Hired Wife

Sam leaned a little closer, capturing her gaze with his, and continued, “You are a real woman, Kim.”

She scooted away from him into the corner of the sofa, half scared, half amused. Her heart was racing, yet she wanted to laugh about the absurdity of it all. “Don’t play games with me.”

He took her hand. “But you’re my wife.”

His tone was light, yet for a fraction of a second she caught a glimpse of something dark and smoldering in his eyes. And her heart made a nervous leap.

Ever since KAREN VAN DER ZEE was a child growing up in Holland she wanted to do two things: write books and travel. She’s been very lucky. Her American husband’s work as a development economist has taken them to many exotic locations. They were married in Kenya, had their first daughter in Ghana and their second in the United States. They spent two fascinating years in Indonesia. Since then they’ve added a son to the family as well and lived for a number of years in Virginia before going on the move again. After spending over a year in the West Bank near Jerusalem, they are now living in Ghana again, but not for good!

Hired Wife

Karen Van Der Zee

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEDROOM door creaked softly and Kim stirred in the big bed. Through half-opened eyes she saw the man enter—a dark, floating shape in the moon-shadowed room, mysterious, undefined. Outside the open window, palm fronds rustled in the cool sea breeze and she could hear the gentle rushing of the waves lapping onto the beach.

The door closed behind him and he moved toward the bed, soundlessly. She caught a glimmer of white, a dress shirt? Slowly she began to see more. He was tall and she could see the outline of strong, square shoulders. His face was in darkness. She willed her eyes to see, to focus. She noticed the movements of his arms and hands as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. The moonlight silvered over his broad, bare chest.

She could not see his face.

It did not matter. She closed her eyes, waiting, smiling in the dark, wondering where she was. An island?

The breeze floated over the bed, stroking her face, and naked shoulders, carrying the scents of sea and sand and some exotic night-flowering bloom. The sheets were cool against her skin. A slow, languorous sigh escaped her. She felt blissful, sleepy soft, the beginnings of a delicious warmth stirring in her blood.

Waiting, wanting, drifting.

She felt him beside her, felt his body against hers, warm and hard and strong. He put his arms around her and she nestled into his embrace. He was so big and she was so small; he nearly swallowed her.

Happiness suffused her. She belonged in these arms, sheltered, safe. At the center of her, desire stirred. The scent of him filled her and her blood began to tingle through her body as if it were champagne.

“Hello, Kim,” he whispered near her ear.

“Hi,” she whispered back, heady with his nearness.

He began to kiss her, tender kisses by her right ear, her temple, her closed eyes, her cheek. He had reached her mouth. “You smell delicious,” he murmured against her lips, his voice deep, intoxicating.

His hands joined in the caressing and her body sang with his touch. A yearning, deep and real, captured her heart and soul and body—a yearning to love him, this man in her bed, to hold him and cherish him and never let him go.

He whispered something magical and secret she did not understand.

She looked up at his face. It was still hidden in the darkness. Reaching up, she traced her fingers along his hard square jaw, newly shaven, and along his cheeks and nose and wide forehead—a strong, manly face, she knew. She touched her fingertips to his mouth.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

Floating out of darkness into light, bright light, Kim moaned in protest. She wanted to slip back into the velvety darkness, a darkness full of sensuous delights and pleasures.

The sounds of New York City traffic, muffled, familiar, insinuated themselves into her consciousness. She buried her face in the pillow. She wanted the sounds of the waves washing ashore, the sound of whispered words of love, the exquisite sensation of his hands stroking her body. Slowly she inhaled the air, her eyes closed, willing herself to smell the sea breeze, the scent of the man who shared her bed. Nothing.

Surfacing. She struggled against it, not wanting to leave behind the magic of the night, but knowing she had to.

A police car, the siren going full blast, shrieked down a nearby street, shredding the last of the veil of sleep. Kim sighed. There was no denying it; she was awake, totally completely awake. And sadly aware of the cold reality that there had been no lover in her bed last night.

