Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) (20 page)

On a street of
stunningly restored traditional homes, it was by far the grandest. I
could hardly believe I was here, in this dress, with this man.

“The house was built
by a wealthy railroad family,” Drex said as the driver pulled up to
the curb. “It’s called the Clark Mansion. Scott spent four years
renovating it.”

“It’s beautiful,”
I said, peering up through my window. “Like something from a
dream.”

He gave my hand a quick
squeeze. “Is it? I can’t see anything but you tonight.”

If I’d thought I was
living in a fairy tale before, now I was sure of it. Walking up to
the door in my new gown, holding Drex’s arm, I expected any moment
to wake up on the park bench and realize that none of it was real. I
would lose my glass slipper, the clock would strike midnight, and it
would all be over. Life couldn’t possibly be this wonderful.

But moments kept
passing, and the fairy tale didn’t end. Drex introduced me to so
many well-dressed, good-looking, and accomplished people, I could
hardly tell one from the other. They had first and last names and job
titles and histories with Drex, but I was always just Jane. “My
date, Jane,” Drex said, too many times to count.

Nobody probed my
background or asked to see identification. I was just another woman
in a fabulous dress, though I happened to be with the most gorgeous
man there.

Three bacon-wrapped
prawns and a glass of champagne later, I finally got to meet Scott
Marshall. He was stocky and deeply-tanned with pale green eyes and a
thick head of gray hair. He had the relaxed air of someone who
couldn’t remember what it was like to worry about money, if he’d
ever known in the first place.

He shook my hand firmly
and smiled. “Good to meet you,” he boomed. “Welcome.”

Though he joked about
turning sixty and chatted about a recent sport-fishing trip, I could
see the uncomfortable truth in his eyes: Drex should have his arm
around Brooke, not some strange woman from outside his social circle.
Two years may have passed since his daughter was Drex’s date, but
he hadn’t given up hope. Not even close.

As if her father had
called for back-up, the infamous Brooke suddenly appeared at my side.
I’d seen photographs of her in Cougan company literature, but in
person she was even more striking. Tall and long-limbed with big,
dark eyes and hair to her waist, she made me glad I was wearing
five-inch heels and a Ruby-approved dress.

“Aren’t you going
to introduce me to your friend, Drex?” she asked.

Friend
.
Really?

“Of course,” he
said. “Jane, Brooke. Brooke, Jane.” He smiled his addicting,
impossible-to-be-annoyed-at-him smile. “See? That was easy.”

After a few minutes of
small talk, Scott pulled Drex into a discussion about a new golf
course. It was the perfect opportunity for Brooke to grill me, and
she wasted no time.

Taking my elbow, she
turned me toward the windows overlooking a lush, English
country-style garden. “Drex told me he was bringing someone,” she
said. “I’ll admit I didn’t believe him.” She paused to scan
me from head to toe, then did the same thing in reverse. “I guess I
do now.”

“It’s great to meet
you,” I said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She considered me over
the rim of her cocktail glass. “Oh? I’ve heard absolutely nothing
about you. Drex didn’t give me a single detail.”

“Well, we haven’t
known each other that long.”

“He’s known you
long enough to bring you to my father’s birthday dinner. He must be
very taken with you.”

“Oh…I don’t
know,” I said. Vague and polite, just as I’d planned in the car.

“It’s the strangest
thing,” Brooke said, “but he didn’t want to talk about you.
You’re like…a big mystery or something.” She peered at me
through slightly narrowed eyes. “He wouldn’t even tell me where
you’re from or where you met.”

“Oh, well, we met
because...”

How did I know this was
going to happen? I should have stayed home with Diesel. She could
bark and growl but she couldn’t cross-examine me. “I needed
directions and Drex stopped to help,” I blurted out.

Brooke’s head tilted
an inch. “Really?”

“God’s-honest
truth.” Or something like that.

“What a charming
little story,” she said. “Like a romance novel. Where did this
happen?”

“In a town a few
hundred miles from here. I was just – passing through.” I scanned
the room for Drex, who was now standing in a group of tuxedoed men of
various ages, all privileged and attractive. But none of them
compared to my date. He was by far the tallest, the handsomest, and
the sexiest. There was no contest.

