Bride by the Book (Crimson Romance) (27 page)

“I’m looking for a new place.” She hoped she could find an apartment in Houston, or in whatever city she moved to in search of a job, where dogs were welcome. “If anyone asks, I’ll say I’m keeping him for my sister in Houston.”

“Perfect.” Zara sounded relieved. “Gotta go, honey. Enjoy yourself. And don’t worry about Adam. This isn’t one of his usual times to visit. Bye, sweetie.”

“How do you like that?” Leonie asked the collie after hanging up the phone. “Zara’s fallen for probably the only man in the entire universe who isn’t falling for her.”

The dog moved his ragged plume of a tail slightly.

“Usually, men take one look at Zara and fall over their own feet trying to get a date. I wonder what’s wrong with this Adam Silverthorne?”

The collie, having never met either Zara or Adam, had no opinion to offer.

“You’ll probably fall for her, too,” Leonie grumbled. “She’s an even bigger sucker for good-looking dogs than I am.” She opened the door and followed him outside. “That’s a compliment, in case you didn’t notice.”

Leonie walked toward the lake with her dog beside her, thinking hard. Assuming Adam Silverthorne visited the area while she was there, Leonie decided she better leave him off her list of men suitable for a fling.

Unless, of course, Zara would appreciate having Leonie do the hard work of attracting him. Leonie grinned at the thought, knowing full well that if Adam Silverthorne ignored Zara, he certainly wasn’t going to give her younger sister a second glance.

Butch clearly found the forest-surrounded lake fascinating, but he was a well-mannered dog and remained close to Leonie’s side in spite of the peculiar way she chuckled to herself.

Zara’s lakeside cabin fronted Lake Ouachita in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, near Hot Springs. Why Arkansas, Leonie didn’t know. She’d have thought her sister would prefer a cabin in Aspen or beside Lake Tahoe where there were lots of men and activities. But Zara claimed to love her Arkansas hideaway, even though she rarely spent any time there. Recently, Leonie had begun to suspect the cabin had been bought for some other purpose, probably something to do with Zara’s job. Or maybe even to chase this Adam Silverthorne, she thought, grinning to herself.

Leonie walked to the shore of the lake and peered out over the shining waters. Lake Ouachita sat amid rolling Ozark foothills covered with trees and studded with quartz deposits that contained big crystals. Perhaps she’d go on a hike in search of quartz crystals, but not in these shoes.

She walked out on the narrow, wooden pier that extended about twenty feet into the lake and bent to test the water with one hand. It felt warm, just right in fact. She would take a swim later so she could stay in shape.

Butch showed no interest in the water or the pier. He remained firmly on shore, watching her anxiously.

“You aren’t scared of water, are you?” she asked.

He ignored the gently lapping water and stayed at the end of the pier despite her coaxing.

She ambled back to shore, stroked the dog’s head, and turned toward the forested area that lay behind Zara’s cabin. “I don’t blame you. After all, you aren’t a Labrador retriever.”

The woods were green, cool, and full of interesting, well-marked trails. The middle trail, according to Zara, led through the woods to a set of cabins that fronted another cove of the big lake, one of which belonged to Adam Silverthorne’s family. She might as well familiarize herself with one of the other trails. Then she and Butch could head back to the cabin for a well-deserved lunch and afternoon nap.

The United States Government was paying the rent on her Houston apartment for the next two months. That would help, but Leonie knew she needed to be searching for a job. School would start again in two months, and all the available openings for high school P.E. teachers would be filled by the time she started looking.

That would be just her luck. Perhaps she should demand that the government guarantee her a good job the next time she filled in for Zara.

“You’d better gain all the weight you can, boy,” she said. “If I don’t get a job lined up, we may both find ourselves on weight-loss diets we don’t need.”

With all the free time available, maybe she could take a crafts class. She brightened. As soon as she got back to the cabin, she would investigate. Perhaps she could learn a craft and become a flea market entrepreneur if she failed to find a teaching job.

What could it hurt to try?

