Hired Wife. Karen Van Der Zee

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      Kim took her key and pushed it into the lock, saying no more. She felt Sam behind her, knew he was wondering who Tony was. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” she said casually, loud enough for Tony to hear. “He’s my stalker.”

      “Your stalker?”

      They got into the elevator. “It’s the newest craze, haven’t you heard?” she asked breezily.

      Sam frowned. “Who is this guy? What does he want?”

      “I met him at a party three weeks ago, and he sort of trapped me in the corner of a room and bored me with endless self-involved stories about how he is misunderstood as an artist and an actor and how the world owes him respect and admiration. I found it a little hard to take, but I was trying to be nice and I tried to listen, and I think he thought I was…eh—”

      “Charming?”

      She made a face. “Something like that. I didn’t want to charm him at all. What I really wanted to do was to get away from him.”

      “You’re not having a lot of success,” Sam said dryly. “So what else does he do besides play the clown?”

      She shrugged carelessly. “Oh, harmless stuff. He sends me things—flowers, paintings, poems, love boat tickets. He leaves sappy messages on my answering machine, nothing dangerous. He’s basically a frustrated, out-of-work, aspiring actor in need of a cause.”

      “And he sends you cruise tickets?”

      “He has a rich daddy.”

      The clanging elevator struggled its way to the top floor. She wondered what Sam was thinking of the rattling old contraption, what he would think of her rather unusual living quarters.

      She’d spent the morning housecleaning, shopping for food and getting ready for Sam’s visit. Her plan was to cook something simple yet delicious, not wanting to overdo things by offering him something extravagantly expensive and ostentatious. Simple, yet elegant was the key. She’d made a cold sauce of olive oil, Gorgonzola, prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, to be tossed with hot pasta and lots of parsley and chopped walnuts. It was ready apart from cooking the fettuccini and assembling the salad. The washed greens were in the crisper, the lemon-ginger dressing was made.

      She opened the door to the loft, looking forward to a nice evening, and stopped dead in her tracks. A man lay sprawled on her sofa, asleep—or dead, or in a coma, you couldn’t tell by the way he lay there—lifeless, motionless, his mouth slack, one arm dangling off the side.

      CHAPTER THREE

      IN STUNNED silence, Kim took in the man’s appearance, all thoughts of a nice dinner with Sam fading into the distance. He looked like something that had crawled out of a swamp with his long, unkempt hair, his wild, woolly black beard, his old, ragged jeans. His shoes were off, muddy hiking boots the size of ocean liners. A bulky backpack, worn and faded, lay on the floor with half of its filthy contents spilling out onto her lovely Navajo rug.

      She did not know this man.

      Sam stood beside her in the door, calmly surveying the scene. For some reason she couldn’t make herself speak. This was the moment for comic relief, to say something witty, something clever, something…anything.

      “And who is this one?” asked Sam casually, as if he were already resigned to the fact that her life was littered with weird men, and that here was yet another specimen.

      She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she answered, tonelessly.

      A short, significant silence. “You don’t know?” he inquired, as if he found it hard to believe.

      “No.” She didn’t dare meet his eyes. She kept staring at the huge man on her sofa. His chest was moving up and down, so he wasn’t dead. She supposed she should be grateful for small mercies.

      So, what do I do now? she asked herself. What do you normally do when you come home and find a derelict passed out on your sofa? Call the police?

      “How did he get in?” Sam asked practically.

      She ventured a look at him. He looked very clean, very respectable, very…sexually appealing. Everything the comatose stranger was not. “I don’t know,” she said again.

      “I think there’s someone else here, too.” Sam gestured casually toward the bathroom, where she now heard the noise of running water. A moment later the door opened and Jason emerged, naked apart from a blue towel wrapped around his hips. Water drops glistened on his manly shoulders. Apparently he’d just had one of his many showers to set him up for a night of serious brain work.

      Jason was the only person she couldn’t blame for making an appearance while Sam was around—after all, he lived here. However, did he have to show up in all his half-naked glory?

      Her hopes of making a dignified impression on Sam had been duly crushed. Why had she even thought she could pull it off, she who had such undignified friends, led such an undignified life? How could she possibly expect him to take her seriously now? She’d asked him to her apartment for a civilized visit and instead he’d found an idiot clown on her doorstep, a swamp creature passed out on her sofa and a naked Adonis in her bathroom. All she really wanted was the chance to go back to the Far East for a while. Was that too much to ask? Why were the gods playing games with her, first dangling the opportunity in front of her, then yanking it out of reach? It just wasn’t fair.

      She didn’t normally indulge in self-pity, but now she was truly being tested. She had the momentary impulse to just crumple to the floor, curl up in a ball and cry her heart out like a little girl. But that would not improve matters. Nothing could.

      And she was right. The situation did not improve; it got worse.

      “I hope it was okay for me to let him in,” said Jason, indicating the inert body on the sofa. “He said he was your cousin.”

      “My cousin?” She only had two male cousins. One was a balding accountant in New Jersey, the other a red-haired student in dental school. “This is not my cousin. I don’t know who he is.” There was a desperate little shrill in her voice that embarrassed her.

      The stranger stirred and opened his eyes. He gazed around dazedly.

      Kim took a step forward on wooden legs, fury rushing through her, hot and fast. She glared down at him. “Who are you?” she demanded sharply. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

      He focused his eyes and a slow smile crept over his hairy face. “You know who I am, Kimmy, you know.”

      She froze. There was something nightmarishly familiar about those words. And then it came to her.

      The dream.

      Her secret lover.

      The stranger on the sofa reached out to her with his big hand, and she stepped back instinctively, nearly tripping over his boots. Boots like boats.

      And then she knew.

      Oh, God, she thought, it’s Jack! Jack with the big feet. A horrifying thought occurred to her. Had she been dreaming of Jack? Of this repulsive man on her sofa? Of course he hadn’t СКАЧАТЬ