Lady with a Past Read online

  The muscles in Connor’s shoulders were bunched with tension. He was tired. He was frustrated. Somewhere in the background he could hear Robby offer him five bucks for Glitter Baby’s picture. Connor advised him to get a life and walked out into the parking lot. It looked like rain again, and the wind was picking up. He was so discouraged he was seriously considering calling Morris and telling him to track down Alan Greenspan. Lord knew he would be easier to find than one Frances Calhoon.

  A dusty white pickup pulled out of the parking lot, tires spitting gravel. The brunette named Maxie, Connor thought absently, was in a hurry. She must be looking forward to getting that fertilizer home and doing whatever it was country people did with fertilizer.

  Except…

  Connor’s flesh started prickling, from his toes to his scalp. A dawning realization kicked his heart into double time. Except Maxie hadn’t driven around the back to load her fertilizer. She had sped out of the parking lot as if all the hounds in hell were after her.

  Connor sat down abruptly, right there on the front steps of the store. His mind was spinning. He brought Glitter Baby’s picture out of his jacket pocket and stared with fierce concentration. The chin, that stubborn chin was less angular in Maxie’s face, but still similar. They were both of the same height. Frances Calhoon was a blonde and Maxie a brunette, but that meant nothing. The sultry waif in the photograph looked to be little more than a hundred pounds. Maxie had filled out her jeans with a mature woman’s figure. Still….

  Connor had another memory, an echo of something only his subconscious had registered at the time. He recalled seeing a split-second flash of Maxie’s eyes before she’d replaced her hat, his subconscious noting an unusual color. Not brown, not hazel…

  Violet. Glitter Baby’s trademark, soul-stabbing violet eyes that rendered even the most jaded arbiters of beauty completely smitten. Connor had studied a hundred photographs, screened hours of videotapes. He knew her eyes better than his own, was intensely familiar with every mood, every subtle, sensual nuance they could project. He was no more immune to her powerful charisma than any other red-blooded man. One look from her eyes and the world stopped, shifted, and began spinning in a new orbit.

  Maxie had those eyes.

  “Hot damn,” he whispered, the ghost of a smile touching his mouth.

  Busted.

  The important thing was not to panic. She panicked anyway. Frances Maxine Calhoon paced her front porch from one end to the other and back again, wringing her hands and whimpering. Her dog Boo, an enormous black lab who preferred naps to exercise, waddled loyally behind, now and then offering sympathetic whining and struggling for air. Boo had never seen his owner in a state of extreme agitation. Maxie hadn’t been in a state of extreme agitation for two years. It had been blissful, wonderful, healing, therapeutic…and she was terrified it was over.

  This little ranch in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, had been her refuge, her heaven-sent second chance. She knew without a shadow of a doubt it had saved her life. Two years ago she had weighed ninety seven pounds, smoked incessantly and slept less than an hour or two a night. She had debilitating migraines, her hands shook dreadfully and she neglected to eat for days at a time. Her agent sent her to a series of doctors who prescribed sleeping pills, tranquilizers and anti-depressants. Her trainer advised colon-cleansing, aromatherapies and a nicotine patch. Her friends borrowed her clothes and her pills and her money and always made sure they were standing next to her when tabloid photographers closed in for yet another shot. After eight years in the glare of the spotlight, Maxie was spent, coming apart at the seams, and no one seemed to realize or care how close she was to a complete breakdown. It was almost too late before she realized the creation known as Glitter Baby was first, last and always a stepping stone for others’ interests. If she was to survive, she had to save herself.

  She had been twenty-two-years old.

  At the time, her widowed mother had started a new life in Oakley, Wyoming, running an antique shop in the nondescript little town. It was the perfect place for the runaway supermodel to start over, to learn to breathe and sleep and hope again. She retired without warning, used her savings to buy out her endorsement contracts and disappeared without a trace. She’d exchanged her first name for her middle name and become Maxie Calhoon. She had never looked back.

  Until today. She hadn’t realized the stranger in the feed store was Connor Garrett of television fame until he had spoken directly to her. She knew at that instant, even before she had looked at Glitter Baby’s photograph, that the jig was up. This man was from the world she used to inhabit, a world she knew only too well. If he could benefit from publicizing her whereabouts, he would.

  She became conscious of poor Boo’s exhausted wheezing and stopped her frenzied pacing. Sweet dog, he had no idea the sky was falling in on them. He only knew he’d missed his mid-morning nap and his mistress had suddenly gone crazy. Maxie sat on the porch swing and scratched Boo under the chin until his big brown eyes began to droop. “That’s it, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Go to sleep and dream about big fat kitty cats…that’s right, lie down.”

