Her heart was thudding like she'd just run a marathon. She turned his wrist over gently, noting that his skin was marked. Either the rope had been there too long, or he had tried to fight against it. Maybe he was new to this. Maybe he didn't want this. Maybe...God, this was confusing. If only she spoke Chinese she'd know precisely what it was she'd just done!
Still, everything about the man's posture spoke of subservience now. But that wasn't what she had in mind.
Damn it, she was going to need to talk to him, gain his confidence. She didn't even know where to start. "Do you have a name?" she managed.
His head jerked up. Those huge gray eyes fastened on hers once again, widening in surprise. "English? You speak English?" He spoke slowly, his English sounding sort of rusty, but the relief in the man's voice was audible.
Candy swallowed hard. What did you say to a man you'd just rented? "I speak English. I'm Candy. Candy Nelson. From New York."
He blinked, a kind of slow, mesmerized look in his eyes. "Brooke. Brooke Harper."
Well, it looked like she was right. Not too bright. Candy almost sighed. She wasn’t sure whether to offer to shake hands, as she would with a client, so she didn’t. He was rubbing his injured wrists, anyway. Instead she said the first thing that came to her mind. "You have a beautiful voice." The perfect voice to go with that gorgeous body.
Brooke looked at her as if she'd gone quite insane. Perhaps she had. He glanced at the crowd again. The German was still watching them, his glare openly hostile, even though he was already bidding on another young Malaysian woman. No one else besides the cabdriver was paying any attention to them.
Brooke focused his attention on her. "You came here alone?"
Candy shrugged, still feeling a bit self-conscious. "I always travel alone."
He ran his eyes over her again, assessing her deliberately. She felt the color rise to her face. A slow, hesitant smile formed on his lips. Oh God. When he smiled like that she nearly melted at his feet. He didn't need to be intelligent and articulate. She'd tried that, hadn't she?
"Thank you, Candy Nelson. You're either very brave or very foolish. Either way I'll do my best not to disappoint you. I know I went a great deal higher than I should have. If I had to be arrested and sold into slavery, I'm glad I ended up with you instead of someone like him. I knew I was going to end up in one of the Japanese whorehouses this time. Not a pleasant fate, I assure you."
It was Candy's turn to feel dazed. She didn't take the time to register the fact that Brooke's vocabulary far exceeded her expectations as her worst fear, the gut feeling she'd had congealing in the pit of her stomach throughout the entire auction, was just confirmed.
Arrested. Slavery.
She owned this man.
Oh God. What had she gotten herself into?
*****
Candy fought the overwhelming sense of having drifted off into the twilight zone as the cab slowed again. She glanced about uneasily. There was some sort of a roadblock ahead. Her nerves worked into a tight bundle as they moved toward the uniformed officers. Ordinarily she wouldn't have cared about anything but the delay. Ordinarily she wouldn't have had a nearly naked slave in the cab with her. Slavery was illegal even here, wasn't it? She was going to be arrested. There was no way this man looked like a tourist.
The cabdriver didn't seem too concerned. As they joined the line waiting to move through the checkpoint, the man turned and spoke rapidly in his odd mixture of Malaysian and English. Candy didn't understand a word of his advice.
It was Brooke who responded, shaking his head no rather violently. "Sotong! Pai seh , lah?"
The cabdriver repeated his first instruction. Candy had no idea what either of them had said, but she was almost sure she didn't like it. But the guards were getting closer. Brooke was blushing under that dark tan. She felt the heat in his face as he reached for her, picking her up almost easily despite the awkward angle. She'd have shrieked if he hadn't looked so embarrassed. He pulled her across his lap and wrapped his arms around her, guiding her to straddle his legs.
Oh, God. Now she was going to get arrested. She'd look like a whore.
Or he would.
Then she forgot what she was afraid of as his hands tangled in her hair, pulling her into an embrace that assaulted her senses. His lips felt as soft as they'd looked, trembling against hers in uncertainty. Sparks like electricity shot through her. She raised her hands to wrap her arms around him, hiding even more of his body from view. After all, it was for a good cause. Keeping her out of some foreign jail.
