“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing,” she snapped, “but it won’t get you anywhere.”
“Such anger, Miss Brewster. Such hostility. Could it possibly be a disguise for your real feelings about what happened that night?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Anger is a safer emotion than embarrassment.”
Sam flushed. Maybe he was right, but she’d choke before she admitted it. “You mean, it’s safer than bad judgment. If I hadn’t had that caparhinia—”
“Imagine that. A reserved spinster with a drinking problem.” Demetrios folded his arms. “Your brother-in-law would be fascinated to hear it.”
“I don’t have a problem. I was tired. And surely you don’t expect me to believe Nick described me as a reserved spinster!”
“No. Certainly not. Rafe said that. Nicholas merely said that he had a sister-in-law who was an excellent translator.” He smiled coldly. “I had no reason to think they were describing the woman who’d promised everything and delivered nothing that night in Brazil.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Karas.”
Demetrios took her elbow, deftly maneuvered her into the booth and slid in beside her.
“Your brothers-in-law see you as an intelligent, honorable woman leading a lonely existence. By the time they finished describing you, I pictured a stick in a tweed suit.”
“I am intelligent and honorable,” Sam said, wincing for having said something so nonsensical. “I am certainly not lonely. And if you think of women as stereotypes, that’s your problem, not mine.”
“I had to lie to Nicholas—to my good friend—to protect your, ah, honor.”
“You lied to protect yourself, Mr. Karas. As for my honor, it’s never been in question—not that it matters. This entire thing, starting with what happened at Rio de Ouro and ending with this supposed job offer, is best forgotten.”
“This is not a ‘supposed’ job offer, Miss Brewster. I have need of a skilled linguist.”
“Find one.”
“I have found one. You.”
“I’d sooner translate for Vlad the Impaler.”
Demetrios smiled thinly. “I don’t think he’s been doing much hiring the past couple of centuries. On the other hand, now that I think about it, your credentials don’t suit my needs.”
“My credentials happen to be excellent,” Sam said tightly.
“I’m sure you’re a competent academic, Miss Brewster.” Demetrios looked up, caught the waiter’s eye and mimed lifting a cup to his lips. “But I have a complex business deal to handle. French, Italian, very colloquial but with lots of legal terms thrown in…” He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t work. The more I think about it, the more I doubt you could handle it.”
“You doubt I could…” Sam’s mouth flattened. “I suppose your opinion would change if I were wearing tweed?”
“It would change if you had not spent your professional life translating poems and love letters.” The waiter appeared at the table with coffee. Demetrios paused, waited until they were alone again. “My needs are much more stringent. I need a translator who can judge the meaning behind a word, behind an intonation.” He smiled politely, lifted his cup and drank. “Clearly, Miss Brewster, you lack the necessary qualifications.”
“You have a distressing habit of leaping to conclusions, Mr. Karas. It just so happens my specialty is exactly the kind of translating you’ve just described.”
“Really.”
A little smile—smug, masculine, totally self-assured—accompanied the word. Sam gritted her teeth. How could she ever, ever, have found this man attractive? He was arrogant beyond belief, self-centered, conceited…
“What I cannot even begin to comprehend,” she said coldly, “is why anyone who knows me would have thought I’d find you the least bit interesting.”
Demetrios raised one dark eyebrow. “Did they?”
“So it would seem, which only goes to prove how foolish some people can be.”
“Well, I can’t comprehend why anyone who understands the complexity of business would have thought I’d find you suitable as a translator.”
“What have you been doing for the past several months, Mr. Karas? Oh, don’t bother answering. I know what you did.”
“Indeed.”
“You sat around counting the money you inherited from your father while I worked my tail off, keeping a bunch of prima donna ethnologists from killing each other over who’d made which discovery first in a Danian village in Anemaugi.”
“Anemaugi?”
“Indonesia. Borneo, to be specific. You’d have hated it. Mud huts, no running water, no electricity…” Sam smiled coldly. “On the other hand, you might have found the economy right up your alley. It’s based on pigs.”
His mouth twitched. “I take it there’s not much call for your skill at translating poetry in—”
“Anemaugi. No,” she said, wishing she had slugged him so he wouldn’t be giving her that supercilious little smirk, “there isn’t.”
“No love letters, either?” He grinned at the look on her face. “Just asking, Miss Brewster.”
“No poems. No love letters. Just months of tough, brain-twisting work.”
“Excellent.” Demetrios put down his coffee. “In that case, you’re hired.”
“Are you deaf or just dumb? I wouldn’t work for you if—”
“I would expect you to sign a four month contract.”
“I just said—”
“What did you earn for your job in this charming backwater?”
Sam knew the figure, precisely. Without a moment’s hesitation, she doubled it, spat out the resultant number and waited for Demetrios to gape. He didn’t.
“Per month?”
She almost laughed. “What do you mean, per month? Of course—”
“I’ll double it.”
He’d double it? Sam stared at him in disbelief. She’d been about to tell him that the outrageous sum she’d invented was what she’d been paid for the entire stint in Indonesia. Even halved to the true amount, it had been damned good money, more than she’d earned in the past. “Combat pay,” the museum that hired her had dubbed it, for putting up with the ins and outs of academic warfare.
