Читать книгу The Debutante - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 10

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.”

To herself, she added silently, But after this, he may not be governor for long….

Miles studied Lanie for several moments in silence. The governor’s daughter. He realized now he probably should have recognized her right off the bat, but who paid attention to such things? Whenever he’d seen the first family of Texas on TV, he’d been listening to what the governor was saying, not ogling the man’s daughter. And Miles had better things to do than read the parts of the newspaper that only talked about who went to what parties with whom, and what designers’ fashions they were wearing when they did. And that was where Lanie Meyers was whenever she made the news. Which was fairly often. Miles did know that. He’d heard his sister and cousins talk about the girl from time to time, and he supposed he’d absorbed some of the stories through osmosis. Still, she’d seemed harmless enough. A party girl. Not really unexpected when your daddy was a big-time politician.

But she hadn’t seemed like a party girl tonight. Well, maybe at first she had, he amended. But after just five minutes alone with her, Miles knew she was a lot more than that. Lanie Meyers was a nice girl who was witty and funny and easy to talk to. And she was maybe a little bit lonely, too. And that last had been what had ultimately cemented Miles’s connection to her, because he’d recognized in Lanie so much of what was inside himself.

How about that? You really couldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.

He grimaced involuntarily as he thought about what kind of stories would be appearing about Lanie in the papers over the next several days. Although they wouldn’t be true, that didn’t mean people wouldn’t lap up every last word as the gospel truth and talk about it at the office water cooler. Or the backyard clothesline. Or the grocery counter. Or the tennis nets. Or wherever else they happened to be.

Lanie Meyers. Miles Fortune had just been photographed in what could easily be misconstrued as a compromising position with the governor’s daughter. Had the situation not been so unfair, it would have been funny.

He supposed he should have expected something like this would happen sooner or later. If not with that bastard Kaminski, then with another slimy photographer. Miles Fortune was something of a hothead when it came to having his photo taken. As a result, he’d become a real challenge for the members of the local paparazzi. It wasn’t that he was especially famous or notorious. But he did hate to have his photo in the paper, and he’d reacted badly on occasion in the past.

Truthfully, though, it wasn’t as much because Miles valued his privacy as it was because he didn’t want the women he was escorting at any given time to be portrayed in a less-than-stellar light. And because he tended not to stay in relationships for very long—because he was a womanizer, he acknowledged with some distaste—the papers always intimated that the women he dated were little more than warm bodies to keep him entertained through the night.

Truthfully, Miles thought they were, too, for the most part. But that didn’t make it okay for the press to cast the women in a bad light. His endless parade of girlfriends couldn’t help it if each thought she’d be the one to make him change his ways and settle down. He just wasn’t the settling-down type. They couldn’t help it if they looked all besotted with him every time they showed up in a photo standing next to him. Hey, he was a very likable guy. That didn’t mean the press had to hang those women out to dry the way they invariably did.

Now Lanie Meyers was going to be portrayed as little more than another notch on his bedpost. That was going to cast her in a much darker light than party girl, and it would inevitably reflect badly on her father and, as a result, on her father’s campaign.

“Lanie Meyers,” Miles repeated slowly, carefully, his head still too full of repercussions and implications to say much else.

She nodded as slowly and carefully as he had spoken. “Lanie Meyers,” she confirmed.

“Governor Meyers’s daughter,” Miles echoed.

“Governor Meyers’s daughter,” she likewise confirmed.

“Bad dream?” he asked, hoping she’d confirm that, too.

She smiled, albeit not entirely happily. “Reality,” she assured him.

He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Hey, it was worth a shot.”

“So who’s going to end up being most embarrassed by this?” she asked.

Hell, Miles didn’t even have to think about that. And he was pretty sure it was a hypothetical question anyway. “Well, I imagine it’ll be your old man.”

“No imagining about it,” Lanie told him. “It will definitely be my father. This is going to make him look incredibly bad.”

It was an interesting comment on a number of levels, Miles thought, not the least of which was that at a time when Lanie should be worried more about herself and her own reputation than anyone else’s, she was concerned only about her father’s. She had yet to utter one word of concern for herself.

“But nothing happened,” Miles pointed out, knowing how ridiculous it was to even say such a thing when Nelson Kaminski was anywhere in the same time zone.

“No, it didn’t,” she agreed. “But you and I both have had enough experience with the press to know that that’s beside the point.”

Miles nodded disconsolately. There was nothing either of them could do now but hope for the best. But he couldn’t seem to let it go. Sighing with much exasperation, he added, “If I hadn’t had my shirt off, we probably could have salvaged this.”

“If you hadn’t had your shirt off, there never would have been any photographs,” Lanie pointed out. But there was no censure in her voice, no bitterness or resentment.