Yeah. Right. And it was for a good cause when her lips opened in a soft sigh of delight, and the tip of her tongue touched his too. The cause deepened when he crushed her against his chest, no longer playacting as he kissed her in earnest.
Oh God. There was no uncertainty about him now. The man knew how to kiss. She could feel the heat of him rising up through his shorts. The pressure against her felt long, and thick, and aching to escape his scanty clothing. If he was acting, this was a stellar performance with great props.
The cab lurched forward again, but Brooke didn't let go. When the kiss finally ended neither one of them moved.
"Wow," Candy managed, her voice still breathy. "It's been a long time since anyone kissed me like that." It had been a long time. Maybe never. But she wasn't going to admit that. Not just yet.
Brooke just stared at her, as if he was trying to put the pieces of an intricate puzzle together in his mind and not getting the picture he wanted. Something slightly cynical clouded his expression. "That's what you paid for, isn't it?"
Her emotions spiraled down off the cliff of surreal joy to crash into the valley of hurt waiting below. She slipped to the seat beside him and turned to stare out the window at the ocean. She loved the ocean. She'd paid an extra charge for a hotel room with a view overlooking Keppel Harbor, but the seawater looked dark and drizzly gray now.
"Yeah. Yes. I guess so."
Chapter Two
What the hell was she going to do with him? This wasn't the sort of souvenir most tourists brought home with them. She couldn't just tuck him away in her luggage to get him through customs...
First things first. Candy shut down her emotions as she turned her attention to details. Richard had always counted on her for that. She was good at details. Unfortunately she wasn't much good at other things. Not good enough anyway.
The huge open atrium presented the first major problem. Brooke didn't look like one of the guests. She didn't want people thinking—
Screw what people would think. Why should she be embarrassed? Brasden-Marten didn't pay her enough to own her personal life. She didn't have to answer to Richard anymore.
Besides. No man would have had to hide a scantily dressed woman following him back to his hotel room. Why was it wrong just because Brooke was with her? Whose business was it, anyway? She didn't have to answer to anyone.
"Ms. Nelson. Good to see you again, Ma'am."
Candy forgot to be even mildly miffed that she'd graduated to a "Ma'am." She shouldn't have been worried. Not here. This was the Orient, after all. Nobody here was going to say anything. She swallowed a sigh of relief as the doorman signaled to the bellhop and a short pool robe mysteriously appeared, apparently conjured out of thin air. Neither attendant asked any questions, and she didn't offer any explanations. After all, one paid for such services—and for the privilege of having them available. As she tipped the doorman generously, Candy gave a brief thought to some of her clients' drunken escapades and decided she didn't need to ask why the doorman kept such things handy.
Brooke made no comment as he slipped into the robe. God. It didn't matter what he was wearing. He simply looked gorgeous. The thin robe clung to his broad shoulders, falling open across his smooth upper chest, and molded itself to his narrow hips as he belted it shut, ending low on sculpted thighs dusted with thick, dark hair. He had great legs. Even his calves looked sexy, playing with muscles that bunched and rippled as he shifted his w
eight.
Candy tried to push images of the two of them in the hot tub together out of her mind. Pool robe or not, Brooke didn't exactly look like he'd just climbed out of the water, but at least he would be a little less conspicuous. Heads turned as he followed her across the large open atrium, but somehow she didn't think anyone was paying all that much attention to what he was wearing. She didn't have to wonder what the women whose eyes followed him were thinking.
She was thinking the same thing, but it wasn't going anywhere. Candy kept a careful distance from him, avoiding even accidental contact. They rode up in the elevator together in uneasy silence. Candy had entertained fantasies once about what she might do with the right man in an elevator, but that wasn't even an option. No matter how well he kissed, Brooke had made it pretty clear what he thought of a woman who had to buy sex. Even if he had been interested, there was no point in starting something that would only end badly. She didn't need any more rejection in her life.
"This is not really happening," Candy mumbled as she swiped her key card through the electronic lock on the door to her suite.
