The Rana Look

Nine

First Rana couldn’t remember why she didn’t want to wake up. Then it came to her, and she squeezed her eyes shut again.

Trent was leaving today.

Rolling onto her back, she stared at the ceiling over her bed and wondered if she would be able to handle his departure with dignity. Before she could think about it long, however, there was a discreet knock on her door. She scrambled from the bed and rushed across the room to open the door a crack.

“I wouldn’t have to come tiptoeing across the hail at six A.M.if you’d let me spend the night in your bed. But I love you anyway.” Trent leaned forward and kissed her gently. Ruby knew about their affair, but Rana had remained steadfast about their need for some privacy from each other. She had stubbornly refused to sleep with him for the entire night. “Why aren’t you dressed to run?”

“I didn’t know you’d want to,” she whispered back.

“I do. This is our last morning to jog together on the Galveston beach. At least for a while.” He reached behind her and patted her bottom. “Hurry. I’ll be warming up on the front lawn.”

So he was going to pretend that today was just like any other… at least for a few hours.

When they returned from an exhilarating workout, they drank fruit juice and ate a light breakfast in the kitchen, as had become their habit. But when they were climbing the stairs, he took her hand and pulled her into his room, closing and locking the door behind them.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Locking you in. Today we shower together.”

That had been another intimacy she had refused him. “ Trent, you know how-”

He laid a finger over her lips. “No arguments. Consider this your send-off to a soldier on his way to the front.”

“But-”

“Do you love me?”

He asked the question with such intensity that she dared not make light of it. “Yes,” she said truthfully. “I love you, Trent.”

“And I love you. We’ve been as intimate as a man and woman can be. I’ve touched you, kissed you, everywhere. But I want to see you in the light. Do this for me. Please.”

He was the first-and probably would be the last- person ever to love her just as she was. Could she deny him anything on their final day together? She didn’t protest when he began removing her ugly gray sweat suit. She let him peel away one shapeless garment after another until she stood before him naked.

Several minutes ticked by before he said anything. His eyes traveled from the crown of her head to her feet, back up, then down again with more leisure. Bewildered, he hissed a soft curse.

“Why do you dress the way you do? You’ve got one of the most spectacular bodies I’ve ever seen. I don’t understand,” he said hoarsely, shaking his head in confusion.

Rana wanted to weep with happiness. His compliment meant more to her than any she had ever received. Words to the same effect had been repeated to her so often that they had lost their meaning. But Trent ’s speaking of them gave those words new significance.

If she let herself dwell on it, she would cry, and if she began, she was afraid she would never stop. This was too precious a day to waste on tears. So she closed the distance between them and, standing on tiptoe, murmured against his lips. “You’re wearing too many clothes, Mr. Gamblin.” She began working his shorts down his hips.

Before they stepped into the shower stall, he snatched off her glasses. She reached for them reflexively, but he held them far above her head. She turned her face aside.

“Ana, look at me.”

She loved him, didn’t she? If he did recognize her, would it matter so much now? He would leave her in a few hours anyway. Gradually her head came around, until she was staring up at him.

He seemed to lose himself in the swirling depths of her eyes. “Such an unusual color,” he remarked distantly, as though talking to himself. “It’s a crime for you to hide such beautiful eyes behind these tinted lenses.”

He put the glasses on the edge of the sink, then cupped her face between his hands and dotted it with soft kisses. He kissed her closed eyelids and her cheeks, her forehead and her chin, before settling his warm, open mouth over hers and sending his tongue deep into it.

Their shower together became a ritual of love. Lips sipped water from pulsing flesh, unashamed and uninhibited. Soapy hands explored slick skin, caressed and massaged, earned murmurs of pleasure and sighs of fulfillment. His lathered fingers moved provocatively through the silky tuft at the top of her thighs. Slippery hands made milking motions that left him gasping.

“You make me so hard,” he rasped, bringing their bodies together. Their coupling was exquisite and seemingly timeless.

The water from the shower turned cool long before their ardor.

Lunch was a solemn occasion. Ruby was unnaturally glum. “Are you sure you haven’t forgotten anything?”

“I’ve packed everything and checked the room twice, Auntie. If I’ve overlooked anything, you can send it to my house in Houston. The housekeeper will be there even if I’m not.”

Rana said little. She was concentrating on not bursting into tears, while she idly moved the unwanted chicken salad around on her plate.

“What time is your flight?” Ruby asked.

“We’re scheduled to take off at four, but I’m sure media interviews will delay us. They always do.” A frown creased his brow as he watched Ana. He had expected a little show of sadness on her part, since they wouldn’t be seeing each other for three weeks. He hadn’t thought she would be this despondent.

“Will you be interviewed on camera?” Ruby asked him.

“Maybe. Watch the news tonight and you might see me.” Trying to lighten the mood around the dining table, he winked at his aunt. “Should I wave to you?”

