The Rana Look

One

“Hi. Did I scare you?” he asked with a smile.

She met him in the hallway on her way down to dinner. He was the last kind of surprise she expected. His impact on her was startling. Several things happened at once. She drew in a quick, sudden breath. Her heart slammed into her ribs. She flattened herself against the wall.

His teeth were white and straight. His easy grin lit up a darkly tanned, weathered face. When his lips tilted up at the corners, one dark brow tipped down, while the other arched high, as though reaching for the wavy lock of sable brown hair that had fallen across his forehead.

It was an intriguing smile. Arresting. Sexy. Her heart was pounding abnormally.

“N-no,” she stammered.

“Didn’t Aunt Ruby tell you she was getting a new boarder?”

“Yes, but I…”

She didn’t finish. She couldn’t very well say, “Yes, but I pictured a doddering elderly man with a pipe and cardigan, not one whose shoulders practically span the hallway.” She had expected the new boarder to have a benevolent face with a pleasant smile. Not one that made her think of daredevils and ne’er-do-wells.

Still smiling, he set down the box of records and tapes he had been holding under his right arm and extended his hand to her. “ Trent Gamblin.”

Rana stared at his hand for an embarrassing length of time before laying hers against it, not quite clasping it, and muttering, “I’m Miss Ramsey.”

When she dared to raise her eyes to his, his smile had deepened. She suspected that he was smiling with derision at her primness.

“Do you need any assistance, Mr. Gamblin?” she asked starchily as she drew her hand back.

“I think I can handle it, Miss Ramsey.” His face was solemn now, but the mirth was still twinkling in his eyes. They were the color of coffee liqueur, dark and rich and fluid.

Slightly irked that he apparently found her so amusing, she pried herself away from the wall and stood up straight. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go on down for dinner. Ruby gets cross if I’m late for meals.”

“Guess I’d better hurry down too. Left or right?”

“Pardon?”

“Which apartment is mine? The one on the left or the one on the right?”

“The left.”

“The right one is yours?”

“Yes.”

“I sure hope I can keep that straight, Miss Ramsey. I’d hate to come stumbling into your room some night by mistake.” His mischievous eyes traveled over her. “No telling what might happen.”

He was laughing at her! “I’ll see you downstairs,” she said coolly. She marched past him, forcing him to press himself up against the wall to let her pass. But he didn’t press quite far enough. As she went past him, her clothes dragged against the front of his. He did it on purpose, of course. She could feel his arrogant smile at her back.

If only he knew, she fumed silently as she took the stairs. Miss Ramsey could dazzle him, freeze him in his tracks, wipe that tomcat grin right off his smug face-

Rana paused on the third step from the bottom. Why was she even entertaining such thoughts? She hadn’t cared about her appearance for months. All that was behind her. Why now, after meeting the new boarder in Mrs. Ruby Bailey’s house, was she even thinking of the Rana she had been six months before?

She disliked herself for it. She had cut herself off completely from her former life. She wasn’t ready to resume it, not even temporarily, in order to put the conceited Trent Gamblin in his place.

Becoming the internationally known Rana again would bring back all the self-doubt and pain that went with the single name. She had given up her celebrity status. For the time being she didn’t want it back. She was enjoying the anonymity of her current life too much. She liked being simply Miss Ramsey, an undistinguished resident of a typical Galveston boardinghouse.

Ruby Bailey, however, was about as atypical a landlady as one could imagine. When Rana entered the dining room, Ruby was lighting the candles she had placed in the center of the table. In honor of the new arrival, she had gone to special pains with the centerpiece this evening.

“Damn!” she exclaimed, fanning out the match. “I almost caught my nail polish on fire.” She inspected the crimson enamel on her nails.

Her age had never been firmly established, but Rana had calculated that it must be beyond seventy, judging from the dated references Ruby occasionally let slip in her colorful dialogue. She was hardly what Rana had pictured when she had responded to the ad in the Houston newspaper advertising an apartment for lease in Galveston.

