The Look-Alike Bride (Crimson Romance) (2 page)

This time, things would be different. This time, she
was
Zara—for an entire month, and by golly, she was going to enjoy it.

Leonie studied her reflection in the mirror. She was supposed to be noticeable, so that nameless individuals involved in anti-American activities would assume Zara was vacationing at her lakeside cabin rather than tracking and sabotaging their operations.

Great
, Leonie thought. Attracting the attention of people who hated Americans and wanted to kill them was just the sort of thing she preferred to avoid. For that reason alone, she deserved every bit of fun she could derive from this “vacation.”

However, there was no way she could stand Zara’s taste in clothes for hours at a time, so she smuggled along a tiny selection from her own wardrobe. Leonie opened a paper sack that held two pairs of well-worn jeans and several of her favorite T-shirts. Around the cabin, she would be comfortable. When she went out in public, she’d be Zara.

Swiftly, she tossed off Zara’s skintight white leggings and loose, hot-pink blouse and pulled on a pair of soft, faded jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt. The only thing she had forgotten was her own well-broken-in running shoes, so she laced up Zara’s, a true example of high-tech athleticism. She took the cell phone Zara’s employers had provided from her purse and shoved it in her pocket. Then she whistled softly to the collie and headed for the door, confident that she looked like a cross between her usual self and her sister.

The secure landline Zara kept in the kitchen rang before she could get outside. Muttering, Leonie turned back while the dog stood waiting patiently beside the front door.

“Hello, baby,” Zara cooed with her usual insouciant cheer. “How’s it going so far?”

“Fine.” Leonie figured Zara knew very well how it was going and opted for brevity.

“Don’t be huffy. Your country thanks you. I thank you. We both kiss your feet.”

“Um-hum.” Zara wanted something. That much was obvious. “These clodhopper running shoes of yours won’t make all that foot-kissing very easy.”

“I forgot to mention something earlier,” Zara went on, ignoring Leonie’s response. “There’s a man who stays in the cabin on the other side of the woods behind mine.”

“Oh, yes?” Leonie picked up on the uncertainty in Zara’s voice immediately. Zara never sounded uncertain.

“Well, he doesn’t stay there all the time, but he’s there a lot of weekends. His brother owns the cabin.”

“That’s nice.” It also wasn’t like Zara to beat around the bush.

“His name is Adam. Adam Silverthorne.”

Leonie maintained a wondering silence. Was she supposed to faint upon hearing his name? Zara sounded as if that was exactly what she expected. Leonie had never heard her sister’s voice take on that particular soft, feminine quality before.

“He lives in Dallas, so you probably won’t run into him, but if you do . . .” Zara trailed off.

“Am I supposed to seduce him for the good of my country? Maybe I should impress him with that silver hankie you call a party dress.”

“I’ll have to slap you silly,” Zara said, laughing. “Seriously, Leonie, you’d better consider Adam off-limits. He used to work for my branch, and he might—” She broke off. “I mean, he might realize you aren’t me.”

“Oh, yes?” Leonie decided to have some fun. “This sounds interesting. Maybe I

should—”

“Don’t you dare,” Zara interrupted, laughing again. “So far, Adam has resisted all my blatant hints, but I’m hoping to remedy the situation soon.”

“What kind of blatant hints are we talking about? Maybe I can learn something.”

Zara didn’t answer. Her voice retreated as she spoke to someone in the room with her, then it returned to full volume. “If you should, by some chance, run into Adam, maybe you could give him a mysterious wink and disappear. That might give him something to think about.”

“He must be something if you’re so interested in him,” Leonie said. “Okay, mysterious wink and vanish. Got it. Anything else?”

“Charles said you’ve got a dog with you,” Zara said. “I thought your apartment complex didn’t allow pets.”

“I’m looking for a new place.” She hoped she could find an apartment in Houston, or in whatever city she moved to in search of a job, where dogs were welcome. “If anyone asks, I’ll say I’m keeping him for my sister in Houston.”

“Perfect.” Zara sounded relieved. “Gotta go honey. Enjoy yourself. And don’t worry about Adam. This isn’t one of his usual times to visit. Bye, sweetie.”