Brooke shrugged as he surveyed the opulent room. He skimmed out of the robe and dropped it over the back of the brightly colored couch, seemingly oblivious to the latent sensuality of his moves. "Then maybe you’re not really out fifteen hundred dollars." The sexy, catlike grace of his movements stood in contrast to the sharp, clipped tone of his words.
Patience. She had to find some or she'd run back down the hall screaming. "I can't own anyone. Slavery does not exist in the twenty-first century. Don't think I'm buying this whole charade. This is all some huge joke. And it's in very bad taste. But who would be capable of—Kelly. Yeah. Kelly has the contacts and the expertise to pull this off. She set this up as some weird Christmas thing, didn't she? Who are you, anyway? Did she hire you off the Internet? I told her she's going to get herself in trouble that way."
His thick, dark eyebrows curled up in a travesty of surprise. "Who is Kelly and why would she go to so much trouble just to play a joke on you?"
Candy yanked the door to the bedroom open, checking to see that the maid had unpacked her luggage. Her rapid, jerky movements betrayed an uncharacteristic agitation. "Kelly is my personal assistant. She lives on the Internet. Keeps trying to get me to register at these singles sites she's always hanging out at. She's been nagging me about dating again for months. Has to be Kelly." Nobody else would care that much, she almost added, but she didn't voice the sentiment aloud.
"Dating." Brooke's tone dripped with sarcasm. "Is that what you call it."
Candy tossed her purse on the coffee table on her way to the wet bar. Lord she needed a drink. "This sure wasn't my fucking brilliant idea." She could see Brooke's expression clearly in the mirrored wall as his eyes skimmed over the lavishly decorated living room.
"Kelly must be pretty damned good. She had me convinced for the last twenty-four months. Seemed real enough to me." His voice dropped lower, tinged with bitterness. "Listen, Candy, whatever you had in mind, this was obviously a mistake. You should send me back with that cabdriver before he gets another fare."
Send him back? Damn it, he'd been the one seeking her out back in that hellhole. Of course that had all been an act. Damn Kelly anyway. Candy spun to confront Brooke, reaching out to grab his arm as he turned away. She moved too fast, held on too hard.
Though he didn't pull away, he flinched, his entire body language changing. He froze, hardly even daring to breathe. The cowed, subservient slave stood before her again, shoulders bowed as against a blow, eyes downcast.
At first she thought it was because he didn't really want her to touch him. Then she looked closer. Under her fingertips she could see the fading outline of a large purplish bruise, almost obscured by the bronze of his deeply tanned skin. She hadn't looked past the surface. She inspected him carefully now, taking the time to really look. There were others. Bruises and scars, some fresher, some old and fading. Not offensive wounds. He hadn't been in a fight. Not even defensive wounds.
He'd been beaten. Regularly, from the looks of things, by someone who knew what they were doing. Knew how to do it without permanently disfiguring the merchandise.
The reality of it all came crashing in on her. She traced a shallow purple ring with her fingertips. "Oh my God. Kelly couldn't fake that." Her hands started to shake. "This is real, it's all real, isn't it?" she whispered.
The spell broken, Brooke looked away, the hard muscles in his arm tightening under her hand. His breath came in long, deep pulls that made his chest ripple. He seemed intent on studying the heavy brocade drapes that obscured their vision of the harbor.
She hadn't noticed. The maid should have opened the drapes.
Her hand lingered on his arm, her touch feather light now. "How did this happen?"
A muscle worked in his jaw, bunching into a knot. "You waved a handful of American dollars at an auctioneer. I guess everyone thought you actually wanted me."
Wait. In the cab he'd been pissed because he thought all she was after was sex. Now he was upset because he thought she didn’t want him? What was going on here? "People don’t own other people, not in the twenty-first century," she said quietly. Candy closed her eyes, trying to pull her scattered thoughts into some semblance of order. "How did you end up in that auction?"
His eyes focused anywhere but on her. "What difference does it make? I don’t know what you thought you were doing at that auction, but you obviously didn't intend to end up owning me. Have the cabdriver take me back and send me through again. I don’t think anyone else will bid that high, but you’ll get some of your money back. You can go back to your safe modern world. I'll be somebody else's problem."
