The Look-Alike Bride (Crimson Romance) (17 page)

Fortunately, she had chosen to wear Zara’s shocking pink silk blouse—one that left her arms and part of her chest bare—with a tried-and-true pair of her own jeans. Zara would have chosen a pair of skintight white toreador pants, but Leonie figured the blouse was enough of a shock. The color reflected a healthy glow onto her skin and cheered her up just gazing at it. She would just have to bluff her way through the lunch and try to think like Zara.

But it was going to be a really long and stressful lunch.

• • •

The two men, now driving a white rental car, followed them at a distance, careful to keep a car or two between them and the Jeep.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“Positive,” Bolt said. “She’ll come after him, never fear.”

“You’d better be right.” Lloyd stared balefully out the windshield at the Jeep, a small, dark dot climbing a small mountain peak. “So far, the dog goes where she goes.”

“They’ve got to be going to Mountainside Manor. It’s the only thing on this road past this point. The dog will have to stay outside in the car.”

“You hope.”

“It’s the law,” Bolt said blandly. “Animals aren’t allowed in restaurants. For once, the law is on our side.”

Leonie watched the rolling, tree-covered mountains and said little as Adam guided the Jeep straight up the narrow highway, until she realized the restaurant was cut into the side of the mountain near the top. “It looks like it’s going to fall off the mountain.”

“No chance of that.” Adam leaped out and came around to help her step down. “The view from the dining room is fantastic. You’ll love it.”

When Adam took her arm and led her toward a table, she was so mesmerized by the spectacular view of Hot Springs far below the mountain, she didn’t immediately realize the table was occupied by three people rather than the two he had mentioned.

Adam brought her back to earth abruptly.

“I’d like you to meet my mother, angel,” he said, “Frances Silverthorne. And this is my brother, Jeremy, and his wife, Maureen.”

Leonie gulped. For one brief instant, her surroundings whirled around her. How, she asked herself, through the roaring in her ears, would Zara handle this one?

With finesse, of course. That was how Zara handled everything—as if she knew exactly what was going on, which Leonie didn’t, most of the time.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said in what she knew were thin, fading tones, and somehow managed to mitigate her voice by turning on a warm smile. “I’m Zara Daniel. Don’t we have a wonderful view of the city from here?”

“Wonderful,” Jeremy agreed, casting a meaningful glance at Adam as he stood to shake her hand.

Jeremy Silverthorne looked like an older version of Adam, with the same green eyes and dark hair. Maureen, his wife, was a striking brunette whose brown eyes reflected a sharp intelligence and sense of humor.

Frances Silverthorne retained the dignified beauty and peaceful gaze of one who had been the cherished wife of a successful man. Leonie recognized the look because her own mother had it in spades. She was a woman Leonie would love to converse with—under almost any other circumstances.

At the moment, however, the only thought rampaging through her brain was that she was deceiving them all, including Adam. She felt like a liar and a thief. None of Zara’s lectures about serving her country could mitigate her deception.

Adam seated her then took the chair beside her, smiling warmly at her. While she pretended to concentrate on the menu, Adam’s relatives teased him about his old Jeep and its effect on her hair.

Great. That meant her hair probably looked like a tornado-struck haystack.

“I’m so happy to know you, Miss Daniel.” Adam’s mother probably had no idea she had successfully frozen Leonie’s very blood. “What a beautiful blouse you’re wearing. You must tell me where you found it.”

Leonie almost swallowed her tongue. Where did Zara do most of her shopping? She had no idea, even though Zara had told her in great detail about the exclusive boutiques she patronized.

“Oh. My blouse.” She looked down at it and wished she’d worn almost anything else. Moreover, her fingers itched to throw Zara’s silver windbreaker over her bare shoulders. With Adam’s mother, in a blue knit dress and matching jacket, gazing kindly at her, Leonie felt dreadfully underdressed. Un-dressed was more like it. “Well, I definitely remember buying the jeans at J.C. Penney.”

Zara was going to kill her, Leonie thought miserably. Zara eschewed J.C. Penney and any other store that wasn’t an exclusive boutique full of the sexy, flashy clothing she favored.

Maureen and Frances both laughed with understanding.