It was the third time in two weeks that she’d had the dream. It was a wonderful dream, no question, but what was the meaning of it? Who was the man? It was a tad disturbing, really, making love with a man she didn’t know. Shame on her! Still, in some mysterious way he seemed familiar, as if she knew him somehow.

She hoisted herself up into a sitting position and with both hands wiped the hair out of her face, over her shoulders. It was a mess; she couldn’t even get her fingers through it.

It didn’t make sense for her to be having a dream like this, especially now. She was fed up with men, at least for the moment.

For a while she wanted no more love and romance to complicate her life. Men demanded so much attention and coddling and ego-stroking; she really was quite tired of it and felt in need of a well-deserved man rest. Now if only Tony would quit bothering her she might find a little peace.

She’d met him at a party three weeks ago, and it hadn’t taken long to realize that the only topic of conversation of interest to Tony, was Tony. Much to her despair, he had taken an immediate fancy to her and was now making a nuisance of himself by devising various crazy schemes to gain her interest.

She was not interested.

Amused, maybe, but not interested. He did have a sense of humor, she had to give him that. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and grinned, thinking of the hideous painting of a half-dead weeping willow he’d sent her as a joke two days ago, accompanied by a poem—something impressively maudlin about how he wept like the willow for being unable to gain her love. Last week he’d sent her reservations on a love boat cruise through the Caribbean. She’d returned them, of course—not that she didn’t want to go on a cruise, but she wasn’t for sale.

Cruise. Islands. Palm trees. She was thinking about the unknown lover in her bed again, the feel of his naked body against hers. She groaned. Stop it, she told herself. Stop it! She struggled to her feet, swaying a little, feeling a distinct lack of energy. The dream sure had taken it out of her.

In the bathroom she turned on the shower and gingerly tested the temperature of the water. Jason, who shared her spacious loft apartment with her, liked his water frigidly cold—some torturous regimen to keep him awake so he could work on his doctoral dissertation, something excruciatingly brainy to do with statistics. She adjusted the temperature and stepped into the warm spray. No more men for a while. She’d concentrate on her career. She was twenty-six and she had plenty of time for them later. No, not them, she corrected herself. She wanted just one man: the right man. And children, too, of course. She’d teach them how to bake cookies and paint and sculpt and sing and dance waltzes. They’d have a blissfully happy, creative, colorful family…

Later.

She turned off the water, dried herself and went back to her bedroom.

She slipped into a long, slim skirt with an exotic, multicolored design and topped it with a white silk T-shirt. Humming a little tune, she brushed her hair until she’d tamed it into some sort of order and tied it back with a scarf the color of sandalwood. When at work she needed to keep her hair out of her face, constrained in a scrunchy or a scarf, or it would end up in a bright halo of out-of-control curls, which made her look even younger than she already did. Blond hair and big blue eyes were the stuff of baby dolls. She made a face in the mirror, then put on some makeup and a pair of long, artsy earrings to add a touch of sophistication.

In the kitchen area she made coffee and contemplated the view from the window—an untidy design of brick walls and rooftops adorned with antennae, water tanks and chimneys. Here and there hopeful souls had created what looked like small gardens of potted plants.

Maybe she needed a change of scenery, to do something different, go somewhere else, get away from the men in her life.

Now where had that thought come from? Why would she even think about a change? She was happy. She loved her work and her roomy loft, she loved New York, and her friends. What else could a person want?

A sexy lover.

“No, I don’t,” she said out loud, glancing up at the sound of a door opening. Jason emerged from his room, dressed in gray sweatpants and a blindingly white undershirt. He was tall, blond and handsome like a Viking, but he had no social life to speak of. Why he hid his drop-dead gorgeous self from the world was anybody’s guess.

“Good morning,” Kim said cheerily, pouring him a cup of coffee. He looked bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and in need of some serious fortification.

“Thanks,” he muttered, taking the coffee from her and leaning his hip against the counter to drink it.

“Sit,” she suggested.

He raked his free hand through his thick hair. “I’ve been sitting all night.”