What Demetrios had just offered made that amount pale by comparison. Nobody would pay a translator so extravagantly, not unless translation was only part of the job description.
“That’s too much,” she said bluntly.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do. I’ve been in this business for six years. People don’t pay that for a translator.”
“I’ve been in business twice that long and if I have learned nothing else, it’s that you get what you pay for.”
“And what, exactly, is it you think you’d be getting from me?”
Demetrios grinned. “Your very special ability, Miss Brewster. Your talent…with languages. What else would I expect to get for my money?”
“That’s my question, Mr. Karas. What would you expect?”
“Your skill.” His smile faded; his tone turned crisp. “This will be delicate, perhaps difficult, work. I would want to be informed of every nuance as you discern it, every possibility you suspect but cannot confirm. You would have to be available to me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” His expression hardened. “Do you think I am so in need of a woman to warm my bed that I would hire one, or lure her there with dollars? I assure you, that is not the case.”
No. Sam suspected that it wasn’t. Demetrios Karas wouldn’t have to offer a woman anything but himself to get her into his bed…and that was just the problem. Hadn’t he almost gotten her there within minutes of their meeting?
But she’d turned him down and regained her sanity. That surely counted for something. Besides, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Not just the money, although the amount was staggering. It was the job itself that sounded irresistible. She loved language, loved nothing quite so much as searching for the hidd
en meanings in words…
“Well?”
Sam cleared her throat. “I’m willing to give your offer some thought. Give me your telephone number and I’ll get back to you later this week.”
“That will be too late.” Demetrios pulled out his wallet, tossed a handful of bills on the table. “I’m afraid I need an immediate answer.”
“How immediate?”
He looked at her, his eyes cool, his expression unreadable. “I leave for Greece in the morning.”
“Then, I’ll call you there.”
“If you want the position, you will leave with me. If not…”
His shrug, a casual lift of those broad shoulders, said it all. She would either take what he’d offered or she’d turn it down. From the look of him, he didn’t care which choice she made. This was business, as he’d claimed…Or was it?
“Yes or no?” he said brusquely.
Sam hesitated. Then she took a deep breath. Don’t be an idiot, she was going to tell him…
Instead, she told him yes.
CHAPTER FOUR
BY EVENING the rain had ended, leaving the sky over Manhattan a surprisingly tender blue. A soft breeze, redolent of the newly budding trees in the little park behind Samantha’s apartment, teased lightly at the curtains in her bedroom as she packed.
Packed? Sam looked at the open suitcase on her bed and the things inside it. Nobody could call some underwear, a couple of pairs of cotton slacks and a handful of T-shirts “packing,” not if you were going to be out of the country for four months.
Four long, endless months.
She sighed, sank down on the edge of the mattress and leaned back on her elbows. She’d wasted the last few hours pacing her small apartment. Now time was running out, not just for packing but for deciding if she’d made a mistake in accepting Demetrios’s challenge. That was what it had been; why pretend otherwise? Can you work beside me for all that time without tumbling into my bed? He hadn’t said that, of course, but that was the message.
As for what else he’d said, about not having to buy women…Of course he didn’t buy them. He didn’t have to. Women took one look at Demetrios Karas and wanted him. She’d wanted him, Sam thought with disgust. Hadn’t she almost slept with the man within minutes of first seeing him? Now, somehow, he’d maneuvered her into saying yes, she’d work for him, she’d go to Greece with him, spend days and nights at his side…
Maneuvered her into it? Sam got up, grabbed an armload of blouses from the closet and slung them onto the bed.
His “maneuvering” had been done with all the delicacy of a waltzing elephant. The man had made her a job offer only an idiot would refuse. She knew there were people who assumed she didn’t have to worry about supporting herself because she was Jonas Baron’s stepdaughter. The truth was, Jonas would have gladly supplemented her income, if she simply asked, but Sam had always cherished her independence.
She made her own way in the world, the same as she never backed away from anything difficult, and so far, things had gone well. She was a long way from getting rich but she paid her bills. And she’d never done anything truly crazy, either, well, except for things like bungee jumping off a bridge in Australia or swimming with sharks off the Seven Sacred Pools in Maui…
And saying yes, she’d go to Greece with a stranger.
“Hell,” she muttered, and grabbed for the phone. The only thing worse than making a bad decision was not admitting it. Yes, Demetrios had offered her a lot of money and yes, she certainly could use it, but she’d survived dry spells before.
It’s Samantha Brewster, she’d say politely. Something’s come up, Mr. Karas. I’m afraid I’ll have to forego your job offer.
At least, she’d tell him that once she knew where to reach him.
Sam sat down, hit a speed-dial button, crossed her legs and swung her foot impatiently as Amanda’s answering machine picked up.
We’re sorry, her sister’s voice said cheerfully, but we can’t take your call just—
“Amanda? Amanda, can you hear me? I know you’re there. And this is as much your fault as anybody’s. Pick up the—”
“Sam? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Everything.” Sam took a deep breath. There really wasn’t any point in letting out her anger on her sister. She was the one who’d accepted the job offer, not Amanda. “Do you know how to reach Demetrios Karas? Is he at a hotel, or does he have an apartment in the city?”
