The Look-Alike Bride (Crimson Romance) (7 page)

“You have to admit, it doesn’t sound good,” Leonie said, interested in spite of herself. “What are black roses supposed to mean?”

“According to her, they implied a death curse.” Adam was laughing, even as his warm, appreciative green gaze rested on her face. “He spent about three nights at my place, thanks to a flower shop clerk who refused to call his wife and admit that she’d interpreted ‘deep red’ a little too deeply.”

“The wife must have been rather superstitious.” Leonie found herself unable to meet Adam’s intense gaze for very long. “Who would ever think of something like that?”

“You aren’t superstitious?” Adam asked, watching her.

“Who, me?” She suspected Adam was quizzing her to see if she was easily spooked. “I’m always crossing paths with black cats and walking under ladders. So far, so good.”

“I’ll bet you even open umbrellas in the house.”

Leonie faced him. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“Never mind.” Adam chuckled, still gazing into her face with an intensity Leonie found uncomfortable. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, either.”

Before Leonie could reply, the teacher called for their attention. It was a good thing. Another moment of that intense stare, and she’d have painted that moustache on Adam’s face anyway.

She hoped Zara called that evening. Leonie had a few things to say to her about the alleged safety of her current job as a stand-in—and a lot to ask about Zara’s relationship with Adam Silverthorne.

• • •

The man in the boat across the lake from Zara Daniel’s property relentlessly cast his fly and watched the cabin. Around noon, his partner trolled up in an aluminum bass boat, dragging a full stringer of fish behind him.

The partner, Bolt, halted his motor. Observers would have noticed nothing but two dedicated fishermen, comparing catches.

“We got a problem,” Bolt said.

“Says who? The guy didn’t spend the night. In fact, he left at ten. Far as I could tell, they sat at the kitchen table eating cookies the entire time.”

“Smith says the woman isn’t Zara Daniel.”

“What the hell does he know?” the fly fisherman, Lloyd, exploded. “I’m the one sitting out here throwing this stupid bug all over the water and hanging around outside her windows, and I say it’s Zara Daniel.”

“An operative saw Zara Daniel early this morning in Istanbul. He’s certain it was her.”

“He’s wrong,” Lloyd stated, and cast his fly again.

“Smith thinks we’re wasting the organization’s time and money.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Lloyd said in sour tones. “I’ve been on her two days, and so far the most exciting thing she’s done is swim in the lake.”

“That was exciting, all right.”

For a moment, the two men dwelled on visions of Zara Daniel in her tiny bikini.

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Lloyd asked. “If Smith doesn’t think we’re keeping Zara Daniel under surveillance, then why are we still here? This was all his idea in the first place.”

“I argued with him, said the operative didn’t know what he was doing, needed to get his eyes checked, the works,” Bolt said. “So Smith’s going to take a few days and check it out further. In the meantime, he’s hinting that we’re incompetent and he might need to replace us. He seems to think we should have noticed the switch.”

“He can replace me anytime,” Lloyd growled. “I hate lakes and fishing poles.”

But both men knew the kind of replacement Smith had in mind had nothing to do with reassigning them to other fields of endeavor.

“Keep watching her,” Bolt said. “We’re supposed to log her activities and visitors until further notice. And if the woman turns out not to be Zara Daniel—”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Even new hires like them knew the penalty for failure.

Neither man intended to fail in this simple assignment.

“I’ll get some photographs and send them to him. We’ll let Smith be the one to tell us this is the wrong woman.” Lloyd shrugged. “He sent us here to watch Zara Daniel, and if this isn’t Zara Daniel, then who is she? We’re just the peons, and we go where he sends us. It’s his job to tell us where the subject is.”

Bolt agreed. “Smith can go soak his head. Tell you what. If we get word that this isn’t Zara Daniel, we’re done.”

In more ways than one
, they both thought.

• • •

Adam decided, after two hours of instruction in basic rock painting, that he could take it or leave it. Preferably, leave it. What he really wanted to take was Leonie Daniel, and from the prickly expression she’d developed, he had about as much chance of that as he had of selling his current artistic effort for a million dollars.

He wondered what on earth he’d said to offend her.