With the directions Ruby had given her during a brief telephone interview, Rana had located the house without difficulty. Her excitement could barely be contained when she pulled up to the address. The Victorian house, built in Galveston ’s heyday, had withstood hurricanes as well as the ravages of time. It was situated on a tree-shaded street among other recently restored homes. For Rana, who had lived for the past decade in Manhattan ’s high rises, it was like stepping into another century. She was delighted. She only hoped she and Ruby Bailey would hit it off.

The landlady’s hair was white, but it hadn’t been pulled into the classic grandmother’s bun, as Rana had imagined. Ruby wore it short and curly, cut in a surprisingly fashionable style. She wasn’t matronly plump, either, another misconception on Rana’s part, but whipcord lean. Her attire, far from conservative, consisted of a pair of jeans and a sweater the color of the vibrant red geraniums that bloomed in the concrete urns on the front porch.

“You could do with a good meal or two.” That blunt statement was the first thing Ruby had said to Rana upon giving her an inspection with busy, no-nonsense brown eyes that could have snapped a longshoreman to attention. “Come on in. We’ll start with sugar cookies and herbal tea. Do you like herbal tea? I swear by it. It’s good for everything from toothache to constipation. Of course, if you eat the balanced meals I plan on cooking for you, you won’t ever be constipated.”

And that, it seemed, was that. Ruby considered the apartment on her second floor leased.

Rana would come to learn that Ruby’s cup of herbal tea was sometimes liberally laced with Jack Daniel’s, especially in the evening after dinner. Rana forgave her friend that particular idiosyncrasy, the same way she forgave Ruby the frown she made no effort to disguise as she looked up now and spotted Rana.

“I was hoping you’d gussy up a bit tonight. Your hair’s such a pretty auburn color. Did you ever think of pulling it back away from your face a tad?”

Rana, darling, your cheekbones are to die for! Show them off love. I see all this glorious hair, sweeping back, big, big volumes of it, like a mane surrounding your face and cascading down your back. Shake your head, darling. See! Oh God, positively to die for! Every tacky little beauty shop in the try will soon be advertising the Rana Look.

Rana smiled at the memory of the famous hairdresser’s words the first time Morey sent her to him. “No, Ruby, I like it like this.” Ruby had insisted on being addressed by her first name, because she said being referred to as Mrs. Bailey made her feel old. “The table looks lovely tonight.”

“Thank you,” Ruby said impatiently as she spied a smear of paint on Rana’s sleeve. “You have time to change, dear,” she ventured tactfully.

“Does it matter what I’m wearing?”

Ruby sighed with resignation. “I suppose it doesn’t. You’d only put on another of your horrid baggy combinations, none of which I’d be caught dead in, and I have about three decades on you. I’m sure, Miss Ramsey, that you could make yourself more attractive if only you’d try.” First names didn’t apply to her guests.

“I’m not interested in my appearance.”

Ruby assessed Rana’s flat, functional shoes, her shapeless dress, and the heavy hair hanging on either side of her thin face, a face made to appear even more gaunt by oversized round eyeglasses. Ruby’s disapproving expression clearly said, “That’s readily apparent.” Her actual words were, “ Trent ’s just arrived.”

“Yes, I met him upstairs.”

Ruby’s brown eyes sparkled. “Isn’t he the most adorable boy you’ve ever seen?”

“I didn’t expect him to be so… young.” So young, so good-looking, so virile, and so dangerous to have around, Rana added to herself. What if he recognized her? “I thought you said the new boarder was your cousin.”

“Nephew, dear, nephew. He’s always been a favorite of mine. My sister spoiled him abominably. Of course I constantly chastised her for it. But she couldn’t help herself. Who could? He could twist any woman around his little finger. When he called and said he needed a place to stay for the next few weeks, I pretended to be aggravated, but actually I was delighted. He’ll be such fun to have around.”