Candy slid her hand down his arm until she captured his calloused fingers. She kept her voice pitched low, gentle and non-threatening, but firm. "I am not going to take you back to the auction house, Brooke. I don't want my money back. I don’t care about the money. That’s not what’s important here. I'm just trying to figure this all out. In my world people don't own people. And they sure as hell don't beat people into submission. Things like this just don't happen."
He didn't seem very relieved. If anything his voice turned harder. Still, he made no attempt to pull away from her, though his eyes focused on the wet bar rather than her face. "If you don't want to keep me, you have to send me back, Candy." He didn't even try to keep the bitterness out of his voice now. "I have nowhere else to go. I can't work anywhere legally. I don’t look like a native and I don't have a work permit or a visa or any sort of I.D.. How long do you think I’ll last on the streets? I didn't make it two days last time I escaped."
Candy took a deep breath to steady herself as she dropped his hand. With the sort of precision she was known for in business she snapped open her briefcase and took out a legal pad. "I’m not going to take you back to that auction house, Brooke. I know you don't think very highly of me right now, but you're wrong about me. Just because I'm not willing to own you doesn't mean I’m going to turn you out on the street. Whether it was through my own ignorance doesn't matter. I got you here. I'm willing to take responsibility for getting you out of this mess. I'm going to help you. I do have a conscience, and at least some sense of common decency left."
Brooke shrugged, his face stoic again, as if he didn’t care in the least about what she’d said. Or else he didn’t believe her. "Do they charge you for the crackers?"
Crackers? She was trying to help him put his life back together and he was worried about crackers? Candy waved off the question of price. "Help yourself." She found the local phone book and began organizing a list of contacts.
"Is there anything I need to draw up, a contract or whatever, to—" She looked just as Brooke was stuffing the last of several packages of hotel crackers into his mouth, hardly even bothering to chew them.
"Oh my God," Candy whispered.
His face turned a dark crimson as he spun toward her. He swiped a hand hastily across his mouth. "Wha
t? You said they were free."
A knot of anger twisted itself in her stomach. She laid her Cartier pen down perpendicular to the spine of the legal pad. "When’s the last time you ate, Brooke?"
He shrugged, his eyes going distant again. "They fed us last night."
Last night. Twenty-four hours ago at best. Probably longer. And who knows when before that.
Well, sympathy was getting her nowhere. Candy crossed to the bedroom to find her shampoo and conditioner and a fresh disposable razor. She thrust them at him. "Go get a shower. I’ll call room service and have them send up dinner. In the meantime I’m going to have to find you some clothes. Do you have any clue what size you wear?"
He shrugged, his eyes fixed on the things she'd shoved into his hands. "Don't know anymore. Used to be a double extra large. Forty-four thirty-six jeans. Can't have changed that much."
Forty-four? Candy tried not to laugh as she laid down her pen. "Brooke."
There was that flash of temper again. "What?"
"Have you looked in a mirror lately?"
He looked a little more disgruntled. "No. Where would I have had a mirror?"
"Just look." She took his arm again, tugging him over to the large dressing mirror in the hall leading from the living room to the bedroom. "Size forty-four jeans wouldn’t even stay on you. They'd be way too big."
Brooke turned reluctantly to frown into the mirror. He just stared for a moment, finally turning sideways, looking more critical than conceited. "Guess I’ve lost more weight than I thought. But it doesn’t matter if things are baggy. Bigger sizes are longer anyway. Regular stuff's always way too short. Always comes apart in the middle. Makes me look even more ridiculous. Helps if you can find things in tall. Hard to find long T-shirts though." He tugged at the shorts that hung almost obscenely low on his hips. "But you're right. Bet I’m down to forty jeans by now." That thought, at least, seemed to please him.
Candy arched an eyebrow at the thought of buying him jeans and T-shirts, though he’d undoubtedly have looked great in them. "Shoes?" was all she said out loud.
All I Want For Christmas Page 2