The Rana Look

by Sandra Brown

  The Rana Look

  Sandra Brown

  Sandra Brown

  The Rana Look

  One

  “Hi. Did I scare you?” he asked with a smile.

  She met him in the hallway on her way down to dinner. He was the last kind of surprise she expected. His impact on her was startling. Several things happened at once. She drew in a quick, sudden breath. Her heart slammed into her ribs. She flattened herself against the wall.

  His teeth were white and straight. His easy grin lit up a darkly tanned, weathered face. When his lips tilted up at the corners, one dark brow tipped down, while the other arched high, as though reaching for the wavy lock of sable brown hair that had fallen across his forehead.

  It was an intriguing smile. Arresting. Sexy. Her heart was pounding abnormally.

  “N-no,” she stammered.

  “Didn’t Aunt Ruby tell you she was getting a new boarder?”

  “Yes, but I…”

  She didn’t finish. She couldn’t very well say, “Yes, but I pictured a doddering elderly man with a pipe and cardigan, not one whose shoulders practically span the hallway.” She had expected the new boarder to have a benevolent face with a pleasant smile. Not one that made her think of daredevils and ne’er-do-wells.

  Still smiling, he set down the box of records and tapes he had been holding under his right arm and extended his hand to her. “ Trent Gamblin.”

  Rana stared at his hand for an embarrassing length of time before laying hers against it, not quite clasping it, and muttering, “I’m Miss Ramsey.”

  When she dared to raise her eyes to his, his smile had deepened. She suspected that he was smiling with derision at her primness.

  “Do you need any assistance, Mr. Gamblin?” she asked starchily as she drew her hand back.

  “I think I can handle it, Miss Ramsey.” His face was solemn now, but the mirth was still twinkling in his eyes. They were the color of coffee liqueur, dark and rich and fluid.

  Slightly irked that he apparently found her so amusing, she pried herself away from the wall and stood up straight. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go on down for dinner. Ruby gets cross if I’m late for meals.”

  “Guess I’d better hurry down too. Left or right?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Which apartment is mine? The one on the left or the one on the right?”

  “The left.”

  “The right one is yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sure hope I can keep that straight, Miss Ramsey. I’d hate to come stumbling into your room some night by mistake.” His mischievous eyes traveled over her. “No telling what might happen.”

  He was laughing at her! “I’ll see you downstairs,” she said coolly. She marched past him, forcing him to press himself up against the wall to let her pass. But he didn’t press quite far enough. As she went past him, her clothes dragged against the front of his. He did it on purpose, of course. She could feel his arrogant smile at her back.

  If only he knew, she fumed silently as she took the stairs. Miss Ramsey could dazzle him, freeze him in his tracks, wipe that tomcat grin right off his smug face-

  Rana paused on the third step from the bottom. Why was she even entertaining such thoughts? She hadn’t cared about her appearance for months. All that was behind her. Why now, after meeting the new boarder in Mrs. Ruby Bailey’s house, was she even thinking of the Rana she had been six months before?

  She disliked herself for it. She had cut herself off completely from her former life. She wasn’t ready to resume it, not even temporarily, in order to put the conceited Trent Gamblin in his place.

  Becoming the internationally known Rana again would bring back all the self-doubt and pain that went with the single name. She had given up her celebrity status. For the time being she didn’t want it back. She was enjoying the anonymity of her current life too much. She liked being simply Miss Ramsey, an undistinguished resident of a typical Galveston boardinghouse.

  Ruby Bailey, however, was about as atypical a landlady as one could imagine. When Rana entered the dining room, Ruby was lighting the candles she had placed in the center of the table. In honor of the new arrival, she had gone to special pains with the centerpiece this evening.

  “Damn!” she exclaimed, fanning out the match. “I almost caught my nail polish on fire.” She inspected the crimson enamel on her nails.

  Her age had never been firmly established, but Rana had calculated that it must be beyond seventy, judging from the dated references Ruby occasionally let slip in her colorful dialogue. She was hardly what Rana had pictured when she had responded to the ad in the Houston newspaper advertising an apartment for lease in Galveston.