“It’s only for a few weeks?”

“Yes, and then he’ll move back into his house in Houston.”

Divorce, no doubt, Rana thought. This nephew of Ruby’s, this Trent, needed a place to stay while waiting for a nasty divorce to become final. Well, Aunt Ruby might think he was an “adorable boy,” but Rana knew an arrogant, conceited, sexist chauvinist when she saw one. She had every intention of staying out of Mr. Adorable’s way. It wouldn’t be difficult. A man like Trent Gamblin would never look twice at a woman like “Miss Ramsey.”

“Something smells wonderful.”

Rana actually jumped at the sound of his cello-mellow voice as he came striding through the portiere that hung across the doorway. His sure footsteps thudded on the hardwood floor. Each strike of his boot heels made the floorboards groan and the china and glass bric-a-brac tinkle against each other.

Ruby was encircled from behind by a pair of brawny brown arms that Michelangelo would have loved to sculpt. Trent bent over her spare body and nuzzled her neck. “Whatcha got cookin’, Auntie?”

“Let me go, you big gorilla.” She wriggled out of his suffocating embrace, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were more animated than usual. “Sit down and behave. Did you wash your hands before coming downstairs?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly, winking slyly at Rana at the same time.

“If you can mind your manners, I’ll let you sit at the head of the table. Ask her nicely and Miss Ramsey might pour some sherry for you. Now, excuse me and I’ll bring dinner out.”

With her electric-blue skirt rustling, Ruby sashayed through the swinging door into the kitchen. When Trent turned around, he was still grinning in approval of his saucy elderly aunt. “She’s something, isn’t she?” he asked Rana.

“Yes, she is. I like her immensely.”

“She’s outlived three husbands and one daughter. But none of that got her down.” He shook his head in perplexed admiration. “Where do you sit?”

Rana moved toward her accustomed place setting, but he rounded the table with the grace of a danseur noble and moved her chair away from the table for her.

Rana was tall. He was much taller. It was odd, and disconcertingly pleasant, to have a man tower over her. Even if she were wearing the highest high heels, Trent Gamblin would be taller than she.

When she was seated in the rosewood lyre-back chair, he took his place at the head of the table. “How long have you lived here?”

“Six months.”

“Before that?”

“Back East,” she answered obliquely.

He grinned broadly. “I didn’t think that was a Texas accent.”

She laughed softly. “Hardly.” To keep from looking at him, she toyed with her spoon, tracing the elaborate silver pattern with the pad of her middle finger.

“Did you know the other boarder?”

“Guest.”

“Huh?”

“Your aunt calls us guests. She says ‘boarder’ sounds too commercial.”

“Ahh.” He nodded. His throat was brown and strong. His shirt was opened at the collar, and Rana could see a healthy crop of curling dark hair in the V. Looking at it made her stomach feel weightless, so she averted her eyes. “I’ll have to rely on you to acquaint me with the house rules. What time is curfew?”

He was teasing again, and, as before, it annoyed her. She had known plenty of men who played these kinds of flirting games, some of them with more talent than Trent Gamblin. They were games in which a woman was inevitably the prey and a man the hunter. Rana had always resented the masculine assumption that she was interested in such tiresome silliness. She did so now.

Besides, why was this man playing the game with the homely Miss Ramsey?

Then the answer came to her. Except for his aunt, Rana was the only woman around. If there was one aspect of Mr. Gamblin’s personality that was readily apparent, it was that he was a born womanizer. Habits were hard to break.

“The former occupant of your apartment was a widow about Ruby’s age,” Rana explained briskly. “When her health declined, she went to live in Austin, nearer her family.”

She took a dainty sip from her water glass, a gesture that she hoped would suspend conversation until their hostess brought in dinner. The dining room seemed awfully close and stuffy this evening. She ruled out the possibility that Trent Gamblin’s presence had anything to do with it. Perhaps Ruby needed to adjust the thermostat on the air conditioner.