• • •

Adam Silverthorne congratulated himself as he stepped out of his brother’s lakeside cabin and headed for the woods. He had finally chosen a time to visit when Zara Daniel wasn’t lying in wait in the next cabin over. If she’d been there, she’d be knocking on his door right now, asking if he wanted to have lunch with her.

Zara was beautiful, but Adam knew her type all too well. Once he let her talk him into taking her out, he was liable to find himself engaged to marry her. That was the level of determination he sensed in the stunning Zara Daniel.

Adam had worked for the government once himself, and he’d known the moment he met her several years back exactly what Zara did for a living. She had sought him out at a party in Dallas, and he had realized at once that she had researched him thoroughly. Her well-constructed biography about being a secretary who worked for a special interest group in Washington, D.C. notwithstanding, Adam knew that although she might spend a lot of time at a computer, she didn’t spend it typing other people’s letters.

No, Zara Daniel was an agent, a damned good one. Just from watching her move, he knew she’d had extensive self-defense training and worked out every day. Her pose as a brazen bimbo was so perfect, Adam was unsure how much was pose and how much was Zara’s own outgoing personality.

What Adam couldn’t understand was why she had set her sights on him. In fact, he strongly suspected she had bought that cabin behind his brother’s property because she wanted to pursue him. From a few hints she had dropped, he figured she had been assigned to lure him back into government work.

Adam smiled grimly. If that was the case, she could resign herself to a long, drawn-out siege and ultimate failure. He felt certain Zara wasn’t much acquainted with either.

He strode briskly down the forest trail behind the cabin, enjoying the cool shadows and desultory bird song that surrounded him. The Arkansas forest held a charm that never failed to soothe him, even when Zara Daniel lurked in her nearby cabin, ready to pounce. Smiling with satisfaction that he’d finally be able to get some work done, he turned a corner on the narrow trail and came face to face with his current nightmare.

“Oh.” Zara took a step back, clearly startled.

“Miss Daniel. Why am I not surprised?”

Although he smiled, Adam knew his voice betrayed overtones of annoyance his mother would condemn if she could hear him. She was a stickler for gentlemanly behavior, no matter what the provocation.

“Wh—?”

Zara shut up abruptly. Adam could have sworn she was about to ask who he was.

Behind her, a long, orange-and-white muzzle with even longer-looking fangs poked forward. A deep, rumbling growl filled the quiet woods.

“Hello, fellow,” Adam said. Of all the females in the world likely to adopt an ugly dog, he’d have picked Zara Daniel last. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. “Are you a new recruit to the K-9 forces?”

“He kills on my signal.” Zara backed up a few steps and almost tripped over her own feet. “Steady, Butch.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed on her. Something seemed different about her.

Maybe it was her voice. Zara’s voice was usually crisp and determined, but at the moment, she sounded nervous and uncertain. He studied her, gripped by something he couldn’t put his finger on.

Yes, it was Zara Daniel all right. He’d know that long, tall body, silver hair, and those heavily made-up blue eyes anywhere.

Yet, he’d never seen her look quite so—Adam scanned her slim, curvy figure—so
normal
before. Instead of clothing designed to flaunt her well-honed feminine curves, she wore jeans and an old blue T-shirt. She’d still attract any male eye within a hundred yards, but she wasn’t going out of her way as she usually did, to make sure of it.

That didn’t mean he could afford to relax his rule about letting her intrude on his quiet time. His security consulting business had just landed a contract that meant his hard work over the past few years had paid off, and he had hours of work ahead of him tonight.

“No need to sic Butch on me,” he said. “I was heading in the wrong direction anyway. Excuse me, please.”

“Sure,” she said in a faint voice.

Now he knew something was up. Normally, Zara would have instantly claimed she was going his way. He’d have needed a shoehorn to shift her from his side.

Adam knew better than to test his luck. He swiftly turned on his heels and vanished the way he had come. A little farther down the trail, he turned off and stepped silently behind a thick tangle of wild grape vines.

After waiting a good five minutes, he was even more baffled than ever. No tall, silver-blond bombshell glided down the path in his wake.

