Lady With A Past

Connor tossed the phone down on the seat with a weary sigh. He had worked as a highly successful television journalist for over six years now, but had never come up against a challenge quite like this. Glitter Baby had dominated the fickle world of high fashion for nearly eight years. Even at the age of fourteen, when she had first begun modeling, she had radiated a powerful combination of innocence and sexuality that left women envious and men gasping for air. When she had abruptly retired two years ago at the venerable age of twenty-two, there had been no announcement of future plans. Even with Connor’s research staff scrambling in all directions, there was scant information available on who the woman really was, why she had vanished or where she might have gone. She had been born Frances Calhoon in Redfern, Wyoming, and her father had farmed there until his death six years earlier. Her mother had moved away since, although none of their former neighbors in Redfern knew where. End of story. Connor had an infallible sense of what the public hungered for, and the true story behind the disappearing supermodel had the makings of a dynamite show…not to mention the fact he had a promise to keep.

But first he had to find her.

Every lead his office could come up with was being investigated. Someone claimed to have seen her at a health club in Palm Beach. Another tip claimed she had gained 150 pounds and joined a nunnery, while yet another maintained she had opened her own tattoo parlor in the Philippines. Connor himself was following up on a tip that she had recently been seen at a cattle-judging competition at the Western Wyoming State Fair. He was dogged, if not particularly hopeful. Cows and supermodels did not compute.

Again and again he found himself sneaking sideways glances at her photograph. The camera adored her; he could understand why she had achieved such astonishing notoriety. Unlike the vacuous gazes of other ennui-drenched models, her eyes shone wetly with fire and fantasy. Part waif, part siren, and the combination was a powerful commercial aphrodisiac.

He wondered what it would be like to hold her.

After a restless night at the small motel in Oakley, Wyoming, Connor again went through his routine of visiting shops and cafés, showing Frances Calhoon’s picture and hearing the same comments over and over: “Of course I know who she is. I’ve never seen her around here, though.” Then, if Connor happened to be talking to a member of the male sex over the age of thirteen: “I wish I had.”

Somewhat of a celebrity in his own right, Connor wore his usual semi-disguise of sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over his choppy mane of golden-brown hair. Unrecognized, he followed the western-style boardwalk up one side of the main street and down the other. He was oblivious to the female eyes that followed his rolling, somewhat cocky gait, lingering wistfully on his broad shoulders and snug-fitting faded jeans. Since his college days as a football star, women had enthusiastically appreciated Connor’s golden-boy good looks and he liked to think he did his part by appreciating them right back. When a knee injury had derailed his promising professional football career and left him in career limbo, he had crossed his fingers and accepted a job offer from his godfather, Jacob Stephens, the head honcho at a television cable network. Jacob had assured him that he had the presence to hold his own while interviewing celebrities, athletes and anyone else who was making news.

Connor discovered the job was far less stressful physically and mentally than football had ever been. What it boiled down to basically was flirting with pretty women, trading war stories with egotistical men and asking whatever question came to mind. Connor felt a little guilty about the generous salary he was making, since he never actually broke a sweat, but the powers that be seemed enormously pleased with his “work.”

Truth be told, Connor was amazed at his own success. He knew his looks and manner were not quite the norm for a television journalist. Where others were suitably somber, he was boyishly spirited. Where others were spritzed and polished to perfection before air time, Connor threatened the life of any makeup artist who approached him with a powder puff or a can of hairspray. Still, Public Eye managed to consistently top the ratings, which Connor modestly attributed to the luck of the Irish. Female members of the viewing audience, however, attributed its popularity to his longish, beautifully dishevelled hair, heavy-lidded amber eyes and a look so sweet you could pour it on a waffle. In fact, Morris liked to razz Connor by referring to him as “eye candy.” Actually, Connor didn’t enjoy the emphasis put on his looks, but he was basically an easygoing fellow who didn’t like to make waves. Consequently, he collected his paycheck twice a month and resigned himself to enjoying the ride while it lasted. If he was occasionally bored, he told himself all men who couldn’t play football for a living were probably bored. Then he went over his financial portfolio and felt much better.

Still, this particular assignment was something out of the ordinary and a far cry from boring. Normally, Connor would have been content to let his staff and field investigators do the footwork, but time was growing short and none of his leads so far had panned out. This had become a challenge, and the former quarterback often found himself yearning for a challenge—not to mention the fact he owed Jacob Stephens a tremendous debt of gratitude for seeing him through a difficult time in his life. Jacob had long been making plans to buy out a struggling network, and ruling the ratings during sweeps week would put the icing on a lucrative acquisition. Connor owed his godfather that much, and a great deal more.

