Free Stone, Katherine by Pearl Moon Page B

compelling them to follow wherever he chose. He's
arrogant, chauvinistic, despicable.
    But so sexy, the renegade sensations purred. Even the way he
smokes is sexy.
    The way he smokes? With that came a semblance of control. "I
hope you don't die of lung cancer before the hotel is completed."
    Sam grinned, stamped out the cigarette, and said, "Really?
You care?"
    "Just about the hotel. So, are we going to walk around?"
    ***
    The earth was parched, thirsty for the summer rains. Ruts left by
tractors were hard as rock. Maylene teetered but didn't stumble, a feat accomplished
through sheer will.
    Sam had spent much of the previous night worrying about how he and
Maylene were going to work together. It was essential they focus on the hotel
without distraction. Peripheral issues, such as their personal feelings for each
other, didn't belong in the workplace. But it would help if those feelings,
good or bad, were clearly defined.
    We don't like each other. Fine. We're grown-up professionals.
Let's proceed with the task at hand.
    Or... we're attracted to each other. Fine. We're consenting
adults. Let's do something about our attraction after hours.
    But Sam's feelings for Maylene weren't clearly defined. They were
ever-changing, as mercurial as she, one moment stormy, the next dazzling. She
seemed just as confused.
    For the next seven months, he and Maylene needed to be united in
their commitment to the project. After a sleepless night, Sam had no answer as
to how they'd achieve such accord—and he'd have greeted with skepticism the
suggestion that it would happen on its own.
    But it did happen. Today. Amid the dust of the parched
earth and beneath a blazing sun, they talked with quiet excitement about the
Jade Palace. And, as he raised logistical problems her design presented, she
acknowledged possible changes that might need to be made.
    They walked the entire site, ending up at the harbor's edge. When
their eyes met, there was intimacy in his, a wish for the kind of passion she'd
never be able to fulfill.
    Maylene's response was fueled by fear—and disappointment for them
both. "Is there anything else you wanted to discuss, cowboy?"
    "About the hotel? No, I think that just about covers it for
now... Jade."
    "You really are a bastard, aren't you? A redneck Texan
complete with all the prejudices."
    Many an angry woman had called him a bastard. It wasn't
technically accurate, but as a description of his behavior it had on numerous
occasions been quite apt. But he'd never been accused of prejudice against
anyone, ever.
    It bothered him—a lot.
    "I think you'd better spell out what you mean. Real slow,
ma'am. We rednecks have a reputation for being pretty stupid."
    "You've been prejudiced against me since the moment we
met."
    Sam's dark blue eyes sent a reminder of how they'd met. Only when
he was certain her memory had traveled to the Trade Winds lobby, where there'd
been, at the very least, a powerful chemistry, did he reply.
"Hardly."
    "I meant in the office," Maylene countered swiftly.
"When you discovered I was the architect."
    For the past hour, they'd been able to discuss the problems
inherent in the creation of the Jade Palace and what could be done to overcome
them. Working together when obstacles loomed, they could make her vision come
to life.
    Sam wanted something even more extraordinary than the Palace—a
meaningful, emotional relationship with Maylene. He'd never wanted more than
the ordinary before. But now he did, with this complicated woman. It was an
illusion, perhaps—and, as with the illusion of her hotel, if attention wasn't
paid to the tiniest detail, disaster would result.
    Maylene's accusation of prejudice was, of course, more than
detail. It threatened the foundation itself.
    "Your belief that I'm prejudiced against you is something we
need to talk about," Sam said. "Please tell me, specifically, in what
ways you believe that to be true."
    "My age."
    "Which is what?"
    "I'll be twenty-eight on January first,