Disobeying his aunt’s instructions to mind his manners, Trent propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand while he unabashedly studied Miss Ramsey.

Interesting. She couldn’t be very old. Either side of thirty by a year or two. She mystified him. Why would a seemingly healthy, intelligent young woman ensconce herself permanently in Aunt Ruby’s boardinghouse, quaint and charming though it was? What would motivate a woman to isolate herself deliberately?

Family tragedy, perhaps? A love affair gone awry? Had she been jilted at the altar or something equally shattering?

Miss Ramsey made him think of nothing so much as a spinster schoolmarm of a hundred years ago. Thin face, lank hair-although the candlelight made it shine a color like nothing he’d ever seen before-and that awful gray dress that kept her figure a total secret even from his discerning eyes. She wore no makeup, but her complexion was clear. Unlike that of most redheads, her skin had an olive tint. Actually, though, her hair was too dark just to be called “red.” That deep mahogany luster went far beyond merely red.

Her hands, which kept fidgeting with her silverware, were amazingly small and long-fingered, but looked rough. Her nails had been cut bluntly at the ends of her fingers. She was wearing no polish on them. Nor was she wearing perfume. His nose could detect and name at least fifty different fragrances. Miss Ramsey wasn’t wearing one of them. What he hated most were her round eyeglasses. Their blue- tinted lenses hid her eyes completely.

His steady, bold stare was making her nervous. He could tell by the way she kept shifting in her chair. In a mischievous way, he was glad his attention was unsettling her. The poor thing probably needed a thrill or two to enliven her dull, drab existence. If he could oblige, why not? He had nothing better to do.

“Why are you living here, Miss Ramsey?”

“None of your business.”

“Ouch! Are you always so prickly?”

“Only when someone is rude enough to stare and ask nosy questions.”

“I’m the new kid on the block. You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

Aunt Ruby’s bragging wasn’t without some basis. He was adorable, particularly when he formed that boyish pout that somehow looked just right on his sensual lips.

“Would you like some sherry?” Rana lifted the lead- crystal decanter.

“Are you serious?” She set it back down. “Got a cold Coors?”

“I don’t think Ruby stocks beer.”

“I’ll bet she’s never out of whiskey, though.”

Rana’s cheeks went red. “I don’t-”

“Come on, now, Miss Ramsey. You can tell me. I’m family.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, moving his face to within scant inches of hers. “Does the old girl still swizzle her Jack Daniel’s?”

Before Rana could form a response, Ruby appeared, pushing a tea cart loaded with silver platters through the kitchen door. “Here we are, dears. I’m sure you’re starving, but the rolls needed a few more minutes in the oven.”

Trent, still staring at Rana’s shocked expression, chuckled softly.

“ Trent, stop that irritating sniggering,” Ruby scolded. “You always were the rudest child at the table and prone to laugh for no apparent reason. Sit up straight, please, and make yourself useful by carving this roast for me. Miss Ramsey likes hers medium to well done, and be generous with her portion despite her protests. I’ve managed to put some meat on her meager bones, but she still has a long way to go. Now, isn’t this nice?” Ruby said enthusiastically as she took her seat. “This is going to be so cozy, the three of us sharing every meal.”

Rana, who was trying to ignore Trent ’s calculating assessment of just how meager her bones were, was wondering if it would be too obvious if she asked to have her meals in her apartment from now on.

Trent had a hefty appetite. Ruby kept refilling his plate, until he held up his hands in surrender after eating two and a half portions of everything.

“Please, Aunt Ruby, no more. I’ll go to fat.”

“Nonsense. You’re still a growing boy. I can’t send you to summer camp weak and unfit.”

Rana choked on a bite of parsleyed potatoes and took a quick drink of water. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she was careful not to remove her glasses as she blotted them.

“Are you all right, dear?” Ruby asked with concern.

