Elizabeth Bevarly - The Debutante

Guys like this Nelson Kaminski, on the other hand, went out of their way to ambush their subjects at the most inopportune or inappropriate moments, and they did their best to make their photos as sensational as possible. If they couldn’t find a situation that was legitimately sensational, then they altered their photos—and even the situation—to create the sensation themselves.

Lanie looked at Miles again, watching as he fastened the last button and began to stuff his shirttail back into his pants. “What were you doing with your shirt off?” she asked halfheartedly, even though she pretty much knew the answer.

He glanced up from what he was doing and met her gaze, his eyes full of an apology he really wasn’t obligated to give. “You had your back turned,” he said. “Shaking out my jacket. I turned around, too, thought I could just shake out my shirt in a couple seconds and put it back on before you even noticed. My trousers…” He inhaled deeply and exhaled the breath in a long, exasperated sigh. “Well, I was just trying to work quickly, you know? I never thought you’d see me. And if you did, well… I thought the position was innocent enough. I had my back turned to you,” he said again. Then, more softly, he added, “Until the first flash went off. That’s when I turned around, still half-dressed. And that was when the flashes really started popping.”

He shrugged, looking tired and defeated. “When I said I didn’t mean to get you dirty earlier, Lanie, this wasn’t what I was talking about. Unfortunately, I think I just got you dirtier than you ever thought you could get. Thanks to your association with me, you’ve just become fodder for the tabloids. Tomorrow morning, you might just wake up and find yourself under a headline that says something about you being a mystery woman who’s the latest acquisition of Miles Fortune.”

Lanie appreciated his effort to take responsibility for what had happened, and under other circumstances she might have let him. Because under other circumstances, Miles Fortune would have been the target of the photographer. But not this time, she was sure. Not when there were less than two weeks left before the election. Not when she’d heard so many lectures from her father about how important it was for her to maintain some semblance of propriety, now more than ever, because anything she said or did in public might be misconstrued and used against him. As much as she wished she could be a mystery woman right now, she knew it just wasn’t realistic—or likely.

“I don’t think it was you the photographer was after tonight,” she told Miles softly. “At least, he wasn’t after you alone.”

Miles narrowed his eyes at her in clear puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

She smiled weakly. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?” she asked.

“I know enough,” he said. “I know you’re Lanie, and that you’re nice, and that you’re sweet, and that you’re easy to talk to, and that you make me smile, and that you’re surprisingly comfortable to be with. What else do I need to know?”

Now her smiled turned sad. “Well, there’s my last name, for starters.”

“What difference does your last name make?”

“Normally, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. But in this case, Miles, it makes a huge difference. Because my last name is Meyers. I’m Lanie Meyers.” She could tell by his expression that he understood then. That the two names put together told him everything he needed to know. Nevertheless, she continued, “My father is Tom Meyers, the governor of Texas.”

To herself, she added silently, But after this, he may not be governor for long….

Miles studied Lanie for several moments in silence. The governor’s daughter. He realized now he probably should have recognized her right off the bat, but who paid attention to such things? Whenever he’d seen the first family of Texas on TV, he’d been listening to what the governor was saying, not ogling the man’s daughter. And Miles had better things to do than read the parts of the newspaper that only talked about who went to what parties with whom, and what designers’ fashions they were wearing when they did. And that was where Lanie Meyers was whenever she made the news. Which was fairly often. Miles did know that. He’d heard his sister and cousins talk about the girl from time to time, and he supposed he’d absorbed some of the stories through osmosis. Still, she’d seemed harmless enough. A party girl. Not really unexpected when your daddy was a big-time politician.

But she hadn’t seemed like a party girl tonight. Well, maybe at first she had, he amended. But after just five minutes alone with her, Miles knew she was a lot more than that. Lanie Meyers was a nice girl who was witty and funny and easy to talk to. And she was maybe a little bit lonely, too. And that last had been what had ultimately cemented Miles’s connection to her, because he’d recognized in Lanie so much of what was inside himself.

How about that? You really couldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.

He grimaced involuntarily as he thought about what kind of stories would be appearing about Lanie in the papers over the next several days. Although they wouldn’t be true, that didn’t mean people wouldn’t lap up every last word as the gospel truth and talk about it at the office water cooler. Or the backyard clothesline. Or the grocery counter. Or the tennis nets. Or wherever else they happened to be.

Lanie Meyers. Miles Fortune had just been photographed in what could easily be misconstrued as a compromising position with the governor’s daughter. Had the situation not been so unfair, it would have been funny.

He supposed he should have expected something like this would happen sooner or later. If not with that bastard Kaminski, then with another slimy photographer. Miles Fortune was something of a hothead when it came to having his photo taken. As a result, he’d become a real challenge for the members of the local paparazzi. It wasn’t that he was especially famous or notorious. But he did hate to have his photo in the paper, and he’d reacted badly on occasion in the past.

Truthfully, though, it wasn’t as much because Miles valued his privacy as it was because he didn’t want the women he was escorting at any given time to be portrayed in a less-than-stellar light. And because he tended not to stay in relationships for very long—because he was a womanizer, he acknowledged with some distaste—the papers always intimated that the women he dated were little more than warm bodies to keep him entertained through the night.

Truthfully, Miles thought they were, too, for the most part. But that didn’t make it okay for the press to cast the women in a bad light. His endless parade of girlfriends couldn’t help it if each thought she’d be the one to make him change his ways and settle down. He just wasn’t the settling-down type. They couldn’t help it if they looked all besotted with him every time they showed up in a photo standing next to him. Hey, he was a very likable guy. That didn’t mean the press had to hang those women out to dry the way they invariably did.

Now Lanie Meyers was going to be portrayed as little more than another notch on his bedpost. That was going to cast her in a much darker light than party girl, and it would inevitably reflect badly on her father and, as a result, on her father’s campaign.

“Lanie Meyers,” Miles repeated slowly, carefully, his head still too full of repercussions and implications to say much else.

She nodded as slowly and carefully as he had spoken. “Lanie Meyers,” she confirmed.

“Governor Meyers’s daughter,” Miles echoed.

“Governor Meyers’s daughter,” she likewise confirmed.

“Bad dream?” he asked, hoping she’d confirm that, too.