When they had dragged out lunch as long as they possibly could, all that was left to do was say good-bye. Trent hugged his aunt and gave her a smack on the lips. “I thank you, the coach thanks you, the team thanks you, the fans thank you.”

She pretended to be irritated. “What are you blabbering about, you silly boy?”

“If you hadn’t given me a quiet room to rest in and three square meals a day, I wouldn’t be in such terrific condition. All the other guys will have a much harder time at camp than I will, and I owe it all to your tender, loving care.”

Ruby blotted her damp eyes with a hanky and mumbled that he had an open invitation to come and stay any time. He would always be welcome at her house. After his promise to call her often, she discreetly withdrew, leaving him alone in the entrance hail with Rana. He had loaded his belongings in his car before lunch. It was waiting for him at the curb.

Without a word, he pulled Rana into his arms. She buried her face in his neck and locked her hands together at the small of his back. She wished she could gather his strength, his smell, his warmth, and cork them in a bottle to be enjoyed later whenever she needed a “fix” of Trent.

“Are you going to tell me?” he asked softly, stroking her hair.

“Tell you what?”

“Why you look like someone has just run over your kitty.”

She smiled tremulously. “Is that what I look like?”

“Or worse.”

“I’m sad. I hate to see you go.”

“It’s only for three weeks.”

It’s for a lifetime.

“I’ll call every night.”

For a few nights, then you’ll skip a night, and then another.

“I’m going to miss you. So damn much.”

Until you meet someone else.

He tilted her head back and kissed her. Knowing that this would be the last time she ever felt his lips on hers, she poured all her love for him into that kiss.

When he pulled back, he let his thumb glide over her lips. “Kiss me like that a few more times, and I’ll be able to fly to California under my own power.” He hugged her quickly, fiercely. “See you in three weeks.”

Then he was gone.

She groped her way to the deacon’s bench behind the stairs and collapsed on it. She began to cry. Bitterly. Rackingly. And this time he wasn’t there to lend her comfort.

At least Rana’s days were busy. She finished her outstanding orders in ten days. Barry had promoted his idea of hand-painted upholstery fabric. She already had an order for three oversized cushions to decorate a poolside wicker settee.

To her delight, Trent called faithfully every night, and they talked until Tom, his roommate, demanded that he shut up and turn out the lights. He phoned with such regularity that it was with some surprise that Ruby called Rana to the phone one evening and said, “It’s a man, but it’s not Trent. And whoever it is, he got your name wrong. He pronounced it Rana.”

She avoided Ruby’s questioning eyes as she took the receiver from her. “Hello?”

“Rana Ramsey?”

A quick glance assured her that Ruby had already become engrossed in her television serial. “This is she.”

The caller identified himself as a representative of a life-insurance firm in New York City. “You are the beneficiary of a fifty-thousand-dollar policy, and I wanted to verify your current address. You’ll be receiving a check in the full amount, as the taxes were taken care of when the will was probated.”

Her throat constricted. “Who… Who…?“

“Oh, I’m sorry. Mr. Morey Fletcher.”

Her knees almost buckled beneath her. She certainly didn’t want to benefit financially from Morey’s suicide. The thought made her nauseous. She swallowed hard, fought off the dizziness, and wet her lips. “But in instances such as his, I didn’t think life-insurance policies were honored.”

The man was obviously taken aback. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What do you mean by ‘instances such as his’?”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the hateful word. “I mean, the way he died.”

“The insurance company has found nothing irregular about Mr. Fletcher’s death, Ms. Ramsey. No one could have predicted his reaction to the medication.”

“Medication?” She virtually inhaled the word, making a wheezing sound.

“Yes, the drug to control blood pressure that his physician had prescribed for him. I apologize again. I thought you were acquainted with the circumstances of Mr. Fletcher’s death.”

“I thought I was too,” Rana murmured. The implications of this telephone call were just beginning to sink in. Facing her mother’s part in describing Morey’s death was going to be painful.

“His doctor had given him a new prescription that day to bring his blood pressure down.”

“I understood that he took the medication with alcohol.”

“Yes, the postmortem confirmed the police report, but the alcohol content of his blood was so low as to be negligible. He might have had one glass of wine with dinner. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to prescribe the correct dosage of the drug he was taking, or to predict a patient’s reaction to it. If someone else had been present when Mr. Fletcher lost consciousness, his life might have been saved, but the glass of wine made no difference one way or the other. I’ve upset you, Ms. Ramsey. Forgive me,” he said when he heard her telltale sniffling.

“No, no, thank you. Thank you for telling me.”

Morey’s death had been an accident!

He might have been disappointed about her decision not to sign a new contract, but she hadn’t driven him to suicide. She would continue to grieve for him, but she no longer had to bear the burden of responsibility for his death.

