The Debutante

“Dennis Stovall, the governor’s campaign manager, is a friend of mine from college,” Miles said. “I was in Austin on business this week and gave them a call the way I always do. They invited me to tag along tonight.”

Right, Lanie thought, remembering her mother’s earlier remark. She made a mental note of Miles’s connection to Dennis and Jenny Stovall, thinking she might need it someday.

“So then you’ll have to leave Austin soon,” she surmised, “and go back to…”

Most of the Fortunes lived in Red Rock, Lanie knew. About twenty miles east of San Antonio, it hadn’t become just another bedroom community and had instead held on to its own individual charm. Lanie had visited the town twice. First with her parents, when her father was stumping for his original attempt at the governor’s mansion, eight years ago. He’d lost that election by a narrow margin, something that had only made him that much more determined to win next time around—which, of course, he had. But back when Lanie had visited Red Rock, she’d been a teenager, still enamored of the Fortune triplets, and more than a little excited to be visiting their home base. Mostly what she remembered from that brief visit was an enchanting little village, complete with town square—which was actually round, she remembered, but did claim the requisite white gazebo—and whose downtown claimed for focal features a café and a knitting shop.

Over the past five or six years, though, Red Rock had grown into a more bustling community, which Lanie had seen for herself when she’d gone there a second time last month as an emissary of her father to meet with Ryan Fortune with regard to his receiving the Hensley-Robinson Award. Its quaint Main Street had become a booming thoroughfare by then, one that included more upscale shops and restaurants. The café and knitting shop had still been thriving, though, so the town was maintaining its roots well.

Ryan Fortune’s ranch, the Double Crown, had been a Fortune family stronghold for decades, and lay just outside of Red Rock. Not far from it was the Flying Aces, which Miles Fortune and his brothers had built several years ago. Now, though, Steven Fortune lived near Austin. That was where her father’s party for Ryan would take place next month. Lanie was already looking forward to it. Not just because it promised to be a very nice event, but because she’d bet good money Miles Fortune would be there, too, and it might provide her with another opportunity to run into him for another momentary chance encounter.

Well, it might.

All right, all right, so Lanie’s fascination with the triplets hadn’t ended when her adolescence had. Sue her. Maybe someday she’d get back to Red Rock again. After all, it wasn’t that far from Austin. You never knew whom you might run into once you got there.

“Red Rock,” he said now, answering the question she already knew the answer to. “It’s near San Antonio. A small town. Making me a small-town guy. Pretty boring when you get right down to it.”

Oh, Lanie wouldn’t say that.

“Do you and your folks live here in Austin?” he asked.

“We do, actually,” she replied without thinking. Not that Miles was going to make the leap that she was the governor’s daughter by virtue of her living in Austin. Still, she didn’t want to give him too many hints.

“Nice city,” he said.

“It is,” she agreed.

“Did you grow up here?”

She shook her head, content now to be making small talk. “I grew up in Texas,” she said, “but I’ve lived in several different cities. Dallas, Fort Worth. I was born in Houston. And I spent a lot of my summers in Corpus Christi and Galveston.”

He smiled. “You really are a Texas girl.”

“How about you?” she asked, again already knowing the answer, but wanting to hear him speak it in that luscious, velvety baritone of his anyway.

“I actually grew up in New York City,” he said. “But I spent summers here when I was a kid, and I just fell in love with the place. Couldn’t wait to move out here permanently. Same for my brothers. The Fortunes have deep roots in Texas. Steven and Clyde and I wanted to put down roots right alongside them.”

“That’s right,” Lanie said, feigning a vague recollection. “I think I remember reading about you Fortunes from time to time,” she added in an oh-yeah-now-I-remember voice that she hoped masked her intense, youthful crush on him and his brothers. “You’re one of the triplets, aren’t you?”

He smiled this time in a way that let her know how genuinely delighted he was by being one of three—and which told her again which of the three he was, thanks to that yummy dimple. “Yeah, I am. But I have another, older, brother named Jack, and a younger sister, too. Violet.”