“Fine, fine,” Rana choked out. When she was composed, she looked at Trent. “Aren’t you a little old to be sent off to summer camp?”

Ruby and Trent both found that highly amusing, and they laughed heartily. “Football summer camp,” Ruby explained. “Didn’t I tell you that Trent is a professional football player?”

Rana, embarrassed, smoothed her napkin back in her lap. “I don’t believe you did.”

“He plays with the Houston Mustangs.” Ruby beamed proudly, laying her hand on her nephew’s muscled arm. “And he’s the most important player. The quarterback.”

“I see.”

“Don’t you like football, Miss Ramsey?” Trent inquired. He was a trifle piqued that she hadn’t recognized him. Nor had she seemed suitably impressed to discover that she was sharing dinner with a man touted by some sportswriters as the finest quarterback in professional football since Starr and Staubach.

“I don’t know very much about it, Mr. Gamblin. But I know more now than I did.”

“How’s that?”

“I know that the players go to summer camp.”

His mouth split into a wide grin. Miss Ramsey had a sense of humor. The next few weeks might not be too taxing after all. In fact, he didn’t remember when he’d enjoyed such a relaxing dinner. He didn’t have to work at impressing his aunt. She already thought he hung the moon. Any charm he sent in Miss Ramsey’s direction was equally certain to be appreciated. No effort was required there either. For the first time in years, he could be himself in the company of females, and it felt good.

“How is your shoulder, Trent?” Ruby turned to Rana to explain. “He has an injury that refuses to heal properly. A shoulder dislocation.”

“Separation, Auntie.”

“Sorry, a separation. His doctor recommended that he get away from his circle of friends and suspend his other activities so his shoulder would have the rest it needs to heal before training camp. Right, dear?”

“Right.”

“Is it painful?” Rana asked.

He shrugged. “Sometimes. Only when I overexert myself.”

He frowned as he recalled his last appointment with the team doctor. “The damn thing just won’t get any better, doc,” he had complained. “And you know it’s got to be completely well by training camp.”

He had gnawed on his lip. If he had another season like the last one, the coach would be scouting for younger and better talent.

Trent wasn’t fooling himself. He was thirty-four. His retirement from professional football was imminent. But he wanted one more good-no, great-season. He didn’t want to retire a broken-down, banged-up failure who caused people to shake their heads sadly and say, “He’s lost it, but he just won’t admit it.” Deep inside him, he knew he hadn’t lost it. He wanted to get his shoulder in shape and retire in a blaze of glory. Then he’d go gracefully. Not until then.

“Don’t come whining to me, Trent,” the doctor had said. “Tom Tandy told me you pulled that shoulder again playing tennis. Tennis, for heaven’s sake! Have you lost your mind?”

Trent winced as the doctor’s capable hands explored the tender muscles. “I needed to brush up on my ground strokes.”

“Bull. I know what kind of strokes you were brushing up on. Tom also told me you were servicing the club’s woman pro… and I don’t mean on the tennis court.”

“With tattling friends like Tom-”

“Don’t blame this lecture on him. Look, son,” the Mustangs’ doctor had said, pulling up a stool and speaking to Trent earnestly, “that shoulder is never going to heal if you keep on going the way you have been. Sure, this is the off-season, and you’ve earned the right to raise a little hell. But training camp is just a few weeks away. Which is more important to you, next football season or the swinging-single’s life? Which would you rather be, a Super Bowl quarterback or a superstud?”

Trent had called his aunt that afternoon.

It had been the right decision, he thought now as he leaned back and sipped the coffee Ruby had poured into his china cup. He probably did need the rest, the earlier hours, and regular meals that this sabbatical in Galveston promised. Aunt Ruby certainly wasn’t boring. He still had fond memories of his childhood visits with her.

He looked speculatively at the other woman at the table. Miss Ramsey might even prove to be amusing, if she ever lightened up. Maybe he could prod her along.