“How do you like that?” Leonie asked the collie after hanging up the phone. “Zara’s fallen for probably the only man in the entire universe who isn’t falling for her.”

The dog moved his ragged plume of a tail slightly.

“Usually, men take one look at Zara and fall over their own feet trying to get a date. I wonder what’s wrong with this Adam Silverthorne?”

The collie, having never met either Zara or Adam, had no opinion to offer.

“You’ll probably fall for her, too,” Leonie grumbled. “She’s an even bigger sucker for good-looking dogs than I am.” She opened the door and followed him outside. “That’s a compliment, in case you didn’t notice.”

Leonie walked toward the lake with her dog beside her, thinking hard. Assuming Adam Silverthorne visited the area while she was there, Leonie decided she better leave him off her list of men suitable for a fling.

Unless, of course, Zara would appreciate having Leonie do the hard work of attracting him. Leonie grinned at the thought, knowing full well that if Adam Silverthorne ignored Zara, he certainly wasn’t going to give her younger sister a second glance.

Butch clearly found the forest-surrounded lake fascinating, but he was a well-mannered dog and remained close to Leonie’s side in spite of the peculiar way she chuckled to herself.

Zara’s lakeside cabin fronted Lake Ouachita in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, near Hot Springs. Why Arkansas, Leonie didn’t know. She’d have thought her sister would prefer a cabin in Aspen or beside Lake Tahoe where there were lots of men and activities. But Zara claimed to love her Arkansas hideaway, even though she rarely spent any time there. Recently, Leonie had begun to suspect the cabin had been bought for some other purpose, probably something to do with Zara’s job. Or maybe even to chase this Adam Silverthorne, she thought, grinning to herself.

Leonie walked to the shore of the lake and peered out over the shining waters. Lake Ouachita sat amid rolling Ozark foothills covered with trees and studded with quartz deposits that contained big crystals. Perhaps she’d go on a hike in search of quartz crystals, but not in these shoes.

She walked out on the narrow, wooden pier that extended about twenty feet into the lake and bent to test the water with one hand. It felt warm, just right in fact. She would take a swim later so she could stay in shape.

Butch showed no interest in the water or the pier. He remained firmly on shore, watching her anxiously.

“You aren’t scared of water, are you?” she asked.

He ignored the gently lapping water and stayed at the end of the pier despite her coaxing.

She ambled back to shore, stroked the dog’s head, and turned toward the forested area that lay behind Zara’s cabin. “I don’t blame you. After all, you aren’t a Labrador retriever.”

The woods were green, cool, and full of interesting, well-marked trails. The middle trail, according to Zara, led through the woods to a set of cabins that fronted another cove of the big lake, one of which belonged to Adam Silverthorne’s family. She might as well familiarize herself with one of the other trails. Then she and Butch could head back to the cabin for a well-deserved lunch and afternoon nap.

The United States Government was paying the rent on her Houston apartment for the next two months. That would help, but Leonie knew she needed to be searching for a job. School would start again in two months, and all the available openings for high school P.E. teachers would be filled by the time she started looking.

That would be just her luck. Perhaps she should demand that the government guarantee her a good job the next time she filled in for Zara.

“You’d better gain all the weight you can, boy,” she said. “If I don’t get a job lined up, we may both find ourselves on weight-loss diets we don’t need.”

With all the free time available, maybe she could take a crafts class. She brightened. As soon as she got back to the cabin, she would investigate. Perhaps she could learn a craft and become a flea market entrepreneur if she failed to find a teaching job.

What could it hurt to try?

• • •

Adam Silverthorne congratulated himself as he stepped out of his brother’s lakeside cabin and headed for the woods. He had finally chosen a time to visit when Zara Daniel wasn’t lying in wait in the next cabin over. If she’d been there, she’d be knocking on his door right now, asking if he wanted to have lunch with her.

Zara was beautiful, but Adam knew her type all too well. Once he let her talk him into taking her out, he was liable to find himself engaged to marry her. That was the level of determination he sensed in the stunning Zara Daniel.

