Merran didn’t flush, but he most emphatically didn’t look at her either. After leaving the Temple the first time, before coming back as an acolyte, he’d welcomed his adolescence with a vengeance, using his looks and charisma to get him quite a few willing partners, especially after he’d figured out how to act and speak in order to hide his urro-ken heritage. It was that spontaneity and interest in the opposite sex that had gotten him the reputation he still had here on Earth. It was an undeserved reputation now, and most certainly had been for the past year, even before Tamara had come into his life. Mostly.
“Mellis stopped being able to talk to Charina quite so much once the two of you started having sex. Chari cut her off when she got too graphic, so Mel and I used to talk quite a bit. What she liked the most about you was your spontaneity. You didn’t care where or who or why. It was something I envied, actually. Alarin was never that … free. Ever.”
Merran lifted a hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don’t need to go down that road right now.” As true as it might have been, he wasn’t going to discuss it with Idara. “I didn’t realize you and Mellis had that close a relationship.”
Idara shrugged. “It was one of those things that I didn’t really advertise. Mother wouldn’t have approved.” She looked sheepish. “Mennak is High Council, but not quite high enough for her.”
“How did your mother take to you coming to Earth?” he asked, hoping to shift her off his sex life and onto other subjects.
“Greg had already pushed all those buttons with her, so it was relatively easy. She thought I was chasing Alarin, so she didn’t say much.” Idara looked down at her hands. “Of course she doesn’t know my true reasons for coming to Earth. Everyone thought it was because I was chasing Alarin. I wasn’t, and I’m not.” She twisted her hands in her lap and was silent for a moment, then said in a voice that had an unusual hint of shyness, “I used to go over to Mel’s and watch Earth television shows, especially the ones about modeling and fashion. The Emmys, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, reality shows about the fashion industry, anything I could find … I would really like to become a model. I’ve been researching it. It’s not the easiest industry to get into, but I love clothes and fashion, and the chance to see myself on billboards and advertisements appeals to me too. I can see myself doing that. The idea of mating an influential man on Azelle just doesn’t have the appeal to me it once did. Since I’ve been here on Earth, I’ve gotten a taste these past few months of something totally different. Something I can do, myself, without someone to hide behind.”
“So in setting her daughter free, your mother loses her altogether. I can’t say I disapprove. High Council families’ tendency to push their daughters and sons into subservient positions for generations has never been to my taste. One of the reasons I pushed for the exchange program.”
Idara widened her eyes at him. “I used to be jealous about your family. That your family didn’t do what mine did around arranging marriages. I mean, you weren’t forced into a relationship you didn’t want. The Corina elect their leaders from within the family, not hand them down from oldest son to oldest son, so they don’t care who marries who. Didn’t your sister take the family leadership from your older brother?”
“She did,” Merran agreed, then smoothly shifted the subject away from his older brother. Junian was not a topic he was going to discuss with Idara, newly converted to a more liberal attitude or not. “You are certainly beautiful enough to be a model. I might be able to get you some connections into the modeling industry. There are friends of friends who might be able to set you up. If we run into them in Aspen, I’ll be sure to introduce you.”
“You’d do that? Thank you! You really think I’m beautiful?”
Merran raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. “Insecurity? You?”
Idara flushed slightly. “Well, things have been different here on Earth. I haven’t had any of the guys I know even approach me since I got here.” She stared at her hands. “Alarin’s so in love with Tamara, I don’t think he even sees other women anymore. And you, well, you’re different too. Not so interested in sex.” She glanced up at him. “Or not in sex for its own sake. Who changed you?”
Merran choked again and gripped the steering wheel. Idara seemed to insist on bringing the conversation back to where he didn’t want it to go. What was she doing? They were just friends. No sexual interest at all. Why did she care how he felt about sex anyway? “What do you mean?”
“I know you better than you think. You’re … softer. Less hard edges than you used to have when you were just out to claw your way up in the world. And I know that you didn’t change until recently. So who was it?” Merran opened his mouth to protest, vehemently, but Idara interrupted, waving a hand. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t really have a right to know, and it’s not that important to me.” She glanced at him. “No, what I would like, if it’s possible, is for you to teach me.”
“Teach you what?” He could barely keep up with her mercurial subject shifts.
Idara leaned a little toward him, smiling up at him. “If I’m going to be a model, I need to learn a little more about other men than just Alarin. If you’ll help teach me, I can use some of your … glamour.”
Merran blinked at her. “You want me to teach you how to be seductive?” He couldn’t believe his ears.
“Something like that. I already understand fashion. Now I just need to understand how you manage to walk into a room and make all the women and half the men fall in love with you.”
Merran shifted in his seat as he dodged through the traffic of other skiers heading up to the mountains. “For one thing, you exaggerate my powers. For another, just how am I supposed to teach you how to be seductive?”
“Have sex with me. I’ll take what I need from your mind.”
Merran stared at her for a moment, then returned his attention to the road. “Excuse me?”
Idara giggled. “Oh, come on, Merran. You have been away from Azelle way too long if an honest proposal throws you this far off balance.”
