Secrets and Lies Read online

  “Are you telling me my country’s in trouble?” Mel asked.

  “No,” Alex replied. “A tiny little country called Tantilla could get into trouble. And the U.S. could be in danger if Tantilla were ever overthrown. The president of Tantilla’s daughter and her husband came to the U.S. on a diplomatic mission. They’ve been in D.C. for a week, and they were supposed to spend a week in Houston, but they’ve disappeared.”

  Mel’s eyes got bigger.

  “I’m told they do this all the time. It seems they’re newlyweds who can’t keep their hands off each other. They’ll be found within a few days at most. In the meantime, it’s in everybody’s best interest that the U.S. keeps it completely secret that they are missing.”

  She blinked at him. “How the hell do they plan to do that? Someone’s going to impersonate them?”

  Alex stared her into her eyes. “Not someone. Us.”

  Dear Reader,

  As the year winds to a close, I hope you’ll let Silhouette Intimate Moments bring some excitement to your holiday season. You certainly won’t want to miss the latest of THE OKLAHOMA ALL-GIRL BRANDS, Maggie Shayne’s Secrets and Lies. Think it would be fun to be queen for a day? Not for Melusine Brand, who has to impersonate a missing “princess” and evade a pack of trained killers, all the while pretending to be passionately married to the one man she can’t stand—and can’t help loving.

  Join Justine Davis for the finale of our ROMANCING THE CROWN continuity, The Prince’s Wedding, as the heir to the Montebellan throne takes a cowgirl—and their baby—home to meet the royal family. You’ll also want to read the latest entries in two ongoing miniseries: Marie Ferrarella’s Undercover M.D., part of THE BACHELORS OF BLAIR MEMORIAL, and Sara Orwig’s One Tough Cowboy, which brings STALLION PASS over from Silhouette Desire. We’ve also got two dynamite stand-alones: Lyn Stone’s In Harm’s Way and Jill Shalvis’s Serving Up Trouble. In other words, you’ll want all six of this month’s offerings—and you’ll also want to come back next month, when Silhouette Intimate Moments continues the tradition of providing you with six of the best and most exciting contemporary romances money can buy.

  Happy holidays!

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  Maggie Shayne

  SECRETS AND LIES

  Books by Maggie Shayne

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Reckless Angel #522

  Miranda’s Viking #568

  Forgotten Vows…? #598

  Out-of-This-World Marriage #633

  Forever, Dad #694

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  The Littlest Cowboy #716

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  The Baddest Virgin in Texas #788

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  Badlands Bad Boy #809

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  The Husband She Couldn’t Remember #854

  Brides of the Night #883

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  “Twilight Vows”

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  The Baddest Bride in Texas #907

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  The Outlaw Bride #967

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  Angel Meets the Badman #1000

  Who Do You Love? #1027

  “Two Hearts”

  ††

  The Brands Who Came for Christmas #1039

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  Brand-New Heartache #1117

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  Secrets and Lies #1189

  Silhouette Shadows

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  Twilight Phantasies #18

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  Twilight Memories #30

  Kiss of the Shadow Man #38

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  Twilight Illusions #47

  Silhouette Books

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  Born in Twilight

  Strangers in the Night 1995

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  “Beyond Twilight”

  Fortune’s Children

  A Husband in Time

  World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

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  That Mysterious Texas Brand Man

  The Fortunes of Texas

  Million Dollar Marriage

  *

  The Texas Brand: The Homecoming

  MAGGIE SHAYNE,

  a USA TODAY bestselling author whom Romantic Times calls “brilliantly inventive,” has written more than twenty-five novels for Silhouette. She has won numerous awards, including two Romantic Times magazine Career Achievement Awards. A four-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award, Maggie also writes mainstream contemporary fantasy, as well as story lines for network daytime soap operas.

  She lives in rural Otselic, New York, with her husband, Rick, with whom she shares five beautiful daughters, two English bulldogs and two grandchildren.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 1

  “L ook, it’s not going to be all that tough for you to impersonate Thomas Barde. He’s only important by marriage, and he’s rarely seen publicly. Especially here in the U.S.” The man Alex Stone trusted most in the world, Mick Flyte, took a pause to rub his chin thoughtfully. “The tough part is going to be finding a woman who can impersonate her. Everyone knows what Princess Katerina looks like.”

  Alex leaned back in his comfortable ergonomic chair, looking at the men who sat around the long, narrow table. “Everyone but me, I guess. Until just now, I’d never even heard of any island nation called Tortilla.”

  “Tantilla, Alex,” Flyte said with a scowl. “And she’s not a princess, in truth. She’s the first daughter. ‘Princess Katerina’ is just what the people have nicknamed her. They adore the girl.”

  “Whatever. Look, I’m not working for the government anymore. Didn’t you guys hear? I’m an independent now.”

  “That’s why we need you to do this, Alex. It’s important. It’s vital. And it’s not gonna be that big a challenge.”

