The Debutante

It was only a small lie, she consoled herself. After three club sodas, she did, without question, need to go to the ladies’ room. And she did doubtless need to make herself presentable, since she’d been pigging out on desserts for the last half hour. And she would certainly be right there—only after Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth had moved on to another unsuspecting victim.

Before excusing herself from her mother, Lanie stole another glance in the direction of Miles Fortune, only to find that he had disappeared. She scanned the crowd for some sign of him, but he was gone.

Ah, well, she thought. Easy come, easy go.

Scurrying off to the ladies’ room, Lanie took her time seeing to her various needs. Then she tucked a few errant strands of hair back into the topknot and adjusted the shoulder-length tendrils that dangled free. She applied a fresh layer of Rouge Rage to her mouth and dabbed at a smudge of eyeliner beneath her lashes. She tugged her little blue dress back into place and smoothed a hand over the silky, barely there fabric. Then she glanced at her diamond wristwatch and sighed.

Damn. It had only been ten minutes since she’d left her mother. No way would Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth be put off yet. That woman was tenacious when it came to organizing committees. Now Lanie was going to have to go to the extra trouble of “accidentally” getting lost on her way back to the ballroom.

Exiting the ladies’ room, she veered right when she should have turned left to get back to the ballroom and made her way down a hallway identical to the one she had traveled after leaving the ballroom. Gee, if she wasn’t careful, she really would get lost, she thought. She’d never realized how big this hotel was, or how so many parts of it resembled so many other parts of it. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all….

Miles Fortune couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to be dragged to a $100-a-plate fund-raiser where the focal point of the event was dessert. And not normal dessert like apple pie or peach cobbler or chocolate chip cookies, either. Now, had it been a bourbon whiskey tasting, he could understand going to all the trouble and expense. But truffles? Tiramisu? Sorbet? Soufflé? What the hell kind of self-respecting male attended an event where such words were commonplace, without even putting on a disguise and assuming a fake name first?

And why did desserts have such sissy names to begin with? Miles wondered further as he looked around. Even a perfectly good word like punch got ruined at an event like this by having someone put the word fruit in front of it. If he ruled the world, after-dinner fare would have names like Cherry Flamethrower or Coconut Jackhammer or good old-fashioned Rocky Road. Hell, where was a good beer pie when you needed one?

“Miles, you must try the chocolate bombe.”

Yeah, Chocolate Bomb, that’d be a good one, too, he thought. Oh, wait. Evidently, that was one.

He turned to the woman who had just suggested it, Jenny Stovall, who’d been on the planning committee of the event. She was also the woman who’d roped Miles into attending it. Her husband, Dennis, was Governor Meyers’s campaign manager, and a friend of Miles’s from college. Jenny, Miles saw, was busily sampling one of everything she’d been able to get her hands on. But since the normally petite brunette was seven months pregnant with twins, and therefore eating for three, he supposed it wasn’t unexpected that she would have enough food on her plate for six. Or maybe it was just that her serving of chocolate bomb had exploded all over everything else.

“What the hell is a chocolate bomb?” he asked warily, just in case it did have the potential to detonate.

“Not sure,” Jenny said. “Ice cream, though, for certain. And chocolate, of course. This white stuff seems to be whipped cream. Have some. You’ll love it.”

“I’d rather look for the bar,” he said, gazing at his still-full wineglass and thinking that a bourbon whiskey tasting would be pretty good about now. “The real bar, I mean. Not one of the ones they set up for this thing. Those don’t serve what a man likes to drink. Not a Texan, anyway.” No, all those bars had were wine and champagne and stuff in triangular-shaped glasses that were pale, pretty colors Miles didn’t want to get within fifty feet of.

“The real bar is through the far exit,” Jenny told him without breaking stride in her eating, waving her fork airily toward the other side of the room. “To the right and down a ways.”

Miles eyed her suspiciously. “You know, Jenny, it occurs to me that a woman who’s seven months pregnant with twins shouldn’t know where the bar is.”

“Of course she should,” Jenny countered, “when that’s where the closest women’s room is.”

Miles supposed that would mean something to another woman—especially another pregnant woman—and manfully decided not to dwell on it himself. Instead, he took Jenny’s directions to heart, and after making sure she had someone else to talk to, he excused himself and wandered off in that direction. As he went, he found himself scanning the crowd, looking for someone. A female someone, to be precise. A female someone with blond hair twisted onto the top of her head in a way that made a man’s fingers itch to loosen it, and with eyes that were as blue and enormous as her dress was blue and tiny.