“Passing through,”
she said. “Are you on vacation? You don’t sound like you’re
from Texas, that’s for sure.”

So much for the
Marshalls talking about themselves. If things kept going like this,
in five minutes Brooke would know more about me than I knew myself.

“Not exactly,” I
said. “But sort of. I was...on a desert hiking trip. Solo.”

Her eyebrows quirked.
“Solo?”

“Yes. One of those
journey of discovery kind of things?”

“Journey of
discovery,” she repeated. Clearly I sounded insane.

“You know, like
walking the Appalachian Trail by yourself.”

She tossed her curtain
of shiny hair behind her shoulder. “Actually, I don’t know. I
don’t even own a pair of hiking boots.”

“I’m sure you
don’t,” I said. “Anyway, enough about –”

“So, you were hiking,
and…?”

The air hung heavy as I
hesitated. “I got lost,” I said. “Hopelessly.” Pretty good.
Not far from the truth, actually.

She considered me with
skeptical eyes lined in thick black liner. “Now, wait a minute. You
got lost when you were out hiking alone, and Drex just happened to
find you?”

“Not exactly, but
yup. It was the damnedest thing.” At that moment, Drex glanced in
my direction. I tried to send him a distress signal with a glare, but
he just smiled, gave me a quick thumbs-up, and went back to his
conversation. When a waiter passed with a loaded tray, I practically
lunged toward it. Smoked salmon on toast points – the perfect way
to stuff my mouth so I couldn’t say anything at all. I grabbed two
and a cocktail napkin.

Brooke watched me take
a large bite. “And then he just took you home?” she asked. “That
was quick.”

Chewing, I shrugged. I
hoped she would drop it, but instead she just waited. And waited.
Finally I swallowed, which left me no choice but to answer. “I
didn’t know where I was so…he offered me a place to stay.”

“How kind of him.”

“I thought so, but
what I’d really love to talk about is your role at the company –”

“What do you do in
the real world, Jane? When you’re not hiking around the Southwest
getting lost?”

“Do?”

“As a career. If you
have one?”

The entire room seemed
to fall silent. It was as if two-hundred people were waiting for a
response I couldn’t give. “Well, I…in all honesty, I’m sort
of a –”

I felt a warm, strong
hand on my shoulder. “Is Brooke boring you with company talk?”
Drex asked with a broad grin.

My legs went weak. What
the hell had taken him so long? “If only,” I said.

Brooke gave him a
thin-lipped little smirk. “Jane was just telling me about her
hiking trip.”

His eyes were puzzled.
“Her…hiking trip.”

“That’s right,
Drex,” I said, giving him a quick jab in the side. “That solo
thing I was doing when we met?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said
quickly. “That solo thing.”

“It’s funny,”
Brooke said. “She doesn’t look like much of a hiker to me.”

“Jane cleans up
well,” Drex said. “But deep down she’s a tomboy at heart.”

I frowned at him. He
responded with a quick shrug that Brooke couldn’t possibly have
missed.

“The rest of my
clothes are fleece and cotton,” I said. “And jeans.”

“They really are,”
Drex said. “Like, stuff from a country store.”

“The kind of place
where they sell dresses alongside the hunting rifles,” I said. “And
the ammo.”

“And socks,” Drex
piped up. “And fishing poles.”

Brooke handed her empty
glass to a waiter and looked at Drex as if he’d switched to a
different language. “She fishes, too?”

“Like I said, a total
tomboy.”

“But you always liked
girly girls.”

“He just likes
girls,” I said. “Girly or not.”

Brooke looked from Drex to me and
back again. “All I know is, they’re about to serve to dinner,”
she said. “You’re sitting next to Bob Cochran, the CEO of Dixon
Oil, so you might want to talk about college football or something.
He’s not really a hiker, from what I can tell.”

Apparently Drex had
learned his lesson, because he didn’t leave my side the entire
dinner. I could relax and enjoy myself and just be his date again,
which was all I’d wanted. For a few hours, I could pretend to be a
woman like any other.

