Alex put his arm around her, and they walked out onto the front steps together, waving as the van pulled away.
“So thoughtful of you to give the kitchen staff the afternoon off,” she said in her soft Katerina voice, all for the benefit of the listening devices Alex assured her were nearby. “But then, you’re always so thoughtful, Thomas. It’s one of the things I love best about you.”
“There was no in point keeping them here,” he replied. “We have the ball tonight, after all.” He hugged her a little closer to his side. “I hate being on display all the time as much as you do, you know, but at least at this event I’ll have an excuse to hold you close the whole night through.”
“As if you need an excuse,” she teased, turning to smile up at him.
His eyes held hers, and her smile faded. Licking her lips, she leaned up closer, pressed her mouth against his. He sucked her lips gently, before letting them go free.
She didn’t speak. She probably couldn’t have, just then. And she didn’t know why. It was just a kiss. Just a small, perfect, tender kiss. But it had felt…real. Natural. Not like playacting at all.
She turned away from him, hiding the reaction that one stupid little kiss was causing—not in her belly this time, but in her heart—and went back upstairs to the suite. When she had closed the door behind her, she stood there with her eyes closed tight for a moment, tasting him on her lips, wondering why she was going to do what she was going to do. Was it because of this ridiculous, hopeless crush she had developed on Alex Stone?
But she already knew it wasn’t. At least not entirely. There were two other reasons. Two other very important reasons.
She went to the TV in the living-room area of the suite, searching through the videos stacked on the stand beneath it. Choosing one, she dropped it into the player, closed the door, picked up the remote and thumbed the controls. Then she sank onto the sofa as the tape began to roll.
Katerina looked very much like her, Mel thought, wondering why she hadn’t been able to see the resemblance before. But she was softer, more polished, more poised and younger, though not in age. Mel watched as the princess, looking every bit the part, walked down the aisle in a bridal gown that probably cost more, Mel thought, than every car she had ever owned, put together. The train dragged yards behind her. Thomas waited at the altar, for once without his sunglasses. His eyes were nothing like Alex’s. His smile wasn’t the same, either. It didn’t make Mel’s stomach clench the way Alex’s did.
But he looked at Katerina with his heart in his eyes. And when she reached him and he took her hands in his, Mel found her own vision blurring.
She hit the pause button and sat there, looking at the couple. So young, so much in love. Kidnapped in some silly political game that would mean nothing in the long run. They might be facing death even now.
It wasn’t fair. They had something so special between them. She’d seen it over and over, studied it. Secretly, she had envied it. It was wrong to let that special feeling be cut off. God, think how horrified tender little Katerina must be right now, to think of Alex—er—Thomas being shot. Executed. And Thomas—how helpless he must feel to be unable to protect his precious Katerina from that threat.
Katerina was so gentle. So timid and nonconfrontational.
Mel almost wished she could switch places with her. Let the kidnappers deal with someone who wouldn’t flinch at fighting back, someone who would go down swinging and probably take out of a few of them with her.
But that was exactly what she was doing by being here and pretending to be Katerina. Fighting back. If Mel could keep the criminals uncertain about which of them was the real princess for just a little while longer, maybe Katerina could stay safe, and maybe her beloved could stay alive.
But if Mel left as planned, skipping out on the ball tonight—what then? Would the real Katerina live to see tomorrow’s sunrise if she did? Or would the criminals assume that she had been whisked away to safety, and that the woman they held was the imposter?
She looked again at the pretty, delicate woman in white.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered. “It’s not like the little wimp has a chance in hell on her own. I can’t just throw her to the wolves to save myself. I can’t.”
Selene saw the relief in her mother’s face, and in her sister’s, too, as Wes drove them away from the mansion, the city and the need for pretense. Even after only two days, it was good to be able to speak freely and not watch every word. Different. Like having a gag removed.
Selene wasn’t relaxed, though, and she could see very plainly that Wes wasn’t, either. He glanced toward her, met her eyes, and silently acknowledged what she was thinking. This wasn’t over. Mel was still in danger. Maybe more so than ever before.
Selene knew in her heart that she was going to have to go back there for her big sister.
It was a long, long drive from Austin to the small airport in the middle of nowhere. It would have been too easy to be traced from Austin-Bugstrom International. Wes had to be sure they hadn’t been followed, so he took his time, drove over alternate routes, made unnecessary stops. The roads got narrower and bumpier the farther Wes drove. They stopped at a small-town roadside diner for lunch and a rest-room break. Only then did he seem to be satisfied that they were safe. He took them to the tiny airstrip, where a small plane was waiting, and a Secret Service agent took the van away.
By air it wasn’t as bad. Kara and Vidalia napped, but not soundly enough that Selene could speak freely to Wes. She was dying to get him alone, to discuss what she sensed they both knew.
They landed at another middle-of-nowhere airstrip, got into another van and drove. It was nightfall by the time they passed the sign that said Welcome to Quinn, and Selene felt the most peculiar feeling steal over her like the soothing touch of a hot spring’s water. When Wes turned onto the long dirt driveway and she saw the wooden arch that spanned it, with the words Texas Brand carved into it, that feeling grew. And when they drove underneath that arch, it grew even bigger.