“What do you do to support yourself?” he asked abruptly.

“ Trent! How rude!” his aunt admonished. “Didn’t that sister of mine teach you any social graces? You’ve been around those barbarian teammates of yours too long.”

“I want to know.” His smile was disarming. “Why beat around the bush? If Miss Ramsey and I are going to be… living together, don’t you think we should get to know each other?”

His dark eyes had swept down Rana’s body, leaving a tide of heat. Rana wished she hadn’t felt it. For some unexplainable reason she had been relieved to learn that he wasn’t seeking cover from a sticky divorce, though that didn’t rule out the possibility that he was married.

She had even felt a twinge of pity for him as an athlete who was obviously worried about his future. She knew enough about the world of professional sports to know that such injuries as shoulder separations could mean the end of a career.

Now, however, when he was looking at her with that familiar “I could eat you for breakfast, little girl” look on his face, her compassion evaporated and her previous aversion returned. With it came her resolution to keep out of his path.

“I paint,” she said succinctly.

“Paint? You mean pictures or walls?”

“Neither.” She sipped her coffee, creating what she hoped was an irritating delay. “I paint on clothing.”

“Clothing?” he asked with a deadpan expression.

“Yes, clothing,” she said, staring at him through the blue-tinted lenses of her glasses.

“She’s ingenious,” Ruby contributed with affected gaiety. She had so hoped her nephew could bring out Miss Ramsey, but during the course of this first meal, her hopes had been dashed. If anything, Miss Ramsey had retreated further into her shell. She seemed to be hiding behind her eyeglasses, shrinking inside her oversized ugly clothing, withdrawing even further behind a veil of secrecy and privacy. “You ought to see some of her creations,” Ruby continued, undaunted. “She works too hard at it, though. I’m constantly after her to get out more. To mingle with people her own age.”

Trent hadn’t taken his eyes off Miss Ramsey. “You do your work here?”

“Yes. I’ve turned the sitting room of the apartment into a studio. The lighting is good.”

“I’m not sure I understand.” He stretched his long legs far out in front of him. His knee bumped into hers beneath the table; she quickly pulled hers back. “How do you paint on clothing? What kind of clothing? What do you use?”

She smiled, pleased with his interest in spite of herself. “I buy surplus garments and textiles in warehouses, then hand-paint original designs on them.”

He scowled with skepticism. “There’s a market for such, uh, clothes?”

“I can afford to pay my rent, Mr. Gamblin,” she said tartly. She shoved back her chair abruptly and got to her feet. “It was a wonderful dinner, as usual, Ruby. Good night.”

“You’re not going to your room so early?” the landlady asked, distressed over Miss Ramsey’s sudden mood swing. “I thought we all might have a cup of tea in the parlor.”

“Excuse me tonight. I’m tired. Mr. Gamblin.” She gave him a cool nod before stalking from the dining room.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Trent muttered. “What bee got up her-”

“ Trent, don’t be crude!” Ruby interrupted. “Wait! What are you- Where-”

Heedless of his aunt’s surprised sputtering, he stood, tossed down his napkin, and left the table with the same angry urgency Miss Ramsey had displayed only seconds before. His long legs covered ground faster than she could. He caught up with her just as she reached the stairs. “Miss Ramsey!”

His voice carried with it the imperiousness of a drill sergeant. She stopped with her foot poised on the second step and turned around.

Before she could prevent it, he had her right hand firmly enfolded in his. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you how glad I am to find myself in your delightful company.” Regardless of his seething anger, he spoke in dulcet tones. No woman walked Out on Trent Gamblin. “Enchanted, Miss Ramsey.” Lifting her hand, he pressed his mouth to the back of it.

She tried to hold in her gasp but failed. She felt as if she had been punched in the middle. Aftershocks rippled through her. Snatching her hand away from his, she spoke a frosty good night and haughtily retreated upstairs.

