Male Order Bride (9 page)

He fiddled with the seat belt, adjusting the buckle to fit
his lap. Then he turned to check the nearest emergency exit from his
seat. Then he pulled the in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket in
front of him and noticed he had read the same copy on the trip up. He
put the magazine back and flattened the newspaper on his knees. Taking
a deep breath, he turned to speak to her.

She was staring out the window at the last-minute baggage
being stowed on board. She must have felt him staring, because she
turned and looked at him and her eyes quickly darted away.

"You headed all the way to Biloxi/Gulfport?" Rafe asked,
deciding it was now or never to get her attention. Once that initial
contact was made, the rest would be downhill. Except he had picked a
bad opening line.

"Yes," she answered. "This is a nonstop flight."

Terrific
, Rafe thought.
Bomb
one for an aviator
. He smiled, hoping that his
"how-silly-of-me" grin would hold her interest long enough for him to
try to speak and say something more intelligent. "I guess what I meant
is, are you from the Coast or from Atlanta?"

Now, that sounded legitimate enough for one stranger to be
asking another stranger, he decided. Harmless.

"I live on the Coast," she told him. "How about you?"

He smiled. Her question had been prompted by politeness
more than genuine interest. Her fingers were playing with the edges of
her magazine, telling him he had done well to get her attention before
the plane left the ground, or she would have been walled off by its
pages.

"Biloxi's my home."
Fair-enough answer
,
he decided.
Now, don't blow it by asking where she's been
hiding all your life. Don't ask the tacky question: Are you married
?
He already knew the answer, and she would probably appreciate a male
who didn't ask that for a change.

The flight attendant was walking down the aisle checking
to be sure all carry-on luggage was stowed beneath seats and seat belts
buckled. Rafe turned his attention to the flight attendant and smiled
as she passed. Better not tire out Lacey Adams with too much talk about
nothing before he got a real chance to get into a lot of talk about
something. Let her think that last was just a friendly comment. He'd
made voice contact. He could go from there in a few
minutes—when he had something better to say.

He turned back to Lacey and smiled his "I'm-harmless"
smile.

She was staring out the window again.

Rafe waited until the plane left the terminal and the
flight attendant had finished her speech before he attempted talking to
Lacey again. "Hope the weather is as good in Biloxi as it has been
here," he said, thinking what a mundane subject to start with, not
exactly the kind of thing you could term "memorable".

"Uhm."

And not a subject that you could do a lot with, he
decided. "I'm R.C.," he said, holding out his hand.

She took it and smiled, placing her own hand in his for a
shake. "Lacey."

"Do you get to Atlanta very often?"

"Not too often," she answered. "I'm a fashion designer and
I own a boutique. I come here occasionally on buying trips."

"Really," he said, impressed that he was finally getting
her to open up to him. "I would have thought New York was the place for
that sort of thing."

"It is. But Atlanta has become one of the most aggressive
cities of the South. Houston is another fashion center. I'm there
frequently also."

"You must log a lot of air miles," he commented.

He heard what sounded like a small sigh, but when he
looked at her, she was still smiling. "I do. It gets a bit hectic and
bothersome. But I enjoy it or I wouldn't do it. I have enough people
working with me who would jump at the chance to travel, so I feel lucky
to be able to get away and leave the responsibilities behind with them.
Of course, sometimes I let them buy for me."

He nodded. "Sounds like you have quite an operation."

She shook her head. "Not that big. Just select in the
kinds of things I sell. I just moved to a new location for my
boutique," she explained, "on the Back Bay. I design originals on
orders and market a select line of clothes that I think are a little
different from what you'd find in a department store."

He laughed. "Somehow you don't strike me as
department-store quality."

She blushed. "Thank you. I like my designs to stand out."

"Is that one of yours?" he asked. "That dress you're
wearing?"

Lacey glanced down as if she had forgotten what she had
put on that morning. "Yes, it is."

