The Maddening Model

This one is for Jayne Ann Krentz,

whose friendship through the years

has been worth more to me than

diamonds or emeralds, rubies or sapphires.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Epilogue

A Word About Rubies

One

She stuck out like a sore thumb...from the tips of her three-hundred-dollar handmade Italian leather sandals to the top of her very red head.

The essence of casual chic, she was dressed in pink silk trousers and a pink silk shirt. A designer handbag was tossed over one shoulder—he couldn’t quite make out the initials embossed on the front—and a pair of designer sunglasses were perched on the end of her nose.

Her sunglasses probably cost more baht than the average Thai worker made in a year, Simon Hazard judged as he leaned back in the rickety chair, balancing his weight on its rear legs.

Legs.

Hers were long and lean and lithe. He could tell that much from the way she walked.

Every eye in the Celestial Palace was on her. Little wonder. It wasn’t every day that a six-foot-tall amazon with hair the color of a blazing sunset sauntered into the back-street Bangkok bar.

What in the bloody hell was a woman like that doing in a place like this?

Simon shook his head, picked up the glass of beer in front of him and took a drink. It was none of his business. She was none of his business. He was here to meet a client. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Pushing his cap back off his face—the USN printed across the front identified it as one left over from the days when he’d served in the United States navy for Uncle Sam aboard a nuclear-powered sub—he took another swig of his beer. It was a local brew—strong, pungent, dark in color and served at room temperature. Unfortunately, it was the hot season in this part of the world and the crowded bar was like a steam bath.

An ice-cold beer on a sweltering hot day was one of the things he genuinely missed about the States, Simon reflected as he looked around the pub.

A trio of noisy sailors had bellied up to the bar and were egging one another on as they downed straight shots of Russian vodka. There were two suspicious-looking characters hunched over a nearby table, arguing in a language he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Thai or Chinese or Malay, and it certainly wasn’t English, the four principal languages spoken in this country once known as Siam. Bar girls of every size and shape, most of them dressed in cheap, skintight dresses and teetering on three-inch high heels, were serving watered-down drinks to the customers. An ancient jukebox in the corner was blaring the same tune over and over again. It was a young Elvis Presley singing about a “fool such as I.”

Simon stared bemusedly into his beer. Maybe, just maybe, the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was alive and well and living somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan the way the tabloids claimed.

Or maybe Simon was losing the last remnants of his sanity.

He must be. Here he was, sitting in a seedy bar in the red-light district of a city known for its sex and sin, a compact revolver on the inside of his belt and a small but very sharp stiletto tucked into his right boot, waiting for some damned fool who’d gotten it into his head that he wanted to see the high mountain country between Thailand and what was once called Burma and was now known as Myanmar.

Answer a fool according to his folly.

Simon took another swallow of tepid alcohol. Which one of them was the greater fool? His client, the mysterious Mr. S. Harrington, or himself?

“As long as you’re playing Twenty Questions, what the hell are you doing half a world away from home, you crazy son of a bitch?” Simon muttered under his breath.

But he knew the answer to his own question. He was on the job. For a nominal fee, he would drive his beat-up Range Rover and its passengers anywhere and everywhere they wanted to go.

Although he hadn’t always been a glorified guide/hired driver in a third world country, of course.

One morning, over a year ago, Simon Hazard had awakened in his penthouse apartment overlooking Minneapolis on one side and the mighty Mississippi River on the other, and realized that he was burned-out on his business, on what passed for pleasure in his life and on life itself. It had not, as he recalled, made for a great thirty-first birthday.

So he had packed his bags and gone off to “get in touch with his feelings,” as the pop psychologists labeled it.

He’d spent one entire year wandering among the saffron-robed Buddhist monks, the ancient temples and the golden spires of the Lotus Kingdom: Thailand. He’d made friends with the hill tribes of the North, lived in a primitive hut with a thatched roof, eaten food cooked over a fire fueled by dried water-buffalo dung and learned to use a machete like an expert.

He now spoke the language, knew the customs, was beginning to understand the people. He could defend himself against the Siamese crocodile and the armed bandits who sometimes roamed the Golden Triangle. He knew when the king cobra was in season and how to avoid the fifteen-foot-long, lightning fast serpent with its fatal bite. He understood it was a gross insult to point his toe at someone, according to Thai thinking, and that the national pastime was gambling, whether it was on a cockfight or a boxing match.

As a boy, he had once searched out the source of the Mississippi: Lake Itasca. As a man, he had gone in search of something more elusive. What he had discovered was a simpler time and place, and a people who hadn’t changed in hundreds of years.

What he had found, Simon reflected, was himself.

“Must be the alcohol making me wax philosophical,” he said by way of an explanation, gazing down into the dregs of his drink.

There was an insistent tug on his sleeve. “Hey, boss, you want another beer?”

