The Makeover Mission (8 page)

As if he read her thoughts, a talent he was particularly adept at,
McConneghy handed her a slice of cheese and said. "This morning was easy
compared to what's coming."

The man was a font of good news.

"Didn't your parents ever tell you if you couldn't say
something nice, not to say anything at all?" she snapped back, too tired
to care about the tone of her voice.

He actually had the gall to smile. Something that made little
butterflies spring to life in her stomach, fluttering around the knots already
there.

But he didn't respond directly. Instead he looked at a clipboard
in his hand. "This afternoon the hair stylist will be here. And the
manicurist."

Without thinking Jane's hands reached for the ends of her hair.
"Don't tell me Elena has one of those short, chic haircuts."

"You're Elena and no." His eyes swept over her in a way
that made her want to blush and stammer before his cold, matter-of-fact voice
added. "There won't be much change."

"How are you explaining the need to…" she waved her
hands before her. "The need to fix me?"

"These are not Elena's regular people," he replied.
"We couldn't risk them noting the differences."

The man thought of everything.

"Come on," he motioned before she'd even finished her last
bite, one she didn't even taste over the exhaustion she felt. "Let's get
going again."

"Sadist," she mumbled to herself.

At least she thought no one had heard, until he speared her with
one of those penetrating gray-eyed glares. "Sadism would be to let you
walk into a situation without any preparation. I'd prefer to think of this as
protecting you."

She mulled over his words the rest of the afternoon, keeping her
own opinions to herself. It was too much effort to voice them, anyway. Maybe it
was still shock, or jet lag, or her mind's inclination to retreat from
something so out of her control, but by the time Major McConneghy called an end
to the day she was ready to sink to her knees right then and there. The only
thing that kept her upright and functional was the realization that he was
waiting for her to do just that.

It was in the way he watched her, the way he said little but
implied much with his body language. But she wasn't going to give him the
satisfaction. She'd fall apart later, in the privacy of her room. Or so she
promised herself as she picked at a dinner served in the ballroom they were
using as a training area.

"If you don't eat, you won't keep up your strength," he
said to her when she waved off the second course.

"And if I eat I'll lose it all over your spit-and-polished
shoes," she replied, wondering what had happened to the Jane who got along
with everyone, who never uttered a rude word or spoke back.

All of a sudden a question that had been bothering her resurfaced.
She leaned forward and asked, "Exactly where is the other Elena? The real
one, I mean."

For a moment she thought he might not answer. Not that she learned
all that much when he finally did. "That's need-to-know information."

She sat back as if he'd slapped her. "And I obviously don't
need to know."

"Exactly."

Well, she might not be experienced in the ways of the world, but
she could translate do-not-enter signs as well as the next person. Choking down
another slice of her rare roast beef, she set the rest aside, sure it would
lodge in her throat. Why should it hurt that he wanted her to risk her life for
this missing Elena, but didn't trust her to share all but the barest
information?

"All I can tell you is that she's recovering, away from
Vendari. It'll be safer for you if you don't know any more details."

His words caught her off guard and she found herself glancing up,
surprised by the understanding she saw in his gaze, not trusting that it was
really meant for her.

Then the implication of his words set in. If she was killed
outright it wouldn't make a speck of difference if she knew the whereabouts of
the real Elena. But if she was kidnapped—again—then she could be tortured in an
attempt to get her to reveal information she didn't know.

Swallowing hard she pushed away the rest of her meal. Her stomach
felt as if she'd taken a dive off a very high tower, knowing the ground was
coming up, hard and fast.

"You can't keep skipping your meals and expect to function at
top form."

Major Miss-Nothing obviously thought he could control everything.
Including her stomach. She had to remember her role here. She was part of a
scheme—or mission, or whatever—and that was all. Not a person who was scared
right down to the soles of her feet. Not a woman who might want to be comforted
instead of admonished.

She kept her voice calm when she knew it wanted to quiver as she
lifted her gaze to the man across from her.

"I will do what I need to do to get through this
masquerade."

"Mission."

"And you'll do what you need to do. But—" she saw she
had his attention by the way the lines bracketing his eyes deepened, the color
of them intensifying. "—if you criticize everything I won't be able to
function at all."

He weighed her words. "That wasn't a criticism."

"I think you're used to dealing with subordinates. I'm not,
nor will I be treated like one."

The old Jane would never have dared to confront another,
especially one who glared at her with ice in his eyes. But a small part of her
exalted.

Silence spun between them. She vowed not to give in, not on this.
A man like McConneghy would eat her alive if she let him. And while that
challenged her at one level, or at least evoked some pretty heated images she
had no business dwelling on, she needed some sense of control. Everything else
had been taken from her—her sense of security, her identity, her freedom of
choice, but she refused to be treated like a non-thinking, non-feeling robot.

He reached for his drink, taking a long, slow sip, one that had
her thinking about the taste of it upon his lips before she glanced away.

"I will," he uttered at last, setting down his cup,
"attempt to remember not to treat you as a subordinate."

She gave him a smile, one that seemed to disconcert him, though
she didn't have a clue why. "And I will remind you when you forget."

"I have no doubt about that," came his dry answer, as he
rose from the chair. Dinner was obviously over.

But she had won. Not a battle perhaps, more like a skirmish. But
she'd made her point, stuck to her guns and felt like skipping. Until he
turned, remarking, "Gloating does not become you."

