Suzanne Simms - The Maddening Model

“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.”

“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 heaven,” 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!”