“Well—”
“Because I need to talk to him, and he very conveniently didn’t give me his number.”
“Well—”
Sam’s good intentions flew out the window. “Dammit, will you stop saying that?”
“Well—I mean, why are you so upset?”
“Why do you meddle in my life?”
“Don’t answer one question with another,” Amanda said primly. “Besides, I don’t meddle.”
“You do. You almost stood on your head to get me to meet this—this Greek God.”
“I take it,” Amanda said, muffling a snort of laughter, “that you’re referring to Demetrios.”
“Yes, Demetrios. Unless you know some other man who thinks he’s the walking, talking reincarnation of—of Adonis.”
A gusty sigh came over the phone line. “I thought you liked him.”
“What gave you that impression? His cockeyed story, about how he insulted me at Carin’s party?”
“Well, yes. I mean, that’s what happened, isn’t it? You met, he was called away, you got annoyed and you left.”
“Do you honestly think I’m that self-centered?” Sam said, before she could think.
“Well…” Amanda cleared her throat. “Sorry. Uh, no. I don’t think you’re self-centered at all. Actually—actually, I have to admit, I had the feeling there was more to it than that. I even said so to Nick, and Nick said, well, maybe there was, because he’d seen Demetrios later that same evening…” Her words trailed to silence.
“And?” Sam said sharply. “What did Nick tell you?” Had her brother-in-law seen through the afternoon’s charade? Had he figured out that she was the woman in the stable with Demetrios?
“Nothing. That was all of it. Nick sort of broke off in the middle of a sentence and changed the subject.”
Sam felt a sudden pounding in her temple. She walked into the bathroom, yanked open the medicine cabinet and took out a bottle of aspirin.
“Sam?”
“Mmm?”
“You haven’t answered my question. Was there more to it than Demetrios told us at lunch? Did something happen that night at Carin’s?”
“No.”
“Come on, sis. Remember when we were kids? I could always tell when you were lying.”
Sam jammed the portable phone between her ear and her shoulder, opened the bottle and dumped two aspirin into her palm, then into her mouth. She made a face, added one more tablet for good measure, and swallowed hard.
“Yeah, but we’re not kids anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can still tell. You and Demetrios did meet that night, didn’t you? The story wasn’t quite as simple as he made it sound.”
Wearily, Sam sank down on the edge of the tub. There was no sense fighting both her sister’s instincts and the crazed musician who’d set up his drums inside her skull.
“All right. We met. And yes, something happened. To be specific, something almost happened. But it didn’t. And before you ask, no, I am not going into details.”
“Wow.”
“Wow? What kind of response is that? I tell you something happened—something almost happened—and all you can say is, ‘wow’?”
“That’s so romantic. It’s like Nick and me.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know what went on. And, trust me, it was nothing like you and Nicholas. I mean, you told me the story. How you met through his sister. How you and he agreed on a business arrangement, that you would redecorate his penthouse and that, over a period of time, the relation
ship changed, went from businesslike to something more personal…Amanda?” Sam’s eyes narrowed. Her sister was not given to deafening silences, but one was humming between their telephones right now. “That’s what happened with you and Nick, isn’t it?”
Amanda cleared her throat. “Not exactly. Things were, um, they were a little more volatile.”
“Volatile.” Sam’s eyebrows lifted. “As in, you didn’t hit it off right away?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s more, isn’t there? I can tell.”
“Honestly, Sam, this has nothing in the world to do with you and Demetrios.”
Sam gave a weary sigh. “Maybe not. Look, I’m supposed to fly to Greece with him tomorrow. And I can’t seem to decide if I should or shouldn’t do it.”
“You’re leaving the country?” Amanda’s voice rose. “With Demetrios?”
“He lives in Greece,” Sam said, her tone dry. “His business interests are in Greece. Where did you think I’d be working, Mandy? In Brooklyn?”
“Yes, but Greece…I mean, to go so far away with a man you hardly know…”
“Don’t tell me you’re starting to be sorry you pushed Demetrios Karas under my nose.”
Amanda sighed. “I didn’t push. I’m just surprised you’ll be leaving so quickly.”
“That makes two of us.”
“But there’s nothing to worry about. Neither Nick nor I would introduce you to anybody who wasn’t a decent, honorable person.”
Honorable, Sam thought. Decent. Oh, yes. Those were certainly adjectives she’d use to describe a man who’d tried to get into her pants without even knowing her name. Not that he’d had to do much to convince her. Not that she hadn’t been a more than willing participant.
“Sam?” Amanda’s voice softened. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing. Not really. It’s just—it’s just that I…” Sam hesitated. “If you didn’t like a man, if you found him irritating, arrogant and altogether a pain in the rear but he offered you a terrific job, would you take it?”
Silence, broken only by the soft sound of Amanda’s breathing. Then, finally, an uncomfortable murmur. “I, uh, I might.”
“Suppose—suppose on top of all that, you were, uh, you were attracted to him? I mean, you disliked him but there was—there was this something, this—this feeling—”
The Pregnant Mistress Page 5