The house was alight and alive against a backdrop of deepening blue sky. It reminded her of her own family home, that feeling of welcome that surrounded the place like an aura. Only, this house was far bigger, with a wide front porch full of rocking chairs and wicker furniture. The barn was three times the size of their own, obviously a working barn, not one used just for storage. It was huge and well kept up. Freshly painted, red with white trim. There were fences, and horses grazing, and, in the distance, dark shapes that might be cattle. But her gaze was drawn right back to that front porch again. There was a light on outside. And every piece of wicker furniture and every rocking chair, and even the steps, had people sitting on them. Men and women, children, babies.
“My, my,” Vidalia said. “Just look at them all.” She sounded a little sad.
“These are all…relatives?” Kara asked.
“Family,” Wes told her. “There’s a difference.” He pulled the van to a stop and shut it off. “Not everyone is here. We thought it best for some reunions to take place in private.”
Selene sent him a searching look. “What do you mean?”
He shook his head just slightly, exchanging a look with Vidalia. “It’s not time yet. We’ll wait for Mel. And there’s plenty to deal with for right now. You ready?”
Selene nodded, but she thought her mother looked nervous.
Wes opened the door and got out. Then he went around the van and slid open the side door for Vidalia and Kara, helping them down, while Selene got out the passenger side. The four of them walked slowly toward the front porch as the Brands of Texas rose and stirred. Some waved; some smiled. A dark woman Selene recognized as Taylor, from Wes’s photo of her, came running forward to greet him with a tender kiss. Then a man came forward, a very large man wearing a cowboy hat and a solemn expression.
He took his hat off when he got close to them. He stopped walking, and stood there face-to-face with Vidalia Brand.
“Aunt Vi,” he
said. “I thought you were one of your daughters. You haven’t changed at all.”
She blinked at him. “You can’t be Garrett?”
He nodded.
“What did they feed you, boy?”
He smiled at her. “Meat and potatoes, ma’am. It seemed to do the trick.” But his smile died very slowly. “Aunt Vi…there have been bad feelings between our families in the past. I don’t even know why, but—”
She held up a hand. “After my husband died, his brother, your father, tried to prevent me from keeping the Brand name. You see, John had another wife, another family. So his marriage to me was never legal. But I had five daughters by that man, Garrett, and they are Brands through and through. I earned the name, and I refused to give it up. Orrin disowned us. It’s been that way ever since.”
Garrett nodded. “I figured it was something like that. My father was a proud man, Aunt Vi. A stubborn man. And not always kind. But let me tell you something. My father and your husband are both gone now. I like to think they’ve made their peace on the other side somewhere. I think they’d like us to do the same.”
Vidalia lowered her head. “I came, you know, after your mamma and daddy—the accident and all. I looked in on you. Of course they’d been gone two years before I even had word. But the second I did, I came.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know if I’d be welcome, though. And you seemed to be doing just fine on your own.”
“You’d have been welcome. You’re welcome now.” He looked down at her, smiled broadly and opened his arms.
Vidalia went into them and hugged her big nephew hard. When he let her go, Selene saw tears in her mother’s eyes and felt her own start to burn. She glanced at Kara, who had twin streams marking her cheeks.
“Come on, it’s time you all get to know your family.” Garrett slung an arm around Vidalia’s shoulders and sent Selene a wink as the rest of the Brands came surging from the porch in one large, noisy mass.
It was going to be a long night, Selene thought. And a wonderful night, too. But even though she relished every hug, every welcoming face, every long-lost member of her family, she couldn’t help but wonder just how long it would be before she could slip away, unnoticed, to make her way back to her sister in Austin.
And when she met Wes Brand’s eyes across the crowd of relatives, she thought she saw the same thing in them.
Chapter 7
A lex tapped on the closed door of the master suite and waited a beat before opening it and walking in. “I thought you’d like to know—” he began, with his accent and his tux both firmly in place. But he stopped talking, stopped thinking—stopped breathing, really—when he saw Melusine. She looked…whoa. She looked good. The dress was strapless, black, shiny and tight. It hugged her all the way to her feet, except for the slit up the side. He liked the way her breasts swelled over the top of the thing. He liked that he could see the well of her navel beyond the clingy material. He wondered why the hell it had taken him as long as it had to see how incredibly sexy Mel Brand was. He’d pretty much come to terms with the fact that he liked her, that he was soft on her, that he was attracted to her. But how had he missed the fact that she was a knockout, a woman so beautiful that she could take a man’s breath away, stop his heart and possibly cure cancer?
“Oh, stop it, already,” she told him.
He blinked and forced his eyes upward from her cleavage to her face. “I’m— It’s just— You look…damn.”
“Yeah? Well, you’d better take a picture, then, because I would rather wear a feed bag than this thing.”
The illusion shattered. He lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t like it?”
“Oh, it looked great on the hanger. But for crying out loud, Bernadette has me cinched up tighter than a rodeo bronc. I can’t even draw a complete breath. And I don’t know what to do with these things!” She glanced down at her breasts when she said it.
“I could, uh, maybe offer a few suggestions.”
