“Just call me,” Dorothea answered quickly. “I’ll relay any message.”
“Fine, I’ll call you first thing in the morning, Dorothea,” Max said.
When the elevator doors closed behind them, Kate let out a deep sigh of relief. The evening had been unreal. She still didn’t know why Max hadn’t told Dorothea that he knew who she really was. But now the evening was over, and she wasn’t sure where she stood. If she was fired, she was fired. Nothing was going to change that.
What she wouldn’t do was let him drive her away. What she couldn’t do was admit that he was more than just an exciting, desirable man. She didn’t have to be Deborah Kerr or Bette Davis to feel herself responding. She leaned on the wheelchair, feeling it move under the force of her pressure.
“What’s the matter, girl, don’t have your ‘sea legs’ under you yet? The phone is ringing. Wonder who that could be?”
Kate opened Dorothea’s door and stood, waiting to bolt as soon as Dorothea was safely inside.
“Hold on a minute, Kate, while I answer this. Hello? Probably. I heard you, Max. Yes, I know that Kate didn’t give you an answer. Yes, she’s here. I’ll tell her. Good night, Max.” Dorothea turned back to Kate, rubbing her hands in undisguised glee.
“Good night, Dorothea,” Kate began.
“That was Max. Wanted to be sure that you weren’t leaving? He seemed to think that you might panic and check out. I told him that you’d still be here tomorrow. I suppose Joe’s room is technically ‘here.’ ”
“Dorothea, after the wild things you told him tonight, I don’t know why you’d worry about technicalities. I think that there is something you’d better know before this gets any more insane. Your nephew knows who I am.”
“Of course he does. I told him your name.”
“No, he knows that I work for him in the maintenance department. I repaired a leak in his bathroom last night.”
“So that’s what all that sizzle was about tonight. I get the distinct feeling that there was more than plumbing involved.”
“There wasn’t! Of course, I’ve never worked around a naked man before. But I got the job done.”
“Naked man? Wonderful! I don’t even want to know what that means. It worked. Even I couldn’t have set up a more exciting scenario. And he’s already called here to make sure you’re going with him tomorrow.” Dorothea removed the cape of her gown and trailed the feathers under her chin and across her bosom.
“He’s probably going to put me before the firing squad at dawn, Dorothea. That’s why he wants to be sure that I’m where he can find me.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. But that does explain why he said that Errol Flynn wasn’t the only pirate to sail the southern seas. Oh, Kate,” Dorothea said, “it’s intrigue that gives life it’s flavor. Don’t you want to have a little excitement in your life?”
“Excitement, yes. That’s why I’m working my way across the country. But I didn’t take a how-to class in playing games.”
“Oh, but you don’t need lessons, Kate. You have a natural talent. I’m a good judge of people, and I understand you and Max very well. An adventure is a lot more fun if you have someone to share it with. Go with Max tomorrow.”
Maybe Dorothea was right. She was only going to be there for two weeks. Why not enjoy being a part-time mystery woman? Still, she didn’t want to make it too easy on the septagenarian. Let her enjoy the challenge. Maybe Dorothea needed a little sugar in her lemonade too.
“All right, I’ll think about it. But the bottom line is that I’m a maintenance worker, and I’m afraid that sooner or later Max is going to be furious with you about this.”
“Nonsense. Max may not have my sense of humor, but he’s got my blood in him.”
“But—” Kate began once more.
“No, no more buts. Not tonight. Go to bed, Kate.” Mrs. Jarrett softened the expression on her face and squeezed Kate’s hand. “Please, humor me. And soon I’ll tell you about another woman who was given the chance to share a grand adventure.”
The shower water was hot and it felt wonderful. Afterward, Kate fell wearily across her bed, on the edge of falling asleep.
She wasn’t sure why she let herself turn into Kathryn. She must have been under some sort of magical spell. The morning light would erase that soon enough. She was a maintenance worker with leaky faucets and faulty TVs to repair, not some foxy lady on an assignment. Still, for one magic moment Kate had become the mysterious Kathryn, pursued by an executive who lived in a penthouse suite.