"Very lovely," he said, meaning it. "I noticed you when
you walked up to the ticket counter. I had no idea I'd be so fortunate
as to get the seat next to you," he said, smiling, laughing to himself.
"The color attracted me. What do you call that shade?"

"Blue."

He laughed. "I thought you fashion designers had strange
and inventive names for colors and didn't call a zigzag a zigzag or a
spot a spot."

"We don't call zigzags zigzags," she said, laughing with
him. "We call the pattern herringbone. And spots are dots."

"Oh," he said, nodding grandly. "I'll have to remember
that. Amazing what you can learn sitting next to someone on an
airplane." He turned and smiled at her.

"Actually," she said, "I don't go in for all those cutesy
titles for things. I like to call a spade a spade and an ace an ace.
People can relate to the simpler things much better. When they don't
understand something, they tend not to buy it."

He liked that attitude—straight, up front, open.
Not at all like his sitting and talking with her right now, as if he
had no idea who she was. "Have you done this sort of thing long?"

"I've had my own business about two years," she said, "but
I've been working with clothes and designs and fashion merchandising
since college." She didn't add how long ago that was, but guessing, he
put her in her early thirties or possibly late twenties. She carried
herself with assurance and maturity, but there was something intangibly
youthful about her as well. She would blend well with any age group. He
found himself wondering how Angela would like Lacey.

"How about you?" she asked.

"Oh," he said, searching quickly for a reply. He hadn't
wanted to focus the discussion on his business. All he wanted was to
know about her. He'd have to be careful and not give so much away that
she'd get a hint of who he really was. "I'm a traveling salesman," he
said, thinking that was the broadest term he could use for his work. In
effect he
was
a salesman. He sold himself. He
sold other people's ideas with his marketing research and consultation.
And he was involved in so many different kinds of enterprises that it
would be hard to describe what he did. But if he told her his usual job
title, the "marketing consultant" might give him away. He wasn't sure
what George had told Lacey about him.

"Then you must travel a lot also."

"It comes in spurts," he answered. Quick! Get the subject
back on her. "How do you like New York?"

"Love it!" she said, smiling. "I get so filled up with
ideas there I can only take three or four days at a time, then I have
to come home to recharge. Living on the Gulf Coast has its advantages
in being so restful after the pace of New York."

He nodded. He had spent enough time in the Big Apple to
know what she meant. "Wonderful place to visit, but I agree. I like the
country atmosphere of Biloxi."

Lacey frowned. "I never thought of Biloxi as the country,"
she said. "I think of it more as the beach, but I suppose it does have
a lot of wide-open spaces, once you get away from the beach."

Careful
, he warned himself.
You
almost gave yourself away
. "I live a little way out," he
said, "so I tend to think of my few acres as the country."
Time
for a subject change
, he told himself. "Tell me, how did you
get started designing clothes?"

"That's kind of hard to pinpoint," she answered. "I'd have
to go back to my childhood."

"It's a long enough flight," he said, encouraging her to
speak, anything that would take the conversation off himself.

"I always liked drawing and coloring as a child. That was
probably the beginning. Nobody in my family can even draw a crooked
line. When I was small I used to spend hours with paper cutouts and
paper dolls, drawing more outfits onto the models than they came with."
She stopped speaking a moment to look out the window as the plane lined
up on the runway and the engines revved for takeoff. She turned back to
him, a flush on her face from excitement. "I always love flying.
There's something exhilarating about this huge piece of machinery
lifting off the ground."

He agreed, and he wanted to tell her his own fascination
with flight, but that would be hitting too close to home. Better just
to shake his head and smile.

"Anyway," she said, once the plane had lifted off and
climbed enough to give her a good view, "what really started my
interest in designs was a yeoman warden's hat."

"A what?"

"You know, one of those hats the guards at the Tower of
London wear."

He nodded. "What did that have to do with it?"