When he came to an establishment called Howdy-Do Farm & Feed, he rolled his eyes and nearly passed by it. Then he recalled the cattle-judging competition, sighed and tugged his ball cap further down on his head. More than likely he was going to make a damn fool of himself. In his experience, celebrities did not hang out in feed stores.

It was a bustling day at the Howdy-Do, probably because of the fertilizer sale advertised on a sign at the checkout counter. For the most part, shoppers appeared to be of the middle-aged, bow-legged and leathery variety. The aroma of fertilizer hung heavily in the air.

Connor pulled off his sunglasses and, holding up Glitter Baby’s photograph, approached the teenage clerk at the checkout. The young fellow’s jaw dropped like a hinge had broken.

“Sorry to interrupt you.” Connor smiled. “I’m looking for someone. Have you seen this woman around town?”

“I’m looking for her, too,” the boy mumbled, eyes stretched to a breaking point. “Have been all my life. Hot damn…why can’t someone like that come into this store, that’s what I’d like to know? Man, around here, it’s the same girls over and over, the ones you go to school with, the ones you see at church—”

“Sounds like a bummer,” Connor interrupted, rubbing a weary hand over his eyes. “I take it you haven’t seen her, then?”

“Believe me,” the clerk said earnestly, “I would know if she’d ever been in Oakley. She’s that model, right? Spice Baby or somethin’?”

“Glitter Baby,” Connor corrected, tugging the photograph out of the boy’s clinging fingers. “Thanks anyway, pal.”

“If you want I could tape her picture up and ask folks—”

“That’s not necessary,” Connor said. “Do you know which road I take to get to Riverside?”

“Highway 33 east,” the boy replied, somewhat crestfallen. “Take a right at the next stop sign and you’re on your way. Hey, you don’t happen to have an extra picture, do you? I’d give anything to have one for my bedroom.”

“No,” Connor snapped, finding this teenager and his raging hormones a little irritating. He turned on his heel, colliding chest to chest with a shopper who had just come up behind him. A light bulb went on in Connor’s brain: generous breasts, very female. The luck of the Irish strikes again.

“My fault,” the woman apologized, bending over to scoop up her cowboy hat that had fallen on the floor. She wore jeans, a denim shirt and dusty boots, apparently the official uniform of Wyoming. Her glossy chestnut hair was pulled back into a swinging ponytail, her eyes shaded by a silky fringe of bangs across her forehead. Connor thought the wide smile she gave him was fresh and quite charming. Her figure was full and luscious; even a heavy work shirt couldn’t disguise her generous womanly curves. No wonder farmers’ daughters had a reputation for being quite fetching in a milk-and-honey sort of way.

He grinned and shook his head, white teeth flashing in his California-tan face. “No, it was absolutely my fault. Are you all right?”

She laughed, low and throaty, fitting the cowboy hat firmly on her head. “I’m hardy. I’ll survive.”

“Well, as long as I’ve got your attention…” Connor held out his photograph, noticing that the edges were becoming dog-eared. “I’m looking for this woman. Do you remember ever seeing her around town?”

“She’s famous, Maxie,” the clerk put in, shamelessly eavesdropping. “Remember that model who disappeared a couple of years ago? That’s her.”

The woman studied the picture for several seconds, then scratched her sunburned nose and shrugged. “Sorry I can’t help you. I’ll tell you,” she added, her voice tinged with the lilting western twang Connor was becoming familiar with, “someone like that wouldn’t go unnoticed for long in this town. Robby, I need three bags of fertilizer. Put it on my account and I’ll pull the truck around back to load it.”

Connor touched her elbow as she turned to walk away. “You’re sure? Someone thought they saw her at the tri-county fair last month.”

“Everybody goes to the fair,” she replied dismissively. “I was there, and I didn’t see any famous faces in the crowds.”

“Miss Rodeo Wyoming was there,” Robby said hopefully, as if offering a substitute. “I saw her…she was real pretty.”

“If I was looking for Miss Rodeo Wyoming,” Connor replied flatly, “that news would make me the happiest of men.”

The young woman chuckled on her way out the door. “I don’t hold out much hope for you, buddy, but good luck just the same. See you ’round the back, Robby.”

The muscles in Connor’s shoulders were bunched with tension. He was tired. He was frustrated. Somewhere in the background he could hear Robby offer him five bucks for Glitter Baby’s picture. Connor advised him to get a life and walked out into the parking lot. It looked like rain again, and the wind was picking up. He was so discouraged he was seriously considering calling Morris and telling him to track down Alan Greenspan. Lord knew he would be easier to find than one Frances Calhoon.