While she’d been dreaming of her secret lover making passionate love to her in a moonlit room, he’d been conquering the universe of numbers, or whatever genius thing it was he did.

“When you dream,” she asked on impulse, “do you ever have the sense that there’s a message in it?”

“I don’t dream,” he said.

“Everybody dreams,” she returned. “You just don’t remember them necessarily.”

“Which relieves me of the worry of interpreting them.” There was a flicker of humor in his deep blue eyes.

Kim sighed. “I keep dreaming the same thing over and over again and it’s beginning to be a bit…concerning.”

“What type of dream?” he asked. “Is someone chasing you? Are you falling down a bottomless hole?”

“No. It’s more of a…romantic variety. A man I don’t know comes into my bedroom while I’m in bed. He takes off his clothes—”

“You don’t need to go into detail,” Jason said, taking a gulp of coffee.

Kim laughed; she couldn’t help it. She’d done it on purpose, wondering at what point in the story he was going to stop her. “Haven’t you ever had a really wonderful romantic or erotic dream, one that—”

“I told you, I don’t dream.” His face was expressionless. “I’ve got to go back to work.”

She watched his broad, retreating back and grinned.

The dream would not leave her alone; images of lovemaking floated into her mind as she worked, discussing the designs for a line of lamps she had created for a small, exclusive interior decorating firm, which was going to have them manufactured in Honduras.

How many tall, broad-shouldered men were there in Manhattan? Kim had never paid any attention or kept count, but now she saw them everywhere—walking in the streets, sitting in restaurants, riding in elevators, smiling down at her from billboards. She imagined them slipping into her room at night, getting into bed with her, stroking her. She couldn’t help herself; it was embarrassing; it was awful.

The dream followed her as she rode home in a taxi, and stayed with her as she worked at her computer all afternoon. She kept seeing the tall dark man, kept feeling his tender touch, tasting his kisses. And the magic word he’d whispered, sounds that had no meaning to her, floated on the edges of her consciousness—tantalizing, mysterious.

She was going nuts. When a friend called and suggested meeting for dinner, she was so relieved with the distraction that she found herself leaning weakly back in her chair, gulping for air.

“Girl,” she muttered, “get a grip on yourself.”

Coming home later that night, Kim found a message from her brother, Marcus, on the answering machine. He had something of interest to discuss with her, he informed her, and suggested she call him at his office the next morning. In the grip of curiosity, Kim reached for the phone, hesitated and glanced at the clock. No, it was too late to call him at home. His wife Amy, heavily pregnant with their third child, would be asleep already and might wake up. Loving kindness won out over selfish curiosity and Kim put the receiver down with a sigh. The suspense was killing her.

Interesting. What could he possibly mean?

She got ready for bed, stumbling clumsily over her shoes, wishing she knew what Marcus wanted to tell her. At least she didn’t have a boring life. She had a weepy stalker who sent her poems, a secret lover who visited her at night and now a brother with a surprise. She smiled as she rolled into bed. Life was pretty good.

She adjusted the pillow under her head, closed her eyes and felt herself sinking like a rock into sleep.

Again that night the man came softly into her room, took his clothes off and slipped into bed with her. Again, she could not see his face.

“Hi,” she murmured, burrowing into his embrace. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yes,” he whispered, and kissed her deeply.

Outside the window, the palm fronds stirred in the sea breeze.

“Bahibik,” he whispered, a mere breath of sound feathering against her cheek, bewitching her.

She could not see his face, his eyes. With her hands she touched the familiar outline of his cheeks and chin and nose, traced his mouth with her fingers.

“Who are you?” she asked.

She could feel him smile. “You know who I am, Kimmy, you know.”

Kim got Marcus on the phone at ten minutes before eight the next morning. He was always early at his office.

“Kim, remember you’re always saying you want to go back to the Far East one day? To work, for artistic inspiration?”