“Don’t be so sure,” Miles said, nevertheless. “Kaminski sniffed a potential photo the minute he saw us through the glass. Hell, for all I know, he’d gotten bored at the party because nothing scandalous enough was happening and went on the prowl specifically to find—or manufacture—a situation. Who knows how long he was out there lurking in the bushes? He was just waiting for one of us to do something that he could make look bad. Hell, you could have picked a loose thread off of my lapel, and he would have snapped a shot and worked with it until it looked like the two of us were groping each other.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Lanie said.

“Unfortunately I am,” Miles told her. “But even knowing what I do about him, I still can’t believe how low the guy will sink.” He’d used a lot of restraint by calling the photographer a guy instead of a more accurate description. There was a lady present, after all. “Do you know,” he continued, “that he actually developed and patented a way to use a camera flash so that it doesn’t reflect off of glass? You know why? So he could take pictures of people through windows, like tonight. That’s his specialty. And as long as he takes the pictures in a public place like this, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Unless he’s skulking around bedroom windows, he’s free and clear to prey on whoever he wants to.”

That was exactly what Kaminski was, he thought. A predator. The kind of lowlife that just slithered around in the dark waiting for an opportunity. He could have crouched out there till sunup waiting for Lanie and Miles to do something indiscreet. And when they had done nothing indiscreet, Kaminski had jumped on a perfectly innocent episode to turn it into something tawdry.

That was exactly what that son of a bitch would do, Miles knew. He might be too late to make tomorrow’s papers, but the day after, Miles and Lanie were going to be in every rag in Texas. And Kaminski would make damned sure it wasn’t their best side showing.

“I feel responsible,” he told Lanie now. “That guy’s had it in for me for a long time. I had him busted after he photographed me with a woman who—”

There Miles stopped, because he wasn’t sure how to say the rest. The woman he’d been with at the time was married, but he hadn’t been seeing her romantically. In fact, she’d been seeking his advice because her husband was one of Miles’s close friends. They’d met at a restaurant outside of Dallas, off the beaten path, not knowing that a rising Hollywood starlet who was in town filming a movie was also having dinner there. Kaminski had gone to the place hoping for a shot of her, but when he’d seen a member of the Fortune family, he’d figured he might as well make a couple extra bucks off of Miles, too.

He’d waited until an especially emotional outburst from the woman had caused Miles to reach across the table and touch her shoulder, then had snapped the shot and made it look as if Miles had been making a play for his best friend’s wife. When her husband saw the photo in the paper two days later, the marriage she had been trying so hard to save was well and truly over.

“Let’s just say he photographed me with someone he shouldn’t have, in a situation he shouldn’t have, and I made him regret it. Big-time.”

First by punching the guy in the nose in the hope that he could snatch the camera out of Kaminski’s hand. But when Kaminski had scuttled off like the cockroach he was and sold the photo to the highest bidder, Miles had turned to legal avenues. It hadn’t saved the woman’s marriage but ultimately, Miles had settled out of court for a tidy financial sum from Kaminski and the paper that had printed the photograph, money he’d turned around and donated to a local charity.

“Ever since then, the guy’s been gunning for me,” he told Lanie. “I can make him regret this, too,” he added, “but not fast enough to keep those pictures out of the papers. I’m sorry,” he said again, even though he knew the apology was cold comfort.

“How bad could it be?” she said, obviously trying to inject a cheerfulness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “I mean, we weren’t doing anything. Yeah, you had your shirt off, but we weren’t standing close to each other. We weren’t even facing each other. We’ll just explain what happened and have a good laugh over it. And who knows? Maybe the pictures will be so innocent, there won’t be anything for Kaminski to sell to anyone. This could all wind up being one huge nonevent.”

Miles wished he could believe that was true. But he knew Kaminski. And he knew the American public. Kaminski would do his best to make Miles and Lanie look their worst. And the public would eat it up with a spoon, because everyone loved scandal. Especially a sex scandal. Especially a political sex scandal. Especially close to an election. Even if Lanie’s father wasn’t involved, the publicity could do damage to what Miles recalled now was a narrow lead in the polls.

“I hope you’re right,” he told Lanie, feeling a cold lump settle in the pit of his stomach. “I really hope you’re right.”

“Just wait,” she said, smiling again, a smile that was so unbelievably hopeful Miles wanted to put an arm around her and pull her close. “Everything will be just fine,” she said brightly. Too brightly. “Probably, no one will even see the photos, because they’ll be buried on page nine of the society section, and they’ll just look like two people who had a little too much to drink at a party. God knows, it won’t be the first time a paper has said I was overly intoxicated. In spite of the fact that I never drink anything but club soda at public parties.”

Miles wished he could share her conviction. But deep down inside, he had a very bad feeling about this.