Hired Wife. Karen Van Der Zee

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СКАЧАТЬ hardly blame him, considering the way the conversation had developed, and the fact that he’d probably never taken her seriously in the first place. To him she was just Marcus’s silly little sister who’d had a crush on him. Oh, Lord, she hoped he didn’t remember the stupid, naive things she had done to get his attention, all those years ago.

      “You want to come all the way to Java to set up house for me? Buy pots and pans, arrange furniture?” he asked, as if he were talking about scrubbing public toilets and mucking out pigsties.

      “Yes, I would love to.” She bit her lip.

      Another brief silence as he was digesting this. “I don’t believe that that would be what they call ‘a positive career move’ for you.”

      “I’m known for my bad career moves,” she said impulsively. “Just ask my poor suffering father.”

      “Ah,” he said succinctly, meaningfully.

      “But somehow they always work out very well for me,” she explained. “When I make decisions I use my intuition, my creative instincts, rather than my rational mind.”

      “And that is supposed to reassure me?” he asked with dry humor.

      She kicked herself mentally. “I suppose not. I imagine your life is ruled by logic, reason, common sense and intellect.”

      “Employing those tends to work to my advantage, yes.”

      Kim made a face at the receiver. He had to be the most boring person in the universe, no matter how handsome he was.

      “Well, don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “I know exactly what I want and—”

      “This is craziness, Kim,” he said, interrupting her. “I’m not going to facilitate one of your harebrained schemes. I’ll hire someone locally.”

      Kim grew hot with sudden anger. He was talking to her as if she were a child, not a grown woman who could make good decisions for herself.

      “Sam, I’m not fifteen anymore,” she asserted tightly, trying to control her anger. “This is not a harebrained scheme. I know what I want, and I want to go to Java and—”

      “Kim, I have no time for this nonsense. I have a meeting to go to.”

      “Sam! I—”

      “I must go,” he argued. “Please, do excuse me.”

      And the busy man hung up.

      Kim was so angry, she could scream. Who did he think he was to hang up on her? To not take her seriously? How dare he!

      And who did he think he was going to hire locally? she thought later that day. The frustrated wife of an American contractor or consultant maybe. Someone with time on her hands because she couldn’t get a work permit and have a job of her own. Somebody with no taste and no sense of design, Kim thought, sulkily, who’d cover the walls and beds and furniture with purple cabbage roses and put gaudy plastic flower arrangements everywhere and choose frilly pink lampshades and ruffled pink pillowcases. It would serve him right.

      She visualized Sam’s dark, manly head lying on a frilly pink pillow. In spite of her anger, Kim laughed.

      Somehow she had to get Sam’s attention. Kim lay in bed, wide-awake, staring up into the dark rafters, plotting, just as she had done when she was fifteen.

      Phoning wouldn’t work; he’d just find an excuse to end the conversation. She had to do it face-to-face, with no other people around to distract him or to use as an excuse to get away from her.

      She’d ask him out to dinner.

      Brilliant!

      Not too forward a gesture, really. After all, she was no stranger. He knew her family well, had enjoyed much hospitality in her parents’ house. He would be too much of a gentleman to refuse her invitation, surely? And once she held him captive, eating dinner in a public place, he wouldn’t have any choice but to listen to her. She would be very professional and businesslike and convince him he wanted her to do the job.

      The next morning she once again managed to get Sam on the phone, telling the slew of secretaries that she was his sister, Yasmina, calling internationally from Jordan on urgent family business.

      “Sam, all I want is a moment of your time,” she said hastily as he answered the phone.

      “Kim,” he stated, unsurprised. “I thought you were my sister, Yasmina.”

      “You don’t have a sister, Yasmina,” she informed him.

      “Yes, I know,” he said dryly.

      “But that army of people you’ve got protecting you from the vultures preying on your precious time, don’t know that,” she continued smugly.

      “I must speak to them.” His tone held humor, which was reassuring. She didn’t want anyone fired.

      She sucked in a deep breath, fortifying herself with oxygen. “Sam, I’m calling to invite you out to dinner.” So there, she’d done it, brazen woman that she was. “Any night this week, whenever it’s convenient for you.”

      There was only the slightest of pauses. “I’d be delighted to have dinner with you,” he said then, “but on one condition.”

      Her heart sank. He was going to tell her not to discuss the job. “What condition?”

      “That you’ll allow me to take you to dinner.”

      She laughed, relieved. “Sam—”

      “I know what you’re going to say, but let’s not have a big argument over it, shall we?”

      “Okay,” she said obediently. It didn’t matter to her who took whom. What mattered was that they sat at the same table and that she had his undivided attention.

      “Excellent,” he said. “How about tonight?”

      Tonight. He wasn’t wasting any time. “Tonight is good,” she said.

      His sister, Yasmina, indeed. Sam grinned as he put down the phone, still hearing the echo of Kim’s bright, singsong voice. He’d known it was her, of course—Marcus’s gregarious sister with the wild blond curls, the Renaissance woman who was comfortable in cyber space, who was not afraid of snakes and who could cook “real” food. And, reckless and impulsive as ever, she wanted to come to Java and set up house for him.

      It wasn’t going to happen.

      He glanced down at the file on the desk in front of him and couldn’t for the world remember what he had been doing before her call had come through.

      Ever since he’d seen her in Marcus’s office a few days ago, she’d been on his mind, which he’d found distracting in the extreme. He was busy and it had interfered with his concentration. When she’d called the first time, asking about the job, he’d been short with her, mostly because he’d been irritated with himself for his inability to stop thinking about her.

      And СКАЧАТЬ