“We’ll explain everything later, Tom.”
“Do you want me to come along?”
“No. Thanks anyway, but we need to be alone,” she said over her shoulder.
It only took that rapid glance behind her to lose sight of Trent. He had always seemed to tower over her, but he was dwarfed by most of his teammates. The athletes seemed as immovable as giant redwoods when Rana tried to wend her way through them. Her eyes frantically darted around the obstacles of their massive bodies.
She caught a glimpse of Trent going through a set of French doors on the far side of the room and struggled to push through the crowd. It didn’t help when the dance band chose that moment to break into the team’s theme song. Drunk on champagne and optimism about the forthcoming season, everyone went a little crazy.
She finally made it through the gyrating throng to the French doors, and stepped outside into the sultry evening. Steps led down to a brick patio and a magnificent pool. A pair of lovers was unabashedly necking on a chaise. Trent was angrily striding around the far end of the pool, furiously grappling with the knot of his necktie.
“ Trent, wait!”
Either he didn’t hear her or he was ignoring her cry. She feared the latter and went running down the steps after him. Her progress was impeded by her high heels and narrow skirt. She kicked off her shoes and hiked the skirt of her dress above her knees.
The bricks were hot. By contrast, the grass was cool and damp on her bare feet as she followed Trent ’s progress across the lawn toward the man-made lake. A white summerhouse with lacy gingerbread trim stood on its ferny banks.
It was there that Rana caught up with Trent. He was in the act of slinging off his blazer and throwing it into a wicker chair. His necktie lay looped around his neck, and his shirt was unbuttoned almost to his waist. His impressive, hair-matted chest was heaving with rage.
He launched his verbal attack the moment she stepped into the opening of the gazebo. “Did you come to see if my ears were growing?”
Baffled by his question, she shook her head. Until then she hadn’t realized that she was crying. Tears splashed against her cheeks. “What? What do you mean?”
“You made a jackass out of me. I presume you came to see if I could actually bray.”
“It’s not like that, Trent.”
Belligerently he propped his hands on his hips. “No? Then what is it like? Huh? At least have the courtesy to tell me why you made a fool of me. ”
“Making a fool of you wasn’t my intention. You moved in on me, not the other way around. Remember? Who pursued whom first?”
He looked down at the index finger that was pointing at him imperiously. He didn’t recognize it as the one often smudged with paint. The eyes that gazed into his in the darkness were exquisite. And unrecognizable as well. His anger was momentarily overridden by bafflement. “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Rana.”
“I know that,” he said irritably. “I’m not your average dumb jock, though you obviously seem to think so. I read magazines. I drive down the highway, for heaven’s sake.” He made an angry, sweeping gesture with his hand. “Who could miss you sprawled across a billboard half naked? I watch TV. I see the inane talk shows that focus on the really important things, like hem lengths, while half the world is starving.”
“Oh,” she ground out, “and I suppose a football game has much more global merit.”
He put his face in his hands for a moment, trying to cap his erupting temper. “You’re right. Neither one of us amounts to much, do we? The thing that galls me is that I make no bones about my shallowness. You, on the other hand… What was the disguise for? Those damn clothes and all the rest?”
“I left modeling behind me more than six months ago. I got fed up with it.”
“With looking great? With having the world at your feet, with every woman in the world trying to copy your look? Come on, Ana, or Rana, or whatever the hell your name is, I wasn’t born yesterday. Give me a reason that’s at least plausible enough to believe.”
“It wasn’t the career I left behind. It was everything that went with it.”
“Yeah,” he said sarcastically, “like fame and fortune.”
“My mother was trying to sell me to a rich old man,” she said heatedly. “Is that plausible enough for you? I chose not to prostitute myself that way, and left New York. I came here, moved in with Ruby. I wanted a new name. An unrecognizable, plain, ordinary face. Anonymity. Peace. I wanted people to accept me without the glamorous trimmings, to see past the surface, into the woman I am on the inside.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that for now.” His eyes took in the hairdo, the dress, the accessories. “But what about tonight? Why, after having made that drastic change, did you show up like this tonight?”
She took a step toward him. “I fell in love, Trent. With you.”
He turned his back and shoved his hands into his pockets. He stared out over the still lake. Not a breath of air stirred. It was suffocatingly muggy. Crickets whirred from the trees lining the lake and bullfrogs croaked from cool, muddy hideouts. The music from the party seemed even farther away than it was, as though it couldn’t quite penetrate the heavy air.
“What has that got to do with anything?” he asked after a tense, lengthy silence.
“Everything. You said you love me. Me,” she stressed, pressing her hand over her breasts. “Well, this is a part of me. Up until a few months ago it was a vital part.”
“How do I know your love for me isn’t as phony as the rest of you?” He came around to face her again.
His accusing glare made her angry. “What was phony about Ana Ramsey?”
“Her name, for one thing,” he said, punctuating his outburst with a jabbing finger.
“You assumed my name was Ana because you saw ‘Ana R.’ on the paintings. That’s Rana spelled backward, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Very clever,” he said snidely. “Why didn’t you correct me?”
She knotted her fingers together at her waist. “I was still afraid of discovery. I didn’t have it all sorted out yet. I needed more time.”
“You’ve had time since then. Plenty of time.”
“But when would it have been right to tell you, Trent? You were falling in love with me, and I wanted you to.” A tear rolled down her cheek. It didn’t spoil her beauty. It was as crystal-clear and sparkling as the jewels that dangled from her ears. “You were the first person in my life to like me, then to love me, for what I was, not for what I looked like. I couldn’t bring myself to risk losing that. Forgive me for deceiving you.”
She shuddered as she drew in an unsteady breath. “You’re angry, and you have every reason to be. I knew you would be, when I came here tonight. But I never intended to make a fool of you. I didn’t enjoy tricking you all those weeks. There were times I wanted to tell you, but you said you loved me because I was different. I wasn’t certain you’d love Rana as you did Ana.”
She blotted the tears off her cheeks and laughed softly. “After our first night together, I wanted to put on makeup, to dress up. I wanted to be beautiful for you, just as any woman wants to be beautiful in the eyes of her lover. But the things you said to me, your touch, made me feel beautiful. More beautiful than I’ve ever felt. And it had nothing to do with what I looked like.
“For you to understand my motives, you would have to know the loneliness this face”-she pointed a finger toward her chin-”has caused me all my life. I won’t belabor the point, because you might think, ‘What is she complaining about? Her face has made her a fortune. She’s beautiful.’ But I’ve known the same kind of cruel discrimination an unattractive woman is subjected to. Prejudice, rejection, alienation, hurt, no matter what the reason.”