Kim sighed longingly. “Yes, of course.” If only she could figure out how to do it—find a job over there, inherit some money, win the lottery. The family had lived on the island of Java, Indonesia, for four years and had returned to New York when Kim had been fifteen. She had loved the Far East, loved the international school she had attended and the lush, tropical beauty of the island. She had vowed she would go back when she grew up, to study maybe.

“I’m waiting to win the lottery,” she said to Marcus.

“Well, maybe you won’t need to. Sam’s back in New York, getting organized for…”

Kim’s heart turned over and she didn’t hear Marcus’s voice anymore.

“Sam?” she echoed. “You mean Samiir?”

CHAPTER TWO

EVEN after all those many years, just hearing his name was enough to set Kim’s pulse racing. She amazed herself. How ridiculous could a person be? She swallowed hard. Sam, short for Samiir, the Arab sheikh of her fanciful girlish dreams. She hadn’t seen him in close to eleven years, not since she was fifteen and had been hopelessly, embarrassingly in love with him. He’d been twenty-three. Oh, Lord, she’d made such a fool of herself then.

Sam was Marcus’s college friend and Marcus had brought him home for weekends and holidays when they’d been in graduate school. She’d been in awe of his dark, handsome looks and his calm, self-possessed manner; mesmerized by his enigmatic dark eyes that held a wealth of intriguing secrets and deep passions. He was so…mysterious.

Sam was in reality no sheikh but a full-fledged, passport-carrying American citizen whose Jordanian father and Greek mother had emigrated to the United States when he was ten.

“You remember Samiir, don’t you?” Marcus asked.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah, vaguely,” she said casually.

Marcus gave a hearty laugh. “Sure, sure.”

He wasn’t deceived, of course. Unfortunately Marcus had been keenly aware of her amorous adoration of his friend, but not, she sincerely hoped, of her secret fantasies about him.

A hopelessly romantic girl with a fertile imagination, Kim had often envisioned Sam in long flowing white robes and a cloth covering his head. She’d made up elaborate scenarios of being lost in the desert and being rescued by Sam on a camel, who then brought her back to his tent, full of beautiful rugs and copper pots and large platters of sugary sweets and fresh figs. He always, of course, fell passionately in love with her.

Sam, however, had assured her once, when she had asked, that he had never owned any white robes or worn a cloth on his head. He had smiled magnanimously. “I was ten when I left Jordan, Kim. I wore jeans and T-shirts.” Then he’d laughed. “Don’t look so disappointed, kiddo.”

Kiddo. He’d called her kiddo. She’d been crushed. Well, what could she expect? She was fifteen and looked twelve. She was short and skinny and wore braces on her teeth, and she was his friend’s little sister.

Kim relaxed her fingers around the receiver and tried to focus on the conversation at hand. What had Marcus been saying? She wished her silly heart would calm down.

“What did you say about Sam being in New York?”

She’d heard little about Sam in the past eleven years; Marcus had once told her that he roamed the globe working for his family’s international electronics company.

“He’s here just for a month or so. Rasheed’s Electronics is setting up another manufacturing company on Java and he’s going to live there for who knows how long. He wants someone to get him a house and furnish it and hire servants and that sort of thing.”

“Doesn’t he have a wife to do that?”

“No wife,” said Marcus. “Too much trouble, I think. All the demands she’d make on his time…and then she’d want children, just imagine.” Kim heard the humor in his voice. Marcus was quite happily married himself with four-year-old twin boys, terrors, and the new baby was due soon.

“Anyway,” he continued, “he mentioned Java and I thought of you, how you’ve always wanted to go back. You could do the job easily and you’d be really good, too. I don’t know how much time you’d have for your own artistic and professional pursuits, but you could negotiate an arrangement, I’m sure.”

The Far East. The island of Java.

Sam.

Setting up house for Sam.

Was this a fortuitous opportunity or a temptation to withstand?

A fortuitous opportunity, surely. Kim preferred to look on the bright and positive side of things; it made life so much more exciting. And hadn’t she wondered, a couple of days ago, if she should have a change of scenery? A foreshadowing thought, of course. She believed in omens, in dreams, in intuition.

