfare home. That the thought of leaving the hotel made her feel a little depressed was simply ridiculous. Why on earth should she care? She wasn’t any better off here than she would be anywhere else in Vegas.
She guessed the butterflies jitterbugging in her stomach and the cold fingers of dread flitting up her spine must be the result of exhaustion and her recent emotional trauma, nothing more. She folded her legs and tugged the envelope off the package in one quick, decisive move. Still, as she put her finger into the seam and ripped the envelope open the feeling of dread tightened into an icy fist.
Five crisp new hundred-dollar bills spilled onto her lap. She scooped them up and stared at them. Clutching them in one hand, she unfolded the thick cream paper with the hotel’s green and gold letterhead at the top. It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the brief note, scrawled in that same dominant black ink in the middle of the page.
Kate,
Hope you found something to go with those proper knickers.
Meet me for dinner tonight, 8 pm in the Rainbow Room.
Z
The signature Z had been slashed across the bottom like the mark of Zorro.
Kate blinked and read the note three more times, but there was still no mention of the five hundred dollars. The feeling of foreboding had gone, but in its place was something much more disturbing. Heat shot into her cheeks and the butterflies in her belly were all burned to a crisp. What was this fixation he seemed to have with her knickers? Why did she find it arousing instead of insulting? And what exactly was the five hundred dollars for?
She didn’t want to meet him for dinner tonight. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself again, or, worse, come across like someone on the make. But the invitation sounded like an order, and she couldn’t afford to annoy him.
She remembered the small package
then. The hotel bag had been taped shut. It didn’t look as if there was much in it. Undoing the tape she upended the bag and a scrap of lacy crimson satin with a Post-it note stuck to it fell out onto the coffee-table. She picked it up, and pulled the satin thing tight between her fingers.
A thong! Her cheeks blazed and her breath got choppy.
She read the Post-it note: ‘These are for you, Kate, in case you want a break from your proper knickers.’
‘Why, you cheeky…’ Kate was outraged.
But a bubble of something worked its way up her torso. The light and airy feeling fanned out across her chest and a smile she couldn’t seem to stop spread across her face.
Then, completely against her will, she began to laugh, for what felt like the first time in a millennium.
CHAPTER THREE
KATE WASN’T LAUGHING when she stepped into the elevator that evening. As the empty car whipped soundlessly up to the nineteenth floor she knew the weightlessness in her stomach had more to do with nerves than gravity.
She studied her reflection in the mirror on the elevator’s back wall. At least she didn’t look like a vagabond. After a short but fortifying nap, she’d taken one of the hundred-dollar bills Boudreaux had given her and hit The Strip, aware she could hardly wear her Tom Sawyer outfit to the hotel’s swankiest restaurant.
She absolutely was not dressing up to impress Boudreaux, but she didn’t want to look ridiculous either. Luckily for Kate, she happened to be an expert at styling on a budget. She’d found the vintage blue and gold silk dress in a Salvation Army thrift shop for twenty dollars. It was a little snug around her breasts, showing a bit more cleavage than was probably intended, but otherwise it could have been made for her. The classic hourglass nineteen-fifties styles looked retro, not out of date, she told herself, especially once she added the heeled sandals and clutch purse she’d found on sale at an outlet store on Fremont Street. Kate had never been a shopaholic, she’d never had the finances for it, but she did get a buzz out of coordinating the perfect outfit for peanuts. She’d trolled the cosmetics counters at the nearest mall and picked up a sack full of free samples, so even with the headscarf she’d bought to tie up her hair she’d managed to keep her spending under eighty dollars.
