fantasies. Frankly she’d been more turned on by one look from Zack Boudreaux, the hotel tycoon from planet sexy, than she had by all Andrew’s attention in the last few weeks. He’d accused her of sending him mixed messages. Tears of humiliation clogged up her throat as she recalled how he’d shoved her out of the suite while she’d been giving him another message entirely, at top volume.
Kate sniffed the tears back and gave a weary sigh, pushing the aggravating memory to the far reaches of her mind. She had other, more pressing problems to deal with now. She was back at square one, right where she’d been when she’d walked out on her father and his indifference ten years ago—broke and ‘scrubbing johns’ for a living. Except this time she was doing it thousands of miles from home with a distinct lack of clothing.
She plumped herself down on the sofa.
At least she’d learned something from this situation. Never trust anyone, and don’t kid yourself. If something looks too good to be true, it is.
Picking up the TV remote she switched on the huge plasma screen that took up the opposite wall of the suite.
Perma-pressed chat show hosts and adverts for haemorrhoid cream flicked by as she trolled through the channels. Her thumb stopped dead as a raunchy scene in a daytime soap opera flashed onto the screen. A buxom blonde appeared to be Unibonded to a hairless muscle-bound male torso. Kate tilted her head, trying to figure out where the chest ended and the blonde began.
‘For Pete’s sake, isn’t that a bit much for ten in the morning?’ she said out loud as the camera lifted and the couple proceeded to suck each other’s faces off.
Then the guy came up for air. He droned a series of banal lines but all Kate noticed was the jewel-green tone of his eyes. It reminded her of someone.
She tucked her legs up under her, refusing to acknowledge the tingling sensation between her thighs. Her thumb jerked down on the channel-change button, but not before she’d had the errant thought that Zack Boudreaux’s eyes were a much more compelling shade of green and that she’d bet her knickers the hotel tycoon had hair on his chest.
Of course, once she’d conjured up the picture of Boudreaux’s naked torso in her mind she couldn’t get it out again. No matter how many channels she surfed through.
Eventually she gave up and turned the telly off. Throwing the zapper down on the glass-topped coffee-table, she grasped her ankles and willed herself to calm down. Hadn’t she just promised herself she wasn’t going to put herself at the mercy of any man again, especially not a man like Zack Boudreaux? The guy had testosterone oozing out of his pores. Not only that, but she’d spent all of twenty minutes in his company and it had taken her about two seconds to realise he was exactly the sort of guy any woman with a single independent thought should stay well away from. A man like him would trample all over you without even realising he was doing it.
Stop thinking about him right this instant, she told herself sharply. Now if she could just get rid of the warm, liquid and completely unprecedented feeling that had settled between her thighs…
Kate’s head snapped up at the sharp knock on the door.
‘Hi, I’m Michelle.’ The pristine young woman standing in the corridor had one of those megawatt sales assistant’s smiles pasted on her face. ‘I’m from Ella’s Boutique downstairs. Mr Boudreaux asked us personally to bring up a selection of clothes for you to look at.’
Kate cursed the guilty flush that spread up her neck at the mention of his name. ‘He did?’
‘Yeah, he did.’ The young woman beamed back and then shuffled into the room wheeling a portable garment rail behind her. A profusion of colours and fabrics hung from it. ‘He said for you to pick out as many outfits as you need for your stay with us.’
‘Oh.’ Kate didn’t know what else to say. She’d expected a pair of hotel overalls or something, not a selection of the latest catwalk fashions.
‘Would you like me to lay them out for you?’
Kate stared at the rail. ‘Um.’She bit her lip. ‘No, don’t bother.’
Silk dresses vied for position with designer jeans, cashmere sweaters, a Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt. Kate rubbed a satin top between her thumb and forefinger. The cloth was a deep vivid purple, cool and whisper smooth to the touch. Lifting it off the rail, she studied the perfect stitching, the delicately beaded neckline, the way the cloth draped in shimmering waves. She’d never owned a piece of clothing this gorgeous in her life. Or, she imagined, this expensive.
‘Why don’t they have any price tags?’ Kate asked, hooking the purple blouse back onto the rail.
‘Oh, well.’ The girl’s smile faltered as she hesitated. Obviously her customers didn’t usually concern themselves with something as mundane as prices. ‘You don’t need them, ma’am,’ she said, brightening again. ‘Mr Boudreaux said to charge everything to the hotel.’
Kate gaped at the girl, momentarily struck dumb by Boudreaux’s generosity. Then reality intervened. That was ridiculous—he couldn’t possibly have intended to give her hundreds of dollars worth of clothing. The boutique staff must have misunderstood. He had probably intended for them to charge the clothes to Kate’s hotel room.
‘I’d still like to know the prices,’ she said, trying not to sound ungracious.
The girl looked confused. ‘I guess I could call down to the boutique and get Monica, my supervisor, to itemise them once you’ve made your selection.’
‘All right,’ Kate said. Although it wasn’t all right. She’d much rather know the prices up front. As beautiful as the clothing was she didn’t want to be scrubbing johns in Mr Irresistible’s hotel for the rest of her life, which could very well happen if she picked the wrong thing. Most of this stuff would retail in the hundreds, possibly even thousands.
But at the same time Kate didn’t want to embarrass herself further by making a big deal of it, and she also didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Frankly, she’d been astonished when Boudreaux had offered to help her out in the first place, she didn’t want to press her luck.
She opted for the plainest pair of jeans she could find and a simple blue T-shirt with The Phoenix logo on it. At the bottom of the rail was a box with a selection of shoes. Once again, the designs, colours and craftsmanship had her controlling a whimper. She recognised a pair of Fendis and some Manolo Blahniks from the style magazines she loved to paw over at home. She turned to Michelle, who was busy boxing up her selections.
‘Do you have any trainers?’
‘You don’t like the shoes here?’ Michelle looked thoroughly crestfallen now.
‘Oh, no, it’s not that, they’re gorgeous. It’s just I need something less dressy.’
‘Dressy?’ The girl glanced at the shoes, her eyebrows lifting. She obviously considered five-hundred-dollar shoes perfectly acceptable for day wear, but to Kate’s relief she didn’t say it. ‘The sportswear store in the hotel forum sells Converse and Nike—is that what you mean?’
‘Perfect.’ Even with the hotel mark-up, she was sure she could find something for fifty dollars.
The girl’s eyes widened, but she nodded. Kate had no doubt at all the shop staff would soon be abuzz with gossip about the dotty English girl in the Sunset Suite with the dress sense of a teenage boy. She forced herself not to care. With the stuff she had she could at least leave the suite—and start work tomorrow—without being indentured for life.
The girl took her shoe size and promised to have a pair sent up to the suite. She wheeled her rail back out the door, but stopped when she got over the threshold. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Mr Boudreaux sent up a package for you.’ The girl unclipped a white hotel bag from the end of the rail with an envelope attached to the front. ‘I swear, I’d forget my head if it weren’t glued to my neck,’ she said, giving Kate a nervous smile.
Kate smiled back, or at least