The Debutante

Then again, part of Miles Fortune’s appeal to all those flashy, sophisticated women was how great he looked all the time, Lanie reminded herself. So which was a result of the other? One of those chicken-or-the-egg things she’d probably be better off not thinking about, she supposed.

“You didn’t scare me off,” she said, remembering that he’d made a comment that had invited a reply.

He smiled in response, a smile that was sweet and dreamy and—there was just no escaping it—droolworthy. Lanie battled the temptation to swipe her hand over her mouth and smiled back.

“Good,” he said. “Because the last thing I’d want to do is scare off a nice girl like you.”

A nice girl, Lanie echoed to herself, turning fully around now to face him. Funny, she hadn’t been called that for a long time. Maybe not ever. Whenever she was mentioned in the society pages or elsewhere, she was usually tagged with some cutesy nickname by whomever was doing the mentioning, and rarely were the nicknames in any way appropriate—or earned. Every time Lanie visited a new town, she was awarded some new, usually alliterative label she didn’t deserve. The Dallas Delilah. The Houston Heartbreaker. The Fort Worth Firebrand. The San Antonio Seductress. The Amarillo Angel. The Corpus Christi Cutie. Or just the all-inclusive Texas Tornado. And then there was the one she had to suffer when she was at home in Austin: Government Goddess.

Oh, all right. So maybe she did kind of like that last one.

At any rate, “nice girl” had never been anywhere in the mix. Not even when she’d gone to Nacogdoches. No, there she’d been The Knockout. So hearing Miles Fortune refer to her as a nice girl now made a little ripple of pleasure purl right through her.

“Hi, I’m Miles Fortune,” he introduced himself. With a hint of self-consciousness—though whether real or manufactured to put her at ease, Lanie couldn’t have said—he strode slowly across the room to where she stood, stopping when there was still a good three feet separating them, obviously not wanting her to feel threatened by him. Then, looking uncertain about how welcome the gesture would be, he extended his hand for her to shake it.

Lanie took it automatically, totally comfortable with the masculine form of address, because she’d been shaking the hands of her father’s colleagues since she was a little girl. Something like that had always presented a great photo opportunity, after all. Besides, she didn’t feel at all threatened by Miles Fortune, since he was in no way a threatening guy.

“I know who you are,” she told him, still smiling warmly as she gave his hand a spirited shake.

He arched his dark eyebrows in surprise at the comment, even though Lanie was certain that what she had said couldn’t possibly come as a surprise to him. “Then you have me at a disadvantage,” he replied, still holding her hand, even though he’d stopped shaking it. “Because I don’t know who you are.”

It took a moment for the comment to register with Lanie, because she honestly didn’t think anyone had ever said such a thing to her before. Invariably, people knew who she was: the governor’s daughter. Even before her father had ascended to that lofty position, people had still known who Lanie was. When the Meyerses had lived in Dallas, she’d been the mayor’s daughter. Before that, in the third district, she’d been the alderman’s daughter. Her father had held a political office of one kind or another since before she’d been born, and Lanie had always attended functions with him and her mother where she had been introduced as his daughter.

Which made her realize, perhaps for the first time, just how intrinsically her identity was linked to whatever position her father happened to hold. Her social life before turning eighteen had always been limited to functions that were also attended by her parents, something due largely to matters of security, she knew. Even before her father had climbed the higher rungs of the political ladder, he’d deliberately stayed visible in the public eye in order to reach those rungs, and he’d made sure his family was visible, too, because it made him more sympathetic.

Ironically, however, that public life had brought with it an essential need for privacy. Anyone who held public office might become a target for some lunatic. And, by extension, so might that person’s family. So Tom and Luanne Meyers had made sure their young daughter was well protected at all times. That had meant keeping her out of public when they weren’t with her, something that had rather limited Lanie’s social life as an adolescent.

Lanie had never resented it, though. Well, not as much as she probably could or should have. She had just shrugged it off as a simple misfortune of birth. She had had benefits that a lot of teenage girls would never have, and that had provided her some compensation. Instead of a single bedroom, she’d had a suite of rooms at home. Her wardrobe had been full of party dresses and shoes for the appearances she made with her parents. She went to the salon twice a month to have her hair and nails done. She’d met the members of both *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys when they’d played Dallas. And she’d visited movie sets and met television stars. For not having a social life, Lanie had been a big part of Texas society.

And she’d reassured herself by promising herself that she’d take advantage of adulthood once she turned eighteen, then strike out on her own and make her own impression on the world. But even over the past several years, when Lanie had been struggling to stand on her own two feet, she’d still never found herself in a situation where people didn’t know who she was: the governor’s daughter.

The realization didn’t set well with her.

And maybe that was why she decided not to tell Miles Fortune her name. Well, not her full name. Because suddenly it was kind of nice not being recognized. Suddenly it was kind of nice not being the governor’s daughter. Suddenly it was kind of nice just to be—

“Lanie,” she said, noticing how she and Miles still hadn’t released each other’s hands. “I’m Lanie.”

She could tell by his expression that he was waiting for her to give him her last name, too. And when she didn’t, she could tell by his expression that he thought it was because she was a woman meeting a man for the first time and feeling cautious. He didn’t press the matter, however. And something about that made her like him even more.

“Lanie,” he said, smiling. “Pretty name.”