"Everything," she said, laughing. "Someone brought me one
as a souvenir from a trip to England. I just liked the look of it and I
wanted to wear it so all my friends would ask me where it came from.
But I didn't have any kind of outfit that it would complement. So I
designed one. Of course it was just adapting a dress pattern and making
that my home-economics project for the school year, but it worked.
That's when I started collecting hats also."

He smiled to encourage her to continue talking without his
interruptions. It was easier to keep the conversation in her territory.

"In college one of my projects was to design something for
every hat in my collection, which by then had become quite large.
Friends who traveled knew I collected hats, so they would bring me one
from wherever they had been. Some of the stories that went with how
they carried the hats back to me are funny too. So each hat has its
history. Then I did a little traveling myself and added to the
collection even more. I have them displayed around my boutique now, and
periodically I take on that original challenge to see how differently I
can redesign something for each hat again." She finished speaking and
grinned.

He smiled back.

"That's a nice hat you have," she said, looking at the
cavalry-officer hat he was wearing this trip.

Damn
, he thought,
I hope
she doesn't ask me about it. With luck, she won't know what the gold
ties around the band mean
. "Thank you," he said, hoping he
could head her off at the pass with an explanation that wouldn't relate
to the military. He couldn't help it if his favorite hat was the one
he'd worn in Vietnam. "It's a Stetson."

"Really?" she said. "They're quite legendary."

"It's a good hat," he confirmed. "They hold up for years.
I send them to a hat cleaner periodically, but can you believe this
one's almost twenty years old?"

"May I?" she asked, holding her hand out to touch his hat.

He handed it to her. All it said on the inside was
"Stetson." There weren't any dog tags hanging from the brim.

"That's a quality hat. Quality is something I try to put
into my work. I want it to last. Because fashions keep swinging around
in cycles if you give them long enough. Very nice hat," she said again,
handing it back to him.

"Thank you."

"You know, in all the hats I have, I don't
think… no, I don't," she said, pausing, then resuming what
she was saying, "have a cowboy hat, or western hat—or what
is
the proper term?"

"Stetson," he said, smiling.

She laughed. "I'll have to add one to my collection. The
best way to do it would be to go to Texas, I suppose, and pick one up
on my next buying trip."

"What you need to do is to go to the Stetson factory
outlet in St. Joseph, Missouri."

"Where's that?"

"Near Kansas City."

She nodded. "The western look was big a few years ago, and
last year it was the Santa Fe style that was popular. But I suppose
that rugged-cowboy appeal will never truly die down."

"Hope not," he said, touching his hat. "I'd hate to find
my horse riderless."

"Do you have a horse?" she asked, looking at him.

Rafe hesitated. They were hitting close to home again.
Tread
carefully, Chancellor
, he told himself.
Don't
give yourself away
. "I grew up on a ranch," he said, which
was true enough. "My family always had horses around. Once you get
ropin' and ridin' in your blood, I guess you never get rid of it. Kind
of like traveling."

"But you can burn out on anything," she said, reaching up
to massage the back of her neck.

Rafe watched her movements without her being aware of how
interested he was in her. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

"What? Oh. My neck? My back's stiff. It's from carrying my
suitcases. It happens every trip. This is the tiring end of the
journey."

He smiled his "I-know-what-you-mean" smile. What he
wouldn't give to put his hands on her bare skin and give her a back rub
and massage… and make long passionate love to her through
the night. He smiled. George sure knew how to pick a woman for him.
He couldn't wait to have dinner with her on Saturday evening. And
although he
could
wait, he didn't
want
to wait to make love to her. But he would, of course—the
discovery would be half of the adventure.

Lacey hummed as she went into the boutique on Friday
morning. The memory of meeting R.C. on the plane still weighed on her
mind. She still didn't know his last name. But that would come. He knew
hers, plus her phone number, and he had said he would give her a call
to have dinner with her sometime soon.