The Look-Alike Bride (Crimson Romance) Read Free Page A

now, asking if he wanted to have lunch with her.
    Zara was beautiful, but Adam knew her type all too well. Once he let her talk him into taking her out, he was liable to find himself engaged to marry her. That was the level of determination he sensed in the stunning Zara Daniel.
    Adam had worked for the government once himself, and he’d known the moment he met her several years back exactly what Zara did for a living. She had sought him out at a party in Dallas, and he had realized at once that she had researched him thoroughly. Her well-constructed biography about being a secretary who worked for a special interest group in Washington, D.C. notwithstanding, Adam knew that although she might spend a lot of time at a computer, she didn’t spend it typing other people’s letters.
    No, Zara Daniel was an agent, a damned good one. Just from watching her move, he knew she’d had extensive self-defense training and worked out every day. Her pose as a brazen bimbo was so perfect, Adam was unsure how much was pose and how much was Zara’s own outgoing personality.
    What Adam couldn’t understand was why she had set her sights on him. In fact, he strongly suspected she had bought that cabin behind his brother’s property because she wanted to pursue him. From a few hints she had dropped, he figured she had been assigned to lure him back into government work.
    Adam smiled grimly. If that was the case, she could resign herself to a long, drawn-out siege and ultimate failure. He felt certain Zara wasn’t much acquainted with either.
    He strode briskly down the forest trail behind the cabin, enjoying the cool shadows and desultory bird song that surrounded him. The Arkansas forest held a charm that never failed to soothe him, even when Zara Daniel lurked in her nearby cabin, ready to pounce. Smiling with satisfaction that he’d finally be able to get some work done, he turned a corner on the narrow trail and came face to face with his current nightmare.
    “Oh.” Zara took a step back, clearly startled.
    “Miss Daniel. Why am I not surprised?”
    Although he smiled, Adam knew his voice betrayed overtones of annoyance his mother would condemn if she could hear him. She was a stickler for gentlemanly behavior, no matter what the provocation.
    “Wh—?”
    Zara shut up abruptly. Adam could have sworn she was about to ask who he was.
    Behind her, a long, orange-and-white muzzle with even longer-looking fangs poked forward. A deep, rumbling growl filled the quiet woods.
    “Hello, fellow,” Adam said. Of all the females in the world likely to adopt an ugly dog, he’d have picked Zara Daniel last. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. “Are you a new recruit to the K-9 forces?”
    “He kills on my signal.” Zara backed up a few steps and almost tripped over her own feet. “Steady, Butch.”
    Adam’s eyes narrowed on her. Something seemed different about her.
    Maybe it was her voice. Zara’s voice was usually crisp and determined, but at the moment, she sounded nervous and uncertain. He studied her, gripped by something he couldn’t put his finger on.
    Yes, it was Zara Daniel all right. He’d know that long, tall body, silver hair, and those heavily made-up blue eyes anywhere.
    Yet, he’d never seen her look quite so—Adam scanned her slim, curvy figure—so
normal
before. Instead of clothing designed to flaunt her well-honed feminine curves, she wore jeans and an old blue T-shirt. She’d still attract any male eye within a hundred yards, but she wasn’t going out of her way as she usually did, to make sure of it.
    That didn’t mean he could afford to relax his rule about letting her intrude on his quiet time. His security consulting business had just landed a contract that meant his hard work over the past few years had paid off, and he had hours of work ahead of him tonight.
    “No need to sic Butch on me,” he said. “I was heading in the wrong direction anyway. Excuse me, please.”
    “Sure,” she said in a