And she could tell by his expression that time that her name wasn’t the only thing he thought was pretty. But he didn’t press that matter, either. And something about that made her like him even more, too.

“Thanks,” she told him. “It’s short for Elaine, which was my grandmother’s name.”

“It suits you,” he said, still smiling, still not releasing her hand.

Not that Lanie minded.

But he didn’t clarify which name suited her, she noted. That was interesting, because to her way of thinking, the two names had nothing in common, even though one was derived from the other. She’d always thought of Elaine as the name of an elegant, refined, cerebral brunette. Lanie was a party girl, plain and simple, laughing and dressed in bright colors and always the last to leave the dance floor. Lanie had always suited her much better, she’d always thought. Surely that was the one Miles was referring to, since he’d said it was pretty.

Still neither seemed in any hurry to release the other’s hand, something Lanie decided not to worry too much about. Mostly because Miles’s hand in hers just felt very, very nice, and it had been a long time since she’d held hands with a guy. The fact that she was doing so now for reasons that were in no way romantic was beside the point. Just looking at Miles Fortune made her feel romantic. Besides, this was only a brief little interlude that would be over all too quickly, and soon she’d only have memories of her chance meeting with Miles to keep her company. She wanted to make sure she had as many of them as she could to treasure. It wasn’t every day a woman got to meet a Fortune, after all.

But as much as Lanie was enjoying herself at the moment, she knew better than to think that this momentary chance encounter would turn into anything more. For one thing, she wasn’t such a lucky person that she ran into dreamy men like Miles Fortune every day. For another thing, the reason Miles Fortune was so dreamy was because that was where he dwelled—in Lanie’s dreams. In reality, he wasn’t the kind of man to let anything with a woman go much beyond the chance-encounter stage. And although Lanie Meyers might have the reputation for being a wild child, and although she might have a string of suggestive nicknames following her around Texas, when all was said and done, she really did know better than to get involved with a man like him. She liked to party. She didn’t like getting her heart broken.

“So you had to escape the governor’s bash, too, huh?” Miles asked now, referring to their earlier silent toast.

“Well, it was getting a bit crowded in there,” she said.

Finally, finally, she made herself glance down at their still-joined hands, then back up at Miles with a meaningful look. He mimicked her actions, grinned and, with obvious reluctance, released her fingers. Lanie pulled her hand back unwillingly, but she figured it was silly for the two of them to stand there as if they’d been bonded with Superglue. People should know each other at least a little bit before epoxying themselves to each other. He buried the hand that had held hers in his trouser pocket, and lifted the other, holding a glass of amber-colored liquor to his mouth for a meager sip.

Lanie watched, fascinated, as he completed the gesture, noting everything she could about him in that brief, unguarded moment. How the bright moonlight filtering through the glass ceiling overhead glinted off of the heavy onyx ring on his third finger, flickered in the cut crystal of the glass and winked off the gold cuff link fixed in his shirt. She noticed, too, the confident way his fingers curled around the glass, the square, blunt-cut but well-kept fingernails, the dark hair on the back of his hand, making that part of him so different from that part of her. Her own hands were pale and slender, the nails expertly manicured and painted bright pink. Then her gaze traveled to his face, and she saw the scant shadow of day-old beard that darkened his angular jaw, the perfect, elegant slope of his aristocratic nose, the thick, black lashes that put her own heavily mascaraed ones to shame. As he lowered his glass, she remarked the beautifully formed mouth, how his lower lip was just a shade plumper than the upper one, giving him a sort of brooding look that was at odds with his laughing brown eyes.

She hadn’t thought it would be possible for Miles Fortune to be even more handsome up close than he was from a distance. Most men who were that perfect-looking from afar became a bit less so when one drew nearer. Their eyes weren’t quite as clear as first thought, or their mouths were a bit lopsided, or their complexions were marred by some kind of imperfection. But not Miles Fortune. Up close, the flawlessness of his good looks was only cemented more completely.

After lowering his glass, his gaze met Lanie’s again, and he opened that beautiful mouth with the clear intention of saying something else. But he halted before uttering a word, his eyes widening when they met hers. And that was when Lanie realized her fascination with him must be written all over her face, and that she wasn’t the only one who could tell what others were thinking by looking at them.

Which was not good, since what she was thinking about just then didn’t bear airing anyplace other than in her own fantasies. Mostly because it involved Miles Fortune’s face. More specifically, it involved her touching Miles Fortune’s face. And then moving on to other body parts.

Immediately she snapped her eyes closed and shook her head once, as if trying to physically dislodge her wayward thoughts. “Um,” she began eloquently. “Ah,” she added articulately. “Er,” she then concluded astutely.

She heard Miles chuckle and opened her eyes to find him grinning at her again. But he was enough of a gentleman to pretend he hadn’t just caught her mentally undressing him, or noticed the sudden lapse in her vocabulary. Which went beyond making her like him even more and pretty much ensured that she would be head over heels in love with him for the rest of her life.

Damn. That was going to be tough to explain to her future husband. Whoever the poor sap turned out to be.

“So what brought you to the governor’s gig tonight?” Miles asked, thankfully changing the subject.

Then Lanie remembered they’d been talking about the governor’s gig all along, and the only thing that had changed in the last few minutes had been her body temperature. “I came with my parents,” she said, congratulating herself for having spoken the truth. “How about you?” she hurried to add, before he could ask her who her parents were.

“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.