The Debutante. Elizabeth Bevarly

she thought she caught a glimpse of movement outside, in the bushes that lay just beyond the glass. She noticed then that the entire sunroom was surrounded by outdoor greenery, which, like the potted plants inside, added to the exotic feel of the place. No doubt something small and hungry was out there scavenging about, she thought. Though she doubted it was any more exotic than an armadillo. She placed her open hand against the cool glass of the window, spreading her fingers wide in an effort to block some of the reflection of the light behind her, to see if she could tell what was out there. Narrowing her eyes, she waited to see if the movement would come again.

      “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was someone here.”

      Lanie spun around quickly at the sound of the masculine voice, startled not only by the disruption to her solitary contentment, but also because she had genuinely forgotten she was in a public place full of people, any of whom could have wandered into the sunroom off the busy hallway beyond the door. Startled turned into delighted, however, when she realized who the masculine voice belonged to. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and she had no trouble making out with—uh, she meant making out—Miles Fortune. Of all people. Well, well, well.

      “That’s okay,” she said. “I was actually just getting ready to leave.”

      And why did she tell him that? she wondered. A handsome man she’d found fascinating for years shows up in a room where she’d have his undivided attention, and she tells him she has to be going? What was the matter with her?

      “Don’t let me scare you off,” he said.

      As if, Lanie thought. He was way too yummy to be scary. Most of the photos she’d seen of him had depicted him in casual clothes, everything from grubby ranch denim to preppy golf shirts and trousers to blazers with open-collar shirts and Dockers. Tonight, though, he’d dressed for the formal fund-raiser in a dark suit with a plum-colored dress shirt and a dappled silk necktie knotted at his throat.

      Snazzy, she couldn’t help thinking. Not a bad dresser for a guy who made his living chasing cows. She wondered if he had a woman stashed somewhere who helped him with his wardrobe. She’d read enough about Miles Fortune to know he never stayed with one woman for very long and, in fact, had dated some of the flashiest, most sophisticated women in Texas. But he had a sister and female cousins, and everyone knew those Fortunes were very close. Maybe one of his feminine relatives helped him make his sartorial selections. Most men couldn’t be bothered with that kind of thing. Especially those whose chief interests were bovine in nature.

      Then again, part of Miles Fortune’s appeal to all those flashy, sophisticated women was how great he looked all the time, Lanie reminded herself. So which was a result of the other? One of those chicken-or-the-egg things she’d probably be better off not thinking about, she supposed.

      “You didn’t scare me off,” she said, remembering that he’d made a comment that had invited a reply.

      He smiled in response, a smile that was sweet and dreamy and—there was just no escaping it—droolworthy. Lanie battled the temptation to swipe her hand over her mouth and smiled back.

      “Good,” he said. “Because the last thing I’d want to do is scare off a nice girl like you.”

      A nice girl, Lanie echoed to herself, turning fully around now to face him. Funny, she hadn’t been called that for a long time. Maybe not ever. Whenever she was mentioned in the society pages or elsewhere, she was usually tagged with some cutesy nickname by whomever was doing the mentioning, and rarely were the nicknames in any way appropriate—or earned. Every time Lanie visited a new town, she was awarded some new, usually alliterative label she didn’t deserve. The Dallas Delilah. The Houston Heartbreaker. The Fort Worth Firebrand. The San Antonio Seductress. The Amarillo Angel. The Corpus Christi Cutie. Or just the all-inclusive Texas Tornado. And then there was the one she had to suffer when she was at home in Austin: Government Goddess.

      Oh, all right. So maybe she did kind of like that last one.

      At any rate, “nice girl” had never been anywhere in the mix. Not even when she’d gone to Nacogdoches. No, there she’d been The Knockout. So hearing Miles Fortune refer to her as a nice girl now made a little ripple of pleasure purl right through her.

      “Hi, I’m Miles Fortune,” he introduced himself. With a hint of self-consciousness—though whether real or manufactured to put her at ease, Lanie couldn’t have said—he strode slowly across the room to where she stood, stopping when there was still a good three feet separating them, obviously not wanting her to feel threatened by him. Then, looking uncertain about how welcome the gesture would be, he extended his hand for her to shake it.

      Lanie took it automatically, totally comfortable with the masculine form of address, because she’d been shaking the hands of her father’s colleagues since she was a little girl. Something like that had always presented a great photo opportunity, after all. Besides, she didn’t feel at all threatened by Miles Fortune, since he was in no way a threatening guy.

      “I know who you are,” she told him, still smiling warmly as she gave his hand a spirited shake.

      He arched his dark eyebrows in surprise at the comment, even though Lanie was certain that what she had said couldn’t possibly come as a surprise to him. “Then you have me at a disadvantage,” he replied, still holding her hand, even though he’d stopped shaking it. “Because I don’t know who you are.”

      It took a moment for the comment to register with Lanie, because she honestly didn’t think anyone had ever said such a thing to her before. Invariably, people knew who she was: the governor’s daughter. Even before her father had ascended to that lofty position, people had still known who Lanie was. When the Meyerses had lived in Dallas, she’d been the mayor’s daughter. Before that, in the third district, she’d been the alderman’s daughter. Her father had held a political office of one kind or another since before she’d been born, and Lanie had always attended functions with him and her mother where she had been introduced as his daughter.

      Which made her realize, perhaps for the first time, just how intrinsically her identity was linked to whatever position her father happened to hold. Her social life before turning eighteen had always been limited to functions that were also attended by her parents, something due largely to matters of security, she knew. Even before her father had climbed the higher rungs of the political ladder, he’d deliberately stayed visible in the public eye in order to reach those rungs, and he’d made sure his family was visible, too, because it made him more sympathetic.

      Ironically, however, that public life had brought with it an essential need for privacy. Anyone who held public office might become a target for some lunatic. And, by extension, so might that person’s family. So Tom and Luanne Meyers had made sure their young daughter was well protected at all times. That had meant keeping her out of public when they weren’t with her, something that had rather limited Lanie’s social life as an adolescent.

      Lanie had never resented it, though. Well, not as much as she probably could or should have. She had just shrugged it off as a simple misfortune of birth. She had had benefits that a lot of teenage girls would never have, and that had provided her some compensation. Instead of a single bedroom, she’d had a suite of rooms at home. Her wardrobe had been full of party dresses and shoes for the appearances she made with her parents. She went to the salon twice a month to have her hair and nails done. She’d met the members of both *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys when they’d played Dallas. And she’d visited movie sets and met television stars. For not having a social life, Lanie had been a big part of Texas society.

      And she’d reassured herself by promising herself that she’d take advantage of adulthood once she turned eighteen, then strike out on her own and make her own impression on the world. But even over the past several years, when Lanie had been struggling to stand on her own two feet, she’d still never found herself in a situation where people didn’t know who she was: the governor’s daughter.

      The realization didn’t set well with her.

      And maybe that was why she decided not to tell Miles Fortune her name. Well, not her full name. Because suddenly