The Maddening Model (Hazards, Inc.) Read online

  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?”

  “I was looking for something.”

  So was she.

  “Have you found it?” she inquired.

  “Yes.” The samlor came to a halt. “We’re here,” he informed her.

  “Where?” she asked as she took his proffered hand and stepped out of the taxi.

  “Wat Po.”

  Three

  “The Temple of the Reclining Buddha,” Simon translated as they entered the grounds near the Grand Palace with its complex of exotic buildings, dozens of pagodas and distinctive gilded spires.

  Sunday stopped, put her head back and stared up at the colossal golden Buddha resting on its side. “Why, it’s...it’s...huge!”

  “One hundred and fifty feet long, and fifty feet high,” Simon informed her.

  Sunday had never seen anything like it before. “It’s magnificent!” she exclaimed.

  He agreed. “Yes, it is. There are nearly four hundred Buddhist temples in the city of Bangkok, and countless statues of the Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is the most revered. The Golden Buddha is the most valuable—it’s solid gold and weighs more than ten thousand pounds. But the Reclining Buddha is the most unusual.”

  Sunday was no expert, but she’d done her reading before traveling to Thailand. “I thought the Buddha was always depicted in a meditative sitting position.”

  “Usually, but not always. That’s the primary reason the Reclining Buddha is considered unique.” Simon reached for a stick of incense and lit the end in a brazier at the base of the statue. A thin trail of scented smoke spiraled up from the altar toward the ceiling. “The statue is gold leaf over plaster. The feet are inlaid with gemstones representing the one hundred and eight attributes of the Buddha. And why the reclining position? It’s the final stage of the Buddha’s passage to nirvana.”

  “To heaven,” Sunday murmured.

  “To he
aven,” he echoed.

  They stood in silence for several minutes, and then left the temple to stroll among the guardians—huge stone warriors standing at attention before the royal buildings—the saffron-robed Buddhist monks, those who had come to offer their prayers and homage, the merely curious and the tourists.

  Sunday glanced at Simon out of the corner of her eye. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “I told you. I wanted to take you someplace where we were less conspicuous.”

  She snorted softly. “There isn’t anyplace where a man like you and a woman like me are going to be inconspicuous.”

  “You have a point,” he conceded.

  “I had to face facts a long time ago,” she admitted to him. “I wasn’t going to be cute.”

  “Did you want to be cute?”

  “Yes. For a week or two, anyway.” She laughed at the short-lived girlhood dream. “But I quickly realized I was never going to be cute or dainty, petite or fragile. I was never going to pass unnoticed in a crowd. I was always going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

  She knew Simon was watching; she could feel his eyes on her. “How old were you when you reached this conclusion?” he asked.

  “Thirteen.”

  He grimaced. “An awkward age.”

  “Especially awkward for a girl who stood a head taller than anyone else in her class at school,” she related with an emotional detachment that had come with experience and maturity.

  “So—” he shrugged “—you were tall.”

  “It was more than that,” she confessed. “I had the neck of a giraffe. My shoe size was a ten, extra narrow. And I was covered from head to toe with freckles.”

  “You may have been an ugly duckling, but you turned into a swan in the end,” he said appreciatively.

  She deftly changed the subject. “When did you realize you were different?”

  “Am I?”

  She laughed out loud again. “Of course, adolescent boys want to tower over everyone else, don’t they?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t what?”

  “I didn’t realize I was different.”

  “Why not?”

  “My family.”

  “Explain.”

  “All the Hazard men—that adds up to nearly a dozen if we count uncles, cousins, nephews and brothers—are tall.”

  They both knew there was more to it than height. It was height and a commanding presence.

  She was genuinely curious. “Don’t you have any women in your family?”

  Simon frowned. “Only those we’ve convinced to marry into the clan.” He went on. “My nephew, Jonathan, married a brilliant Egyptologist just before I left the States.”

  Surely any nephew of this man’s would still be a boy. “Your nephew would be how old?”

  He thought for half a minute. “Thirty-seven. Maybe thirty-eight by now.”

  Sunday was baffled. “How...?”

  “It’s one of those generational-gap things,” he said inconclusively.

  She arched one eyebrow. “What is a generational-gap thing?”

  Simon lifted his massive shoulders, and then dropped them again. “My father married five times and had five sons. Avery is the oldest. I’m the youngest. There’s a thirty-year gap between us. Avery’s two sons, Jonathan and Nick, are both older than I am.”

  “I see.”

  They walked past another group of delicately carved pagodas, a traditional Thai garden with immaculately trimmed trees and shrubs, huge stone urns of colorful flowers and life-size statues of elephants and water buffalo.

  “As a matter of fact, it’s thanks to Jonathan that I’m in Thailand,” he said at last.

  “Did he vacation here, and then entice you with tales of his travels?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She waited, assuming he would tell her more.

  He did.

  “I don’t know the whole story,” Simon began. “I don’t think anyone does, with the exception of Jonathan, and he’s real closemouthed about it. All I heard is that his old nemesis finally caught up with him in a back alley here in Bangkok several years ago. Jonathan was fished out of the khlongs the next morning by a friendly local, and spent a month in the hospital recuperating from his dip in the canals.”