“That must be interesting being a triplet. Identical, at that. I can’t imagine another person in the world looking like me, let alone two other people in the world.”

He shrugged, but continued to smile. “I’ve never known what it’s like not to have two people in the world who look like me,” he said. “Besides, Steven and Clyde and I are totally different personality-wise. I think it’s kind of great, actually.”

“I can see that,” Lanie told him. “Five kids, though. That’s a big family you come from.”

“Don’t you have brothers or sisters?” he asked. And something about the way he asked it made Lanie think he’d never even considered the possibility that there might be people in the world who didn’t claim siblings at all.

She shook her head. “I’m an only child.”

“Wow,” he said, sounding impressed. “I can’t imagine what that must be like. To never have anyone to play with or scuffle with or talk to when you need to confide in someone.”

Lanie couldn’t imagine why his comment put her on the defensive, but it did. “I had lots of people to play with growing up,” she said, not quite able to mask the indignation that bubbled up inside her for some reason, and for which she was totally unprepared. “And I had lots of people to confide in. I was very, very popular at school and I was never, ever lonely.”

Even she could see how obvious it was that she was protesting way too much. And okay, so maybe she was stretching the truth, she immediately conceded. Maybe the lots she had mentioned was really only… Well, zero.

And, anyway, she had had friends. A few. Just because she’d never felt all that close to any of them didn’t mean anything.

“I’m sorry,” he hastily apologized. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were lonely. Or unpopular. Or anything like that.”

“Good,” Lanie said, still feeling a bit snippy, mostly because Miles Fortune had just struck a little too close to home, in spite of her protests to the contrary.

“Look, for what it’s worth,” he said, his voice softening some, “my family’s got its share of dysfunctions, too.”

“I never said my family was dysfunctional,” Lanie said, the indignation returning. “Because we’re not. We’re totally normal,” she assured him. “Totally, completely, utterly, absolutely normal.”

If one considered being the first family of Texas normal. If one considered having a father with his eye on the White House normal. If one considered having lived in almost a half-dozen cities by the time one was ten years old normal. If one considered having buckets of money and unlimited social status normal.

So maybe the Meyerses weren’t exactly normal. They certainly weren’t dysfunctional. Well, no more than any normal family.

Now Miles laughed outright. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’d been neglected and mistreated,” he said. “I just meant—” He blew out an exasperated breath. “Ah, hell. I’m sorry, Lanie.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” she said, letting go of her uneasiness. “I guess, really, my family isn’t all that normal. But it’s not a bad family.”

“Neither is mine,” he said. “There are just times when I wish they’d been more…” He shrugged, then smiled again. “Normal,” he concluded.

“What do you mean?”

Belatedly, she realized what a personal, inappropriate question it was to ask him. The two of them had just met, after all, even if Lanie had known who Miles Fortune was for years. It was none of her business what the Fortune family dynamics were out of the public eye. Or even in the public eye, really. Unfortunately, thanks to reality television and infotainment shows, no one’s life was really private anymore. Voyeurism had become a real spectator sport in this country. And Miles was the one who’d brought it up, she reminded herself. Not that that made it okay for Lanie to pry.

But he didn’t seem offended by the question. On the contrary, he told her readily enough, “My parents were—and still are—very busy people, and sometimes they got stretched pretty thin. Don’t get me wrong. We always knew how much they loved us, and family was more important to my folks than anything. But with five kids and being passionate about so many things, they needed more hours in the day. I just would have liked to have them around more. Does that make sense?”

Oh, it made perfect sense to Lanie. Not so much about the Fortunes. But she knew herself what it was like to have too-busy parents who weren’t always around. It was hard to be resentful, though, because she knew they loved her, and what they were doing was to make her life better as much as their own. But it was hard to understand that when you were just a kid.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” she said in response to Miles’s question, not sure when she’d made the decision to speak aloud. “My folks are like that, too. They have important stuff to do. They’re important people,” she added.