Four
Kate awoke suddenly, jarred by the urgent pounding on her door. She groaned and willed the person to leave. He didn’t.
The person at the door had to be Max, she realized. Any hope she had that he had forgotten about the previous night and would go to his committee meeting in Panama City without her evaporated.
“Go away!” she yelled desperately. “I’m busy!”
“Doing what?”
“Sleeping.” It was Max, and she wasn’t ready to face him.
“Not any more,” he said.
“No, your pounding woke me up.”
There was a moment of silence. “I can think of better ways to do it, if you’ll open this door.”
His voice was hoarse and a bit unsteady. Kate clutched the sheet tightly as if it might restrain her from flinging open the door and wrapping herself in his arms.
On the other side of that door, Max realized that things weren’t working out the way he’d planned—if he’d had a plan, which he hadn’t. He’d ordered a picnic lunch, canceled it, and ordered it again. This trip was business. Taking her along on his boat would be a distraction when he needed to concentrate on the upcoming meeting.
But leaving her behind would be an even bigger distraction. What he wanted to do was cancel the meeting and take Kate straight to his apartment—and make love to her.
Such intense desire for a woman was new to him, and he’d spent half the night trying to understand it. Finally, at dawn, he’d decided to go without her. Yet there he was, outside Kate’s door. When she’d yelled that she was sleeping, all thoughts of leaving without her vanished.
“Kate, will you let me in?”
“No! I’m … I’m not dressed.”
Ahhh! She was lying in bed naked not three feet away. Max groaned again.
Let him in? Kate’s mind seized on the picture of Max waking her up, seized on it and expanded it in less than a second. Weakly she sighed, recognizing the beginning of an ache in her head and a tingle between her thighs that seemed to be an automatic response to his presence.
For Pete’s sake. She was no virgin, though her experience had been limited and long ago. But Max Sorrenson was an assault on her senses that she couldn’t stave off. Sylvester Stallone lips, a Chuck Norris body, and the sophistication of Cary Grant. He was a man to die for—but not to open the door for.
“I’m sure you’re more alarming than a clock, Max, but no thanks. If you don’t intend to fire me after last night’s little escapade, I think I’d better go to work. Plumbing is a lot safer than being alone with you.”
“Work? Not today. I’ve arranged for the boss to give you a day off. It seems a new employee has converted him to the theory that all work and no play makes Max a dull boy.”
Then she wasn’t out of a job. She leaned back on her pillow and tried to suppress the unexpected happy feeling that came over her. She allowed herself to consider the possibility of going with Max, of the two of them sailing down the coast like ordinary people on a Sunday cruise.
But, no. She doubted that they’d get out of the harbor. Kate swung her feet to the floor and sat up. She wanted to go with Max Sorrenson. There was a sense of power about him that was intoxicating. But he was the man in the penthouse, and she knew that she belonged there about as much as beer in the boardroom.
“Max, it wouldn’t be smart for me to go with you.”
“At least let’s talk about it.”
He wasn’t goi
ng to give up. Sooner or later somebody else in the hotel was going to see or hear him pounding on her door. “All right,” she agreed, “I’ll come to your office and discuss the situation.”
Max had heard her voice change from dreamy to irritated to resigned. Irritation was an emotion that could be teased into excitement. But resignation was more difficult to deal with. There you go again Sorrenson, he told himself, you’re being stuffy. He wanted to hear the dreamy voice again, and he didn’t know how to coax it back.
Maybe he could challenge her. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to resist replying to the kind of lighthearted banter they’d exchanged the previous night.
“Good. I’m always willing to hear any employee’s grievance. Never let it be said that Max Sorrenson isn’t open to compromise,” he ad-libbed. That ought to do it. “I’ll meet you in my office in ten minutes.”
His office? Too late she remembered that Max’s office was in his penthouse suite. She’d be the one who was compromised. “No. I think that would be a mistake. I’ll met you in the manager’s office, or,” she announced bravely, “or not at all.”