He wondered who the young woman was with whom he’d shared an impromptu toast. And he wondered why he was still thinking about her now, a full fifteen minutes after the fact. Out of sight usually meant out of mind for Miles when it came to women. He was a firm believer in the “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with” philosophy. Probably mostly because he’d never been in love. Not a heart-stopping, storybook, ever-after kind of love, anyway. So loving the one he was with was about as good as it got for him.

Tonight, however, for this occasion, he wasn’t with anyone. Which meant his recent, brief, if silent, exchange with the blonde was, for now, the equivalent to a love that would span all time.

As he threaded his way carefully through the crowd, Miles wondered where she might have gone. She’d looked the way he felt—out of his element—and that as much as anything, he supposed, had cemented a weird sort of bond between them. He knew he shouldn’t feel uncomfortable here, though. He was a Fortune, after all, and no stranger to wealth and refinement. And God knew, he’d always been one to jump at any excuse to party.

But Miles wasn’t much one for the political crowd. Sure, he cared about his country and the great state of Texas, but both had been moving along just fine for centuries without his input and would continue to do so for centuries after he was gone. He figured that as long as he was reading the newspaper regularly to keep himself informed and voting his conscience every time election day came around, then he was doing his civic duty. He’d just leave the actual running of things to the people who knew more about it than he did.

But he’d been in Austin on business this weekend and had, as he always did, made plans to see Dennis and Jenny while he was in town. This event for the governor was too big a deal for either of them to miss, though, so Miles had agreed to meet them here instead of for dinner somewhere, which was their normal arrangement. Once Jenny delivered those twins, she and Dennis weren’t going to have a lot of free time to do things like dinner out with their still blissfully single and delightedly child-free friends.

He smiled at the thought of his friend Dennis becoming a dad. The guy was suited to it. In fact, Miles wondered why he and Jenny hadn’t done this years ago. He admired the two of them for their commitment to each other and to the family they were creating, but he didn’t understand it for a minute. Not that Miles didn’t think family was important. He was a Fortune, after all, and to the Fortunes, family was everything.

He hadn’t always known that, though. His grandfather, Mark Fortune, had estranged himself from the rest of the Fortune clan years ago, both literally and figuratively. And Miles had done most of his growing up in New York, where his parents had moved before he was born so that his father could pursue a career in finance, and Patrick and Lacey both could work for the social and political causes they felt passionately about. By the time Miles had hit adolescence, however, his parents had reunited with the rest of the Fortune clan, and Miles and Steven and Clyde had begun spending every summer in Texas. It was those summers here that had caused the three boys to fall in love with the place, and when they’d come of age, they’d invested together in the Flying Aces, a modest ranch near Red Rock.

Steven, however, still feeling restless, had struck out on his own and purchased his own spread, which had only recently become habitable, outside Austin. That was where he and his new wife, Amy, were living now. But Miles and Clyde still called the Flying Aces home. And so did Clyde’s new wife, Jessica. Fortunately, the main house was large and separated into suites for each of the triplets. Clyde and Jessica had their own space in one part of the house, and Miles had his in another. Which was good, because he had a feeling Clyde and Jessica were already talking about starting a family.

But Miles didn’t have any desire to grow his own branch on the family tree, even in light of the way that tree suddenly seemed to be leafing out. Not only were two thirds of the triplets now committed to matrimony, but their sister Violet was engaged, too. And their oldest brother, Jack, had just married recently and settled in Texas. There was no way, however, that Miles would be upholding that particular family tradition. He was having too much fun as a single man. And he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone but himself.

He found the bar easily enough after following Jenny’s directions, and ordered a bourbon straight up. Restless, though, he didn’t feel like sitting at the bar and drinking alone. But he didn’t feel like returning to the fund-raiser, either. Wrapping his fingers around the heavy glass tumbler, he turned—

—and saw a flash of sapphire-blue speeding past the bar’s entrance on the other side of the room.

Instinctively, Miles headed toward the door and walked through it, just in time to see that flash of blue disappear around a corner at the end of the hall. And although he couldn’t be positive, he was pretty sure there had been a blond topknot attached to the woman wearing it.

In a word, hmm…

There was a glass-enclosed sunroom at the end of that hallway, he knew. And it had been a nice evening, cool and crisp and cloudless, when he’d arrived at the hotel. No doubt it had turned into one of those crystal-clear nights by now, the kind where the constellations were all very easy to find.

Yeah, he thought as his fingers wrapped more firmly around his glass and he began to walk in the same direction as the blue dress, maybe a little stroll would do him good….

Two

Okay, she was well and truly lost now, no mistaking or faking it. As Lanie stood in the middle of a darkened sunroom, gazing at the inky, star-spattered sky through the glass ceiling overhead, she asked herself where she could have possibly gone wrong.

