Lady With A Past. Ryanne Corey
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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. She worked with her hands and her mind and her heart. This journey of finding out who she was was turning out to be the most satisfying trip of her life. Why did that damned Connor Garrett want to ruin it all? Didn’t he have anything better to do than make life miserable for a humble dairy farmer?
She heard footsteps on the gravel, looked over her shoulder and realized she could ask him herself.
He was walking towards the corral in a crimson haze of late-afternoon sunlight. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his jeans and his sneakers kicked up little clouds of dust as he walked. Creating disturbances, it seemed, came naturally to Connor Garrett. The baseball cap was missing and his longish golden-brown hair moved over his forehead with the restless evening breeze. His head was tilted quizzically as he approached, his bright-eyed gaze never leaving her face. And Boo, that traitorous canine, was bobbing along beside him like a drooling, furry welcome committee.
No place to hide, Maxie thought miserably. Which left her no alternative but to bluff. She climbed off the fence, slapping her palms clean on her jeans. “Well, this here’s a surprise,” she drawled. “I didn’t expect to see you again. You lost, or somethin’?”
“Save the country-girl accent,” Connor suggested. “It’s overdone, anyway. You forgot your fertilizer, Maxie. Young Robby at the feed store gave me your address, so I thought I’d bring it out to you. I put it on your porch.”
“Such a good Samaritan.” Maxie forced a tight smile. “And what did you give young Robby in exchange for my address?”
“A picture,” he said softly, “of you.”
In truth, Connor thought it a miracle he could make any sound at all. He’d stood face-to-face with any number of celebrities, had wined and dined them and cheerfully pushed the necessary buttons to get a good story. This was different. Connor couldn’t quite get away from the fact that he was a fully functioning male and she was…hell, she was Glitter Baby.
Two years, he realized, had changed her in remarkable ways…and yet not at all. Her eyes, completely free of makeup, were intensely violet against her sun-browned skin. Her shoulder-length hair, glossy brown with deep auburn highlights, had been freed from its ponytail and washed over her shoulders in no particular style. The impossibly generous shape of her dusky rose lips had inspired many a male