“That isn’t a good idea, Kate. There are too many people there. I really think we ought to keep this discussion private.”
He was right. How would it look to have an audience when the pompous eccentric and his plumber discussed their impossible relationship? Kate couldn’t hold back a smile. She was beginning to realize that Max and his aunt were alike, even if they didn’t recognize their similarities. They were both a bit daft.
First Dorothea had forced her into a situation where she didn’t belong, now Max was doing the same. It didn’t make sense for him to be interested in her. He should be able to see that there was no future for them. She was only there temporarily.
Kate wrapped the sheet around her, came to the door, and leaned her head against it. “Please, Max. Last night was a mistake. I didn’t know that you were Mrs. Jarrett’s nephew when I agreed to go with her. I was out of line. Just go away and leave me here to do my work. Don’t make this into something that it isn’t.”
An irrational flash of anger roared through Max. He was known as the man who was always in control. Yet this time he couldn’t stop his words. “All right. Let me put it another way, Ms. Weston. You will get dressed and sail down the coast with me, or there will be two unemployed people in this hotel by noon. You and the day manager who hired you.”
Kate opened the door. “You wouldn’t dare! It isn’t Helen Stevens’s fault. Your aunt browbeat her into giving me this job. What kind of man are you?”
She was wrapped in a thin sheet. He could see the shape of her small breasts with their dark nipples jutting proudly beneath the fabric. Her hair was softly tousled, and her eyes sparkled defiantly.
Max swallowed hard. He’d done it now. He’d made himself into Simon Legree when all he’d wanted to be was Lorenzo Lamas. She should never have opened the door. “An impatient one,” he said, biting off the words with clenched teeth. “And you’re right. I’m not going to fire Helen. Because you’re coming, if I have to kidnap you. Fifteen minutes. In front of the hotel. And, Kate, do put on something that will cover that body, or we may never get off the boat.”
Kate knew she had no choice. She looked down at her body and back at the man. She’d never thought much about how she looked. Back in Kentucky she was accepted for who she was. Since leaving home she’d had to fight so hard to prove that she was able to do a man’s job that she’d grown used to rough talk and sexual innuendo. She’d always become just one of the boys. But Max didn’t see her that way. And when he looked at her, her body reacted in very feminine ways.
Even now her sensitive nipples were responding to the rough touch of the fabric rubbing against them as she breathed. “I’ll be there,” she said in a whisper.
“I’m glad.” The dreamy quality was back in her voice, and Max felt a warm sense of possessiveness swell inside him. Another minute and that wouldn’t have been the only thing that swelled.
Kate splashed her face with water, ran a comb through her hair, and turned to the closet to survey her wardrobe. Cover her body? Fine. She tugged on the pair of faded jeans she’d been wearing the last time she worked on the car. Battery acid had eaten holes in the legs, and there was a three-cornered tear in the knee. She pulled a grease-smeared T-shirt emblazoned with the Atlanta Braves logo over her head and stuck her feet into sneakers with holes. As a last glowing touch, she crammed the orange cap on her head. She looked like a slob. That ought to keep him from forcing her to go, she decided.
Kate rounded the corner of the building and caught her breath. The grim expression on Max’s face and the sight of his clenched fists made her chest tighten and her stomach flutter. Unsuccessfully, she fought back an attack of panic, then ducked into the souvenir shop, rubbing the goose bumps that had suddenly raised like ant hills down her arms.
“May I help you?” The sales clerk hovered near the entrance, obviously suspicious of the oddly dressed woman hiding behind a rack of sunglasses.
“Ah, yes,” Kate stammered, desperately wishing that she had never turned her automobile into the driveway of La Casa del Sol. She saw Max plowing through the lobby in her direction. He’d seen her.
“I’d like these,” she said as she searched the rack wildly, selecting a pair of over-large bright yellow plastic sunglasses.
“Kate!”
She jammed the glasses on her nose and turned to face him.