Trent was still smiling when he returned to the dining room. “I don’t like the gloating expression on your face, Trent,” Ruby said sternly.

He resumed his seat and poured himself another cup of coffee from the silver pot. “Miss Ramsey might act like a prickly old maid, but she’s still a woman.”

“I hope that you won’t do anything indiscreet or treat Miss Ramsey with anything but the utmost respect. She is a dear girl, but treasures her privacy. In all these months, she hasn’t divulged any personal information about herself. My guess is that there’s a great sadness in her history. Please don’t provoke her.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said with a smile that was anything but sincere.

Since his aunt had always adored him, she didn’t question his earnestness. “Good. Now, be a sweetheart and come into the kitchen with me while I clean up. I want to hear everything that’s been going on in your life.”

“Even the raunchy stuff?”

She giggled and squeezed his chin between her fingers. “I want to hear the raunchy stuff first.”

Trent followed his aunt into her kitchen, but his mind was still on Miss Ramsey. What the hell was her first name, anyway He had noticed, in spite of her clothes-clothes that a bag lady would be ashamed to wear-that she had a remarkably graceful, fluid walk. Her posture was proud. The hand he had so arrogantly kissed might have been Unmanicured, but it was dainty to the point of fragility. For some reason, despite the rough skin and the faint smell of paint and turpentine, he had enjoyed kissing it very much.

Upstairs in the bedroom of her apartment, which took up the east side of the second story, Rana undressed. She had avoided mirrors in the last six months, but she looked at herself carefully now. The cheval glass stood in one corner of the antique-furnished room, so she could see her whole image reflected.

She had left New York weighing one hundred and ten pounds. Stretched over her five-foot-nine-inch frame, the flesh had been thinly distributed. Thanks to Ruby’s culinary arts, not to mention her nagging, Rana had gained almost twenty pounds. By any other standards, she was still thin. To herself, she looked fat. Her hipbones no longer protruded from a concave abdomen. Her breasts had become rounder, softer, far more feminine.

The extra poundage was also evident in her face. The cheekbones made legendary by photographs published in the world’s leading fashion magazines didn’t seem so pronounced, now that the cheeks beneath them had filled out.

She took off the unnecessary eyeglasses. Those topaz-green eyes that had lured hundreds of thousands of women into buying eye-shadow collections with names such as Sahara Sands and Forest Gems stared back at her. Artfully made up, they were spectacular. Even without makeup, their slanting almond shape was distinctive and arresting. Too arresting not to be camouflaged by tinted glasses if she wanted her identity to remain a secret.

She forced her lips into a smile. Her teeth were going crooked again. Her mother would fly into a tizzy if she could see them. How much money had Susan Ramsey spent straightening Rana’s teeth? Yet without the retainer Rana had been advised to sleep in every night of her life, her four front teeth were stubbornly overlapping again.

Picking up a hairbrush, she swept back the heavy strands hanging on either side of her face. She shook her head, as she had been taught to do. There it was, the Rana Look. A mane of dark red hair framing an exotic face. A blurred, diluted version, true, but a glimpse that brought back painful memories.

Even now she could feel the agent’s tobacco-stained fingers pinching her chin as they jerked Rana’s head this way and that to capture certain angles. “She’s just too… too exotic-looking, Mrs. Ramsey. She’s lovely, but… foreign. Yes, that’s it. She’s not all-American enough.”

“You’ve already got all-American models,” Susan Ramsey said with disgust. “My Rana’s different. That’s what makes her an undiscovered treasure.”

No one, not the appraising agent, not the yawning photographer, least of all her mother, noticed Rana wince. She was hungry. A cheeseburger came to mind, and the thought made her mouth water. No sense in torturing herself. She would be lucky to be allowed low-calorie dressing on her lettuce salad if she got lunch at all.

“I’m sorry,” the agent said, gathering the glossy eightby-ten pictures of Rana into a messy stack and handing them back to Susan Ramsey. “She’s a beautiful girl; she’s just not for us. Have you tried Ford? Eileen did very well with Ali McGraw, and she had dark hair and eyes.”