  Boo was asthmatic, overweight and incurably lazy, but he was her first true friend. She had confided in him all the regrets and mistakes of the past, and together they had celebrated her little accomplishments, such as learning to eat without guilt. Boo was a very good listener and fine company, particularly if she shared her SpaghettiOs with him. He didn’t know or care who she had been in her previous life.

  Heaven help her, she didn’t want to lose it all now. Connor Garrett could so easily put an end to her peaceful exile. Maxie wasn’t at all sure she had fooled him with her careless indifference, either. There had been something in his dark eyes when he looked at her, a burning intensity that contrasted with his boyish baseball cap and casual L.A. Lakers sweatshirt. Sooner or later he was bound to put one and one together. For Maxie, that would mean the beginning of the end.

  She gazed out at her sunwashed pasture, her eyes growing misty as she watched the newest addition to her fledgling herd of Holsteins frolic through the dandelions. Glitter Baby, that naughty darling of the high-fashion set, was raising cows. She fed them, milked them and read endless books about them. Granted, her new career put her in a much lower tax bracket than when she’d been modeling. Much, much lower. Fortunately, it looked like her struggling hand-to-mouth operation was going to get a desperately needed shot in the arm. While in town, she’d 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 in
side, 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 fantasy, an understandable reaction. Connor was somewhat inspired himself at the moment. How on earth had this unforgettable lady escaped recognition? Was everyone in this town blind?

  Maxie watched him with the cool composure of one who was used to being the focus of attention. “Your mother should have taught you better manners. It’s rude to stare.”

  “My mother was a politician’s wife. She paid people to stare at her. It made her very happy. Besides, it couldn’t bother you too much. You spent eight extremely profitable years being stared at.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”

  Connor grinned, admiring her pluck. “You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

  “You poor confused man. Do you have a short-term memory problem? How old are you, forty-five or so? That’s quite young to be going senile.”

  “Thirty-four,” Connor corrected. “And I still have all my own teeth, too.”

  Maxie shrugged. “You look much older in person than on television.”

  “You know who I am?” Pleased, he crossed his arms over his broad chest and began rocking back and forth on the heels of his sneakers. “I’m flattered. Why didn’t you say something when I met you at the feed store?”

  “I said I knew who you were, Mr. Garrett,” Maxie retorted. “I didn’t say I was a fan. Thank you for delivering my fertilizer. Having said that, I’m now goi
ng to walk you to your car and wave enthusiastically while you drive away.”

  “I’m beginning to feel unwanted.” Connor lagged behind as she marched towards the house, a blissful smile on his face as he thoroughly appreciated the indignant rhythm of her rounded derriere. “We need to talk. Can’t you spare me a minute? I promise, it could be well worth your while.”

  “My mother told me never to talk to strangers. You’re very strange, therefore I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Now who’s being rude? I’ve done nothing to—” He gave a low whistle. “Will you look at that? Holy cow…!”

  Ever mindful of her Holsteins’ health, Maxie stopped and looked back. Connor Garrett was down on his haunches in front of the vegetable garden in the side yard. Boo had crouched down likewise, his head tilted inquisitively. “What are you doing?” she demanded, her patience wearing thin.

  He looked up at her, his finger jabbing in the direction of the cabbages. “I just saw a rabbit.”

  “And your point is?”

  “It had bent ears,” Connor stressed. “Like they were broken or something. I swear, it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. He just ducked under the cabbages.”

  Maxine rolled her eyes. “His ears are supposed to look like that. That’s Harvey. He’s a lop-eared rabbit. He lives in the garden and helps me eat the produce. You don’t get out to the country much, do you?”

  Connor stood up, a wave of color rising in his face. “Hey, very few of my acquaintances keep rabbits as pets, bent-eared or otherwise. When I saw him, I thought the poor guy was crippled or something. Why the name Harvey?”

  “I’m a big Jimmy Stewart fan.”

  “So why didn’t you name it Jimmy Stewart?”

  “Didn’t you ever see the play Harvey? Or the movie? Jimmy Stewart had this imaginary rabbit—” She broke off abruptly. Connor Garrett was the enemy, and it wouldn’t be smart to strike up any sort of friendship. “Never mind, Mr. Garrett. I’m sure you have better things to do than talk about my rabbit.”