  With the directions Ruby had given her during a brief telephone interview, Rana had located the house without difficulty. Her excitement could barely be contained when she pulled up to the address. The Victorian house, built in Galveston ’s heyday, had withstood hurricanes as well as the ravages of time. It was situated on a tree-shaded street among other recently restored homes. For Rana, who had lived for the past decade in Manhattan ’s high rises, it was like stepping into another century. She was delighted. She only hoped she and Ruby Bailey would hit it off.

  The landlady’s hair was white, but it hadn’t been pulled into the classic grandmother’s bun, as Rana had imagined. Ruby wore it short and curly, cut in a surprisingly fashionable style. She wasn’t matronly plump, either, another misconception on Rana’s part, but whipcord lean. Her attire, far from conservative, consisted of a pair of jeans and a sweater the color of the vibrant red geraniums that bloomed in the concrete urns on the front porch.

  “You could do with a good meal or two.” That blunt statement was the first thing Ruby had said to Rana upon giving her an inspection with busy, no-nonsense brown eyes that could have snapped a longshoreman to attention. “Come on in. We’ll start with sugar cookies and herbal tea. Do you like herbal tea? I swear by it. It’s good for everything from toothache to constipation. Of course, if you eat the balanced meals I plan on cooking for you, you won’t ever be constipated.”

  And that, it seemed, was that. Ruby considered the apartment on her second floor leased.

  Rana would come to learn that Ruby’s cup of herbal tea was sometimes liberally laced with Jack Daniel’s, especially in the evening after dinner. Rana forgave her friend that particular idiosyncrasy, the same way she forgave Ruby the frown she made no effort to disguise as she looked up now and spotted Rana.

  “I was hoping you’d gussy up a bit tonight. Your hair’s such a pretty auburn color. Did you ever think of pulling it back away from your face a tad?”

  Rana , darling, your cheekbones are to die for! Show them off love. I see all this glorious hair, sweeping back, big, big volumes of it, like a mane surrounding your face and cascading down your back. Shake your head, darling. See! Oh God, positively to die for! Every tacky little beauty shop in the try will soon be advertising the Rana Look.

  Rana smiled at the memory of the famous hairdresser’s words the first time Morey sent her to him. “No, Ruby, I like it like this.” Ruby had insisted on being addressed by her first name, because she said being referred to as Mrs. Bailey made her feel old. “The table looks lovely tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Ruby said impatiently as she spied a smear of paint on Rana’s sleeve. “You have time to change, dear,” she ventured tactfully.

  “Does it matter what I’m wearing?”

  Ruby sighed with resignation. “I suppose it doesn’t. You’d only put on another of your horrid baggy combinations, none of which I’d be caught dead in, and I have about three decades on you. I’m sure, Miss Ramsey, that you could make yourself more attractive if only you’d try.” First names didn’t apply
to her guests.

  “I’m not interested in my appearance.”

  Ruby assessed Rana’s flat, functional shoes, her shapeless dress, and the heavy hair hanging on either side of her thin face, a face made to appear even more gaunt by oversized round eyeglasses. Ruby’s disapproving expression clearly said, “That’s readily apparent.” Her actual words were, “ Trent ’s just arrived.”

  “Yes, I met him upstairs.”

  Ruby’s brown eyes sparkled. “Isn’t he the most adorable boy you’ve ever seen?”

  “I didn’t expect him to be so… young.” So young, so good-looking, so virile, and so dangerous to have around, Rana added to herself. What if he recognized her? “I thought you said the new boarder was your cousin.”

  “Nephew, dear, nephew. He’s always been a favorite of mine. My sister spoiled him abominably. Of course I constantly chastised her for it. But she couldn’t help herself. Who could? He could twist any woman around his little finger. When he called and said he needed a place to stay for the next few weeks, I pretended to be aggravated, but actually I was delighted. He’ll be such fun to have around.”