Stuffing the pictures back into a large portfolio and roughly taking Rana by the arm, Susan had marched out of the office. In the elevator, she marked that agent’s name off her long list. “Don’t worry, Rana. Everyone in New York can’t be that blindly stupid. Please stand up straight. And next time will you please try smiling a little more?”

“I’m slouching because I’m weak with hunger, Mother. I had one slice of melba toast and a half a grapefruit for breakfast. We’ve walked miles. My feet hurt. Can’t we stop somewhere, sit down, and eat?”

“Just a few more interviews,” Susan said absently as she scanned the remaining names on her list.

“But I’m tired.”

Susan ushered Rana Out of the elevator when it reached the lobby floor. “You truly are selfish and self-centered, Rana. I got you out of that unfortunate marriage. I sold my home to get the money to bring you to New York. I’m sacrificing my own life for your career. And this is the thanks I get. All you do is whine.”

Rana didn’t say what she was thinking, that the modeling career had been her mother’s idea, not her own, that it had been Susan’s desire to sell their house in Des Moines and move to New York, and that the marriage had been unfortunate because of Susan’s constant meddling.

“Our next appointment is in fifteen minutes. If you stop dawdling, we’ll be there five minutes early. That’ll give you time to repair your makeup. Please remember to smile. You never know when a smile or a sexy glance will pay off. One of these agents is bound to see your potential.”

The agent who finally did was Morey Fletcher. His office wasn’t at a prestigious address. He was overweight, gruff, disheveled, balding. His name was far down on Susan’s list. But he looked past the mother and saw the nineteen- year-old girl hovering in the background. His stomach did somersaults, and it wasn’t because of the corned-beef sandwich he had had sent up from the deli downstairs. If a jaded professional like himself could be moved by that face and those eyes, he reasoned that John Q. Public would be too.

“Sit down, Miss Ramsey.” He offered a chair to the girl first. Surprised, she collapsed in it and immediately slipped off her shoes. He smiled, and she smiled back.

Within two days a contract had been drawn up, repeatedly examined by Susan, and eventually signed. That was the beginning.

Just thinking about the months that followed made Rana weary. Her shoulders slumped. Her head dropped forward and her hair swung down to hide the classic cheekbones again.

She pulled on a ragged T-shirt to sleep in and padded to the window. If she listened closely she could hear the incessant waves of the Gulf of Mexico rolling toward the shore a few blocks away. Cicadas and crickets made their shrill racket in the thick branches of the trees. The novelty of these sounds still intrigued her. They were so different from the city sounds that had filtered up to the thirty- second-story window of her Upper East Side apartment. She much preferred this quaintly furnished bedroom to the stark modernity of her professionally decorated apartment in New York. The peacefulness of it was something she would always treasure.

Except that tonight, she wasn’t so peaceful.

She discovered her restlessness as soon as she slipped between the sheets. Her mind kept returning to the man who now lived across the hall from her. He so fit the stereotype of the macho man that he was laughable. Strange, though, she mused, she didn’t feel like laughing.

She was relieved on one account-he hadn’t recognized her. Of course his reading material probably ran more toward Sports Illustrated than it did to Vogue. Miss Ramsey hardly looked like the model in the cosmetics commercials on television. And no one would expect the elusive Rana to turn up in a boardinghouse in Galveston, Texas.

He had his nerve, kissing her hand that way. He’d done it out of sheer spite. How was she going to stand living under the same roof with a man who had such an inflated ego?

She would ignore him, she decided.

But she was already listening for his tread on the stairs and wondering what he was doing. Aggravated with herself, she punched her pillow and erased Trent Gamblin from her thoughts. But as she drifted to sleep, she was thinking about his smile and how attractively it rearranged his entire face.

And on the back of her hand lingered the burning sensation left by his lips.