She shot him a glare. “Oh, very funny. This dress has them squashed up so high, I’m afraid they’ll pop out at any moment.”
“We can only hope,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Er, nothing. I, um…” He cleared his throat, tugged at his suddenly too-tight collar and reminded himself of their roles. “Katerina, I know that you’ve always secretly detested formal wear, but surely, with all the functions we’ve attended together, you must be getting used to it by now.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. No one could get used to this. Not in a hundred years. Will you look at these shoes?” She thrust her leg out the slit, so it was bare from midthigh down, save for the silk stocking and the stiletto-heeled, open-toed shoe.
“Lord have mercy,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Have I ever mentioned that you have legs to die for?” he asked.
“I am practically standing on my toes.”
He swallowed, his throat suddenly very dry. “Your buckle is coming undone.”
“Well, it’s not as if I can bend over to fix it in this sausage casing.”
“I’ll, uh…I’ll get it.” He bent down on one knee and slid his hands around her ankle, and the silk of her stocking brushed his fingers. He thought that he had never been so turned on in his life. My God, he was on fire. His hands were shaking like dry leaves in a brisk wind as he adjusted the strap of the shoe. His knuckles brushed her ankle. He cupped her calf in his palm, and for the life of him, he had to fight to keep from kissing her toes. What was wrong with him?
She lost her balance, had to bend forward, brace her hands on his shoulders. His hands shot to her hips to steady her. And then stayed there.
He rose very slowly, his hands still on her hips, hers still on his shoulders. Her face was very close to his. She smelled delicious, and he leaned a little closer.
She backed off almost imperceptibly, mere millimeters, but it was enough. He got the message. He thought about mentioning the chance of cameras, pretending this was just part of their act, but no. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She was already angry enough about the last time he’d kissed her for that reason.
Or at least he thought that was what she’d been mad about.
“I’m going to be the envy of every man at that ball tonight,” he told her softly.
He took a moment to brush a stray wisp of hair off her forehead. She didn’t look him in the eye, though. “Are you ready to go, then?”
“Yes. What was it you came in here to tell me?”
He lifted his brows, drawing a blank.
“When you first came in, you said you thought I would like to know…?”
“Oh, right. Our…friends…have arrived safely at their destination.”
She nodded, getting the message. “That’s a load off my mind.”
“We’ll have a new driver tonight. Our usual driver has the day off.”
Again he saw that she understood. They would have to keep to their roles, even in the car tonight.
“Are you ready, then?”
“My, um, my wrap?” She nodded toward the back of the chair, where a black silk shawl with lace edging was draped.
He got it for her, came back, and draped it gently over her shoulders. He let his fingers skim the bare, warm flesh there, and he closed his eyes in secret hunger. God, what she was doing to him tonight.
He thought he felt her tremble when his fingers brushed her shoulder. But he couldn’t be sure. Moving from behind her to stand beside her, holding her elbow, he walked her out of the room, into the hall.
At the top of the stairs she paused and turned to look up into his eyes. “I’m going to fall and break my freaking neck in these ridiculous shoes,” she said.
It broke through the tension all this heat had created in him. Smiling, Alex slid one arm around her waist, bent at the knees and slid the other arm beneath her legs, scooping her up as he rose. “I can at least ensure that doesn’t happen.” He carried her down
the stairs as she gaped at him.
“Al—er, Thomas, put me down. For heaven’s sake, this is—”
At the bottom, he set her down again.
She drew a breath, smoothed her dress, then her hair. “I…thanks.”
“Anytime.”
She looked very confused as she searched his face. And no wonder. He was acting like a teenager with a crush. Hell. He took her arm again and led her outside to the waiting limo.
The ball was held at the governor’s private residence, a mansion set on a sprawling ranch in the countryside. The Colorado River wound through the lush acre-wide backyard.
The ballroom at the mansion was utterly beyond belief. Mel couldn’t get over the glittering chandeliers, the shiny marble tiles on the floor or the gems and diamonds glittering from the fingers, wrists and throats of all the women.
They were all so beautiful. So polished and charming. They knew how to laugh just so, how to flirt, how to dance. Oh, she could manage to move around the floor, but they were waltzing!
A string quartet played classical music in the front of the room. The place was packed, wall-to-wall bodies draped in rich fabrics and glittering jewels. People fluttered around her like mosquitoes in a swamp, and she started to feel claustrophobic as the governor’s wife, hostess of this event, made introduction after introduction. She felt a complete fraud in her fake jewels and makeup, pretending to be someone she wasn’t, someone she could never be.
Worst of all was the fact that Alex seemed to like her better tonight than he ever had before. When she was as little like her true self as she could possibly be.
It hurt. It shouldn’t. But that didn’t soothe the sting.
She clutched Alex’s hand, even though she hated him right then, and he glanced down at her as if he adored every bone in her body. Even though she knew it was make-believe, that it wasn’t her he was reacting to, she got warm and soft inside when he looked at her like that. He glanced at their hostess and the crowd milling around them, chattering. “If you’ll excuse us, I’ve been waiting all day to dance with my wife.”
Secrets and Lies Page 9
