“I’d love to,” Sam said, “but I’m hardly ever home. I do a lot of traveling.”
Jack’s smile turned cool. “Yeah,” he said, “so I’ve heard.” He excused himself, went inside and melted into the crowd.
Sam took a sip of her caparhinia.
Well, hell. She hadn’t wanted to be impolite and she’d ended up being unkind, instead. She hadn’t meant to be; she’d just pulled out the first excuse that came to mind but now that she thought about it, telling someone not to call you because you did a lot of traveling ranked right up there with “Sorry, but I can’t see you tonight. I have to wash my hair.”
It wasn’t her fault. Not really. She was just wary, that was all. It was her sisters’ fault. The two of them needed to start minding their own business instead of hers.
She probably shouldn’t have flown down to Rio de Ouro for this party, not after three months translating Italian into English and English into Italian as the language liaison for ethnologists from Rome and San Francisco, but she hadn’t wanted to miss Carin’s and Rafe’s fifth anniversary or her niece’s fifth birthday. The two events were only separated by a few days, a fact that neither her sister nor brother-in-law ever denied, and who could blame them, when they were so obviously still crazy in love? If only Carin wasn’t convinced love was the universal panacea.
“I met Rafe at a party just like this one,” she’d chirped this morning.
“So did I,” Amanda had chirped back. “Met Nick at a party, I mean.”
Sam gave a sigh and peered into the living room again. Carin was nowhere in sight. She could chance a quick exit…But the man was still there. He was talking with someone whose name she couldn’t remember. The Twelve smiled. So did the other man. They shook hands and the other guy wandered off…
Samantha’s heart thudded.
There was no doubt about it. The stranger was looking at her. Directly at her, while a little smile curved over his mouth, and now he was coming towards the terrace, towards her, making his way through the crowded room…
“Demetrios!”
Sam’s eyes widened. The booming voice belonged to her brother-in-law but the man who responded to it by stopping dead in his tracks and turning towards Rafe was no rotund, over-aged Lothario.
It was Mr. Twelve.
She watched, openmouthed, as he and her brother-in-law clasped hands, then laughed and threw their arms around each other in a bear hug.
“When did you get here, Demetrios?”
Demetrios. Demetrios Karas. Sam could hardly get her mind around the reality. This gorgeous creature was the man her sisters wanted her to meet? Not a toad that marriage would turn into a prince? This tall, handsome, dangerously sexy-looking man was their idea of Mister Eminently Suitable?
Only two women floating on the euphoria of wedded bliss would come up with such a plan. Demetrios Karas was no more marriage material than she was. What was that old saying? It took one to know one. Well, she knew. The man was a confirmed bachelor, a state of mind Sam understood, completely.
She stepped quickly back into the darkness and bit her lip to keep from bursting into laughter. Here she’d been skulking around because she didn’t want to be shoved into the arms of someone like the professor or the rancher, men who’d expect her to cook a hot meal at the end of a long, dull day of knitting or crocheting or whatever it was the wives of men like that did and all the time her sisters’ quarry had been the best-looking male on three continents.
Make that four continents.
Marriage must have turned her sisters’s brains to mush.
Surely, they knew this man was not marriage material. He would cherish his freedom just as much as she cherished hers. Actually, she wouldn’t even date someone like this. Oh, he might be fun for an evening but that would about do it. The smile. The swagger. He’d be self-centered, hot-tempered…and Greek. Really Greek, as in old-world, I-am-male, you-are-female, macho.
Sam rolled her eyes.
Just wait until she got hold of Carin and Amanda in the morning. Her brothers-in-law, too. And her mother, who’d done more than her fair share of trying to find her The Right Man. Get out of my life, she’d tell the bunch of them. No more matchmaking. No more setting me up. No more—
“Samantha.”
Rafe purred her name in that wonderful Brazilian accent of his. Sam took a deep breath and turned towards him.
“Rafe,” she said calmly. She smiled, rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. “What a lovely party.”
“Carin arranged it all,” he said proudly.
“Well, she did a wonderful job.”
Rafe nodded. Then he tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and cleared his throat. “So. Have you met everyone?”
Here we go, she thought. “How could I?” she said, with wide-eyed innocence. “You have a zillion guests. I couldn’t possibly meet everyone.”
“Ah. No, of course not. But you should come inside, Sam, so you can—so you can meet some of them.”
She stared at her usually unflappable brother-in-law. A flush spread across his tanned cheeks and she sighed.
“Rafe,” she said gently, “I do not wish to meet Demetrios Karas.”
“Carin thinks…”
“Carin should stop thinking. About me, anyway.” Sam softened her words with a smile. “I’m happy as I am. Honestly.”
Her brother-in-law looked relieved. “I know it. I tried telling that to her, but…”
“You didn’t say anything to him, did you? To Karas?”
“Certainly not,” Rafe said briskly.
“Well, that’s good.” Sam fluttered her lashes. “Because I’d hate to have him think of me as goods in the marketplace, if I should decide to go over and introduce myself.”
“But you just said—”
“I said I didn’t want to meet him. I meant as a marriage prospect.” She dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper. “Actually, he wouldn’t be a very good one.”
“He would agree with you, I am certain,” Rafe said, and smiled.
“But he’d make a great evening’s entertainment.”
“Samantha!”
Sam laughed. “I’m joking.”
Of course she was. It was all a joke. The matchmaking. The handsome stranger with the groupies hanging all over him. The attraction she’d imagined she felt to him and the idea that he’d been looking at her. Even if he had noticed her, even if he were her type, what did it matter? She wasn’t in the mood to get involved with anybody, not for an evening, not for a week, not for a long time. She wanted some peace and quiet while she came down after the months in Indonesia. Some simple translating arrangement that would keep her in New York for a bit. Then, perhaps, she’d be in the mood to meet someone and enjoy him until the next job took her someplace else.
“…if you’ll forgive me.”
Sam focused her eyes on Rafe. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that.”
“I said I was going to find my wife and see if I can steal her for myself for a little while. That is, if you’ll excuse me…?”
She