  Sunday was stunned. “Someone beat him up?”

  “Somebody beat him to a bloody pulp.” Simon paused and stared off into the distance. There was something implacable about the way he stood there, something unnerving in his eyes and in the square set of his jaw. She wouldn’t want to be this man’s enemy. She wouldn’t want to be Jonathan Hazard’s old nemesis, if Simon ever caught up with him. “Not literally to a bloody pulp,” he said finally. “There wasn’t a visible scratch on him. All his injuries were internal.”

  She tried to swallow and found it impossible. “He must have been badly hurt.”

  “He was half-dead.” Simon shook his head from side to side. “Make that closer to three-quarters.”

  “Is Jonathan all right now?”

  “Good as gold. Right as rain. Has been for ages.”

  She was relieved.

  “Anyway, what impressed him about Thailand was the warmth and hospitality of its people. He wasn’t used to that in his line of work.”

  Sunday’s hand fluttered to her breast. “Is Jonathan—” she lowered her voice to a whisper “—a spy?”

  “Was.” Simon walked on. “At least, that’s the rumor.”

  “He’s your nephew and you don’t know for certain.”

  “I never asked. He never said.”

  “Men!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Even if she tried to explain it, he would never understand. Sunday threw up her hands. “Men!”

  * * *

  Simon wasn’t sure when he first became aware that they were being followed. It had started with a slight niggling sensation at the back of his neck, a mere pinprick of awareness.

  Instinct.

  The men in his family had an instinct for trouble. It was a kind of sixth sense, an inexplicable talent for spotting a disaster before it happened. Maybe it was the reason so many of them had made danger their business.

  By the time they’d left the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Simon was certain.

  Three paces behind them.

  Small wiry man.

  Thai.

  Dressed in dark trousers, white shirt, brown sandals.

  Black hair. Black eyes. Nondescript features. Nevertheless, Simon had seen him somewhere before.

  The Celestial Palace.

  “Damn!” he swore, making a production of removing his hat, taking a linen handkerchief from his back pocket and mopping the perspiration from his forehead.

  “It’s hot, isn’t it?” Sunday remarked, retrieving a tissue from her handbag and blotting her upper lip.

  “Yes. Let’s grab some shade,” he suggested, reaching for her hand and urging her toward a stone bench beneath a copse of trees. He wanted to see what the man shadowing them would do next.

  “I thought I knew everything there was to know about what heat and humidity can do to a woman’s disposition, but I was wrong,” Sunday said, taking a silk fan from her handbag.

  She waved the fan back and forth in front of her. It created a slight breeze that carried her scent to his nostrils.

  Simon breathed in deeply. Sunday Harrington smelled of exotic incense, tropical heat, warm silk and...roses, of all things. It took a great deal of self-control—more than he thought he had, for a minute—not to bend over and nuzzle her neck, or to bury his face in the inviting cleavage between her breasts.

  Son-of-a-gun! Maybe he’d been gone from home too long. Maybe his vow of celibacy, however temporary or sensible under the circumstances—he was living like a Buddhist Monk—was backfiring after more than a year. One thing was certain: he’d better get a grip on himself.

  “I promise it will be cooler up in the mountains,” Simon said, cl
earing his throat.

  “I hope so.”

  He was aware that she sat there quietly, calmly, observing everything around her. She had the ability to sit utterly still, to simply be. It wasn’t a trait he often saw in Westerners.

  He was also aware of their shadow. The man had paused some twenty feet away and was making a pretense of studying the rock garden.

  “It’s very peaceful here,” Sunday finally said.

  “Beneath the noise, the pollution, the traffic of Bangkok, there is a sense of serenity. Most people believe it’s the calming influence of Buddhism.” Simon removed his cap again and ran his fingers through his hair. “However, appearances can sometimes be deceiving.”

  “Everything isn’t always what it seems to be.”

  “Or everyone,” he suggested.

  “You mean like the man who’s been tailing us since we left the Celestial Palace?”

  He was taken aback. “How did you know?”

  “For our own safety, we women have had to develop a sixth sense about that kind of thing,” she said. “I must say, he looks harmless enough. I wonder what he wants.”

  “Probably your handbag.”

  “I can’t imagine why. It doesn’t match his outfit,” she teased, flashing him a smile.

  “Here he comes. I’ll do the talking. You keep an eye on your purse,” Simon warned.

  “I hardly think a purse snatcher would try to strike up a conversation first,” she said.

  The man halted several feet from them. He bowed politely and said to Simon in excellent English, “If you were guests in my humble home, I would offer a glass of water to you and to your lady.”

  “A glass of water would be greatly appreciated,” Simon responded with the same excruciating politeness.

  The newcomer’s expression was enigmatic. “‘The man who possesses a good wife, possesses a good thing.’”

  Simon looked at him with steady eyes. “The lady is not my wife.”

  He tried again. “‘The man who has good health is young.’”

  Sunday leaned toward him and murmured in his ear, “Are you healthy?”

  Talking out of the side of his mouth, he said to her, “As a horse.” He turned his full attention back to their shadow.

  “‘A coward turns away, but a brave man’s choice is danger,’” the man said this time.

  “‘A living dog is better than a dead tiger,’” Simon responded with the same degree of inscrutability.