  The second voice belonged to one of Alex’s best friends, Caleb Montgomery. He’d been called to Tulsa from Big Falls, Oklahoma, for this meeting. Apparently the powers-that-be thought he could help convince Alex to go along with this harebrained scheme. Some of the most well-known political figures in the nation, most of them retired now, were gathered in this conference room within the heart of the Federal Building on a Sunday, when it should have been closed. The doors were guarded by armed soldiers. Mick Flyte had been Alex’s superior during his Secret Service days. Caleb was the son of one of Oklahoma’s former U.S. senators and a powerful attorney in his own right, though he spent most of his time in his small-town office since settling down with that Brand girl, Maya.

  That thought led to another—of Maya’s hellcat sister, Mel. He’d thought of her several times since his recent visit to Big Falls, each time with a shiver of dread at the thought of ever having to see the woman again. She was crude, tactless, violent and she had a mouth on her like a sailor. He suppressed a shudder as her face flashed through his mind. Tiny and elfin, capped in short jet-black hair, and deceptively innocent. Those jewel-blue, almond-shaped eyes sparkled with trouble and hellfire.

  “Alex?”

  He shook away his thoughts, glanced at Caleb and nodded as if he’d been listening the entire time. “Look, I’ll listen to your pitch, okay? That’s all I can promise.”

  There was a sigh of relief among the men in the room. One gave a nod to another, who dimmed the lights and flicked on a slide projector. Alex rolled his eyes, feeling as if he had fallen into a scene from Mission
Impossible. Good God, could they get any more cloak-and-dagger?

  A tall, slender, nice-looking man in a very expensive suit filled the screen. He wore sunglasses and a full beard. “This is Thomas Antony Barde,” Mick Flyte said. “He married President Belisle’s daughter, Katerina, six months ago in a secret wedding designed to keep the press away. It worked. I’ve never seen him in public without the glasses and beard.”

  “His height and build look about right,” Caleb volunteered, glancing from the image on the screen to Alex and back again.

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Why is it you want me to impersonate him?”

  The men all sighed. It was Caleb’s aging father, Cain, retired U.S. senator, who rose and spoke. “Thomas and Katerina are guests of the U.S. They came as representatives of Tantilla, because President Belisle was unable to make it himself. This has been set up for months. All pomp and ceremony, really. Tantilla is small, and its government none too stable. They want U.S. aid.”

  “And what’s in it for us?” Alex asked. When the men frowned at him, he only smiled. “Oh, come on, there’s always something. We don’t give aid to just anyone.”

  Mick Flyte cleared his throat. “Tantilla is sitting on a veritable ocean of crude oil, most of it still untapped.”

  Alex nodded slowly. “So the little princess and her new hubby come tour the U.S., get a few photo ops, make nice with the White House, and…?”

  “And spend a week in Austin as guests of the governor of Texas. Barde was supposed to meet with some of our leading oilmen there, get advice and input on future drilling and so on,” Cain Montgomery said.

  Alex listened, tried to get to the truth beneath the words. “Was supposed to meet with them? Has something happened to prevent it?”

  “Uh…well, we’re not sure,” Flyte said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Mick Flyte cleared his throat. “The couple arrived in Austin from D.C. as scheduled, and were taken by limousine to the house where they were to be spending a week as guests of the state. But shortly after arriving at the house, they, uh, well, they vanished.”

  “Vanished?”

  Flyte nodded.

  “Did someone get to them?” Alex asked, alarmed. “Does this government have enemies out to—”

  “All governments have enemies, Alex, but that’s not what happened. These two are…well, they’re notorious for this kind of thing,” Flyte explained.

  “What kind of thing?”

  Caleb cleared his throat. “They’re still newlyweds. They seem to be madly in love with each other, and they have a habit of taking off without warning anyone, shaking their security teams and going off on some romantic lark, just the two of them.”

  Alex frowned. “Isn’t that kind of stupid of them?”

  Caleb shrugged. “You do stupid things when you’re in love. But, it’s not exactly safe for them, considering who they are. They always turn up in a couple of days. Either their security team finds them holed up in a love nest somewhere or they come back on their own.”

  “So, then, what’s the big deal?” Alex asked.

  “The big deal is that we don’t want anyone to know they were ever gone. President Belisle trusted us with the safety and security of his only daughter. It would look very bad for us to admit we lost her,” Cain Montgomery explained. “We have the FBI and the CIA on this. We have no doubt we’ll locate the couple within forty-eight hours at the most, and once we know they’re safe and sound, things can continue as planned.”

  “That’s not the only reason. Come on, Dad, he deserves the truth,” Caleb said.

  Sighing, Cain went on. “Tantilla does have enemies. Small groups, unorganized for the most part. Still, they’re likely paying close attention to this visit. We feel that if it became public knowledge that Katerina and her husband were missing, those groups might attempt to find them before we do.”

  Alex nodded. “So the plan is…?”

  “The plan is to go ahead just as if everything is normal. Put a couple in place to impersonate them at various functions, buy us the time we need to find the real couple and get them back here,” Mick Flyte said. “Meanwhile, all you need to do is pose as Thomas Barde, attend a few dinners and social events, and basically be treated like royalty for a few days, all on Uncle Sam’s nickel.”