“I’ll bet you bought that blouse and a dozen other things at the same time,” Maureen said. “Adam says you live in Houston. Do you shop at the Galleria?”

Leonie nearly fainted. She had slipped, and badly. True, she lived in Houston, but Zara lived in Washington, D.C. She should have followed her first instincts and avoided Adam Silverthorne from the very beginning. Enjoying herself with him, she had forgotten her cover story and had somehow released the fact that she lived in Houston.

Operatives, Zara would lecture, couldn’t afford to forget their cover stories. That kind of slip cost good agents their lives every day.

“I have shopped at the Galleria,” she said, with perfect truth. “It’s one of my favorite places. My sister lives in Houston, and she’s taken me around when I’ve visited.” She hastened to change the subject. “But I think this blouse came from a boutique in New York. Do you live in Dallas, Mrs. Silverthorne?”

“Call me Frances, dear. I live in Little Rock, but I do spend a lot of time in Dallas.”

“Keeping an eye on Adam,” Jeremy supplied, grinning. “No telling what he’d get up to if she didn’t watch him.”

“When she isn’t keeping an eye on you,” Maureen said to Jeremy. “She’s promised to come to us next week and show me how to brew that special nerve tea you like so much. Maybe that’ll help get you through this merger alive.”

Leonie smiled dutifully and tried not to let herself get sucked into believing she was a member of the Silverthorne family. That was the way they treated her, and to Leonie, nothing could have been more seductive. Although she appreciated the love and acceptance they projected toward her, she couldn’t kid herself into believing it was all for her.

She was Zara, not Leonie. They responded to Zara’s all-embracing charm. She had to remember that.

“What do you do, Miss Daniel?” Frances asked. “Adam said something about—” She caught Adam’s eye and broke off. “I’m sorry to say I’ve already forgotten what he told me.”

Leonie chanced a look at him, but Adam’s face bore no identifiable expression. Perhaps Frances had memory problems.

“Please call me Zara. I’m basically an executive secretary,” she said with as much of Zara’s zest as she could manage. “My boss is head of a political action committee that represents the fertilizer industry. It’s exciting work, complete with a weird schedule and eccentric employees, located in the most dynamic city in the country. What else can a woman ask for?”

“No traffic and a job that makes a difference to the lives of young people, that’s what else,” Maureen said, chuckling. “That’s what I asked for, and that’s what I got.”

Leonie came to attention.

Rightly interpreting Leonie’s involuntary show of interest, Maureen smiled with understanding. “That’s right. Since I don’t have children of my own yet, I decided to adopt about a hundred of them. I teach chemistry and earth science at our local high school.”

Leonie exhaled slowly so she wouldn’t blurt out the fact that she was a teacher herself, and for many of the same reasons.

“We’re very proud of Maureen,” Frances Silverthorne said with a warm glance at her daughter-in-law. “I was a teacher, too. My subject was high school algebra.”

“That sounds so interesting,” Leonie said, careful not to reveal the full extent of her interest. “Teenagers fascinate me, perhaps because they’re at that age where they’re forming habits that will stay with them all their lives.”

“Perfectly true,” Maureen said. “Lots of them will never know any more science than what they learn in high school.”

Leonie considered her words, decided she’d better shut up while she was ahead, then spoke anyway. “I’ve always thought how much fun it would be teaching teenagers how exercise and diet can change their lives for the better, but—”

“You, too?” Maureen looked delighted. “I’m going to be teaching two health classes next semester. Maybe you know some good books.”

Leonie knew exactly what books to suggest and was full of pointers developed on the job. Fortunately, she caught Jeremy’s curious gaze before she could launch into the subject properly.

“I’m afraid not,” she managed. “So far, it’s just a dream.”

So far as Leonie was concerned, the lunch went downhill after that, even though Adam’s relatives put on a good show of enjoying her company. She had to stay on her toes to avoid saying anything that would reveal her identity. Worse, Adam’s family pushed every button she had in their discussion of teaching as a career.

She found it amazing that Adam’s brother’s wife and his mother were both teachers. Leonie couldn’t have prayed for better—if Adam had been truly hers instead of Zara’s. If she believed for one minute that Adam was serious about her, rather than just wanting a brief vacation affair with a woman who knew the score.

