Kara Lennox - Vixen In Disguise

She heard the strike of a match, then saw the flare not ten feet in front of her. She could just make out Wade’s strong features as he lit a kerosene lantern that looked like an antique. The lantern glowed to life, and Anne could see the cavernous barn was full to the rafters with hay.

“Why were you standing here in the dark?” she asked. “And is it safe to have a lantern in here? All this hay…”

Wade hung the lantern on a hook. “Lots of questions. I like the dark. And the lantern is safe, so long as we don’t get so wild we knock it over.”

Anne’s heart did a flip-flop. If he was trying to unnerve her with his innuendo, he’d succeeded.

Wade held on to the illusion of confidence like a two-year-old with a security blanket. He tried to pretend Annie showing up here tonight was no big deal. In truth, he’d been terrified she would blow him off.

But Annie had come. She was standing before him, looking like a mirage in the lantern light, her green eyes keeping a wary watch on him. Which meant that maybe she was still interested.

He leaned against a stack of round hay bales and folded his arms. “So, Annie, what’s your story? Why the big deception?” he asked, his tone intentionally casual. “And why the disappearing act?” She’d really thrown him for a loop when he’d awakened that Monday morning after the rodeo to find her gone.

He wasn’t like a lot of the guys on the circuit who slept with any buckle bunny who came along, making empty promises then awkward goodbyes when it came time to move on to the next rodeo. Not that he was a monk, but he’d thought Annie was special—different.

Worth his time and attention.

Though they’d made no promises, he’d felt so good when he was with her that he’d been silently plotting ways he could keep her hanging around. He’d thought she felt the same.

She said nothing, just stood there with her hands clenched, staring at the floor.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, enjoying her discomfort. “Come on, you’re a lawyer. Lawyers have to know how to talk, right? Damn, I never would have guessed.”

“The woman you met at the Mesquite Rodeo,” she finally said, “that wasn’t me. She—”

“I thought we covered that territory earlier.”

“I mean, physically she was in my body, but she wasn’t the real Anne Chatsworth.” She paced, a caged lioness looking for a crack she could squeeze through.

Abruptly she stopped and faced him squarely. Though she still wore the conservative clothes from earlier, some of her hair had worked itself loose from her knot and squiggled around her face. Her eyes were large and luminous, and she’d lost that tight, controlled expression he’d seen at the fair.

“I was studying for finals and having a real hard time,” she continued. “The pressure, the doubts, the stress—you can’t imagine what that’s like unless you go through it.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t know anything about stress. I’m just a simple cowboy. Is that it?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sure you’ve had stress in your life at one time or another. I’m just trying to explain where my mind was.”

“Okay, I’ll agree, you were under pressure. Go on.”

“That Friday I kind of lost it. I’d been studying nonstop for hours, days, and I just…snapped. I needed a break. No, I needed more than that. I needed to get away from everything—forget everything, including myself.”

“Enter Annie the slow-talking rodeo girl.” She looked at him, her face pleading with him to understand.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “So I was nothing to you but Cowboy Valium?”

She sank onto a rickety wooden bench. “I guess you could put it that way, although at the beginning I certainly had no intention of…of…”

“…picking up some guy and sleeping with him,” he finished for her.

“Exactly.”

“But that’s what you did. Any particular reason you picked me?”

“You make it sound so premeditated. I recognized your name when the announcer said it. I remembered you, although I’m sure the reverse isn’t true. Last time we saw each other, I was twelve and you were sixteen, so I probably didn’t register on your radar screen. I used to hang out at the Livestock Exchange arena and watch you practice with Traveler when he was just a colt.”

She was right, he’d been focused on other matters. Getting Traveler up to competition speed so he could get the hell out of Cottonwood had been the only thing he could think about back then.

“Anyway, after you won your event, I went back to the chutes to find you so I could say hi, you know, a friendly voice from back home. But I sort of never got around to mentioning Cottonwood.”

“You never even told me your last name. So you could make a clean getaway after you seduced me?”

“Hey, come on. There was a lot of mutual seducing going on, if you’ll recall.”

Oh, yeah, he recalled. And so did she, judging from the way she was breathing, quick and shallow, and the flare of heat in her eyes.

“You know, this doesn’t sound much like an apology,” he said.

“I’m getting there. Let me finish.”

“I’ve got all night.” He couldn’t be sure, because the light was so dim, but he thought she blushed. That was something he loved about redheads, about Annie in particular. It was so easy to make her blush.

“Going to bed with you wasn’t a premeditated act. It just happened. And afterward I knew I should go home and forget about it, get on with my studies, but I couldn’t make myself leave.”

He remembered that. He remembered how she’d talked about getting home, how he’d actually walked her to her car, but then they’d started kissing again, and she’d forgotten all about leaving. Somehow she’d ended up staying with him all night—then all the next day, then through the weekend.

They hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. He’d been crazy about her, unable to think of anything else—even his upcoming rodeo events. Nothing had ever before distracted him from his obsession.

“I guess I needed that time away from my studying more than I knew,” she said. “It felt like a drug in my system. The longer I pretended to be Annie, the less I wanted to go back to reality.”

“Did you ever think that maybe Annie is your reality? And the other is just an elaborate personality you’ve invented?”

She looked at him sharply. “Annie isn’t real. I’m not like her. I don’t flirt and I don’t dress that way. I’m a very serious person who is pursuing a very demanding career. Practicing law has always been my dream, and I’m almost there.”

Well. She’d told him. “Did you flunk your exams?”

“No. I left you early that Monday morning because I had a test at ten o’clock.”

“You could have woke me up and told me that.”

She shook her head. “I was afraid you’d talk me into staying. I was really scared by what I’d done, Wade. I panicked. I ran back to the world where I belonged. You and the rodeo—that was a fantasy.”

He stood up, angered by her words, and made a mock bow. “Glad I could oblige. But next time you need to blow off steam, try racquetball.”

“I didn’t think it would matter to you. We both knew it was a temporary thing. You were on the road. I figured you slept with a different girl in every town, that you’d be glad I left without all those uncomfortable goodbyes.”

“Yeah, well, you’re right. It stung a little, waking up in that empty bunk, not even a note, but it wasn’t all that hard to find a replacement.” Big lie. He hadn’t slept with anyone since Annie. Too busy, too focused on the competition. Anyway, every time he looked at an attractive woman now, he compared her to Annie and found her lacking.