Suzanne Simms - The Maddening Model

At sixteen, miraculously, she’d blossomed. As a result, she had signed a lucrative contract with the biggest modeling agency in New York. While everyone else in her high school class back in Cincinnati was worrying about what to wear to the prom, Sunday had been in Paris, modeling haute couture for the most expensive and prestigious French designers. She had gone full steam ahead from that day on, and she’d never looked back.

Not once.

From the beginning, she’d insisted on wearing only three colors: pink, purple or red. The look became her trademark, and was soon heralded as one of the cleverest marketing tools in the industry.

At the age of twenty, she’d graced the covers of every major fashion publication from Elle to Vogue. She had been making the incredible sum of fifty thousand dollars a day.

At twenty-two, she’d been chosen to appear on the cover of the annual swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Sunday and her tiny bikini would go down in history. It became the most talked-about and the bestselling edition of the magazine, ever. For a while, no matter where she turned, Sunday saw herself in those three ridiculously tiny triangles of purple spandex.

She’d gone into modeling with her eyes wide open, but she hadn’t counted on the insatiable appetite of the paparazzi and the tabloid press. Any supermodel-cum-celebrity was considered fair game by one and all. Without her consent—even without her knowledge—her life became an open book. One reporter had tracked down some of her former classmates from high school. After all, inquiring minds had wanted to know.

“Sunday Harrington? We called her The Giraffe.”

“Sunday Harrington? Isn’t she dating some rock star now?”

“Of course, I know Sunday Harrington. We’ve been the best of friends since the third grade,” declared a girl whose name Sunday didn’t even recall.

“Sunday was in love with me for years. Probably still is,” claimed Brad Peterson, captain of the football team, whose glory days had ended with graduation.

Enough was enough. At twenty-three she had retired.

“So much for my fifteen minutes of fame,” Sunday said to herself as the elevator doors closed behind her.

Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what she’d asked for and that’s what she’d gotten for five years. Although enough of the fickle public remembered her name, her face, her penchant for pink, purple and red for her to make the transition from ex-model to fashion designer two years ago after finally graduating from college.

Only the most exclusive department stores carried Sunday’s upscale, expensive line of signature items. She did a little bit of everything from jewelry to belts, from scarves to handbags. All in pink, purple or red. All imprinted with her initials: a stylized, intertwining S and H.

In fact, it was her fashion design business that had brought her to Thailand. She was going to look into doing something with silk for the first time, and where better to learn about silk than in the country where the textile industry had been revolutionized by another American. Before his mysterious disappearance over a quarter of a century ago, Jim Thompson had made Thai silk famous.

When she opened the door of her suite, a welcome blast of cool air hit Sunday square in the face. She closed the door behind her, turned the lock and went straight through to the bedroom. Dropping her handbag onto the dressing table, she kicked off her sandals, slipped out of her silk shirt and pants and stretched out on top of the bed covers. She was hot and tired and hungry, but dinner could wait. A nap was at the top of her list.

Sleep did not come easily; niggling thoughts did.

What was she doing half a world away from home? And what was she doing about to head up into the rugged mountains of northern Thailand with a two-bit cowboy?

But she knew the answers to her own questions. She was on the job. She was searching for inspiration and direction as a designer. Besides, Simon Hazard wasn’t really a two-bit cowboy. He was an enigma. He was certainly different from the men she usually met.

Despite her age—her thirtieth birthday had been several months ago—and despite the reputation fostered in the gossip columns, Sunday’s experience with the male of the species was far more limited than anyone would guess.

At first she’d been too young, too unattractive and too self-conscious. Then she’d been too famous and too well chaperoned. Plus, the men of her acquaintance seemed to be either married photographers on the make, or effeminate designers who weren’t.

Now she was too successful.

And too old.

“You’re only as old as you feel,” Sunday muttered as she put her head down on the pillow. “Which, at the moment, is somewhere between ninety-five and one hundred.”

For some time, she drifted between wakefulness and sleep. Often, her best ideas occurred to her when she was in that twilight state. This afternoon was no exception. Images came and went. Saffron-robed monks. The scent of exotic incense. Golden Buddhas and teak forests, mangoes and creamy coconut-milk sauces. Great carved elephants. Hot and sour, sweet and salty foods. Classical Thai dancers with their elaborate headdresses, bare feet and long nails. Wind chimes and tinkling bells and brass cymbals. Golden spires and mirrored pagodas. Bamboo. Brown rivers. Black panthers.

Sights, sounds, smells, impressions sifted through Sunday’s mind. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she found what she was looking for. She would design a whole collection in silk. The colors would be the colors of Thailand: brown, green and, of course, saffron. She would call the collection Siam.

* * *

The past had finally caught up with him.

Sooner or later, he’d known it would. He just hadn’t expected it to be here and now.

He hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.

Somebody back at headquarters had made a botch of it. He’d only been informed a month ago that another Hazard—Jonathan was just one of many, it seemed—was in Thailand. Since then, he’d been doing his homework on the man.

What he had found out about Simon Hazard didn’t make any sense. The bloke was a millionaire. He had his own company, his own penthouse apartment, even his own tropical island. Why would a man like that be in Thailand driving a bunch of bloody tourists around in a beat-up Range Rover?

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