The Debutante

He laughed outright at that and began brushing halfheartedly at his shirt again. “We can’t go back into the party like this,” he said. “Not only do we look a mess, but people will wonder what the hell we’ve been up to all this time. It won’t look good.”

“And people do tend to gossip a lot after an event like this,” Lanie concurred wearily. She, too, began to brush at her clothing again, but really, when all was said and done, she wasn’t that big a mess. Miles had far more to worry about than she did.

“Give me your jacket,” she said. “I’ll try to shake out as much as I can. Maybe if you free your shirttail, you can get most of the dirt out of your shirt.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I can manage. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you all dirty, too. You go on back. There’s a ladies’ room before you get back to the ballroom. You can get yourself cleaned up in there.”

“Not until we’ve gotten you cleaned up in here,” Lanie objected. “Come on. There’s no one around. Give me your jacket and shake out your shirt. It will only take a minute.”

With clear reluctance, he shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her. She turned away from him as he began to untuck his shirt, in an effort to give him a little privacy, regardless of how innocent the action was. Holding his jacket out at arm’s length, she gave it a gentle shake, but that one movement freed a considerable cloud of dirt, so she turned the jacket upside down, releasing handfuls of dirt from the pockets. She scooped her hand inside each one to free as much of the leftover soil as she could. Then, spreading the jacket open wide in front of her, she started to give it another shake…

Only to be blinded by a flash of glaring white light from the other side of the window in front of her.

Three

No, it wasn’t just one flash of light, Lanie realized as she blinked against the dizzying display, but dozens of them, one right after the other. Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash. Then a brief pause. Then another round. The flashes were so bright, and so fast, and there were so many of them, that Lanie instinctively closed her eyes and pulled Miles’s jacket up over her face to block them.

She wasn’t sure what happened after that. She heard Miles utter a few choice oaths and epithets behind her; then he dashed between her and the window to block her from view of whatever was on the other side. She started to lower his jacket, but he stayed her hands and jerked the garment back up in front of her again, preventing her from seeing what was going on.

“Don’t,” he told her in a voice edged with something vicious and dangerous. “Keep your face covered.”

“What’s happening?” Lanie asked, completely befuddled now.

Instead of receiving an answer from him, she felt him wrap an arm around her shoulders, his other hand holding the jacket in a way that allowed her to see where she was going but kept her face hidden. He hurried her out of the sunroom, but instead of turning left, to go back to the party—and a crowd of people—he turned right and hurried them both in that direction. Lanie let him do it, figuring he knew more about what was going on than she did, since he’d seized control of the situation so quickly and expertly. They didn’t slow down until Miles was leading them down a narrow corridor, and she could see just well enough through the slightly parted lapels of his jacket to know he was leading her to a men’s restroom.

For the first time that evening, she felt real fear.

But she immediately tamped it down. Whatever his reason was for leading her this way, it had to be a good one, she told herself. He didn’t mean her any harm. Even though she still didn’t know what the hell was going on, she felt absolutely certain that Miles Fortune was no threat to her. They’d passed a perfectly nice evening in conversation and had shared some pretty intimate parts of themselves with each other during that time. They’d laughed together. Hoped together. Dreamed together. They’d made each other feel good. Miles was a nice man. Period. Hey, maybe he didn’t even realize he was leading her into a men’s room.

So she told him, “I can’t go in there.” She dug her feet into the lush pile of the carpeting. “That’s the men’s room.”

He muttered something unintelligible under his breath and released her. “Wait here, then,” he said softly, pushing past her to enter first.

Although Lanie told herself she must be seeing things, that her skewed view from beneath the jacket was playing tricks on her vision, she could have sworn Miles wasn’t wearing a shirt when he entered.

Nah, she told herself immediately. Couldn’t be.

But in a matter of seconds, the men’s room door was swinging open again, and there stood Miles in front of her. Sure enough, his chest was as bare as the day he was born, and his shirt was clutched in one hand.

What the…? she thought.

“What the…?” she began to speak her thoughts aloud.

But Miles didn’t give her the chance. “It’s empty,” he told her. Then he grabbed her hand and tugged hard, pulling her into the men’s room behind him, whether she liked it or not.

And Lanie didn’t.

Strangely, however, it wasn’t because she felt any fear about the situation. No, it was because the moment she’d seen Miles bare-chested, she hadn’t been able to push her brain any further forward. Not even the confusion and chaos of whatever the hell was going on bothered her anymore. The only thing that bothered her then was that Miles was half-naked and she wasn’t.

She hated it when that happened.

He was magnificent, she thought. Splendidly formed, his torso and shoulders and arms were solid and muscular without being overblown. Some of that was no doubt due simply to the physical labor of ranch work, as was the burnished bronze of his skin that lingered even now, in November. But he’d taken care with his abs, too, no mistaking that, because each and every one was exquisitely outlined. A dark, rich scattering of hair winged its way from one brawny shoulder to the other, spiraling down to disappear into what Lanie now saw was an unfastened belt and button on his trousers.

Just what the hell was going on?

