by Hazel Hunter
Clark exhaled and turned to the door.
“Yes, Annan. Come in.”
Like Tam, Annan had been at the plantation since his youth. Only in his early fifties, though, his hair was still jet black and his wiry frame ramrod straight. A good deal stronger than he looked, Annan had slowly taken on more and more of aged Tam’s physical duties–like driving the Jeep and toting luggage. One thing he and Tam shared, though, was the sunny disposition.
But the smiling eyes quickly landed on the scotch and his eyebrows furrowed. Clark took the bottle and the tumbler, dumped them unceremoniously back into the big drawer, and shoved it shut with his foot.
“What is it, Annan?” Clark said.
“Mrs. Juntasa says dinner is at seven,” he said, in his high nasally twang.
Clark had spoken to Mrs. Juntasa before the guests had arrived and, now that he thought about it, he knew that Annan must have heard him tell them seven. He took in a deep breath and slowly let it go. As he crossed his arms over his chest, he leaned back against the edge of the desk.
“You saw her,” Clark said.
“Yeah, Boss,” Annan said quietly.
Of course he’d seen the resemblance. You couldn’t miss it.
Clark only nodded.
What was there to say?
“You’ll be helping Mrs. Juntasa serve?” Clark asked.
“Yes, Boss,” Annan chirped, bobbing his head.
“Seven,” Clark confirmed.
“Yes, Boss,” Annan said again as he backed through the door and softly closed it.
Clark continued to stare at the intricately carved wood for a few moments and then he heard voices. He cocked his head a little and listened. Then he heard the sound of running feet. Quietly, he went to the door and slowly opened it just a crack.
Across the near corner of the courtyard, Jean stood in her doorway as though she were waiting for someone. She was backlit. The light easily passed through her silk blouse, outlined her slim torso, and also hinted at the fullness of her figure.
Suddenly, Annan came running down the hall, a stack of towels in his arms.
Clark grimaced–the first oversight.
Though he couldn’t make out Annan’s words as he handed her the towels, he could clearly hear Jean since she faced his direction.
“Really, Annan,” she implored. “Please don’t think a thing about it. I’m sure these would have been set out tonight.” Annan made some reply. “Of course,” Jean said and put a hand on his upper arm. “I know,” she said in a soothing tone that went with her brief touch. Annan said something and bobbed his head. “No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m sure I have everything I need. Thank you so much. The room is lovely.”
Annan made a brief reply as he backed up and Jean nodded and shut the door. As Annan hurried away, Clark silently closed his door. Though Jean hadn’t seemed upset, Clark would have a quick word with Annan. They couldn’t afford mistakes–any of them.
CHAPTER TWO
A silk dress had made sense in New York when Jean was packing. The snow had barely left the ground. But here, it was like wearing a thick sweater. Not that she minded dressing up. In fact, the formal dining room made her feel just a bit underdressed if anything.
She was still taking it all in when she realized that Clark had pulled out her chair for her.
“Oh,” she said as she quickly sat. “Thank you.”
George sat opposite her and Clark took his place at the head of the table. They made for a tiny threesome at the end of the long room. The china, silver service, and crystal goblets were immaculate, sparkling in the flickering light of several large candelabras in the room. Annan was already pouring red wine. The only thing that was missing was the ceiling fan.
“Thank you, Annan,” Clark said as Annan finished pouring.
Annan set the wine on the sideboard and turned back to the table. As he’d done continuously on the drive, Jean noticed him quickly look at her and then away.
Clark picked up his wine.
“I propose a toast,” he said.
George had almost started to drink his and stopped. Jean picked up her glass.
Although George hadn’t changed clothes, Clark was wearing the formal men’s wear of Thailand. Over dark slacks, he wore a long-sleeved, white, cotton shirt with a mandarin collar. It looked cool and comfortable, everything that Jean wasn’t. It also looked fitted, tapered at the waist. Instead of draping from his broad shoulders, it seemed to hang more from the front of his chest. Jean didn’t need to imagine what his arms looked like. As he’d helped with the luggage in the afternoon, she couldn’t help but notice.
Clark lifted his glass.
“Kra-tie mai jhun,” he said.
Behind him, Annan smiled broadly.
“Only a rabbit aims for the moon,” translated Clark. When Jean tilted her head at him, he smiled and continued. “It’s a Thai proverb that means you have to stay grounded. There’s no point in aiming at impossibilities.” He looked into her eyes. “But tonight is the beginning of possibilities.” He paused and, for a moment, she thought he focused on her lips. He abruptly looked away, turning to George. “And it’s also the result of many years of staying grounded.” He raised his glass to them both. “To possibilities.”
“To possibilities,” she and George echoed.
Like Clark, Jean only took a sip. Even under the best of circumstances she’d flush from alcohol, let alone in this climate. George, though, apparently had no such problem. Half the wine was gone when he set it back down.
“Wonderful,” he said, smiling.
Jean sipped her water and was aware of Annan at the sideboard.
“Are your rooms comfortable?” Clark asked, looking from George to her.
“Oh very,” said George, fingers resting on the stem of the glass.