A dusty white pickup pulled out of the parking lot, tires spitting gravel. The brunette named Maxie, Connor thought absently, was in a hurry. She must be looking forward to getting that fertilizer home and doing whatever it was country people did with fertilizer.

Except…

Connor’s flesh started prickling, from his toes to his scalp. A dawning realization kicked his heart into double time. Except Maxie hadn’t driven around the back to load her fertilizer. She had sped out of the parking lot as if all the hounds in hell were after her.

Connor sat down abruptly, right there on the front steps of the store. His mind was spinning. He brought Glitter Baby’s picture out of his jacket pocket and stared with fierce concentration. The chin, that stubborn chin was less angular in Maxie’s face, but still similar. They were both of the same height. Frances Calhoon was a blonde and Maxie a brunette, but that meant nothing. The sultry waif in the photograph looked to be little more than a hundred pounds. Maxie had filled out her jeans with a mature woman’s figure. Still….

Connor had another memory, an echo of something only his subconscious had registered at the time. He recalled seeing a split-second flash of Maxie’s eyes before she’d replaced her hat, his subconscious noting an unusual color. Not brown, not hazel…

Violet. Glitter Baby’s trademark, soul-stabbing violet eyes that rendered even the most jaded arbiters of beauty completely smitten. Connor had studied a hundred photographs, screened hours of videotapes. He knew her eyes better than his own, was intensely familiar with every mood, every subtle, sensual nuance they could project. He was no more immune to her powerful charisma than any other red-blooded man. One look from her eyes and the world stopped, shifted, and began spinning in a new orbit.

Maxie had those eyes.

“Hot damn,” he whispered, the ghost of a smile touching his mouth.

Busted.

The important thing was not to panic. She panicked anyway. Frances Maxine Calhoon paced her front porch from one end to the other and back again, wringing her hands and whimpering. Her dog Boo, an enormous black lab who preferred naps to exercise, waddled loyally behind, now and then offering sympathetic whining and struggling for air. Boo had never seen his owner in a state of extreme agitation. Maxie hadn’t been in a state of extreme agitation for two years. It had been blissful, wonderful, healing, therapeutic…and she was terrified it was over.

This little ranch in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, had been her refuge, her heaven-sent second chance. She knew without a shadow of a doubt it had saved her life. Two years ago she had weighed ninety seven pounds, smoked incessantly and slept less than an hour or two a night. She had debilitating migraines, her hands shook dreadfully and she neglected to eat for days at a time. Her agent sent her to a series of doctors who prescribed sleeping pills, tranquilizers and anti-depressants. Her trainer advised colon-cleansing, aromatherapies and a nicotine patch. Her friends borrowed her clothes and her pills and her money and always made sure they were standing next to her when tabloid photographers closed in for yet another shot. After eight years in the glare of the spotlight, Maxie was spent, coming apart at the seams, and no one seemed to realize or care how close she was to a complete breakdown. It was almost too late before she realized the creation known as Glitter Baby was first, last and always a stepping stone for others’ interests. If she was to survive, she had to save herself.

She had been twenty-two-years old.

At the time, her widowed mother had started a new life in Oakley, Wyoming, running an antique shop in the nondescript little town. It was the perfect place for the runaway supermodel to start over, to learn to breathe and sleep and hope again. She retired without warning, used her savings to buy out her endorsement contracts and disappeared without a trace. She’d exchanged her first name for her middle name and become Maxie Calhoon. She had never looked back.

Until today. She hadn’t realized the stranger in the feed store was Connor Garrett of television fame until he had spoken directly to her. She knew at that instant, even before she had looked at Glitter Baby’s photograph, that the jig was up. This man was from the world she used to inhabit, a world she knew only too well. If he could benefit from publicizing her whereabouts, he would.

She became conscious of poor Boo’s exhausted wheezing and stopped her frenzied pacing. Sweet dog, he had no idea the sky was falling in on them. He only knew he’d missed his mid-morning nap and his mistress had suddenly gone crazy. Maxie sat on the porch swing and scratched Boo under the chin until his big brown eyes began to droop. “That’s it, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Go to sleep and dream about big fat kitty cats…that’s right, lie down.”

Boo was asthmatic, overweight and incurably lazy, but he was her first true friend. She had confided in him all the regrets and mistakes of the past, and together they had celebrated her little accomplishments, such as learning to eat without guilt. Boo was a very good listener and fine company, particularly if she shared her SpaghettiOs with him. He didn’t know or care who she had been in her previous life.