On that note, she ordered a steak and a green salad. She needed the protein to keep her feel-good neurotransmitters in heavy production. She had a feeling she was going to need them if she was going to give a good performance as Adam’s vacation girlfriend to his family.

Leonie scolded herself. She was getting ahead of the situation, thinking this lunch had anything at all to do with Zara’s relationship with Adam. According to Zara, the cabin Adam was staying at belonged to his brother, Jeremy. That meant Jeremy and Maureen were in Hot Springs to enjoy their cabin, not to meet some girlfriend of Adam’s.

Frances Silverthorne clearly was a welcome visitor at any time. Both her sons adored her. Probably, she was simply paying a motherly visit to her sons at a time when she could catch them both together at Jeremy’s lakeside cabin.

So why, Leonie wondered, did she persist in believing Frances had come here especially to check her out as a possible bride for Adam?

• • •

Adam decided the lunch wasn’t nearly as grueling as it could have been, even though Maureen’s slip had nearly caused Leonie to blurt out the truth about her job. He could almost see her every thought as she considered how best to answer every question his relatives posed after that.

How he was going to explain this little question-and-answer session to Leonie was another matter. It was perfectly obvious to him that his mother was assessing her suitability as a member of the Silverthorne family. He hated to imagine what Leonie thought of the third degree his family put her through.

Not that his mother and Maureen weren’t perfectly polite in their questions. It was his own fault for telling them the truth about Leonie’s masquerade, and that she taught physical education for the Houston Independent School District. He knew they wanted badly to feel Leonie out about her pedagogy and her teaching philosophy.

Worse, Leonie was dying to tell them. He was rapidly becoming aware that she had strong beliefs on the subject of teaching physical education, and she had at last located an interested audience, one that understood exactly what she was talking about.

“I think,” Leonie announced, “that there’s nothing more important than getting the idea across to kids these days that if they eat nothing but fast foods, they can’t expect any brain function to speak of, and they’re dashing their hopes of getting into Harvard or Yale.”

“That bad?” Adam asked, remembering the many pizzas and hamburgers he had consumed during college.

“Worse.” Leonie leaned forward, radiant with enthusiasm. “And the hardest thing is getting it across to these young beauty queens that eating a solid, high-protein breakfast is the first step toward maintaining a normal weight for the rest of their lives.”

Adam watched her, enchanted anew. If he’d thought she was stunning before, she absolutely glowed with energy and passion. Why hadn’t he realized how she felt about her job?

Because she was pretending to be Zara, he reminded himself. Zara was very different from her sister.

He’d never seen anything like it. Leonie actually
loved
teaching teenagers about the connection between their bodies and their minds. He had been right. Leonie was passionate about everything she did, including her work.

“You are so right.” Maureen slapped the table lightly with her palm. “My ten o’clock classes always resound with under-the-desk crackling from candy bar wrappers.”

“Ten’s the time their blood sugar really hits the skids from eating no breakfast,” Leonie said, nodding. “No wonder grade school children are so much at risk for Type II diabetes these days.”

“They need to take the candy and soft drink machines out of the schools,” Maureen declared.

“They’ll just sneak junk food into their lockers,” Jeremy said. “You can’t legislate what a kid’s going to eat anymore than you can tell him what to think.”

“Do you remember how we never used to be hungry until noon because our mothers made us eat eggs and bacon and biscuits for breakfast?” Leonie was clearly in her element. “The public school systems need more mothers like that.”

“My feelings exactly,” Frances chimed in. “That’s why I stopped teaching when I had my boys. I didn’t go back until they were in high school, and even then, I made sure the family ate a good breakfast together every morning.”

“Even if she had to get up at five,” Jeremy added.

“Because breakfast was the only meal we ate together,” Adam finished. “Jeremy and I had football practice and track after school. Plus, Dad worked late a lot, and Mom tutored some of her more challenged students.”

“One thing about teaching physical education is that you don’t have to tutor anyone after school.” Leonie smiled blandly. “Unless, of course, it’s track season, basketball season, or volleyball season. Or swimming season. Or soccer season. ”