  “It’s only for a few weeks?”

  “Yes, and then he’ll move back into his house in Houston.”

  Divorce, no doubt, Rana thought. This nephew of Ruby’s, this Trent, needed a place to stay while waiting for a nasty divorce to become final. Well, Aunt Ruby might think he was an “adorable boy,” but Rana knew an arrogant, conceited, sexist chauvinist when she saw one. She had every intention of staying out of Mr. Adorable’s way. It wouldn’t be difficult. A man like Trent Gamblin would never look twice at a woman like “Miss Ramsey.”

  “Something smells wonderful.”

  Rana actually jumped at the sound of his cello-mellow voice as he came striding through the portiere that hung across the doorway. His sure footsteps thudded on the hardwood floor. Each strike of his boot heels made the floorboards groan and the china and glass bric-a-brac tinkle against each other.

  Ruby was encircled from behind by a pair of brawny brown arms that Michelangelo would have loved to sculpt. Trent bent over her spare body and nuzzled her neck. “Whatcha got cookin’, Auntie?”

  “Let me go, you big gorilla.” She wriggled out of his suffocating embrace, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were more animated than usual. “Sit down and behave. Did you wash your hands before coming downstairs?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly, winking slyly at Rana at the same time.

  “If you can mind your manners, I’ll let you sit at the head of the table. Ask her nicely and Miss Ramsey might pour some sherry for you. Now, excuse me and I’ll bring dinner out.”

  With her electric-blue skirt rustling, Ruby sashayed through the swinging door into the kitchen. When Trent turned around, he was still grinning in approval of his saucy elderly aunt. “She’s something, isn’t she?” he asked Rana.

  “Yes, she is. I like her immensely.”

  “She’s outlived three husbands and one daughter. But none of that got her down.” He shook his head in perplexed admiration. “Where do you sit?”

  Rana moved toward her accustomed place setting, but he rounded the table with the grace of a danseur noble and moved her chair away from the table for her.

  Rana was tall. He was much taller. It was odd, and disconcertingly pleasant, to have a man tower over her. Even if she were wearing the highest high heels, Trent Gamblin would be taller than she.

  When she was seated in the rosewood lyre-back chair, he took his place at the head of the table. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Six months.”

  “Before that?”

  “Back East,” she answered obliquely.

  He grinned broadly. “I didn’t think that was a Texas accent.”

  She laughed softly. “Hardly.” To keep from looking at him, she toyed with her spoon, tracing the elaborate silver pattern with the pad of her middle finger.

  “Did you know the other boarder?”

  “Guest.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your aunt calls us guests. She says ‘boarder’ sounds too commercial.”

  “Ahh.” He nodded. His throat was brown and strong. His shirt was opened at the collar, and Rana could see a healthy crop of curling dark hair in the V. Looking at it made her stomach feel weightless, so she averted her eyes. “I’ll have to rely on you to acquaint me with the house rules. What time is curfew?”

  He was teasing again, and, as before, it annoyed her. She had known plenty of men who played these kinds of flirting games, some of them with more talent than Trent Gamblin. They were games in which a woman was inevitably the prey and a man the hunter. Rana had always resented the masculine assumption that she was interested in such tiresome silliness. She did so now.

  Besides, why was this man playing the game with the homely Miss Ramsey?

  Then the answer came to her. Except for his aunt, Rana was the only woman around. If there was one aspect of Mr. Gamblin’s personality that was readily apparent, it was that he was a born womanizer. Habits were hard to break.

  “The former occupant of your apartment was a widow about Ruby’s age,” Rana explained briskly. “When her health declined, she went to live in Austin, nearer her family.”

  She took a dainty sip from her water glass, a gesture that she hoped would suspend conversation until their hostess brought in dinner. The dining room seemed awfully close and stuffy this evening. She ruled out the possibility that Trent Gamblin’s presence had anything to do with it. Perhaps Ruby needed to adjust the thermostat on the air conditioner.