“It’s beautiful,” Jean replied, smiling at him. “And very comfortable.”
“Anything missing?” Clark asked, looking her directly in the eye.
She flicked her eyes to Annan who was staring at the far end of the room, his face a stone.
“Not a thing,” Jean chirped a bit too loudly. “I mean, it’s perfect,” she said, more quietly.
Clark seemed to study her for a moment, the corner of his mouth crooking up a tiny bit.
“Good,” he said, as Annan poured wine for George. “I’d expect nothing less.”
“So, Clark,” George began.
As Clark turned to George, Annan finished pouring and his smiling eyes met hers briefly. He gave her a little wink. She quickly looked down into her lap to hide her smile.
“You’ve done,” continued George, “what a dozen different research arms of a dozen different rubber companies couldn’t do.”
“Not just me,” Clark said. “My father before me and also my staff.”
Though Jean listened as Clark recounted the story, she was already very familiar with it. Clark's father had begun cross-breeding Hevea brasiliensis, the rubber tree of the Amazon, with indigenous varieties back in the 60s. Generation after generation of plants had been selected, pollinated, and grown to maturity and then their properties tested. Finally, they had produced the offspring that consistently performed better than any other.
“Higher latex yield, shorter maturation cycle, and–”
“Resistance to drought,” finished George. “Yes. Truly remarkable. And all without direct genetic modification. Very impressive.”
“All it took was hard work and time,” Clark said.
“Two things very much in small supply in today’s corporate world,” said Jean.
Annan was serving salad and moved from her to George.
“Especially when it comes to a multi-billion dollar business like rubber,” she finished.
“So says our forensic accountant,” said George, nodding at her. “A mind for numbers.”
“Forensic accountant,” said Clark in his deep and smooth voice. “I must confess I’d never heard of such a thing.”
&n
bsp; “An uncommon specialty,” Jean replied. “It takes a certain kind of person.”
Clark's eyebrows went up as he speared some salad with his fork.
“And what type of person would that be?”
“Someone not given to trust,” she said quickly and stopped. Her chest tightened and her mouth went dry. I’ve never said that to anyone. It was the absolute truth–something she’d always known about herself–but why say it now? She took a sip of water.
“I’m not sure I see the connection,” Clark said.
“I need to know a lot about a person before I feel like I really know them,” she said, replacing the water glass. “I may know more about you than you. You might be surprised what letters and numbers can tell.”
“Surprise me,” he said and took a bite of salad.
She cleared her throat.
“Clark David Peterson,” she said. “Age thirty-six. Graduated top of his class from Columbia with a major in biological chemistry. Graduate degree in cellular biology. Captain of the heavyweight rowing team.” She continued for five minutes as George finished his salad and wine and Annan started clearing the first course. She covered school, business, and patents, groups and clubs to which he belonged, charities to which he and his family contributed, and then his family. How his parents met, his father’s military service. The establishment of the Peterson Ranch as a Thai corporation and its recent brush with bankruptcy. As Annan refilled George’s glass, she was still talking about family.
“Married two years ago to Linda Malloy,” she said. “Who you met in New York–”
“Ah!” George interjected. “May I ask what this wonderful wine is?”
Jean stopped and looked at him. He was smiling and regarding his glass. But when she looked at Clark, it was as though he hadn’t heard George. He was staring at her, tight-lipped, one fist gripping the wine stem and the other his fork. She swallowed.
“Is it local?” George asked.
Eventually, Clark tore his gaze away from her. Without the crushing weight of his glare, her stomach lurched and she took a deep breath.
Oh my god. What have I done?
“Shiraz,” Clark said, tightly. “From the Monsoon Valley Winery. Up country, but not as far as Bangkok.”
“Monsoon Valley,” mused George. “How appropriate on a day like today.”
Though they could hear it only dimly, the rain was still coming down.
I was babbling like an idiot, Jean thought, as she stared at her wine glass.
Suddenly, a crash of china and silver that came from near the sideboard made her jump. An older woman was standing there, her hands covering her mouth and staring back at Jean. Clark immediately leapt to his feet.
“Mrs. Juntasa,” he said, taking her by the arm.
As though drawn by the woman’s stare, Jean got up as well and went to her, stepping around the mess. To her surprise, Mrs. Juntasa reached out to her.
“Are you all right?” Jean said quietly.
Trembling, the old woman looked at Clark, who supported her left arm, and then back at Jean, who held her right hand. Annan crouched at their feet and picked up broken pieces of china from the wood floor. They clinked together in his hands and the sound was like a reminder.
“I’m so sorry, Boss,” Mrs. Juntasa said, almost crying. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Clark said. “It’s just some dishes and the soup.” He helped her out of the way as Annan piled up the larger pieces on a tray and took them out. “At least it wasn’t your world famous panang, right?”
Clark turned to George as he led her and Jean further away from the debris.
“Dr. George Liew and Miss Jean Willis,” he addressed them. “Mrs. Juntasa here makes the most amazing panang in all of Thailand.”
Mrs. Juntasa had been trying to see what Annan was doing behind them but had to turn at the formal tone in Clark’s voice.