Leonie had painted a fist-sized, oval rock with a black base coat and was now assiduously practicing drawing primroses on a sheet of paper. Her expression indicated this was the most important job of her life, and she didn’t intend to mess it up. Nor did she have time to waste, conversing with a guy named Adam.

Well, he wasn’t going to let her get away with that.

“You’ve made that petal too small.” He pointed with his pencil.

“You weren’t listening.” She lifted her long lashes to give him a chastening stare. “You’re supposed to make some of them smaller.
Verisimilitude
.”

She was right. He hadn’t been listening. He had been watching her. Those lashes, those lips . . .  Adam laughed inwardly at himself. Wait until his brother found out he’d developed what amounted to a gigantic crush on a woman.

He had no doubt that’s all it was—a huge crush. Puppy love, at the ripe old age of thirty-two. For some reason, Leonie Daniel fascinated him on all levels, and he wouldn’t rest until he had her.

After that, who knew? From everything Adam had observed, affairs lasted until the couple involved had worked through the crush and faced reality. Reality happened when the lovers realized they had nothing in common except a physical fascination with each other.

Reality was a real bummer when it came to actual romance that would last a lifetime. Still, for the first time in his life, Adam was willing to take the chance of crashing headlong into reality, if he could have a few weeks of physical fascination—and Leonie Daniel—in his life.

“Veri-what?” he asked, bringing his mind back.

“Verisimilitude,” Leonie repeated. She sketched another primrose without looking at him. “Real primroses have some petals smaller than the others, so the artist tries to imitate reality by painting them the way they appear in nature.”

“Oh.” He glanced at his own empty sheet of paper. “I must be lacking in verisimilitude.”

Adam was experienced enough to realize Zara Daniel would have gone to bed with him in an instant, but Leonie was another matter. He didn’t want to scare her off.

He’d have to be careful. Zara was thoroughly modern in her approach to sexuality, but Leonie gave the impression of being a little more old-fashioned. He was probably going to have to spend time getting to know her.

Adam looked at his blank sheet of white paper and grinned. He could live with that. Mentally, he rearranged his schedule to allow for another week or two of vacation time.

“What are you grinning about?” Leonie regarded him and his blank sheet of paper suspiciously. “You haven’t drawn a single flower.”

He pushed his paper toward her. “I was hoping you’d oblige. Primroses are outside my usual repertoire.”

“They’re outside mine, too.” She sounded exasperated. “Why do you think I’m taking this class?”

“Please?” He put on what he hoped was a pleading, little-boy expression.

“Oh, all right.” She took his blank sheet grudgingly. “But I’d better not hear one word out of you about small petals.”

“Verisimilitude,” he murmured, watching her.

She ignored him and bent over the sheet, swiftly sketching in a few primroses. He indulged himself by watching the play of light and shadow off her long lashes and along the planes of her high cheekbones. If he leaned closer, he could inhale the fresh, clean scent of the perfume she favored—a scent totally unlike the heavy perfume Zara usually wore. He took a deep breath and entered something akin to a dream state.

“Quit staring,” she commanded. “You’re going to make me really mess these up.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your artistic concentration.”

She muttered something about his lack of artistic attitude and bent over the paper once more.

Adam suppressed another smile. There was no sense in really annoying her, but he longed to tease her a little, just to see her flash those blue eyes in his direction.

“What about leaves?” he asked.

She reared up her head. “We haven’t gotten to leaves yet. Didn’t you pay
any
attention to the teacher?”

“I must have missed it. Business problems,” he invented hastily. In another minute, she was going to demand to know why he had signed up for the class if he didn’t intend to paint any flowers on rocks. “Something’s come up in Dallas. I might have to cut my vacation short and go back to deal with it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She looked up, concerned, and studied his face. “Is it anything I can help you with?”

He suffered her scrutiny a moment then transferred his gaze to the primroses she was drawing on his behalf. “No one can help me, I’m afraid. It’s one of those decisions I was hoping to avoid. Naturally, it’s now become pressing.”

For a moment, he toyed with the idea of spending a couple of days back in Dallas to get his head on straight again, but he discarded it. Two days in Dallas was plenty of time for some other male to move in on the territory Adam had staked out as his own.