Well, not quite. I
couldn’t imagine that anyone else here had fallen in love this
quickly under such strange circumstances. Every time Drex and I
looked at each other, our connection sizzled like a stripped wire.

What had happened
earlier tonight in his bathroom – it wasn’t over. My skin still
sparked wherever he’d touched me, my lips still burned from his
hot, hard kisses. He’d branded me and made me want to belong to
him. And couldn’t I? Was what I felt for him so wrong?

Determined not to spoil
our night, I shoved my questions aside. We sat together at a round
table and ate lobster risotto, filet mignon, and decadent
butter-whipped potatoes that melted in my mouth. I asked Bob Cochran
so many questions about the oil business he didn’t have time to do
anything but answer. Amnesia was turning me into a very good
listener.

As the waiters served
coffee and after-dinner drinks, one of Scott Marshall’s sons took
the podium at the front of the room. After a brief, deadpan speech
about his father’s dread of getting old, he introduced a short film
he’d had made for the occasion. The lights darkened, leaving the
room lit by the candles flickering on each table.

The film started with
black-and-white photographs of Scott growing up on a farm in
Oklahoma. There were funny pictures of him covered with mud while
milking cows and asleep on the floor in front of an old television
set. There was a home movie of him graduating from high school, and
pictures from his years as a track star at Texas A&M. There was
even eight millimeter film from his wedding to his college
sweetheart, now passed away from cancer.

While the people around
me laughed and shouted out funny remarks and went quiet for poignant
photographs of funerals and newborns, I sat in silence, hands balled
in my lap.

Scott Marshall had what
everyone longed for: love, a happy family, memories to be proud of.
All the things that I might have, somewhere, with someone else.

But as long as I was
hiding out with Drex pretending my life just started last week, I’d
never know.

As I watched film of
Baptisms and European vacations, one thought kept pounding through my
head. I was a coward. A coward who wanted her sexy little fantasy to
go on forever. Who wanted to forget that anything existed but right
now.

I glanced at Drex, who
was consumed in the film along with everyone else. There were video
snippets of him and Scott at openings and publicity events, and
Brooke was always in the background or on Drex’s arm. He looked in
his element, surrounded by other good-looking, successful people. And
Brooke was one of them. She might not be the best at her job, but she
had absolutely nothing to hide. And with her long legs and raven
hair, she looked amazing standing next to Drex.

What did I have to
offer him? Nothing but a pile of lies and an unknown past. The future
was even murkier. If things continued like this, we’d always need a
story, a load of crap we told people so they didn’t think we were
crazy.

I felt Drex’s strong,
reassuring hand on my thigh. My body responded instantly, every nerve
flaring at his touch. As we sat here, I might have a family like
Scott Marshall did, but they had no idea where I was. Or they’d
lost track of me years ago. Maybe I was a hole in someone’s life,
an empty space that would never be filled.

And what if – my
heart spasmed at the thought. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Whatever had happened to me might have happened to someone I loved.
We might have been victims of a crime, or a terrible accident. It
could have separated us, or even – killed one of us. If it was
severe enough to affect my memory, there was telling how bad it had
really been.

Or…maybe we were
criminals ourselves. Wanderers, preying on the innocent and trusting.
I sounded educated, but there were plenty of well-spoken con artists
out there. Maybe I had no partner and I was a one-woman crime spree,
stealing and manipulating my way around the South. No wonder I could
steal food and tie up truckers like a pro. One day it had caught up
with me in the Texas desert, but even with amnesia I’d managed to
avoid capture.

And now here I was,
dressed to the nines among Houston’s wealthiest citizens, a thief
in a thousand-dollar dress. And Drex was the most believable part of
my disguise.

No wonder I didn’t
want to know the truth. The possibilities were endless, and awful.
They might be better than I feared, or at least as bad.

But there was only one
way to find out.

“Something wrong?”
I whispered.

“No,” Jane said.
“Nothing.”

Nothing? Right. I knew
nothing when I saw it, and this was definitely something. Her hands
were trembling and she was nibbling at her plump bottom lip as if she
wanted to tear it open.