Her Tycoon Lover. Lee Wilkinson

very evening. He said he’d cut her out of his will first thing the next morning if she did so. She said go right ahead, she couldn’t care less…then she left the house by taxi with the clothes she was standing up in, and went to her friends’ house. They were a highly respected couple, he was a chief attorney, she was a hospital administrator. The three of them stayed up most of the night, talking.”

      “A cast-iron alibi,” Luke said thoughtfully.

      “Indeed. In my opinion, the case was mishandled from the start. It should never have gone to trial. But it had too many of the right ingredients: money, corruption, scandal, and a beautiful woman as the defendant. When you put all that together with murder and a possible hit man, you can imagine what happened. The press had a field day.”

      Belatedly Luke’s brain was now working at top speed. “So that would explain why Katrin buried herself in Askja. There are no major newspapers there. And who would connect a waitress with Katrin Staines?”

      “Not you. Obviously.”

      Guy had. But Katrin hadn’t really cared. She’d been ready to leave Askja anyway. “What a terrible ordeal for anyone to go through,” Luke said.

      “I felt very sorry for her. She had enormous dignity and courage…both before and during the trial. But you could see it wearing her down, day by day, month by month. By the time it was over, she was on the verge of collapse. She got her lawyers to sell the house, packed her bags and left town. I lost track of her after that. But every now and then I’d wonder what had happened to her.”

      Briefly Luke described Katrin’s situation. “She’s ready to leave Askja,” he finished. “But I can’t imagine she’d ever come back here.”

      “Not unless she had a reason to,” Ramon said, his eyes twinkling.

      “Don’t go there,” Luke said harshly.

      “Warning me off?”

      “You said it.” Then Luke grimaced. “I haven’t asked the obvious question. Did they ever find out who did murder Donald Staines?”

      “Case unsolved.” It was Ramon’s turn to frown. “And you know how I love those.”

      Luke dug into his salad. Ramon was his closest friend, but right now he needed to be by himself. Alone. So he could think. Take in all the implications of what he’d learned.

      Half an hour later, after settling on a time for their next game, the two men parted in the parking lot of the sports club.

      Luke walked toward his car, his gym bag in his hand. For the space of ten minutes he sat in the car, staring straight ahead at the brick wall.

      His lunch with Ramon had cleared up so many unanswered questions, things he hadn’t understood about Katrin. He now knew why she lived in a remote village, worked at a job that in no way fulfilled her potential, and was wary of wealthy men. She had very good reasons; furthermore, after an ordeal that must have tested her to the limits, she’d had the sense to retreat and lick her wounds.

      He couldn’t bear to think of her going through a protracted trial conducted in full gaze of the press and the public. Living day after day with flashbulbs bursting in her face, the prosecution ascribing to her things she would never have contemplated, the ceaseless and remorseless prying into her private life; add to that the terror she must have felt that justice might miscarry and she be held responsible for something she hadn’t done…

      He banged his palm on the steering wheel. No wonder she’d looked so utterly despairing when Guy had confronted her that night.

      Wishing he could take on Ramon in the tennis court right now and get rid of some of his pent-up energy, Luke looked around him. The fog had lifted; the car was starting to warm up. So what was he going to do? Go back to work?

      He had no reason not to. Perhaps now that he knew Katrin’s secret, he could forget about her. For hadn’t that tantalizing air of mystery been one of the things that had drawn him to her? That, along with all the contradictions that had now been so neatly explained.

      Where would she go when she left Askja? Return to the States? Stay in Canada? And how would she earn her living?

      Hadn’t she inherited her husband’s money? But if so, why was she working as a waitress?

      His jaw set, Luke put the key in the ignition. None of these questions was any of his concern. The resort in Askja and his brief sojourn there were history. Over and done with. Along with the woman who had caused him, briefly, to forget all his hard-won control.

      Luke turned left out of the parking lot, toward the distant spire of the Transamerica Pyramid, the city’s tallest building and a notable landmark. Once he got there, he must phone Andreas in Greece.

      That was the final piece of unfinished business from the mining conference at the Askja resort.

      CHAPTER NINE

      FOUR days later, Luke was on a flight to Manitoba.

      He’d made a phone call before he left, to book his room at the resort. Very casually he’d said, near the end of the conversation, “I’d like a table in the dining room with the same waitress I had before…I believe her name was Katrin.” And then waited, with a dry mouth, to be told she no longer worked there.

      “No problem at all, sir. We’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

      It was seven-thirty that evening by the time Luke climbed out of his rental car at the resort. He took a deep breath of the cool air. He could smell the lake. The trees rustled companionably behind him. He felt simultaneously very tired and totally wired.

      He was here. In only a few minutes, he’d see Katrin again.

      Beyond that, he couldn’t go. He didn’t know why he was here, or what he was going to say to her; nor did he have any idea how she’d react to his presence.

      He wanted to make love to her. That much hadn’t changed.

      Grabbing his overnight bag, he walked to the lobby, checked in and went to his suite. He took a quick shower and dressed in casual cotton trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, combing his hair into some kind of order. He should have gotten a hair cut, he thought absently. His heart was racing, as though he’d been jogging. He felt about as suave as a twelve-year-old.

      In the lobby, he grabbed the daily paper; he needed something to do with his hands. Or somewhere to hide his face. He’d never thought of himself as a coward.

      What was he doing here?

      He’d come on impulse, after that equally impulsive visit to the library in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, where he’d read the reports of the trial. Or had he come because he couldn’t forget Katrin, no matter what he did?

      He’d tried. For two whole days, after his lunch with Ramon, he’d pushed any thoughts of her out of his mind as soon as they surfaced.

      Forty-eight hours. It didn’t seem like much.

      On Saturday night he’d even had dinner with a tall brunette, an architect from Sausalito. A move that had proved equally ineffective.

      Taking a deep breath, Luke walked into the dining room. Olaf, the maître d’, said politely, “Good evening, sir. Let me show you to your table.”

      Luke was given a table by the window, which gave him a view of the wharf and of a daysailer bobbing gently in the breeze, its red sail furled. He buried his nose in the wine list.

      Then, as though a magnet had drawn his attention, he looked up. Katrin was crossing the dining room, carrying a loaded tray, her attention on the table nearest his. He noticed immediately that she was no longer wearing her ugly plastic glasses; her hair was in a loose and very becoming knot on the back of her head, a few strands curling on her nape. Then he saw how pale and tired she looked. Dispirited, he thought slowly. Sad. What could be wrong?

      Just before she put the tray down, she glanced over at his table.