“Well, don’t worry about the class.” Leonie viewed him with concern. “I’ll teach you anything you miss if you need to take off. But if you’re going to be gone for longer than a day or two, maybe you ought to speak to the teacher and get a refund. After all, she lives here year round and will be teaching other classes that may be held at a better time for you.”

Adam experienced a twinge of annoyance that she didn’t sound particularly disturbed at his proposed absence. She ought to at least say she was going to miss him. He scowled at the rock he’d coaxed Leonie into painting black. No way was he clearing out and leaving the field ripe for another competitor.

“Thank you,” he said. “But it may not come to that. A few hours on the telephone this afternoon might take care of it.” He switched to the subject that most interested him. “What are you doing later?”

She looked startled. “I have some shopping to do—”

“Good. Then you’ll be free this evening.” He hoped she couldn’t detect how much he longed to kiss her. “What do you say we watch the sun set together?”

“I don’t—”

She intended to refuse. Adam rushed into speech, determined to prevent that.

“There’s a place I know at the top of a mountain,” he said persuasively. “It’s actually a roadside park, but the view to the west is spectacular. You’ll enjoy it.” He gave her an innocent smile. “Artistic inspiration. If we’re going to be painting, we’ll need all the inspiration we can get.”

“But Butch—”

“Butch is invited, too. He’s obviously a sophisticated dog. No doubt, he’ll appreciate a beautiful sunset.”

Leonie shut her mouth and looked away. “You’re right. Maybe I should bring my camera.”

He was going to do this right. He would wait to kiss her until she trusted him. The effort might kill him, but Adam knew the payoff would be worth it.

“In that case, I’ll come by for you at five,” he said. “It’ll give us time to find exactly the right spot and get settled.”

When she nodded, Adam held back his sigh of relief and tried to look as if her agreement to spend some time with him wasn’t that big a deal. Since when had a woman’s acceptance become so important to him, it actually eased a pain deep inside?

Something weird was going on, and Adam wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was.

He leaned in closer to watch her draw more primroses. Once again, her soft scent wrecked havoc on his senses, both intriguing him and enticing him. The sensation brought both pleasure and pain, to a degree Adam had never before experienced.

A wise man would head back to Dallas before he got in any deeper. Since he knew he had no intention of leaving, short of being dragged away, Adam could only presume he’d lost his mind.

No pain, no gain, he told himself firmly, and leaned in a little closer.

“Are you sure it was Adam Silverthorne who brought you a plate of cookies?” Zara asked, when she telephoned from her undisclosed location early that afternoon.

Zara sounded both totally astonished and extremely peeved, Leonie thought. Leonie couldn’t blame her. After a year or more of being ignored by Adam, all of a sudden he deigned to notice her, and the “her” he noticed wasn’t even Zara.

“Does he have a twin?” Leonie asked.

Zara didn’t bother to answer.

“Maybe he sent his twin to the lake for the same reason you sent me,” Leonie suggested helpfully. “Maybe he wants the people watching him to have someone to watch.”

“That doesn’t make a bit of sense,” Zara complained. “Who’d be watching Adam? He’s a civilian now.”

“How should I know? He does drive an old, open-air Jeep, doesn’t he?” Leonie asked. “He claims he’s Adam Silverthorne, at any rate. Maybe he’s just trying to be neighborly.”

“Neighborly, my foot,” Zara muttered. “What a time to end up in—Never mind. Just don’t do anything to scare him off.”

“Who, me? No way. In fact, I’ll make sure I’m wearing your bikini the next time he drops by.”

“Rub it in,” Zara said, with a distinct whine.

Leonie was glad she had toned down the cookie incident and that she had only mentioned running into Adam at church. Something told her to keep the lunch date quiet, and to forget Adam’s presence in her rock-painting class. When Zara returned, Adam could fill her in. Let Zara find out for herself what it was like to have to fish for the details of classroom incidents and shared lunches.

Leonie bit back a grin and hoped it wouldn’t come through in her voice. “By the way,” she said meekly, “I signed up for a crafts class.”