“It’s not the proposal. It’s who it’s from.”
Idara shrugged and looked somewhat embarrassed. “Why?”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see the day that Idara Tenricth asked me to have sex with her,” Merran replied, still a bit dumbfounded. They’d played with the edges of possibility for the first time only recently, but he most emphatically didn’t expect her to request an assignation this boldly, this fast. “To teach you how to be … sexy. I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it. Is this the Idara who told me once, when she even deigned to talk to me, that she didn’t understand how other women could fall for me over and over? There was never any sexual interest between us, Ida. Where is this proposal coming from and why me?”
“Are you interested?” she challenged, crossing her arms and lifting her chin. “Forget our past. Forget what I’ve said to you before. You’re different, I’m different. We’re different. I’m making the offer now. Are you interested?”
Merran shook his head. “I can’t just forget our past, even if we both have changed.” He rubbed his jaw.
“If we didn’t have a past, would you be interested?”
Merran shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Maybe. Maybe not. Oh hell, Ida, I’ve changed too. I’m not into having sex with a woman just because I can anymore. I have too many other … responsibilities.”
It was Idara’s turn to stare at him open-mouthed. “The aarya damn me to the caves. You have changed. What about your reputation?”
Merran sighed. “As you can see, it’s no longer deserved or even wanted. But I don’t have much choice. I don’t fight it because it keeps them from looking too hard at my life … and there are definitely some parts of my life where I’d rather they not look. Misdirection, I believe they call it.” He met her gaze steadily. “Your turn. Why me?”
Idara shrugged. “Because you won’t laugh at me, or make fun of me. Because you’re not interested in relationships
, and you won’t keep me from doing what I want to do when I want to do it. Because I trust you.”
Merran managed to hide his shock, but it took some effort. “You trust me?” He kept his voice as neutral as possible.
Idara gave him a swift glance. “Of course. You never once threw in my face that I treated you terribly for so many years when I called you regularly to talk about Alarin and my relationship. You, as a matter of fact, started encouraging me right from the beginning to get my own career rather than try to ride on the coattails of Alarin’s. You are, as much as you try to hide it, one of the most considerate, compassionate people I know. I think you would give your shirt off your back to help someone else if they asked. And I know that if we have sex, it will go as far as I want it to go and no further. You’re safe.”
Merran stared at her for a moment, then turned back to the road. “Damn, Ida.”
She smiled and uncrossed her arms. “You asked.”
“Yeah, but …” Merran trailed off, lifting his head and taking a deep breath. Silence fell between them for the rest of the trip up the mountain.
He didn’t speak again until they pulled into Aspen and he headed for one of the more distant parking lots. “Are you ready?” he asked, looking off at the distance, deciding it was time to get moving and face the media crowd he could see gathered at the edge of the parking lot.
“Ready for what?”
“For the circus that’s my life. You want to know what it takes to be a model? Well, come with me and I’ll show you.” He looked over at her. “It’s lots of image. Don’t be too surprised at anything I do or say. I haven’t decided on whether or not I’m taking your whole offer, all right? I’ll tell you outright when I do. Until then, it’s all part of the game. No matter what I do.”
A smile spread across her face. “You offering to teach me?”
“About certain things, yes,” Merran replied, opening his car door. “As for the others, I haven’t decided.”
Idara rubbed her hands together. “That works for me,” she said as he got out of the car and went to the back to pull out the skis. She opened her door and got out, slamming the car door shut as she looked pointedly at the four skis he held in place with his mind as much as muscle. “Showing off?”
Merran glanced over at her and smiled. “It’s all about image. Brace yourself,” he added, as they walked toward a crowd of people at the edge of the parking lot. Keep your mind open. The crowd will tell you how to play it if you listen carefully enough.
Idara acknowledged his mental comment, and he could sense her open up a little to pick up the thoughts of the reporters coming at them.
Merran stepped out of the yellow tape that blocked the parking lot from the more public areas of the ski resort. The nice thing about Aspen was the strict rules about where reporters were allowed to be versus where they weren’t. Cameras flashed in his face as he and Idara stepped onto the public walkway and a big burly bodyguard-type appeared out of nowhere behind them. Aspen catered to the rich and famous by offering them guards as part of the package to go up there. It cost an arm and a leg, but it worked, and Merran sometimes preferred the relative anonymity of the guards they provided to bringing one from the embassy. Today, because he was with Idara and didn’t want the whole embassy to start buzzing with rumors, he’d chosen to leave the embassy guards behind, although he hadn’t expected this level of media to be up here. It looked like some major news channels were even here—so much for not spreading rumors.
“Ambassador,” a dozen voices called, trying to catch his attention, each yelling a question they begged to be answered. “Ambassador, is this your new girlfriend? Ambassador, do you come skiing often? Ambassador, are you going to attend the wedding of your Azellian friend? Ambassador, is this your secret lover? Ambassador, did you have an affair with a college student and get her pregnant?”