Simon turned his head. A boy of eight or nine was standing beside him.

He didn’t want another drink, but there was something about the kid, something about his eyes.

“Sure.” Simon flipped him a coin. “And keep the change.”

The small face broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, boss. Beer right away.”

Maybe the hardest lesson he’d had to learn in the past year was that he couldn’t rescue everyone like this street kid. So he did what he could.

“Which isn’t very much, is it, Hazard?” he acknowledged as the boy set the glass down, brown liquor sloshing over the sides, and took off with his newfound wealth.

He couldn’t do anything about the boy, but he could—and would—do something about the woman.

Simon watched as the redhead approached the man behind the bar. Damn, if there wasn’t something familiar about her. He had the strongest sensation that he’d seen her before.

He stared unabashedly. Why not? Everybody else in the Celestial Palace was. Not that it seemed to bother her. She appeared oblivious to the stares and the whispers. This was a woman, he realized, who was used to being noticed, who expected to be noticed.

She slid her sunglasses up into her hair and looked directly at the bartender. The noise level dropped off for an instant and Simon clearly heard her say, in a voice that sent cool shivers down his spine, “Perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for someone.”

The man answered in accented English, “Looking for who, lady?”

The din of voices, clinking glasses and a crooning Elvis Presley picked up again. She leaned over the counter and said something Simon couldn’t make out.

The bartender raised his hand and pointed. He was pointing in the direction of Simon’s table.

She turned. Without the sun at her back, without the dark glasses obscuring her features, Simon saw her clearly for the first time. She was stunning, but not in any conventional sense of the word. Her hair was too red. Her eyes were too green. Her cheekbones were too prominent. Her nose was too aristocratic. Her mouth was almost too perfect.

He had seen that face before.

His gaze dropped to her slender shoulders, her generous breasts, her slim waist, her long, long legs.

He had seen that body before. He could swear it.

She walked toward him, stopped in front of his table and looked down her nose at him. “Are you Simon Hazard?”

He refused to alter his expression. “What if I am?”

“I believe we have an appointment, Mr. Hazard.”

“An appointment?”

“For three o’clock.”

He resisted the urge to glance at his watch. “Is it three o’clock already?”

“Five minutes past,” she said, consulting the slim gold band on her wrist.

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he muttered dryly.

“Are you?”

“Am I what?” He snorted and drained his glass to the last drop. “Having fun?”

Apparently, she chose to ignore his attempt at making a witticism. “Are you Simon Hazard?”

He might as well confess. “The one and only.”

She thrust out her right hand. Simon wondered if he was supposed to shake it or kiss it. “I’m Sunday Harrington,” she informed him.

Sunday. He supposed, with a name like that, she’d heard them all.

Sunday, fun day.

Sunday in the park with George.

Solomon Grundy buried on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon.

Sunday school.

Sunday’s child.

Never on Sunday.

“Sunday Harrington?” The name rang a bell. He studied the initials on her handbag: a stylized, intertwining S and H. Then it suddenly dawned on him. “S. Harrington stands for Sunday Harrington.”

“Brilliant deduction.”

He bit off a brief and rather crude expletive. The legs of his chair hit the floor of the Celestial Palace with a resounding thud. “I assumed the S stood for Sidney or Sheldon or Stanley.”

“You assumed incorrectly.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not a man.”

She seemed to be biting the corners of her mouth. “I’m not a man. I would think that was obvious, even to you.”

It was.

“You’re my client.”

“I’m your client.”

Bloody hell, she was his client.

That’s when he recalled reading in the newspapers—it had been a few years ago now—about a fashion model who always dressed in pink or purple or red, despite conventional wisdom that redheads should avoid those colors.

That’s when Simon Hazard remembered the last time he’d seen this woman. She had been larger than life, literally, and she had been wearing several tiny scraps of purple material that left little, if anything, to the imagination.

Simon blew out his breath expressively. As a matter of fact, the first and last time he had seen Sunday Harrington, she had been wearing next to nothing....

Two

She’d made a mistake.

A big mistake.

A huge mistake.

“There must be some mistake,” she said, swallowing hard.

A small, mocking smile appeared on the man’s lips. “You can say that again.”

“But you’re a—” She was too polite, Sunday reminded herself, to say he was a two-bit cowboy, an unshaven slob, a disreputable character and very possibly a drunkard, besides. She took a deep breath. “But you’re an American.”

He flashed her that smile again. “Born and raised in the heartland of the U.S.A.—Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

“You’re not Thai.”

“I would think that was obvious, even to you,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

Sunday stood a little straighter, not that she had ever been one to slouch. “I assumed you would be Thai.”

“You assumed incorrectly.”

The situation was getting awkward. “I thought my secretary made my requirements clear. I want someone who speaks the language, understands the customs and knows his way around this country.” The man just sat there. “What I want, Mr. Hazard,” she said, no longer mincing words, “is the best.”