“What are you doing, and why are you dressed like a refugee from a thrift store? Never mind.” He took her hand and drew her unyieldingly toward the front door.
“Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?” The clerk was scurrying behind them like a bird uncertain of her perch.
“Yes? What in blazes do you want?” Max roared.
“The glasses, sir. There is a ten-dollar charge for the glasses the lady bought.”
“Ten dollars? If those awful things cost ten dollars, I can understand why you have so many of them. Tell Helen Stevens to write a charge off and put those tacky things on sale immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” The puzzled clerk was unsure of what was happening, but she was beginning to understand that the man directing her was someone in charge. “What shall we price them at, sir?”
“Give them away if you have to. Just get rid of them.” He was doing it again. He was acting like a jerk, he realized.
“Max!” Kate protested. “She’s only doing her job.” Kate hurried out the front door, trying to lure Max away from the clerk and the curious onlookers in the lobby.
“I’m sorry.” Max let out a deep breath and followed her, a look of confusion etched across his tanned face. “I’m acting like an idiot. But I wanted you to come, and I was afraid that you wouldn’t.”
“You were?” Kate’s surprised response popped out before she could stop it. Max led her to a low-slung black sports car and opened the door for her. He paused, a dark look of intensity reflected in his eyes.
“Why didn’t you stay last night?”
“Because I never should have been there. Just as I shouldn’t be here this morning.”
“Why? Were you uncomfortable with my friends?”
His friends? Truthfully, she couldn’t recall a single one of them. “No, it wasn’t that. It’s just that I’ve never been in a place like this, with a man like you. You overwhelm me and I—we—oh, Lordy, this is coming out all wrong. Just go on to your meeting and forget about me, Max Sorrenson.”
He was leaning forward, with one arm against the car on either side of her, pinning her down. She was doing her best to say no to a man whose very nearness was scrambling her brain and turning all her logical thoughts into confusion.
“No. I’ve tried all those arguments. They don’t work. I mean, I think that we have to consider all the possibilities before making a decision. A relationship with an employee is something that I’ve avoided in the past. And I’m still not entirely sure that it’s wise.”
“Then wh
y?”
“Because—because—oh, hell, because I want you with me. Isn’t that enough?”
“Yes,” she said simply. She was rewarded with a smile of pleasure that made her want to hug him. But what she did instead was kiss him. It was a quick, spontaneous kiss, the kind that any friend might give another friend, even if Max’s groan and intake of breath threatened the friendship right from the start.
“Great,” he said, pulling back. “Now we’d better hurry, or I’m going to be late for my meeting.”
“No, wait. Do we have five more minutes?”
“Sure, why?”
“I want to change my clothes.”
“Okay, but I like the shirt. It’s … awesome, or it will be once it gets wet.”
Kate gave him a playful slap and ran down the walk. She tried not to imagine what the day would bring as she exchanged her bag lady outfit for trim white shorts, a clean Braves T-shirt, and a fresh pair of white sneakers. The baseball cap gave way to a perky visor, and she was back at the car before she had time to change her mind.
They were just two people, a guy and a girl, out for a day in the Florida sun. She’d leave it at that for now. No use anticipating trouble before it arrived, she decided.
Max watched Kate slide into the passenger seat, and then he started the engine. Throwing propriety to the winds, he flung back his head and let out one of his aunt’s favorite expressions of approval. “Yahoo!”
He drove the sports car down the road beneath moss-draped trees, alongside squatty palms growing in gray-black dirt. Kate loved reading the names of the streets on the signs at the intersections of the narrow little sandy lanes that led off toward the water: Seagrove, Grayton, Blue Mountain Beach.
The sun was shining. The ocean breeze was tugging at Kate’s hair like a lover sneaking secret kisses, and Max, watching Kate, couldn’t stop smiling. Every time he stole a look at her, she was looking at him, and finally they both gave in and laughed out loud.
“What kind of car do you have, Kate?”
“Nothing like this, I’m afraid.”
Penthouse Suite Page 6