Penthouse Suite

A room and two weeks with pay in the ritziest place she’d ever worked! This was going to be a grand adventure, Kate Weston thought, as she hitched up her coveralls, pushed the cart containing her tool chest and supplies off the elevator, and knocked on the penthouse door.

No answer. She rang the doorbell.

“Maintenance,” she called out, wondering if she’d misunderstood the manager’s instructions to check the shower in the penthouse. Max Sorrenson, the hotel owner and the reclusive occupant of the penthouse suite, had called the maintenance department and requested that someone repair his shower. Why wasn’t he answering the door? Maybe she was expected to use her pass key and go in.

Kate debated for a moment. She’d replaced a few light bulbs, but this was her first call as a member of the maintenance staff of La Casa del Sol. Did she dare? Of course. She opened the door and stepped inside, stopping her cart just in
time to avoid a direct collision with a nearly nude man who gave new meaning to the word spectacular.

Shocked speechless, Kate could do nothing but stare. He’d obviously just stepped out of the shower. He wore a towel around his hips and had another one thrown over his head. He was leaning forward slightly, drying his hair briskly.

“My shower is leaking again.”

His
shower?

It wasn’t that Kate had never seen a half-naked man up close. She had. It wasn’t that Kate was inexperienced in dealing with men. She had often been the only woman on a work crew. It wasn’t that Kate was normally tongue-tied. She hadn’t ever been—until now.

But this particular man seemed to play havoc with her senses. His body was sun-kissed to the color of warm honey. Droplets of water beaded and rolled down his bare chest like arrows, drawing her attention to the loosely draped towel below.

Max Sorrenson was tall, but not too tall. He was solid and lean and emanated power. She compared him to Mr. September on the Chippendale calendar—and he didn’t come up lacking!

Nah, she decided. The owner of the hotel couldn’t be as young as his body appeared. Beneath the towel he was probably a Cesar Romero look alike. “Shades of
Falcon Crest
,” Kate mumbled under her breath. From the time she’d walked into the Spanish hacienda-style hotel two hours earlier, she’d felt as if she were in the Tuscany Valley instead of on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

What she was gazing at was pure unadulterated, unrestrained male. The man definitely had
a bad boy look that sent shivers right up her spine.

“The leak drips hot water on my feet, and by the time I’m halfway through a shower, the water has turned to ice,” Max Sorrenson said as he twisted around and moved back toward the open bedroom door without stopping his hair-drying.

Even his voice was provocative. It was a deep, warm voice that belonged to a man who’d been born in the South and spent years away from the area. Kate tried to envision his body covered with a tan raincoat. Her ploy failed. Instead she envisioned him as Humphrey Bogart saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“Fix the shower, will you?”

He’d made his request a command, and Kate knew that she’d better get cracking. She cleared her throat. Ice water had he said? That was exactly what she needed, buckets full of the stuff to sink her head in. She was a maintenance engineer, not some awkward kid ogling a naked man.

Kate forced herself to look past the half-nude man to the bathroom. She pushed the cart inside and shook her head in astonishment. It wasn’t a bathroom, it was a mini-ballroom, complete with mirrored walls and spotlights. Not only did the self-assured executive who’d met her at the door reek of sexuality, he created the proper setting for it. All he needed was Sophia Loren and a tub full of bubbles.

If Kate hadn’t been dumbstruck first by the sight of the man, and second by the suite, she might have told him right away that she was filling in for Joe, who was in the hospital for two weeks. If he’d bothered to glance in her direction, he’d have known that she was a woman. Well,
maybe. There hadn’t been a mirror in the maintenance room, and until now she hadn’t realized how scruffy she looked. She’d rolled up the cuffs of Joe’s coveralls three times, and the garment hung from her body like some great orange pillowcase with seams. The only part of the uniform that fit was the matching orange cap she’d found hanging by the clothes rack.

Gamely, she opened her tool chest and attacked the plumbing problem. She suspected that the leak might be solved with a simple washer. Thank goodness for night school and the six years of how-to classes she’d worked her way through, she thought as she worked. Plumbing had been one of her best subjects.

Kate felt absurdly nervous as she tested the connections. The fixtures were old, not the washerless modern kind. She forced her attention to the pipes, applied the wrench, and tried to tighten the nut gently. The procedure might have worked if she hadn’t glanced into the mirror at that moment and caught sight of Max Sorrenson just as he removed the towel from his head.

She’d been wrong. The man beneath the terry cloth wasn’t older than thirty-five. Max didn’t resemble the well-preserved Cesar Romero at all. It was the young hunk Lorenzo Lamas who paled in comparison. Max’s hair was so dark and thick and glossy, a woman couldn’t help but want to run her fingers through it. He had a strong face with winglike brows that capped incredibly dark eyes and lashes.

Kate, wrench in hand, froze as she noticed that the angle of the mirrored wall gave her a front row seat for the scene being acted out behind her. She knew she ought to call out, warn him to close the
door, but thought better of drawing attention to the fact that she was staring. The man was so self-absorbed that he either didn’t know or didn’t care that she was watching. She’d been told how aloof he was. Maybe he thought of his employees as simply part of the furniture. She decided to get on with her work and try to ignore him.