Oh yes it did, she thought, not dimming her smile one bit as she
followed him out of the room. She thought she could get used to gloating. Quite
used to it.

The next days passed in a blur to Jane. Rising with the sun, she
repeated, over and over again, the same moves, the same comments, the same
actions until she could do them in her sleep. She learned to crook one finger
while sipping tea and to hold her head at an angle when listening with concentration,
something the major said happened mostly when a man talked to Elena, very
little when a woman did.

Jane learned to keep her eyes downcast when thinking and to eat
escargots without gagging. That lesson took a whole afternoon. But since the
squishy, chewy morsels were one of Elena's favorites, the major was adamant
that Jane practice eating them until she could without even a grimace. He even
handed her a cool washcloth after the first two times her stomach revolted and
she had to run to the nearest restroom.

Protection her foot, the man was a sadist.

But somewhere along the way she found herself hearing less and
less often, "do it again" and more and more often, "that's
right. Just like that."

It was a little like absorbing someone else's thought patterns.
Until the day that McConneghy told her to eat squid, dressed up in a fancy name
and rich sauce.

Jane simply glanced at him, then at the inch-long chunks on her
plate, gave him an arch look and said, "Eat it yourself, Major, because
I'm not going to."

She set down her fork.

Whatever she expected, it wasn't his grin, one that did marvelous
things to the planes of his face.

"I think you're there," he replied, ignoring her
open-mouthed stare. "If that wasn't a queen-to-her-subject comment I don't
know what is."

"Then you think I'm ready?"

He sobered immediately, his expression once again shuttered and
closed. It was as if a light had been quickly extinguished and she wanted to
shiver in the dark.

"You're as ready as you'll ever be."

So why didn't the words make her feel better?

She was asking herself the same question when he met her outside
her room that evening for dinner. A dinner they would not be having served to
them in the training room.

Jane tugged at the simple sheath of blue silk and wondered if the
woman she was impersonating owned anything that didn't dip to here in front and
there in back. She could swear there was less material in this dress than in
the one she'd worn the day she had arrived in Vendari, and that said something.
But there'd only been two choices that Ekaterina had laid out on the bed and
who was Jane Richards to start pawing through that walk-in closet full of
clothes to pick out something more appropriate? With her fashion sense she'd
probably end up wearing pajamas and not know the difference.

But on the other hand, she thought, feeling the slide of silk
against her skin, it was a bit exciting to step into another's shoes—or in this
case clothes—and find herself feeling sexy and provocative instead of competent
and unremarkable.

For the briefest of seconds she allowed herself to wonder if Major
Gray-eyes would like this dress on her, before she ruthlessly shoved that idea
away. There was no place for such thoughts, not when she knew she'd be a fool
to believe the man would want someone like her—plain, everyday, ordinary Jane.
That's what she was and a man like him would never look twice at her unless she
was involved in one of his schemes, or missions, or whatever he wanted to call
them.

It must be the long days getting to her, something had to account
for that briefest of expressions she'd thought she'd seen cross his face
earlier. Or maybe it was just her imagination. She'd always thought of herself
as sensible and rational, but then again she'd always thought that if you woke
up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, you'd go to sleep there, too, and not on
another continent in some mountain-ringed country that was ripe for revolution.

She sensed his arrival before she heard him. Not that he made a
lot of noise when he moved. The man walked like a cat. A sleek, predator kind
of cat.

If she thought she was going to receive a compliment from him, she
was wrong. There was a quick scan that lingered overlong exactly where she felt
most exposed, a tightening of his already stoic expression and a harsh,
"Let's go."

So much for wowing the opposite sex, she thought wryly, making a
quick two-step to catch up with his long-legged stride down the hallway. The
click of her heels across wooden then marble floors was the only sound between
them until they descended down a waterfall of a stairway that looked as if it
should be on a movie set. The kind of movie where the princess glided forward
into the arms of the handsome prince.

But not for her. All she did was catch her heel in one of the
runners while she was busy gawking. She kept herself from pitching head-first
over the rail by grabbing for it and felt the bite of the major's hand around
her arm as he stabilized her, with a glacial glare from those gray eyes
ordering her to behave herself.

Nothing like an unspoken rebuke to put a little starch in one's
backbone, she thought, waiting until she reached the bottom step and stability
to tug her arm free, square her shoulders until she thought they might snap and
ask with a frosty tone she was sure the wife-to-be of a king would use when
necessary, "Which way?"

They were in a part of the villa she'd never seen.

"Straight ahead and to the left."

Obviously hauteur didn't dent the man one bit. Neither did the
fact that when they reached a room with a table large enough to seat a sea of
dignitaries, it was empty, except for a ramrod-straight gentleman dressed in
what looked like a tux standing just inside the door.

She hesitated to proceed into the room lit with tapered candles,
their flickering lights tossed here and there by two walls of mirrors, a
half-dozen crystal chandeliers overhead and furniture polished until it gave
off its own light.

"Will there be others coming?" she asked, hearing the
small echo of her own voice in the room.

"We'll be dining alone tonight." He tucked his hand
around her elbow and propelled her forward. She might have thought it a gesture
of courtesy but dismissed the idea. The man no doubt guessed she was ready to
bolt and was just making sure she had no choice. Again.