“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing,” she snapped, “but it won’t get you anywhere.”
“Such anger, Miss Brewster. Such hostility. Could it possibly be a disguise for your real feelings about what happened that night?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Anger is a safer emotion than embarrassment.”
Sam flushed. Maybe he was right, but she’d choke before she admitted it. “You mean, it’s safer than bad judgment. If I hadn’t had that caparhinia—”
“Imagine that. A reserved spinster with a drinking problem.” Demetrios folded his arms. “Your brother-in-law would be fascinated to hear it.”
“I don’t have a problem. I was tired. And surely you don’t expect me to believe Nick described me as a reserved spinster!”
“No. Certainly not. Rafe said that. Nicholas merely said that he had a sister-in-law who was an excellent translator.” He smiled coldly. “I had no reason to think they were describing the woman who’d promised everything and delivered nothing that night in Brazil.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Karas.”
Demetrios took her elbow, deftly maneuvered her into the booth and slid in beside her.
“Your brothers-in-law see you as an intelligent, honorable woman leading a lonely existence. By the time they finished describing you, I pictured a stick in a tweed suit.”
“I am intelligent and honorable,” Sam said, wincing for having said something so nonsensical. “I am certainly not lonely. And if you think of women as stereotypes, that’s your problem, not mine.”
“I had to lie to Nicholas—to my good friend—to protect your, ah, honor.”
“You lied to protect yourself, Mr. Karas. As for my honor, it’s never been in question—not that it matters. This entire thing, starting with what happened at Rio de Ouro and ending with this supposed job offer, is best forgotten.”
“This is not a ‘supposed’ job offer, Miss Brewster. I have need of a skilled linguist.”
“Find one.”
“I have found one. You.”
“I’d sooner translate for Vlad the Impaler.”
Demetrios smiled thinly. “I don’t think he’s been doing much hiring the past couple of centuries. On the other hand, now that I think about it, your credentials don’t suit my needs.”
“My credentials happen to be excellent,” Sam said tightly.
“I’m sure you’re a competent academic, Miss Brewster.” Demetrios looked up, caught the waiter’s eye and mimed lifting a cup to his lips. “But I have a complex business deal to handle. French, Italian, very colloquial but with lots of legal terms thrown in…” He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t work. The more I think about it, the more I doubt you could handle it.”
“You doubt I could…” Sam’s mouth flattened. “I suppose your opinion would change if I were wearing tweed?”
“It would change if you had not spent your professional life translating poems and love letters.” The waiter appeared at the table with coffee. Demetrios paused, waited until they were alone again. “My needs are much more stringent. I need a translator who can judge the meaning behind a word, behind an intonation.” He smiled politely, lifted his cup and drank. “Clearly, Miss Brewster, you lack the necessary qualifications.”
“You have a distressing habit of leaping to conclusions, Mr. Karas. It just so happens my specialty is exactly the kind of translating you’ve just described.”
“Really.”
A little smile—smug, masculine, totally self-assured—accompanied the word. Sam gritted her teeth. How could she ever, ever, have found this man attractive? He was arrogant beyond belief, self-centered, conceited…
“What I cannot even begin to comprehend,” she said coldly, “is why anyone who knows me would have thought I’d find you the least bit interesting.”
Demetrios raised one dark eyebrow. “Did they?”
“So it would seem, which only goes to prove how foolish some people can be.”
“Well, I can’t comprehend why anyone who understands the complexity of business would have thought I’d find you suitable as a translator.”
“What have you been doing for the past several months, Mr. Karas? Oh, don’t bother answering. I know what you did.”
“Indeed.”
“You sat around counting the money you inherited from your father while I worked my tail off, keeping a bunch of prima donna ethnologists from killing each other over who’d made which discovery first in a Danian village in Anemaugi.”
“Anemaugi?”
“Indonesia. Borneo, to be specific. You’d have hated it. Mud huts, no running water, no electricity…” Sam smiled coldly. “On the other hand, you might have found the economy right up your alley. It’s based on pigs.”
His mouth twitched. “I take it there’s not much call for your skill at translating poetry in—”
“Anemaugi. No,” she said, wishing she had slugged him so he wouldn’t be giving her that supercilious little smirk, “there isn’t.”
“No love letters, either?” He grinned at the look on her face. “Just asking, Miss Brewster.”
“No poems. No love letters. Just months of tough, brain-twisting work.”
“Excellent.” Demetrios put down his coffee. “In that case, you’re hired.”
“Are you deaf or just dumb? I wouldn’t work for you if—”
“I would expect you to sign a four month contract.”
“I just said—”
“What did you earn for your job in this charming backwater?”
Sam knew the figure, precisely. Without a moment’s hesitation, she doubled it, spat out the resultant number and waited for Demetrios to gape. He didn’t.
“Per month?”
She almost laughed. “What do you mean, per month? Of course—”
“I’ll double it.”
He’d double it? Sam stared at him in disbelief. She’d been about to tell him that the outrageous sum she’d invented was what she’d been paid for the entire stint in Indonesia. Even halved to the true amount, it had been damned good money, more than she’d earned in the past. “Combat pay,” the museum that hired her had dubbed it, for putting up with the ins and outs of academic warfare.
What Demetrios had just offered made that amount pale by comparison. Nobody would pay a translator so extravagantly, not unless translation was only part of the job description.
“That’s too much,” she said bluntly.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do. I’ve been in this business for six years. People don’t pay that for a translator.”
“I’ve been in business twice that long and if I have learned nothing else, it’s that you get what you pay for.”
“And what, exactly, is it you think you’d be getting from me?”
Demetrios grinned. “Your very special ability, Miss Brewster. Your talent…with languages. What else would I expect to get for my money?”
“That’s my question, Mr. Karas. What would you expect?”
“Your skill.” His smile faded; his tone turned crisp. “This will be delicate, perhaps difficult, work. I would want to be informed of every nuance as you discern it, every possibility you suspect but cannot confirm. You would have to be available to me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” His expression hardened. “Do you think I am so in need of a woman to warm my bed that I would hire one, or lure her there with dollars? I assure you, that is not the case.”
No. Sam suspected that it wasn’t. Demetrios Karas wouldn’t have to offer a woman anything but himself to get her into his bed…and that was just the problem. Hadn’t he almost gotten her there within minutes of their meeting?
But she’d turned him down and regained her sanity. That surely counted for something. Besides, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Not just the money, although the amount was staggering. It was the job itself that sounded irresistible. She loved language, loved nothing quite so much as searching for the hidd
en meanings in words…
“Well?”
Sam cleared her throat. “I’m willing to give your offer some thought. Give me your telephone number and I’ll get back to you later this week.”
“That will be too late.” Demetrios pulled out his wallet, tossed a handful of bills on the table. “I’m afraid I need an immediate answer.”
“How immediate?”
He looked at her, his eyes cool, his expression unreadable. “I leave for Greece in the morning.”
“Then, I’ll call you there.”
“If you want the position, you will leave with me. If not…”
His shrug, a casual lift of those broad shoulders, said it all. She would either take what he’d offered or she’d turn it down. From the look of him, he didn’t care which choice she made. This was business, as he’d claimed…Or was it?
“Yes or no?” he said brusquely.
Sam hesitated. Then she took a deep breath. Don’t be an idiot, she was going to tell him…