Probably, she immediately answered herself, it was when she had decided to deliberately avoid Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth by telling her mother a fib.

Bad karma will out.

Still, her bad karma couldn’t be all that bad, she decided, since it had led her to a room that was quiet, reflective and pretty, a welcome contrast to the noisy, bustling, extravagant party she’d just left. She hesitated before turning around to leave, attracted to the almost Zen-like serenity of the sunroom. It was more than a little appealing for someone who had survived as hectic a day as Lanie had. Maybe she should just take advantage of a peaceful moment and enjoy it for a few minutes before venturing back to the raucous fund-raiser.

At night like this, the sunroom was really more of a moon room. And the moon was indeed visible, shining like a newly minted silver dollar smack-dab in the middle of the dark sky above. Beyond and around it, stars glittered like tiny gemstones. If Lanie focused very hard, she thought she could see the milky gleam of the galaxy threading its way through the darkness, too. Tables and chairs dotted the room, unused at the moment, but their glass hurricane centerpieces winked in the moonlight as if a few stray stars had spilled into them. Here and there, along the perimeter of the room, pots of ferns and trailing bougainvillea hung from what, in the dim light, appeared to be magic. Coupled with the night sky above, the view made Lanie feel as if she had stumbled into a lush, deserted jungle. The only thing that prevented the impression from gelling completely was that somewhere behind her she could hear the faint strains of jazz—something soft and mellow and perfect for the nighttime hours, the metallic swish of brushes on drum skins inciting an echoing purr of delight that rumbled up from somewhere deep inside her.

It wasn’t easy being a jazz fan in Texas, where country and western and southern-fried rock reigned. Someone here at the Four Seasons must like it, too, she thought. Or maybe her karma really wasn’t so bad after all, and the Fates had simply seen fit to reward her for some good deed she couldn’t remember doing.

For another long moment, Lanie only stood in the center of the deserted sunroom, gazing up at the sky, enjoying the soft sound of music. What was the harm? By now, her mother would have decided she’d been waylaid by another partygoer and would be promising Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth that she’d make sure her daughter called her first thing in the morning. And Lanie would, she silently promised, her guilty conscience gnawing at her. She could fit one more committee into her year, provided it was for a good cause. It was the least she could do for Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth, since avoiding the woman had given Lanie a few moments of peace and quiet in an otherwise turbulent world.

Funny how rewards came out of nowhere sometimes. Good thing she had the good sense to enjoy it.

Not sure what compelled her to do it, Lanie strode to the other side of the room, halting between an especially dense fern and an especially fragrant bougainvillea. Gazing through the window, she thought she caught a glimpse of movement outside, in the bushes that lay just beyond the glass. She noticed then that the entire sunroom was surrounded by outdoor greenery, which, like the potted plants inside, added to the exotic feel of the place. No doubt something small and hungry was out there scavenging about, she thought. Though she doubted it was any more exotic than an armadillo. She placed her open hand against the cool glass of the window, spreading her fingers wide in an effort to block some of the reflection of the light behind her, to see if she could tell what was out there. Narrowing her eyes, she waited to see if the movement would come again.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was someone here.”

Lanie spun around quickly at the sound of the masculine voice, startled not only by the disruption to her solitary contentment, but also because she had genuinely forgotten she was in a public place full of people, any of whom could have wandered into the sunroom off the busy hallway beyond the door. Startled turned into delighted, however, when she realized who the masculine voice belonged to. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and she had no trouble making out with—uh, she meant making out—Miles Fortune. Of all people. Well, well, well.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I was actually just getting ready to leave.”

And why did she tell him that? she wondered. A handsome man she’d found fascinating for years shows up in a room where she’d have his undivided attention, and she tells him she has to be going? What was the matter with her?

“Don’t let me scare you off,” he said.

As if, Lanie thought. He was way too yummy to be scary. Most of the photos she’d seen of him had depicted him in casual clothes, everything from grubby ranch denim to preppy golf shirts and trousers to blazers with open-collar shirts and Dockers. Tonight, though, he’d dressed for the formal fund-raiser in a dark suit with a plum-colored dress shirt and a dappled silk necktie knotted at his throat.

Snazzy, she couldn’t help thinking. Not a bad dresser for a guy who made his living chasing cows. She wondered if he had a woman stashed somewhere who helped him with his wardrobe. She’d read enough about Miles Fortune to know he never stayed with one woman for very long and, in fact, had dated some of the flashiest, most sophisticated women in Texas. But he had a sister and female cousins, and everyone knew those Fortunes were very close. Maybe one of his feminine relatives helped him make his sartorial selections. Most men couldn’t be bothered with that kind of thing. Especially those whose chief interests were bovine in nature.