“That sounds wonderful,” George said.
“Panang is my favorite,” Jean whispered as she leaned in. “How did you know?”
Mrs. Juntasa’s eyebrows flew up and she smiled brightly.
Annan came back in with a dustpan and rag and swept up the rest of the small pieces and the soup.
“Mrs. Juntasa has a sixth sense about these things,” Clark said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Boss,” Mrs. Juntasa said, as he gently turned her and helped her toward the door. She released her hold on Jean and held onto Clark with both hands.
Clark turned to Annan. “Annan?” was all he had to say and the smooth pass-off was made. Annan helped Mrs. Juntasa out.
“My apologies,” said Clark, as he held Jean’s chair for her. Once she was seated, he gracefully resumed his place and put his dinner napkin back in his lap. “I believe we were talking about wine.”
• • • • •
Jean had hardly said a word for the rest of the evening. Instead, George and Clark had discussed the plantation. They didn’t see Mrs. Juntasa again but her panang had indeed been ‘wonderful’ as George liked to say.
As Jean removed her pearls and set them on top of the dresser, she remembered how Clark had looked when George had interrupted her.
He’d looked pained.
She closed her eyes, hung her head, and let an unsteady sigh escape.
Of course he did. I was talking about his wife–his deceased wife.
There’d been very little about her in the documentation, only the bare minimum. She’d died here, at the plantation, not long after they were married. Not much more was known than that. Nothing about their wedding, her family, her friends. It happened sometimes–an almost complete lack of information–even in the internet age. Not everyone was plugged in. Likewise, Clark’s mother had died of a heart attack decades ago and there was little information about her. But his father had committed suicide when the company had been at its lowest point, only months after the death of Clark’s wife. That had been covered extensively. It had to have been a desperate time, an awful time. Jean looked at herself in the mirror.
“And you talked about them like they were text and numbers,” she accused her reflection. “What were you thinking?”
That was the problem. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been trying to impress Clark.
She had never even finished saying what made forensic auditing indispensable–people were never what they seemed. The public face was always different, what someone wanted you to see. It was a tool, used to their benefit and generally to your detriment.
She shook her head.
The night air must have cooled because she finally felt like she was thinking clearly. And the one thing she couldn’t stop thinking about was Clark's face and how upset he’d been.
Her breath caught. Upsetting Clark was the last thing she wanted.
She glanced at her watch.
Not yet eleven.
Was it too late to apologize?
• • • • •
The sound of the knocking was very dim but someone was definitely knocking. Clark quickly threw on a pair of pants and went to the door. Annan and Mrs. Juntasa would have been in bed as soon as the dishes were done and they generally didn’t venture upstairs after the end of the day.
Clark opened the door and stepped out onto the interior balcony.
What he saw made him freeze. There, in the dim light, in front of the door to the sitting room–he almost called out her name. Except it wasn’t her name on the tip of his tongue. It was Linda's. He watched her knock again.
“Jean?” he said.
She jumped and turned toward him. She was wearing the same clinging, emerald dress she’d worn at dinner. It was just the kind of color his wife would have worn. No doubt their similar looks made that less a coincidence than it seemed.
“I’m sorry, Clark,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” he said, coming toward her. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” she s
aid. “I mean no.”
She took a couple steps toward him and they met between the two rooms. As she wrung her hands in front of her, she dropped her gaze to the floor between them. Clearly, something was wrong. Even at dinner, she’d seemed animated at first only to shut down after Mrs. Juntasa had dropped the soup. He remembered how easily Jean had managed to comfort the aged woman. Annan’s secret wink over the dinner table hadn’t escaped him either. There was a sweetness to Jean that was captivating.
“I…I wanted to apologize,” she said quietly.
He’d never stood this close to her. She was the same height as Linda too. They could have been sisters. At least her voice was different, he thought. A little lower. And she was younger, he reminded himself, by several years.
“Apologize?” he said.
She looked up into his eyes and he watched as they searched his. Even in the low light of the hallway, he could see that the color of their eyes was different too. Jean’s were lighter, a pale green that almost seemed translucent.
A flash of lightning lit up the interior courtyard as thunder began to rumble and a light rain began to fall again.
She’d flinched at the flash of light.
“Part of the same storm,” he said.
She no longer wore the pearl necklace that had helped him to focus at dinner. Instead, the dip of her neckline drew his attention. Although it was conservative, the dress showcased her hourglass shape. The lightweight material fit tightly in all the right places. It was pretty, it was business-like, but the hint of cleavage was something he couldn’t help stare at.
As she turned her face toward the rain, he realized that her profile and Linda’s were similar but not identical. In fact, the closer he looked, the less alike they were. With her hair up, the graceful curve of her neck was laid bare. He imagined reaching out his hand and turning her chin toward him.
She turned back to him.
“I wanted to apologize for the way I acted at dinner,” she said, staring at the ground between them. “That was callous. Even for a forensic accountant.”
“There’s no need,” he said. “It’s been over a year.” He paused. “Besides, I told you to surprise me.”