LITMIR.BIZ

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Well, how was she supposed to know how to work a stick shift? Crashing through the garage door that way could have happened to anyone!

      Regardless of how often Lanie had found herself in a bind, though, her father had always been there to bail her out of it, one way or another. Either he’d used his money or his influence—or both—and somehow, the problem just always went away. Looking back, Lanie supposed it had just been easier and less time-consuming for her father to do that than to sit down and talk with his daughter and try to help her learn from her mistakes. He was a very busy man, after all. He had a lot of important things to do. And a lot of important places to go. And a lot of important people to meet. He took his obligations very seriously.

      Unlike Lanie, who was never serious for a minute. Life was for living, however she wanted to live it. She’d decided a long time ago that she’d just do what she wanted when she wanted to do it, and she’d never be serious for a moment.

      Unfortunately, no one tended to take a person like that seriously. So any romantic relationships Lanie had over the years ended up being frivolous. Oh, sure, she always liked the guys she got involved with—one or two of them she’d even loved for a little while—and she always had a good time with them. But that was all those associations ever were—a good time. Of course, some had ended on a sour note when Lanie found out the guy’s only interest in her was as a conduit to her father or her family fortune. But even those guys had been surprisingly easy to get over.

      Fun. That was all Lanie had ever wanted out of life. And that was all she ever really looked for. And invariably, in one way or another, she found it.

      Now Luanne Meyers caught Lanie’s free hand in her own, bringing her daughter’s attention back around to where she was standing. “There’s someone here tonight who wants to talk to you,” her mother told her, her eyes fairly sparkling with glee, her lips turning up at the ends with just the hint of a secret smile.

      Uh-oh, Lanie thought. The last time her mother’s eyes had sparkled like that, it had been because she was about to introduce her daughter to an eighty-two-year-old millionaire rancher who’d just buried his fifth wife.

      “Um, who?” Lanie asked warily.

      “Oneida Steadmore-Duckworth,” her mother told her, beaming.

      Yikes, Lanie thought. Oneida Steadmore-Duckworth was the chairwoman of the annual Women of the Lone Star charity auction. If she wanted to talk to Lanie, it was because she wanted to put her on a committee of some kind. And Lanie had hit her committee quota for the year, thank you very much. Six months ago, as a matter of fact.

      “Tell her I’ll be right there,” Lanie said. “I need to go to the ladies’ room first and make myself presentable.”

      It was only a small lie, she consoled herself. After three club sodas, she did, without question, need to go to the ladies’ room. And she did doubtless need to make herself presentable, since she’d been pigging out on desserts for the last half hour. And she would certainly be right there—only after Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth had moved on to another unsuspecting victim.

      Before excusing herself from her mother, Lanie stole another glance in the direction of Miles Fortune, only to find that he had disappeared. She scanned the crowd for some sign of him, but he was gone.

      Ah, well, she thought. Easy come, easy go.

      Scurrying off to the ladies’ room, Lanie took her time seeing to her various needs. Then she tucked a few errant strands of hair back into the topknot and adjusted the shoulder-length tendrils that dangled free. She applied a fresh layer of Rouge Rage to her mouth and dabbed at a smudge of eyeliner beneath her lashes. She tugged her little blue dress back into place and smoothed a hand over the silky, barely there fabric. Then she glanced at her diamond wristwatch and sighed.

      Damn. It had only been ten minutes since she’d left her mother. No way would Mrs. Steadmore-Duckworth be put off yet. That woman was tenacious when it came to organizing committees. Now Lanie was going to have to go to the extra trouble of “accidentally” getting lost on her way back to the ballroom.

      Exiting the ladies’ room, she veered right when she should have turned left to get back to the ballroom and made her way down a hallway identical to the one she had traveled after leaving the ballroom. Gee, if she wasn’t careful, she really would get lost, she thought. She’d never realized how big this hotel was, or how so many parts of it resembled so many other parts of it. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all….

      Miles Fortune couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to be dragged to a $100-a-plate fund-raiser where the focal point of the event was dessert. And not normal dessert like apple pie or peach cobbler or chocolate chip cookies, either. Now, had it been a bourbon whiskey tasting, he could understand going to all the trouble and expense. But truffles? Tiramisu? Sorbet? Soufflé? What the hell kind of self-respecting male attended an event where such words were commonplace, without even putting on a disguise and assuming a fake name first?

      And why did desserts have such sissy names to begin with? Miles wondered further as he looked around. Even a perfectly good word like punch got ruined at an event like this by having someone put the word fruit in front of it. If he ruled the world, after-dinner fare would have names like Cherry Flamethrower or Coconut Jackhammer or good old-fashioned Rocky Road. Hell, where was a good beer pie when you needed one?

      “Miles, you must try the chocolate bombe.”

      Yeah, Chocolate Bomb, that’d be a good one, too, he thought. Oh, wait. Evidently, that was one.

      He turned to the woman who had just suggested it, Jenny Stovall, who’d been on the planning committee of the event. She was also the woman who’d roped Miles into attending it. Her husband, Dennis, was Governor Meyers’s campaign manager, and a friend of Miles’s from college. Jenny, Miles saw, was busily sampling one of everything she’d been able to get her hands on. But since the normally petite brunette was seven months pregnant with twins, and therefore eating for three, he supposed it wasn’t unexpected that she would have enough food on her plate for six. Or maybe it was just that her serving of chocolate bomb had exploded all over everything else.

      “What the hell is a chocolate bomb?” he asked warily, just in case it did have the potential to detonate.

      “Not sure,” Jenny said. “Ice cream, though, for certain. And chocolate, of course. This white stuff seems to be whipped cream. Have some. You’ll love it.”

      “I’d rather look for the bar,” he said, gazing at his still-full wineglass and thinking that a bourbon whiskey tasting would be pretty good about now. “The real bar, I mean. Not one of the ones they set up for this thing. Those don’t serve what a man likes to drink. Not a Texan, anyway.” No, all those bars had were wine and champagne and stuff in triangular-shaped glasses that were pale, pretty colors Miles didn’t want to get within fifty feet of.

      “The real bar is through the far exit,” Jenny told him without breaking stride in her eating, waving her fork airily toward the other side of the room. “To the right and down a ways.”

      Miles eyed her suspiciously. “You know, Jenny, it occurs to me that a woman who’s seven months pregnant with twins shouldn’t know where the bar is.”

      “Of course she should,” Jenny countered, “when that’s where the closest women’s room is.”

      Miles supposed that would mean something to another woman—especially another pregnant woman—and manfully decided not to dwell on it himself. Instead, he took Jenny’s directions to heart, and after making sure she had someone else to talk to, he excused himself and wandered off in that direction. As he went, he found himself scanning the crowd, looking for someone. A female someone, to be precise. A female someone with blond hair twisted onto the top of her head in a way that made a man’s fingers itch to loosen it, and with eyes that were as blue and enormous as her dress was blue and tiny.

      He wondered who the young woman was with whom he’d shared an impromptu toast. And he wondered why he was still thinking about her now, a full fifteen minutes after the fact. Out of sight

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