“Just what the hell is going on?” she demanded, once again speaking her thoughts out loud, only this time having the presence of mind to complete them. She jerked his jacket off and tossed it at him, heedless of how the gesture sent strands of blond hair flying around her face. Pushing them haphazardly out of her eyes, she further demanded, “Why are you undressed? Why did you throw your jacket over my head? What was on the other side of the window, making that flash—”

And then, like a poorly potted fern, it hit her. She realized what had happened. She understood because it had happened to her before. She’d just been too caught up in falling head over heels for Miles Fortune to figure it out before now.

A photographer. She’d been the subject of enough photo opportunities with her father to recognize the rapidity and white light of the flashes. And not just from her father’s campaign, either, but because she was often followed by photographers herself when she visited new places. She was a regular feature in the society pages, after all, however evenhandedly she was portrayed—which was usually not evenhandedly at all. The fallout from tonight, she was certain, would be no exception.

Oh, no, she thought, dread filling her stomach. Tonight. Tonight, she’d been ambushed worse than ever before. She and Miles both. They’d been together, alone, in the sunroom. And they’d been…

Oh, no.

She looked at his bare chest and unfastened pants again, unable to look at anything else. Miles must have noticed her scrutiny, because he hastily shrugged back into his shirt and even more hastily began to button it. But he missed one somewhere along the way and had to start over again. And Lanie could have no more averted her gaze from him then than she could have stopped the sun from rising in the morning.

For a moment, she forgot all about the fact that she’d just been photographed in a compromising position with Miles Fortune. Because the only thing filling her brain was how he looked dressing and undressing and dressing again, and how it might be if his reasons for doing so were different.

Get a grip, Lanie, she told herself. This is serious. Stop drooling.

“What the hell happened?” Miles echoed her question of a moment ago. “I’ll tell you what the hell happened. What the hell happened is that you and I were just photographed by Nelson Kaminski, one of the vilest, scummiest, son-of-a-bitch photographers in the paparazzi, that’s what. And ever since I had him busted for harassment, he’s made it his life’s work to make my life hell.”

Lanie nodded, not because she recognized the name of the photographer, but because she understood the tactics of the paparazzi. Nothing was sacred to them. They were a breed unto themselves, completely set apart from the legitimate photojournalists she’d met during her father’s political career-building. Those guys waited for planned photo ops to snap pictures, or, at the very least, waited until she or a member of her family was at a public gathering in a public place. And for the most part, they did a fairly decent job of accurately portraying the situation.

Guys like this Nelson Kaminski, on the other hand, went out of their way to ambush their subjects at the most inopportune or inappropriate moments, and they did their best to make their photos as sensational as possible. If they couldn’t find a situation that was legitimately sensational, then they altered their photos—and even the situation—to create the sensation themselves.

Lanie looked at Miles again, watching as he fastened the last button and began to stuff his shirttail back into his pants. “What were you doing with your shirt off?” she asked halfheartedly, even though she pretty much knew the answer.

He glanced up from what he was doing and met her gaze, his eyes full of an apology he really wasn’t obligated to give. “You had your back turned,” he said. “Shaking out my jacket. I turned around, too, thought I could just shake out my shirt in a couple seconds and put it back on before you even noticed. My trousers…” He inhaled deeply and exhaled the breath in a long, exasperated sigh. “Well, I was just trying to work quickly, you know? I never thought you’d see me. And if you did, well… I thought the position was innocent enough. I had my back turned to you,” he said again. Then, more softly, he added, “Until the first flash went off. That’s when I turned around, still half-dressed. And that was when the flashes really started popping.”

He shrugged, looking tired and defeated. “When I said I didn’t mean to get you dirty earlier, Lanie, this wasn’t what I was talking about. Unfortunately, I think I just got you dirtier than you ever thought you could get. Thanks to your association with me, you’ve just become fodder for the tabloids. Tomorrow morning, you might just wake up and find yourself under a headline that says something about you being a mystery woman who’s the latest acquisition of Miles Fortune.”

Lanie appreciated his effort to take responsibility for what had happened, and under other circumstances she might have let him. Because under other circumstances, Miles Fortune would have been the target of the photographer. But not this time, she was sure. Not when there were less than two weeks left before the election. Not when she’d heard so many lectures from her father about how important it was for her to maintain some semblance of propriety, now more than ever, because anything she said or did in public might be misconstrued and used against him. As much as she wished she could be a mystery woman right now, she knew it just wasn’t realistic—or likely.

“I don’t think it was you the photographer was after tonight,” she told Miles softly. “At least, he wasn’t after you alone.”

Miles narrowed his eyes at her in clear puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

She smiled weakly. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?” she asked.

“I know enough,” he said. “I know you’re Lanie, and that you’re nice, and that you’re sweet, and that you’re easy to talk to, and that you make me smile, and that you’re surprisingly comfortable to be with. What else do I need to know?”

Now her smiled turned sad. “Well, there’s my last name, for starters.”

“What difference does your last name make?”

“Normally, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. But in this case, Miles, it makes a huge difference. Because my last name is Meyers. I’m Lanie Meyers.” She could tell by his expression that he understood then. That the two names put together told him everything he needed to know. Nevertheless, she continued, “My father is Tom Meyers, the governor of Texas.”