Lady With A Past. Ryanne Corey

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СКАЧАТЬ before she had looked at Glitter Baby’s photograph, that the jig was up. This man was from the world she used to inhabit, a world she knew only too well. If he could benefit from publicizing her whereabouts, he would.

      She became conscious of poor Boo’s exhausted wheezing and stopped her frenzied pacing. Sweet dog, he had no idea the sky was falling in on them. He only knew he’d missed his mid-morning nap and his mistress had suddenly gone crazy. Maxie sat on the porch swing and scratched Boo under the chin until his big brown eyes began to droop. “That’s it, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Go to sleep and dream about big fat kitty cats…that’s right, lie down.”

      Boo was asthmatic, overweight and incurably lazy, but he was her first true friend. She had confided in him all the regrets and mistakes of the past, and together they had celebrated her little accomplishments, such as learning to eat without guilt. Boo was a very good listener and fine company, particularly if she shared her SpaghettiOs with him. He didn’t know or care who she had been in her previous life.

      Heaven help her, she didn’t want to lose it all now. Connor Garrett could so easily put an end to her peaceful exile. Maxie wasn’t at all sure she had fooled him with her careless indifference, either. There had been something in his dark eyes when he looked at her, a burning intensity that contrasted with his boyish baseball cap and casual L.A. Lakers sweatshirt. Sooner or later he was bound to put one and one together. For Maxie, that would mean the beginning of the end.

      She gazed out at her sunwashed pasture, her eyes growing misty as she watched the newest addition to her fledgling herd of Holsteins frolic through the dandelions. Glitter Baby, that naughty darling of the high-fashion set, was raising cows. She fed them, milked them and read endless books about them. Granted, her new career put her in a much lower tax bracket than when she’d been modeling. Much, much lower. Fortunately, it looked like her struggling hand-to-mouth operation was going to get a desperately needed shot in the arm. While in town, she’d stopped by the bank and filled out papers for a loan that would see her through the coming winter. If it was approved, she would be home-free.

      Still, should the truth about Glitter Baby’s new occupation get out, the tabloids would have an absolute field day. For the first time in a long, long while Maxie found herself worrying about what people would say. Did anyone test her DNA to positively identify her? Have you seen the mud-colored thing she did with her hair? And the weight she’s put on…talk about heifers….

      Maxie stopped herself, putting a chokehold on her negative thoughts. She was letting her imagination run wild, imagining consequences that might never happen at all. She closed her eyes and took a deep, fortifying breath. What other people thought of her was no longer a concern, vital to neither her professional nor her private life. These days Maxie Calhoon pleased herself, and by doing so, had finally begun to build a healthy self-esteem. She wouldn’t allow herself to go backward, not when she’d worked so hard and come so far. It could very well be that Connor Garrett had no idea who she was, would never dream of connecting Glitter Baby with Maxie at the feed store. Heaven knew the two women had nothing whatsoever in common…though they were one and the same.

      What a tangled web we weave, Maxie thought, rubbing her throbbing temples. All she could do was hope and pray for the best. Maybe someday she would think back to that morning in the feed store when she had come face-to-face with her past and smile at her own paranoia. And maybe someday her cows would sprout wings and fly.

      She would go inside, heat up a bowl of SpaghettiOs, make some peanut-butter toast and have a nice lunch. Then she had chores to do. The lawn needed to be cut and the vegetable garden needed to be fertilized and turned under….

      Damn. No fertilizer.

      For a man she had never actually met, Connor Garrett was doing an excellent job of ruining her entire day.

      Two

      Could it be the wrong address?

      Connor got out of his car and took off his sunglasses, blinking at the modest log cabin set a half mile back from the main road. Granted, it had a Little House on the Prairie kind of appeal—each of the windows had flower boxes crowded with cheerful yellow blooms, the front yard was nicely kept and a thick row of pine trees edged the gravel driveway. A wooded creek cut through the front of the property at an angle, sparkling in the sunset like so many diamonds flowing by. Beyond the house was a weathered red barn and a small pasture where several cows grazed.

      It was a nice enough setting, but hardly the sort of place he would have imagined a woman like Glitter Baby would choose as home. Connor had done his homework on his mercurial subject. He knew she had owned luxury apartments both in America and abroad, but never had the time or interest to fully furnish any of them. She seldom stayed in any one place for more than a week at a time, and had often professed herself to feel most at home in four-star hotels.

      Still, perhaps this unassuming ranch house was Glitter Baby’s way of hiding in plain sight. Robby at the feed store had given Connor very clear directions to Maxie’s place. It hadn’t been at all difficult obtaining the information; Connor had traded his photograph of Glitter Baby for the address. Fortunately, he had a portfolio of over 200 pictures in his rental car, along with files of dozens of interviews from magazines. He felt he could spare one to enrich Robby’s fantasy life and further his own research.

      He returned to his car and coasted slowly down the gravel drive, preferring not to give advance notice of his arrival. The white truck parked in the shade of an aspen tree told him she was home. He didn’t want her bolting out the back before he had a chance to talk to her.

      He was surprised at his quietly labored breathing and the erratic rhythm of his heart. He had never found himself quite so fascinated with any of his subjects as he was now. Knowing that he was so affected was unnerving, particularly for a man who had survived repeated sackings by humongous homicidal defensive linemen.

      Connor actually had no idea what he would say when he saw her. He didn’t know what to expect, so at this point, he was taking things one step at a time. He couldn’t stop thinking that whatever the next few minutes held for him, good or bad, they would be different from anything he’d ever experienced before.

      In the past two years, Maxie had become an avid fan of sunsets. She never missed one if she could help it; possibly because she couldn’t recall actually taking the time to enjoy a sunset in all the years she had modeled. Fluorescent lights had surrounded her day and night, artificial, hot and dry. Photographer’s lights, neon lights in smoke-filled clubs and incessant flashing lights from the ever-present press. Bright, empty and blinding.

      But a good sunset…now there was true magic, and something she had never appreciated until moving back to Wyoming. Perched on the top rail of the corral, Maxie studied the world slipping into night with a dreamy intensity. She knew how quickly a brilliant watercolor sunset faded to the comforting blue shadows of night. No two sunsets were alike, but each was a work of art in its own way. How lovely it would be, she thought wistfully, if the world looked at people the same way, knowing each was different and wonderfully unique. Maxie’s eyes had been acclaimed, her cheekbones envied, her haircut widely imitated. And yet, when all was said and done, she had realized, the world knew nothing about her at all. How could they? Maxie had known so little about herself at that point.

      She wondered how long it would be before people like Connor Garrett realized Glitter Baby no longer existed. Her demise was the best thing that had ever happened to Maxie Calhoon. No longer was she the neurotic woman who cried over a broken nail or insisted on weighing herself three times a day. These days she couldn’t care less what the scales told her she weighed. Ah, and best of all, food had taken its rightful and revered place in her life, from SpaghettiOs to Lucky Charms to crackers and milk in bed. She ate. She slept. СКАЧАТЬ