There was a flash of straight, white teeth. “Lady, that’s what you’ve got—the best.”

What she had, Sunday realized, was a problem. And a big problem, at that. From where she stood—and he sat—it was apparent that Simon Hazard was tall, well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged and handsome as sin...if a woman was partial to the rugged he-man type, which, thankfully, she was not.

He stuck out like a sore thumb from the tips of his scuffed cowboy boots to the top of his head. His hair was blue-black and long at the nape; it was damp from the heat and formed dark curls that brushed against the collar of his denim shirt every time he moved his head. She wondered when he had last had a haircut.

There was at least a two day’s growth of beard on his chin. His jaw was chiseled granite and decidedly uncompromising. His nose—possibly his best feature—was a throwback to some patrician ancestor. His eyes were dark, somewhere between brown and black. They were bright, intelligent and unclouded by the alcohol he had consumed.

Unfortunately, his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them, and there was no doubt he had an attitude. His body, his face, his expression, his eyes all spelled one thing: danger.

Sunday’s heart sank.

“I don’t think this is going to work, Mr. Hazard.” She permitted herself a small sigh. “You can simply return my deposit and we’ll go our separate ways.”

“Can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Drank it.” He indicated the glass of brown liquor on the table in front of him. “Beer.”

“You drank the entire deposit?” She was shocked, and she made no attempt to hide it. “But I sent several hundred baht with the messenger only this morning.”

His eyes narrowed. “It seems you haven’t done your arithmetic, Ms. Harrington. A hundred-baht note is the equivalent of only four American dollars.”

Sunday didn’t know what to say. “Oh—”

“And, in case you also didn’t notice, the prices around here are inflated for a farang.“

She still didn’t know what to say to him. She finally managed to inquire, “A farang?“

“A stranger.” Simon Hazard leaned back in his chair again and balanced his weight on the spindly rear legs. “Besides, you won’t find anyone better.”

“That is a matter of opinion.”

“That is a matter of fact.” He stroked his jawline. “Tell me something.”

She waited for him to go on.

“Why would a woman like you want to travel into the hinterlands of Thailand, anyway?”

“Business,” she said.

“Business? What kind of business?” Suspicion was thick in his voice. “It better not have anything to do with the poppy.”

Sunday drew a blank. “The poppy?”

“Opium.”

Her mouth dropped open, whether in surprise or outrage, she wasn’t sure. “You think I’m involved with drugs?”

“I don’t know what to think, do I?” He gave her a stony stare. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“I assure you, Mr. Hazard, my business is strictly legitimate,” she retorted, bristling.

He shrugged but said nothing.

Her temper flared. “Keep the damned deposit, then. I’ll find someone else.”

“No.”

“No?”

“We’ve got a deal, Ms. Harrington. Signed, sealed and delivered. You pay. I guide.”

He was right. She had received an agreement through the mail and she’d signed it.

Sunday permitted herself another small sigh. If she wanted to do business, if she wanted to see the crafts produced by the hill tribes, if she wanted to visit the City of Mist, if she wanted to experience the closest thing to heaven on earth, it was, apparently, going to be in the company of this cowboy.

“All right, we still have a deal, Mr. Hazard,” she said, holding out her hand.

He moved surprisingly fast for a big man. His chair was upright and he was on his feet, pumping her arm, before she knew it. “Business is business,” he said.

Sunday looked around the bar. “Is this where you usually conduct your business dealings?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the Celestial Palace,” he countered in a hard, dry voice.

As if on cue, a fight broke out between two sailors at the bar. There was the sound of breaking glass and voices raised in anger. The bartender shouted, “Stop! Stop!” and pounded the bar with his fist, but no one paid him any heed. Somewhere, a girl let out a shriek.

“The Celestial Palace isn’t exactly a slice of heaven,” Sunday observed judiciously.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Where are we going?” she inquired as he took her by the elbow and steered her toward the door.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course, it matters.”

“We’re going someplace where we’re less conspicuous. Someplace where we can talk and not have half the people in the room eavesdropping on our conversation. You never know who might be in a watering hole like this. Thieves. Smugglers. Pickpockets.”

With long-legged strides, Simon Hazard took off down the street. Sunday was nearly running to keep up with him. “I thought you said there was nothing wrong with the Celestial Palace.”

He threw her a sharp glance. “‘Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.’”

“I beg your pardon.”

“‘The road up and the road down is one and the same,’” he stated cryptically.

Sunday’s handbag—one of her own popular designs—slipped off her shoulder. She pushed the leather strap up her arm and kept going. “What does the road have to do with anything?”

“‘Answer a fool according to his folly.’”

“I’d settle for a simple, straightforward answer,” she muttered under her breath.