But she couldn’t resist watching as he dried his chest and his arms, shrugged his shoulders, and pitched the damp towel behind him. He opened two folding doors and stood in the middle of a walk-in closet, surveying the racks of clothing inside. Good, she thought, he’d soon be out of her line of vision. And then Mr. September loosened the towel from around his hips and let it drop.

Kate’s gasp echoed through the silence like the explosion of a cannon. The wrench slipped, the pipe twisted, and a stream of cold water shot across the bathroom.

“What the—?” Max Sorrenson whirled around.

The stream of water slammed into Kate, shooting her cap into the mirrored wall, releasing her mass of dark hair. She dropped to the floor and began scrambling wildly for her tools.

“Who are you?” Max stared at the figure in the orange uniform in astonishment as he grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist.

“I said,” he repeated, making no attempt to mask his growing anger, “who are you?”

“I’m Kate Weston.”

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Watching you
, she almost said as she located her wrench and began to work at the pipe. She’d blown it now. From the expression on her employer’s face she was going to be fired. There was no point in making small talk when they were about
to be washed away. She didn’t have time for polite conversation.

“I’m fixing a leak, Max. Put your pants on and hold this.”

Max stared at the woman in total disbelief. The water abruptly ceased erupting and trickled to a stop. She motioned for him to take hold of her wrench. She was soaking wet, this waiflike woman who was wearing a hotel uniform with the name “Joe” plainly embroidered on the pocket just over her right breast. Breast? The uniform clung to her body like a wet T-shirt. Her breasts were small but full, he noted, with large areolas circling nipples peaked hard from being pelted by the icy water. For a long instant he could only stare at her.

She glared at him. “Hurry up, Max. I need to get this water cleaned up before it leaks into the room below.”

“Then call a plumber,” he said in a voice that sounded as remote as if it came from outer space.

“I am a plumber,” she said with a bright smile. “And I don’t think either one of us wants to call the desk for help right now, do we?”

Max followed her gaze from the floor to his slipping towel, and he took a deep breath. “No, that would not be a good idea.”

Kate lifted her gaze to his face, determined not to let this penthouse tyrant put all the blame on her. If he hadn’t dropped his towel in the first place, none of this would have happened. She stared at his frown, trying desperately not to let herself gawk at the towel.

So much for determination. She was weak. Lordy, she was ogling the man again, and he was standing there with a stunned expression on his
face. As she watched, the stern expression died, humor welled up in his dark eyes, and the corners of his mouth began to curl.

Good
, she thought, the man was human. It just took him a while to thaw out. It was her turn. She inclined her head and widened her eyes into what she hoped was an I-dare-you expression.

Max struggled to control the urge he had to let his towel drop. He forgot about the water sloshing over his feet. The woman wasn’t backing down. She was bravely standing up to him, knowing that he held the power to dismiss her in an instant. The overhead lights bounced off the mirror and ricocheted a sparkle of silver across the beads of water that frosted her dark hair.

Call for help? He glanced into the mirror and blanched at the reflection of himself standing there grinning like an idiot. He was the one who needed help. But Max Sorrenson had never asked for help in his life. Analyze the problem and reach a proper solution, that was his method of approach.

“I guess you’re right. What do you want me to do?”

“Well,” she said quickly before she gave in to the urge to cover the distance between them and rip that scrap of cloth away. “I’d prefer that you got dressed first—that towel has already caused enough chaos—but there isn’t time.” Kate took a deep, calming breath, stepped to the side, and leaned out of the way so that Max could move close enough to take the wrench.

“I don’t believe this is happening. This is a luxury hotel. We never have problems. I don’t allow them.” Max stepped into the bathroom and took hold where she indicated. “Are you new?”

“I’m filling in for Joe. He’s in the hospital.” Kate
selected the correct size washer from her cart. “I’ve got it. You can let go. I can stop the leak.”

Max stepped aside and glared at the woman. “Forget the leak,” he managed to say between clenched teeth, “just mop up this mess.”

“I’ll have to order another shower head,” Kate said, trying to ignore the return of anger she read in her employer’s face. She had the feeling that he was as confused over what had just happened as she. Butshe didn’t want to test his control any further. John Wayne always outbluffed the bad guys. Maybe she could too. “This one is just worn out.”

“Never mind the shower.”

“Whatever you say,” Kate began. “Look, I’m sorry about the flood. But if you hadn’t taken my mind off what I was doing, it wouldn’t have happened. I mean, Humphrey Bogart wouldn’t have done that. I seriously doubt if Cesar Romero would have either.” She knew she was talking nonsense, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

Max shook his head, swallowed his words, whirled around, and left the bathroom. He stepped inside the walk-in closet and slammed the doors behind him. He threw a pair of shoes on the floor, grabbed clean underwear and a shirt. He reached toward the racks and pulled out the first pair of pants he touched. In less than a minute, he was dressed and balancing himself against the wall as he jammed his feet into his shoes.