Her heart was still soaring when Trent called later that night. She told him about her previous call. “You can’t imagine how relieved I feel, knowing that he didn’t die hating me.” Trent didn’t know that Morey had been her agent, merely that he’d been a very dear friend.

“I was never convinced of that, darling.” He let the contemplative moment pass, and then said, “Since you’re in such high spirits, I’ll ask you tonight.”

“Ask me what?”

“Will you go to the preseason party with me?”

She clutched the receiver tightly. “The preseason party?”

“Yeah, the owners of the team throw a big bash every year after training camp and before the first exhibition game. It’s a dress-up affair, quite a shindig, and I want you to be my date.”

“I don’t think I can go, Trent,” she said quickly.

“Why not? Stringing me along already? Aunt Ruby hasn’t rented my apartment to a Robert Redford type, has she? You like blonds better? Okay, I’ll bleach my hair.”

“Stop! No, I’m not stringing you along. I just don’t think a ‘bash’ sounds like me. Especially a dress-up one.”

“Hey, relax. You’ll be with me, and I’m a star.” She could envision his lazy, crooked, conceited grin, and her heart twisted with love. What would all his friends and teammates think of dowdy Ana Ramsey? She remembered Tom Tandy’s face when he’d first met her, and knew then that she would never subject Trent to that kind of embarrassment.

Nor would she break her resolve and go to the party as Rana. Trent would feel like a colossal fool, and she couldn’t do that to him either, not when the most important football season of his career was pending. He was feeling like a Super Bowl quarterback now. She wouldn’t do anything to imperil his regained confidence.

“We’ll see,” she said obliquely to postpone refusing him outright.

But she knew she would never attend that party.

“Mother!”

“Hello, Rana.”

Rana stood in the doorway, staring at Ruby’s guest, who was sitting with the elderly woman in the parlor. Rana’s face drained of color.

“Your mother arrived half an hour ago, dear,” Ruby said, trying valiantly to ignore the apparent antagonism between the two women. She had disliked Susan Ramsey on sight, and her initial impression hadn’t improved when the woman insisted that her daughter’s name was Rana instead of Ana.

Only inbred southern hospitality had compelled Ruby to invite Susan into the parlor and offer her tea while they waited for Ana, or Rana, to return from her errands. Ruby hadn’t liked Susan’s probing questions, either, and had answered them as evasively as possible. “Would you like tea, Ana, dear?”

“No, thank you, Ruby,” Rana said, never taking her eyes off her mother, who did nothing to mask her disapproval of the flamboyantly dressed landlady, the house, and her daughter.

“Then I’ll leave you two alone to visit.”

She bustled out, patting Rana on the arm reassuringly and whispering, “Just call out if you need me,” as she went past her.

“You look dreadful,” Susan began without preamble. “Your face is sunburned.”

“This is an island, Mother. I’m out in the sun frequently, and I love it.”

Susan sniffed her disapproval. “This Ruby person tells me that you have a beau.”

“Ruby told you no such thing,” Rana said calmly. She sat down in a chair opposite her mother’s, where Susan sat so erect that no part of her back touched the cushion. “You may have deviously gleaned enough information from her to come to that conclusion, but don’t suggest that my friend gossiped about me. I know better. Just as I know how persuasive you can be, Mother.”

Susan’s only reaction to her daughter’s show of spunk was a slight raising of one groomed brow. “Are you living here with a man?”

“No. But I fell in love with a man who lived here. He’s gone now.”

“So I hear. A football player.” She laughed in ridicule. “You’re behaving like a fool over a broad pair of shoulders. I should have known that’s what was keeping you awayfrom where you were supposed to be.”

“ Trent had nothing to do with my decision not to return to work.”

“Didn’t he?”

“We are speaking of Trent Gamblin, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“From what I’ve read recently, his career is in a steep decline.”

“He had a shoulder injury last season, but he’s coming back this year better than ever.”

“Rana, for heaven’s sake, spare me your sickening adulation.” She picked at a nonexistent speck on her skirt. “Where does this shabby little affair go from here?”

“I don’t know. But be assured of one thing, Mother. It’s none of your business,” she said, emphasizing each word. Susan’s face went taut. “I’ve got a new life. A new career. My business is doing well, and growing. If and when I return to modeling, it will be my decision and will have nothing whatsoever to do with you.”

Rana leaned forward and whipped off her glasses, giving her mother a penetrating stare. “Why did you lead me to believe that Morey’s death was a suicide?”

Susan’s composure slipped another notch. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, yes, you did. There’s just no limit to how far you’ll go, is there? You’ll do anything to get your way. I pity you, Mother. You must be awfully lonely.”

Susan sprang to her feet. “Save your pity. I’ve managed to pull myself together since your desertion. I sold the penthouse, and I intend to keep every penny of the equity.”