  “Yeah, but aren’t you forgetting one very important factor in all this?” Alex asked. “You have to find a woman who looks and acts enough like this Katerina Barde to fool the who’s who of U.S. political and social circles. That’s not gonna be easy. Do we even have an agent who resembles her?”

  “Finding the woman to play the role is next on our list,” Caleb said. “I don’t know what the princess looks like, either. Guess I’ve been living out of the loop for too long.” He gave the man at the slide projector a nod. “You have a photo?”

  The man nodded back and clicked his controller.

  The face that filled the screen was the same one that had been invading Alexander Stone’s dreams ever since he’d helped save her sister from a crazed stalker a year ago. Melusine Brand. The roughest, crudest, toughest, mouthiest, most self-confident woman he’d ever met in his life.

  He had never seen her, however, wearing the sweet, demure expression of the woman on the screen. Nor had he seen her wearing makeup like that, or clothes like those, or with gentle curls in her raven hair.

  Alex swallowed hard and glanced at Caleb with an unspoken question.

  Caleb was shaking his head. “No. No way you’re dragging my sister-in-law into this. My wife would freaking kill me. My mother-in-law would string me up. No. We can’t ask Mel.”

  “Oh, but we can ask Alex, right, pal?” Alex said with a slap on his friend’s shoulder. “Guess I know where I stand in your food chain.”

  “She’s family, Alex.”

  Alex sighed, then glanced at the others. “Is there any danger at all in this?”

  “Absolutely not,” Mick Flyte said.

  “None whatsoever,” Cain agreed. “No one even knows they’re missing. As far as the Secret Service men assigned, they’ve been hand chosen. None of them were men you worked with, Alex. None of them know you. As far as they’re concerned, you’re the real deal. They’ll be protecting you as such.”

  Pursing his lips, Alex nodded. “Then you have to ask her.” He glanced at Caleb.

  “She’ll refuse. She’ll flat-out refuse. And if she accepts, her mother won’t let her do it, anyway.”

  “Oh, I can talk to Vidalia,” Cain said. “I think we can get past all that.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said. “If you do, that’s only the first leg of the battle, though. Because Mel Brand may look like a princess, but that woman is the furthest thing from one.” He glanced at Cain. “Can you afford to hire the entire staff of the world’s most successful charm school?”

  “Does all this interest in our plan mean you’re in, Alex?” Flyte asked.

  He drew a deep breath. “Look, I don’t like politics. That’s why I left. But I can probably find you someone else.”

  “It pays more than you’ll make in five years,” Cain said.

  Caleb shook his head. “Alex doesn’t give a damn about money. He has plenty of his own, and his principles are more valuable to him.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  Cain spoke again. “Melusine Brand cares about money. Hell, it’s more than she has ever even imagined earning. And we’re gonna ask her either way.”

  Alex frowned.

  Caleb snapped his gaze to his father. “You knew Mel looked just like this princess before we ever got here, didn’t you?”

  His father nodded. “Tantilla is a tiny nation, son. But it’s one with oil out the wazoo and nuclear capability. This is more important than just finding a pair of wayward lovers. We need ties to this government. We need to keep it in power. Its enemies, though small and unorganized, are a real threat, and just radical enough to use weapons of mass destruction agains
t perceived enemies, which would include most of Western civilization. I think once Mel knows that, she’ll agree to do her part to protect the world.”

  Caleb licked his lips, glanced at Alex. “He’s right. She will.”

  “I know she will, the stubborn, scrappy little harridan.” He sighed. “But she’ll blow it if she tries.”

  “Unless you’re there to help her. It’s only three days at the most, Alex.”

  “A minute ago you said forty-eight hours.”

  “In all likelihood, that’s all it will be.”

  Alex sighed, lowered his head.

  Caleb came around the table and put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “You’re my friend. If I have to see my wife’s sister dragged into this, Alex, it would mean a lot to me to know you’ll cover her back.” He paused. “I’d do it for you.”

  Pursing his lips, Alex lifted his head and looked Caleb in the eye. “Hell, I don’t know another man who could stand her for three days. All right. I’ll do it.”

  The saloon was packed, and Melusine Brand was winding her way between customers with a tray full of frosted foamy mugs held over her head, when a big, male hand cupped her left buttock.

  She stopped in her tracks, turned her head slowly and met the soused cowboy’s unfocused eyes and crooked smile. “Like the song says, Brett, ‘What part of no don’t you understand?’”

  “Ah, honey, you know I’m not the kind to take no for an answer.”

  “Well, hell, then I guess I may as well surrender.” She smiled at him, blinking her eyes rapidly. “You want to take me outta here, hon? Someplace…private?”

  “Whoo-boy. I surely do.”

  “I thought so, being that you’ve grabbed my ass three times now.”

  “I knew you liked it.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I kept telling you stop. You just hold this big ol’ tray for me, hon. I’ll shuck this apron, and we’ll get outta here.” She lowered the tray, and people made room for her. Brett took it from her, grinning, and she unknotted the white apron and peeled it over her head. “There. You ready?”

  “Yeah. Uh, what about the tray?”

  “Oh, silly old me. I guess we’d better get rid of these drinks, huh?”