“Same here,” Miles said. “Good people, but busy people.”

Lanie and Miles began to talk a lot after that, about so many things. Their childhoods, their schooling, their families. Things they hoped to do in the future, things they wished they had never done in the past. By the end of an hour together, they were seated at one of the tables in the corner of the sunroom as comfortably as if they were enjoying dinner at a restaurant. Miles had gone to the bar for another drink and returned with not only a glass of wine for Lanie, as well, but a book of matches to light the candle on the table so that the two of them would have some light.

Gradually, it occurred to Lanie that this was, without question, the most enjoyable evening she’d ever spent anywhere, with anyone. Miles was just so easy to talk to, and something inside both of them connected in a way that felt easy, natural and right. She kept telling herself she needed to get back to the fund-raiser, that her parents would be looking for her. Then she’d remind herself that it was still early, that these things usually lasted till well past midnight and that she could spare a little more time to talk to Miles.

Unfortunately, just as Lanie was thinking that maybe she wouldn’t go back to the fund-raiser ever again—or anywhere else where Miles Fortune wasn’t—their conversation came to an abrupt halt. Because that was when the fern hanging immediately behind him and just above his head suddenly snapped free of its mooring, sending what looked like its entire contents raining down onto his head, his shoulders and into his jacket and shirt. In fact, she felt more than a little dirt splatter her own face and hair as it cascaded over Miles, skittering over her bare shoulders and working its way down the front of her dress.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, or moved, or blinked. They just sat there, frozen in the moon-kissed and candlelit darkness, their hands held up impotently to stop what had already finished happening. Or maybe they were surrendering to the inevitable, Lanie couldn’t help thinking, whatever that inevitable might be. In any event, she suspected they both looked pretty foolish. Miles must have thought so, too, because in the next moment, as one, they both began to laugh. Hard.

Miles, gentleman that he was—however involuntarily in this case—took the worst of the hit, she saw. Where her own dress would probably be fine after a thorough shaking, his jacket and shirt might very well be goners. Little piles of soil perched on each of his shoulders like epaulets, and a veritable pyramid sat atop his head. Without thinking, he gave his hair a good shake, toppling the pyramid and sending a good bit of it down on Lanie. She gasped as she jumped up from her seat and took a few steps backward. Miles halted immediately, standing to help her. But that just sent more dirt flying.

“Oh, man, I am so sorry,” he apologized. But he didn’t quite manage to hide his grin. “I didn’t mean to get you even dirtier.”

Instead of being offended, Lanie began to laugh again. “I don’t know that it’s possible for either one of us to get dirtier at this point,” she told him. She looked at the offending planter, still swinging haphazardly behind him. “How on earth did that happen?”

He turned around, too, to inspect the culprit, and Lanie was surprised to see it hadn’t quite emptied, since there was still dirt trickling out of it. The poor fern, though, was a definite casualty, lying in a heap on the floor behind him.

“I have no idea,” he said when he turned back around. “Must have had a loose link in the chain or something.” He shook his arms this time, less vigorously than he had his head, and dirt tumbled off of him quite liberally.

“I guess we should be grateful they hadn’t watered the plants for a while,” she said, fighting another fit of giggles. “Otherwise it might have been a mudslide. I hope you didn’t pay a lot for that jacket.”

“It wasn’t the jacket that was expensive,” he said.

“No?”

He shook his head slowly in response…something that just made more dirt fall to his shoulders and into the garment in question. “No, it was the whole suit,” he said. Thankfully, he didn’t specify a price, but Lanie, who had an excellent eye for fashion, figured it had been at least four figures.

“What about you?” he said, jutting his chin up in the direction of her person. “Are you going to be able to salvage that dress?”

She shrugged…and felt the dirt in her bodice shift into her bra. Okay, so maybe she’d taken a worse hit than she’d thought. “What, this old thing?” she asked with a smile, even though she’d only worn the dress once before. “I dust with this.”

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.