Merran couldn’t hide the shock that reverberated through him, and though he knew it would be better to let the questions go rather than stop and answer any of them at all, he halted so abruptly the bodyguard nearly ran into him. “Where did you hear that one, Alicia?” he asked, pinpointing the source of that last question. It was a jet-set-following reporter he knew fairly well, who had interviewed him more than once. He’d slept with her, too, more than once, although she’d gotten involved with her current husband and been the one to dump Merran (on Merran’s active encouragement, actually, although she didn’t know that).
Alicia met his eyes boldly. Smiling warmly, she sidled up to him, a petite woman with a much larger personality than her figure implied. “Oh, you know rumors. They spread so easily and can be so misleading. I thought I’d go to the source and ask directly.”
Merran offered her a little bow. Her cameraman followed not far behind, the other reporters perking up intently to hear his answer. “Then you also know that there aren’t many truths buried in rumors.”
“Oh, there usually are,” Alicia replied, the triumph in her voice obvious. “With a little digging, there are usually some truths to be found in all rumors.”
Merran also knew her well enough to realize that she already knew most of what she wanted to ask. Trouble was, which part? If he confirmed the affair part, the other part would end up being considered true too. He knew better than this, and if he didn’t handle it just right, he was going to blow everything he, Alarin, and Tamara were trying to do for the baby.
Idara stepped forward and slid her arm around Merran’s waist. “Well,” she said, adding a sultry lilt to her voice that Merran had never heard before, “the college student part is true, but I’m most certainly not pregnant, am I, Mer?” she asked in accented English, looking up at him with an adoration she’d never shown him before. Hell, she’d never shown Alarin that kind of look, either, at least not that Merran had ever witnessed. He wasn’t entirely sure it was feigned, but she’d also just rescued him from the trap he’d walked right into, so he played along.
He lifted a hand to brush her long hair out of her face, imagining it was Tamara standing there, keeping that part of his mind well shielded from Idara. He’d never have been this open with his emotions with his real lover, but Idara—well, she wanted to play the game, so he might as well let her play it. He lowered his head and kissed her, putting quite a bit of mock passion into it. Idara responded enthusiastically. “No, sweetheart, you’re not,” he replied, pulling out of the kiss and lifting his head as the flashbulbs went off. “Unless you forgot to tell me?”
Idara laughed—and it even sounded genuine. She was a much better actress than he’d ever believed possible. “I always share the important stuff, you know that, love. I think that would be very important.”
From the shock on Alicia’s face, they carried it off. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Idara Tenricth,” Idara said politely, offering her a little bow, disengaging enough from Merran to make it pretty. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Where did you come from?” Alicia wasn’t particularly polite about the question.
Merran cleared his throat and interrupted before Idara got too carried away. “Now, now, Alicia, play nice. Idara is an old friend from Azelle. She’s been on Earth for a short time, studying at the university.”
“And she’s your lover?”
Merran looked over at Idara. She was too tall to fit underneath his arm, but she did help him present a strong front. “Would you say that you’re my lover, dearest?”
Idara pouted, a cute little expression that looked odd on her elegant face, but she did make it look believable. He’d seen that expression before—she had used it on Alarin as often as she could when trying to manipulate him. “I hope so, love. Because I came all the way here for you.”
Alicia was still highly suspicious, but her shock was making it easy for him to read her. She had heard a rumor all right, a rumor not from the embassy, but from campus. He chased down the rumor in her head, rummaging around in there very carefully, while she was still trying to figure out wh
at to say. Much to his surprise, he knew the originator of the rumor—a young woman who’d approached him more than once for a job, offering to sleep with him to get it. He’d turned her down at least three times last semester during the embassy gatherings for the exchange students. Apparently, after the Celebrity Reviews Tonight airing, Kellie Darren had slyly implied that she was both pregnant and his lover. As badly as he’d have liked to have a few words with Kellie Darren about spreading rumors, it was better to let it go. The truth in it hit too close to home. Besides, now the media had something else to chew on, with Idara offering an alternate explanation he could now happily “prove” correct.
“And there you have it,” he said, pulling Idara in tightly against him and kissing her again, very aware of the cameras pointed at them recording every moment. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a date with some powder.”
Snow had started falling softly again as they made their way to the slopes, celebrities of all types passing them, many stopping to say hi to Merran and quite a few others offering admiring comments to Idara. They played up the lovers part thoroughly enough that after dinner, during which Idara managed to charm the socks off three or four potential agents and photographers, they retreated to a single bedroom. Merran hadn’t been intending to stay the night, but given that Idara had two interviews in the early afternoon the following day, he couldn’t exactly run off and leave her behind, not if he was truly a lover trying to help her get her career off the ground.
As soon as the door closed behind them, though, Merran collapsed onto the stiff armchair the suite provided. Looking over at the couch that seemed a lot more comfortable, he announced, “I’ll order a set of extra sheets and take the couch.” He rested his head back and closed his eyes briefly.
“That will give the game away,” she reminded him, stripping off the top three layers of clothes as she sank into the couch wearing little more than a camisole and a thong. He’d seen her in less on Azelle, but the sight of her sprawled on the couch in her underwear bothered him more than if she had stripped everything. “We can both sleep on the bed.”
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