Adam had worked for the government once himself, and he’d known the moment he met her several years back exactly what Zara did for a living. She had sought him out at a party in Dallas, and he had realized at once that she had researched him thoroughly. Her well-constructed biography about being a secretary who worked for a special interest group in Washington, D.C. notwithstanding, Adam knew that although she might spend a lot of time at a computer, she didn’t spend it typing other people’s letters.

No, Zara Daniel was an agent, a damned good one. Just from watching her move, he knew she’d had extensive self-defense training and worked out every day. Her pose as a brazen bimbo was so perfect, Adam was unsure how much was pose and how much was Zara’s own outgoing personality.

What Adam couldn’t understand was why she had set her sights on him. In fact, he strongly suspected she had bought that cabin behind his brother’s property because she wanted to pursue him. From a few hints she had dropped, he figured she had been assigned to lure him back into government work.

Adam smiled grimly. If that was the case, she could resign herself to a long, drawn-out siege and ultimate failure. He felt certain Zara wasn’t much acquainted with either.

He strode briskly down the forest trail behind the cabin, enjoying the cool shadows and desultory bird song that surrounded him. The Arkansas forest held a charm that never failed to soothe him, even when Zara Daniel lurked in her nearby cabin, ready to pounce. Smiling with satisfaction that he’d finally be able to get some work done, he turned a corner on the narrow trail and came face to face with his current nightmare.

“Oh.” Zara took a step back, clearly startled.

“Miss Daniel. Why am I not surprised?”

Although he smiled, Adam knew his voice betrayed overtones of annoyance his mother would condemn if she could hear him. She was a stickler for gentlemanly behavior, no matter what the provocation.

“Wh—?”

Zara shut up abruptly. Adam could have sworn she was about to ask who he was.

Behind her, a long, orange-and-white muzzle with even longer-looking fangs poked forward. A deep, rumbling growl filled the quiet woods.

“Hello, fellow,” Adam said. Of all the females in the world likely to adopt an ugly dog, he’d have picked Zara Daniel last. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. “Are you a new recruit to the K-9 forces?”

“He kills on my signal.” Zara backed up a few steps and almost tripped over her own feet. “Steady, Butch.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed on her. Something seemed different about her.

Maybe it was her voice. Zara’s voice was usually crisp and determined, but at the moment, she sounded nervous and uncertain. He studied her, gripped by something he couldn’t put his finger on.

Yes, it was Zara Daniel all right. He’d know that long, tall body, silver hair, and those heavily made-up blue eyes anywhere.

Yet, he’d never seen her look quite so—Adam scanned her slim, curvy figure—so
normal
before. Instead of clothing designed to flaunt her well-honed feminine curves, she wore jeans and an old blue T-shirt. She’d still attract any male eye within a hundred yards, but she wasn’t going out of her way as she usually did, to make sure of it.

That didn’t mean he could afford to relax his rule about letting her intrude on his quiet time. His security consulting business had just landed a contract that meant his hard work over the past few years had paid off, and he had hours of work ahead of him tonight.

“No need to sic Butch on me,” he said. “I was heading in the wrong direction anyway. Excuse me, please.”

“Sure,” she said in a faint voice.

Now he knew something was up. Normally, Zara would have instantly claimed she was going his way. He’d have needed a shoehorn to shift her from his side.

Adam knew better than to test his luck. He swiftly turned on his heels and vanished the way he had come. A little farther down the trail, he turned off and stepped silently behind a thick tangle of wild grape vines.

After waiting a good five minutes, he was even more baffled than ever. No tall, silver-blond bombshell glided down the path in his wake.

Weird
, Adam thought. It was almost as if Zara had forgotten who he was. Perhaps that was it. Maybe she had been injured in the line of duty and suffered temporary amnesia.

Adam emerged from hiding and followed the path back to the cabin, thinking intently. Something strange was going on, and for the first time in his short acquaintance with Zara Daniel, he discovered himself interested in finding out more about her.

Considering the way she usually tried to attract his attention and failed, that was probably the ultimate irony.

• • •

Leonie waited until the man disappeared back the way he had come before letting out her breath in an explosive gasp. “Wow. Well, what do you think? This is why I named you Butch, by the way.”

Butch, who had no argument with his new name, remained at attention, peering down the forest path.

“That’s got to be Adam Silverthorne.”