Weird
, Adam thought. It was almost as if Zara had forgotten who he was. Perhaps that was it. Maybe she had been injured in the line of duty and suffered temporary amnesia.

Adam emerged from hiding and followed the path back to the cabin, thinking intently. Something strange was going on, and for the first time in his short acquaintance with Zara Daniel, he discovered himself interested in finding out more about her.

Considering the way she usually tried to attract his attention and failed, that was probably the ultimate irony.

• • •

Leonie waited until the man disappeared back the way he had come before letting out her breath in an explosive gasp. “Wow. Well, what do you think? This is why I named you Butch, by the way.”

Butch, who had no argument with his new name, remained at attention, peering down the forest path.

“That’s got to be Adam Silverthorne.”

Butch glanced back at her then resumed his guardianship of the path.

“I don’t think he’ll be coming back this way for a while. We’d better make tracks while we still can.”

She could see why Zara fell for the man. He was a good six-feet-three-inches tall, lean and well-muscled, with thick, dark hair and a rugged face highlighted by straight, dark brows and arresting green eyes. Adam Silverthorne wasn’t classically handsome, but he was definitely all male, something Zara was bound to appreciate.

In fact, now that Leonie thought about it, Adam’s movements were similar to Zara’s, as if he’d spent long hours learning stealth and hand-to-hand combat techniques the way she had. That was probably why Zara was so attracted to him. Adam was the male counterpart of herself, a well-honed, covert agent for the United States Government.

Well, Leonie Daniel didn’t appreciate covert agents or their crazy schedules, and she knew better than to think she’d like being involved with a man who could be ordered at any moment into a dangerous country to do whatever terrible deed the government deemed necessary. Adam Silverthorne had nothing to fear from her. All she wanted was to get back to her own business.

Leonie burst from the woods and headed for the cabin, chuckling. If she didn’t know better, she’d have sworn Adam Silverthorne was scared of Zara. She couldn’t blame him. Her sister could be awfully determined, and she nearly always got what she wanted.

Still, Adam didn’t impress her as a pushover. If he didn’t want Zara, she had no doubt he’d make it known.

Maybe he disliked hurting women.

On top of that, he looked and sounded like a man who appreciated a good dog.

Leonie decided Adam was probably a very nice man, one she’d love to get to know better. But alas, he was like all the other men she met. Once a man belonged to Zara, he was Zara’s. He’d never want plain Leonie Daniel, the younger sister who enjoyed her quiet life and ordinary job and disliked the idea of too much excitement and danger.

Besides, Leonie wouldn’t dream of going after the only man she’d ever seen Zara really interested in. She focused on that thought and refused to allow herself to daydream of what would happen if a man like Adam ever fell in love with her instead of Zara. It would never happen, so why torture herself?

Leonie let herself into the cabin, relieved that she wasn’t followed, and reached for the telephone book. Perhaps she could call around and locate some crafts courses. Anything to create a vacation to remember where she might meet somebody who didn’t already know Zara.

• • •

Across the lake, in a small cove created by trees, two men in a bass boat held fishing poles with corks bobbing innocently on the water. The hooks, however, were not baited. The men had no interest in catching any of the perch or bass abounding in Lake Ouachita.

One held a pair of powerful binoculars, while the other manned a small, spotting scope. On the floor in a metal tackle box, powerful communications equipment waited.

“It’s her, all right. Zara Daniel,” the man with the scope said. “And she’s got a dog with her.”

“Are you sure it’s really her and not a double?”

“It’s either her or her twin sister.” He patted his scope. “This baby can pick out a dime in a gravel pit.”

“She has a sister, all right. A kid sister. But no twin.” The second man reached for the metal box. “I’ll notify Smith—just in case.” He lifted out a tiny cell phone. “This is a helluva job. Not anything like what I signed up for, if you want to know, but a paycheck’s a paycheck when the unemployment checks quit coming.”

“You got that right.” The scope man peered at the cabin. “Ugly dog.”

“I’ll tell Smith you said so.”

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Also by Kathryn Brocato:

Old Christmas

Sutherland’s Pride

Georgie’s Heart

The Counterfeit Cowgirl