“Congratulations. It’s yours. I always hated that mausoleum you mistakenly referred to as ‘home.’”

Susan continued as though she hadn’t been interrupted. “With careful financial counseling from a man I’ve met recently, I’ll live comfortably without you, Rana. He has invited me to stay with him for a while. I’ve volunteered to help him work out some of his personal problems.”

Rana smiled at that piece of news. Susan had found another life to manage. “That’s wonderful, Mother. I hope you’ll be happy.”

“I will be. While you waste your life with some muscle- bound buffoon who carries a football down a field.”

“I don’t know if Trent and I have a future together. But at least I’ll be directing the course of my life, not you.”

“Does he know who you are?”

Rana’s eyes clashed with her mother’s. Susan smiled with smug triumph when she realized that she had scored a direct hit. “No?” she purred. “From his aunt I understand that he’s a man with a fragile ego, especially where his career is concerned. He probably wouldn’t take too kindly to your international fame, would he? Is that why you’re keeping your true identity a secret?”

“No!”

“Well, it’s really no concern of mine,” she said airily. “My friend had business in Houston, so we only flew down for the day.” She picked up her purse, stood, and walked toward the hall. “I must go, or I’ll be late meeting him back at the airport. I wanted to give you one last chance to come back, but I won’t interfere in your life again, Rana. If you choose to live in obscurity and poverty, that’s up to you. By the way, when I moved from the penthouse, I boxed up all your things. I’m having them shipped to you. Use or dispose of them as you see fit. Good-bye.”

Rana’s heart tore in two. This was it. This was their final farewell. She couldn’t believe that she and her mother were parting company so coldly, possibly never to see each other again. From all indications, Susan was washing her hands of her.

“Mother,” she called out, her voice quavering. She took several quick steps forward, her arms extended. Susan turned around, but her posture remained unyielding. Rana forced herself to a halt, but didn’t let her mother’s aloof veneer stop her from speaking what she felt she must.

“You said I live in poverty, but you’re wrong. I’m rich. Wealthier than I’ve ever been.” She paused, desperately wanting to see a glimmer of understanding and warmth in her mother’s emotionless eyes. “I’ve found real beauty. I’ve learned what it is to love. Trent taught me, though he didn’t even know it. I thought I hated you, but I don’t. I love you. Not because of what you are, but in spite of it. That’s what it’s all about, you see? I love you, Mother, and I’m sorry you’ll never know the joy-not happiness-but the joy that can come from loving.”

She expected nothing. Nothing was what she got. Susan turned on her heel and stalked out.

“So are you or aren’t you?”

“You’ll have to speak louder, honey. I’m calling from the locker room, and it’s noisy as hell. Will you meet me at the party? I’m the only guy on the team who hasn’t got a date. They’ll never let me live that down. You wouldn’t be that cruel, would you?”

Ever since Susan’s visit Rana had been debating what she would do on this day. It had come to the eleventh hour, and still she had made no decision. The team had returned to Houston late the night before. The coach had scheduled an early-morning practice, so it had been impossible for Trent to drive to Galveston to see her. The party was due to start in a few hours. He had every right to expect Rana’s answer as to whether she was going to meet him there or not.

Rana had spent hours of agonizing thought pondering the question. Her confrontation with Susan, heart-wrenching as it had been, had accomplished something. Her mother had inadvertently raised some vital points that had forced Rana to think seriously about her love for Trent. And his for her. He had vowed his love before leaving Galveston and told her repeatedly how much he loved her each time he’d called. During their separation his devotion hadn’t waned. Rana had expected never to see him again, but it was clear that Trent planned to make her very much a part of his life.

What it came down to was this: Did he love her for what she was or for what she wasn’t? Would he love Rana as much as he loved Ana? She couldn’t continue the disguise forever. She had come to that decision, at least. She was as much Rana as she was Ana. Living behind the mask of dowdiness was as much a lie as living behind Rana’s glamorous makeup and clothes.

Love meant acceptance. Trent either loved her or he didn’t. It would be a grueling test, but she had to put him through it. Otherwise there could be no future for them.

Of course, she would have to go through the test too. That would be the hardest part. That was what she didn’t know if she could bear.

“Yes, I’ll be there,” she said quietly.

“Great! I’m sending a limo for you.”

“No! Don’t be crazy.”

“I’m crazy in love. And when I see you, I can’t be held accountable for my actions.”

He didn’t know the ironic significance of those words.

They said a hasty good-bye. Trancelike, Rana walked into her bathroom. Looking directly into the mirror, she slowly lowered the blue-tinted eyeglasses. Lest she capitulate to her fears, she cracked the glasses against the side of the bathtub before dropping the pieces into the wastepaper basket. She shook back her hair and gathered it into a ponytail.

Then she reached into the cabinet over the sink and took out her makeup kit.