  Disobeying his aunt’s instructions to mind his manners, Trent propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand while he unabashedly studied Miss Ramsey.

  Interesting. She couldn’t be very old. Either side of thirty by a year or two. She mystified him. Why would a seemingly healthy, intelligent young woman ensconce herself permanently in Aunt Ruby’s boardinghouse, quaint and charming though it was? What would motivate a woman to isolate herself deliberately?

  Family tragedy, perhaps? A love affair gone awry? Had she been jilted at the altar or something equally shattering?

  Miss Ramsey made him think of nothing so much as a spinster schoolmarm of a hundred years ago. Thin face, lank hair-although the candlelight made it shine a color like nothing he’d ever seen before-and that awful gray dress that kept her figure a total secret even from his discerning eyes. She wore no makeup, but her complexion was clear. Unlike that of most redheads, her skin had an olive tint. Actually, though, her hair was too dark just to be called “red.” That deep mahogany luster went far beyond merely red.

  Her hands, which kept fidgeting with her silverware, were amazingly small and long-fingered, but looked rough. Her nails had been cut bluntly at the ends of her fingers. She was wearing no polish on them. Nor was she wearing perfume. His nose could detect and name at least fifty different fragrances. Miss Ramsey wasn’t wearing one of them. What he hated most were her round eyeglasses. Their blue- tinted lenses hid her eyes completely.

  His steady, bold stare was making her nervous. He could tell by the way she kept shifting in her chair. In a mischievous way, he was glad his attention was unsettling her. The poor thing probably needed a thrill or two to enliven her dull, drab existence. If he could oblige, why not? He had nothing better to do.

  “Why are you living here, Miss Ramsey?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Ouch! Are you always so prickly?”

  “Only when someone is rude enough to stare and ask nosy questions.”

  “I’m the new kid on the block. You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

  Aunt Ruby’s bragging wasn’t without some basis. He was adorable, particularly when he formed that boyish pout that somehow looked just right on his sensual lips.

  “Would you like some sherry?” Rana lifted the lead- crystal decanter.

  “Are you serious?” She set it back down. “Got a cold C
oors?”

  “I don’t think Ruby stocks beer.”

  “I’ll bet she’s never out of whiskey, though.”

  Rana’s cheeks went red. “I don’t-”

  “Come on, now, Miss Ramsey. You can tell me. I’m family.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, moving his face to within scant inches of hers. “Does the old girl still swizzle her Jack Daniel’s?”

  Before Rana could form a response, Ruby appeared, pushing a tea cart loaded with silver platters through the kitchen door. “Here we are, dears. I’m sure you’re starving, but the rolls needed a few more minutes in the oven.”

  Trent, still staring at Rana’s shocked expression, chuckled softly.

  “ Trent, stop that irritating sniggering,” Ruby scolded. “You always were the rudest child at the table and prone to laugh for no apparent reason. Sit up straight, please, and make yourself useful by carving this roast for me. Miss Ramsey likes hers medium to well done, and be generous with her portion despite her protests. I’ve managed to put some meat on her meager bones, but she still has a long way to go. Now, isn’t this nice?” Ruby said enthusiastically as she took her seat. “This is going to be so cozy, the three of us sharing every meal.”

  Rana, who was trying to ignore Trent ’s calculating assessment of just how meager her bones were, was wondering if it would be too obvious if she asked to have her meals in her apartment from now on.

  Trent had a hefty appetite. Ruby kept refilling his plate, until he held up his hands in surrender after eating two and a half portions of everything.

  “Please, Aunt Ruby, no more. I’ll go to fat.”

  “Nonsense. You’re still a growing boy. I can’t send you to summer camp weak and unfit.”

  Rana choked on a bite of parsleyed potatoes and took a quick drink of water. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she was careful not to remove her glasses as she blotted them.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Ruby asked with concern.

  “Fine, fine,” Rana choked out. When she was composed, she looked at Trent. “Aren’t you a little old to be sent off to summer camp?”