“‘It is not every question that deserves an answer.’”

“Tell me, wherever did you—”

“Monks.”

“Monks?”

“I spent my first year in Thailand—in Prathet Thai—with Buddhist monks,” he told her as if that would explain everything.

It explained nothing.

He hailed a passing samlor, a three-wheel taxi that was a common sight in Bangkok, and gave instructions to the driver in Thai. Then, off they went through a labyrinth of narrow streets, dodging people, animals and other vehicles alike.

Simon Hazard leaned toward her and remarked conversationally, “Bangkok—Krung Thep—is a paradox.”

Bangkok wasn’t the only paradox, Sunday thought.

He went on. “It is both ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, sacred and profane. Skyscrapers have grown up alongside buildings of traditional Thai architecture. Contemporary shops of every type and description are next to the famous Floating Market, its boats bobbing on the khlongs, or canals, as they have for centuries.” He pulled the bill of his hat down to shade his eyes from the tropical sun. “Bangkok is a city of six million souls. It is a city teeming with myriad sights, sounds and smells.”

“Krung Thep means ‘City of Angels,’ doesn’t it?” she said, recalling what she’d read in her Fodor’s Guide to Thailand.

“That’s the shortened version. Bangkok has the longest place name in the world. The literal translation is ‘Great City of Angels, Supreme Repository of Divine Jewels, the Great and Unconquerable Land, Grand and Illustrious Realm, Royal and Delightful Capital City...’” His voice trailed off. “There’s more, but I think you get the idea.”

“Yes, I think I do,” she said, sitting back in the taxi. “How long have you been in Thailand, Mr. Hazard?”

“Simon. A little over a year. And you?”

“Three days.” She took a silk fan from her handbag, opened it and wafted it back and forth in front of her face. “I confess, most of that time has been spent in my hotel room recovering from jet lag and trying to adjust to the heat.”

“This is the hot season.” Something flickered behind the man’s eyes. “The good news is it’s cooler up in the hills where we’re going.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“The central plain of Thailand lies within the ‘rain shadow’ of the Burmese mountains.”

“Meaning—”

“It’s wet.”

Sunday tried not to wrinkle up her nose. “Wet?”

“It rains a lot.”

“I’m not made of spun sugar, Mr. Hazard. I won’t melt.”

“Simon,” he reminded her.

“Simon.”

He seemed to be choosing his words with care. “Then there’s the king cobra.”

Sunday cast him a sidelong glance. “What about the king cobra?”

“It can grow to be eighteen feet long—” Simon spread his arms wide “—and weigh twenty pounds.”

She shrugged. “In other words, it’s a big snake.”

“The largest of all venomous snakes. Fortunately, the king cobra doesn’t like to be around people.”

“Lucky for us.”

“As a matter of fact, very few cobra bites are reported,” he assured her.

“More good news,” she said happily.

Simon’s expression was deadpan. “Probably because none of the victims survived for more than an hour unless they were treated with antivenin.”

Sunday wasn’t about to be frightened off. “I promise I’ll be very careful where I step.”

There was a short pause. “I feel it’s also only fair to warn you about the elephants.”

“They’re big, too, aren’t they?”

Simon didn’t appear to be amused. “If four tons of enraged animal—ears flapping, trunk raised, tusks aimed at your breast—charges at an unexpected sprint, you won’t be making jokes, Ms. Harrington.”

“Sunday.”

“Sunday.” His mouth curved humorlessly. “You haven’t seen rage until you’ve seen an elephant in musth.“

She had to ask. “What is musth?“

“It’s a state of sexual arousal in male elephants that can last for days, sometimes weeks or even months. The bull’s testosterone level may increase sixtyfold.”

Sunday was nonplussed.

Simon continued. “The first rule of the forest is never take an elephant for granted.”

It seemed like a reasonable rule to her.

“Then there’s the dung,” he added.

“Dung?”

“Elephant manure.”

She made an impatient noise. “I know what dung is.”

He arched one dark eyebrow. “An elephant defecates as often as twenty-eight times a day.”

She hadn’t known, of course. It wasn’t the kind of information considered useful in the fashion world. “It must make for a great deal of dung.”

“Unflappable,” Simon announced.

“What is?”

“You are.”

She stopped fanning herself for a moment and knitted her eyebrows. “Was this some kind of test?”

“You might call it that.”

“I take it I passed.”

“With flying colors. Like I said, you’re unflappable.”

“Not unflappable. Determined.” She folded her lips in a soft, obstinate line. “It’s the only way I know how to be. It’s got me where I am today.”

“Which is where?”

“Successful beyond my wildest dreams.”

He stared at her intently. “What brought you to Thailand, Sunday Harrington?”

She told him the truth. “I want to see the City of Mist.” She met and held his gaze. “What brought you to Thailand a year ago, Simon Hazard?”