“He’s coming to my office later this afternoon,” she heard Marcus say. “We have some business to discuss. Why don’t you come by here, say…six? I’d make it dinner, except he has to be somewhere else, so that’s out.”

“Six,” she repeated. “Okay, I’ll be there.”

“She’s perfect,” said Marcus, looking at Kim and then back at Sam, who stood casually by the large window of Marcus’s plush office, suit jacket open, hands in his pockets, radiating masculine appeal. He was observing her closely, seriously doubting her perfection, she was sure.

He was even more handsome than she remembered; older, more mature, his face all hard angles, his body lean and muscled under the expensive suit. He’d briefly taken her hand and smiled politely when she’d come in. “Well, hello, Kim,” he’d said. “What a pleasant surprise to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” she’d replied, her heart about to jump out of her chest. She was grateful he hadn’t mentioned how she was all grown-up now and not the little girl he remembered.

“She’s absolutely perfect,” Marcus emphasized.

Kim felt like a piece of merchandise and suppressed a grin. She tried to look serious and dignified, which wasn’t easy. Being serious and dignified did not come to her naturally. She wished she hadn’t worn the purple dress she had on, even though it was one of her favorites; it was too frivolous and too short and now that she sat there in Marcus’s sumptuous office, facing the sophisticated Sam she wondered what had possessed her to wear it.

“I am,” she said, summoning confidence, looking right into Sam’s eyes. “Absolutely perfect.” Her heart was doing a little dance of excitement. She wanted the job. She wanted to go to the Far East again. She wanted…

“She speaks Indonesian,” Marcus went on. “How perfect can you get?”

“That’s certainly an important asset,” Sam acknowledged calmly. He looked so cool and composed, everything she was not. She pushed a curl behind her ear, wishing she had twisted her hair up in some elegant style instead of having it hanging loose in all its wild and untamed glory.

“And she’s very good with people,” Marcus continued. “She can even cook! Imagine a nineties’ woman who can actually cook real food.”

“Impressive, indeed.” Sam’s mouth quirked up at the corners as he met Kim’s eyes. “Do you do windows?”

“No, but I can type,” she said with mock seriousness.

“She’s being modest,” Marcus commented. “She knows computers, word processing, how to find her way in cyber space, all that stuff. Very useful in case of an emergency.”

Sam’s left eyebrow arched up slightly. “Really?”

Kim nodded. “Really.” He must be finding it hard to believe that the dizzy little blond thing he had known eleven years ago was capable of anything so complicated as operating a computer.

Marcus leaned back in his leather chair. He was enjoying himself. “And she knows how to entertain. She gives fabulous parties,” he boasted. “People even pay her sometimes to throw parties for them.”

“And I can fix things around the house,” she supplied. “Leaky faucets, electrical plugs, that sort of thing. I’m a handy person.”

“She’s not afraid of snakes and cockroaches, either,” Marcus added.

“I’m a true Renaissance woman.” She smiled brightly into Sam’s face.

Sam was smiling now, and Kim’s heart turned a somersault, much to her annoyance. Why was she reacting this way? He wasn’t her type. She liked the more casual, easygoing type of man, the kind of man who wore jeans and sweaters.

But here he was, in his impeccable suit, his dark eyes mesmerizing her, and she felt fifteen again. She was an idiot.

“I’m impressed,” he said. His voice was deep and resonant, a wonderful voice, that would wrap itself around your heart and give you warm fuzzy feelings. Actually maybe even more than warm fuzzy feelings. Oh, shut up, she said silently to herself. He’s not your type. He’s too cool, too self-contained.

“And she comes cheap,” her brother was saying, as if he were selling her off like a slave trader, he a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Kim glared at him. “I am not cheap,” she countered. “I insist on being paid fairly for my services.” She groaned inwardly as she heard her own words. She sounded like a call girl. This whole exchange was beginning to have farcical overtones, which was not a good omen. She needed to present herself as serious, efficient and competent if she wanted to have any chance with the imposing Sam, the successful international business executive.