The Makeover Mission. Mary Buckham

jaw hurt from smiling. Her fingers cramped from waving and gesturing. Her knees ached from rising and lowering herself into five different kinds of chairs.

      And all through it Major Lucius McConneghy just kept saying, “Now do it again.”

      She wanted to throttle him.

      By the time they took a break for a light lunch she felt as if running a marathon, cold turkey, would be better than being a queen-to-be.

      As if he read her thoughts, a talent he was particularly adept at, McConneghy handed her a slice of cheese and said. “This morning was easy compared to what’s coming.”

      The man was a font of good news.

      “Didn’t your parents ever tell you if you couldn’t say something nice, not to say anything at all?” she snapped back, too tired to care about the tone of her voice.

      He actually had the gall to smile. Something that made little butterflies spring to life in her stomach, fluttering around the knots already there.

      But he didn’t respond directly. Instead he looked at a clipboard in his hand. “This afternoon the hair stylist will be here. And the manicurist.”

      Without thinking Jane’s hands reached for the ends of her hair. “Don’t tell me Elena has one of those short, chic haircuts.”

      “You’re Elena and no.” His eyes swept over her in a way that made her want to blush and stammer before his cold, matter-of-fact voice added. “There won’t be much change.”

      “How are you explaining the need to…” she waved her hands before her. “The need to fix me?”

      “These are not Elena’s regular people,” he replied. “We couldn’t risk them noting the differences.”

      The man thought of everything.

      “Come on,” he motioned before she’d even finished her last bite, one she didn’t even taste over the exhaustion she felt. “Let’s get going again.”

      “Sadist,” she mumbled to herself.

      At least she thought no one had heard, until he speared her with one of those penetrating gray-eyed glares. “Sadism would be to let you walk into a situation without any preparation. I’d prefer to think of this as protecting you.”

      She mulled over his words the rest of the afternoon, keeping her own opinions to herself. It was too much effort to voice them, anyway. Maybe it was still shock, or jet lag, or her mind’s inclination to retreat from something so out of her control, but by the time Major McConneghy called an end to the day she was ready to sink to her knees right then and there. The only thing that kept her upright and functional was the realization that he was waiting for her to do just that.

      It was in the way he watched her, the way he said little but implied much with his body language. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. She’d fall apart later, in the privacy of her room. Or so she promised herself as she picked at a dinner served in the ballroom they were using as a training area.

      “If you don’t eat, you won’t keep up your strength,” he said to her when she waved off the second course.

      “And if I eat I’ll lose it all over your spit-and-polished shoes,” she replied, wondering what had happened to the Jane who got along with everyone, who never uttered a rude word or spoke back.

      All of a sudden a question that had been bothering her resurfaced. She leaned forward and asked, “Exactly where is the other Elena? The real one, I mean.”

      For a moment she thought he might not answer. Not that she learned all that much when he finally did. “That’s need-to-know information.”

      She sat back as if he’d slapped her. “And I obviously don’t need to know.”

      “Exactly.”

      Well, she might not be experienced in the ways of the world, but she could translate do-not-enter signs as well as the next person. Choking down another slice of her rare roast beef, she set the rest aside, sure it would lodge in her throat. Why should it hurt that he wanted her to risk her life for this missing Elena, but didn’t trust her to share all but the barest information?

      “All I can tell you is that she’s recovering, away from Vendari. It’ll be safer for you if you don’t know any more details.”

      His words caught her off guard and she found herself glancing up, surprised by the understanding she saw in his gaze, not trusting that it was really meant for her.

      Then the implication of his words set in. If she was killed outright it wouldn’t make a speck of difference if she knew the whereabouts of the real Elena. But if she was kidnapped—again—then she could be tortured in an attempt to get her to reveal information she didn’t know.

      Swallowing hard she pushed away the rest of her meal. Her stomach felt as if she’d taken a dive off a very high tower, knowing the ground was coming up, hard and fast.

      “You can’t keep skipping your meals and expect to function at top form.”

      Major Miss-Nothing obviously thought he could control everything. Including her stomach. She had to remember her role here. She was part of a scheme—or mission, or whatever—and that was all. Not a person who was scared right down to the soles of her feet. Not a woman who might want to be comforted instead of admonished.

      She kept her voice calm when she knew it wanted to quiver as she lifted her gaze to the man across from her.

      “I will do what I need to do to get through this masquerade.”

      “Mission.”

      “And you’ll do what you need to do. But—” she saw she had his attention by the way the lines bracketing his eyes deepened, the color of them intensifying. “—if you criticize everything I won’t be able to function at all.”

      He weighed her words. “That wasn’t a criticism.”

      “I think you’re used to dealing with subordinates. I’m not, nor will I be treated like one.”

      The old Jane would never have dared to confront another, especially one who glared at her with ice in his eyes. But a small part of her exalted.

      Silence spun between them. She vowed not to give in, not on this. A man like McConneghy would eat her alive if she let him. And while that challenged her at one level, or at least evoked some pretty heated images she had no business dwelling on, she needed some sense of control. Everything else had been taken from her—her sense of security, her identity, her freedom of choice, but she refused to be treated like a non-thinking, non-feeling robot.