Runaway Mistress. Robyn Carr

that while she’d been cleaning her heart out, the day had grown long and the sun was beginning to lower in the sky. With the windows open, it was getting cold, and she shivered as she went to close them.

      But she was so happy! It felt so wonderful to put a house right—a house she was going to occupy for up to six months. And she didn’t have to think about what she could do or wear or say to make a man happy; she only had to think about what would satisfy her.

      There was a note on the counter beside the phone with all the numbers she would need and instructions to “take the master bedroom, please.” This was all typed; Louise’s hands were not agile enough to write legibly with a pen.

      She grabbed her backpack and went to the bedroom, where she found a basket on the bed with a note on it. “Pamper yourself,” it read. In the basket was shampoo, cream rinse, lotion, soap, shower gel, bubble bath, a new brush and comb, toothbrush and paste, disposable razors and a manicure set. She lifted the shampoo and gave a huff of laughter. She sat down on the bed and saw her face in the dresser mirror. It was the face of Jenny at the age of fourteen—no makeup, lips deflated by the absence of collagen, a dark cap of hair covering her scalp and eyebrows grown out and shapeless from lack of tweezing. With her hair a mere buzz cut, her brown eyes looked large and dark.

      Who would have believed the most perfect disguise would be her natural self?

      There was one change she’d made since adolescence that she intended to take to the grave—the veneers on her teeth. If she were really going to go underground, she could probably pop off those veneers and go back to the old mouth.

      But no. Enough was enough.

      She felt the ache creep into her throat. She had spent so much energy on self-beautification, seeing it as necessary to her lifestyle, and her lifestyle necessary to survival. Yet here she was in her manly pants and shirts, so comfortable but so unattractive. Jennifer, she felt, was gone. As she looked at this new face, even though she remembered it from her youth, she wasn’t entirely sure who she was.

      Don’t cry. You don’t have to stay exactly like this. This is only temporary. Until you figure out what to do.

      All that was left of her former self, the self she’d worked so hard to create, was the jewelry and money in her backpack. She could have sold the two rings and tennis bracelet, but if Nick was determined to find her, they could be traced, so she simply tucked them into the backpack for safekeeping—for emergencies. She still had some money left, two jobs and very modest needs.

      It had been weeks since she’d walked out of the hotel suite. A couple of phone calls from phones with blocked lines revealed that Barbara Noble was said to be living in the Nobles’ Caribbean estate. Apparently no one was suspicious of any crime. There had only been that one sighting of an MGM limo—with no evidence it bore Nick or his thugs. Could it be they’d all gone back to Florida and just assumed Jennifer would never dare tell a thing?

      Possible, she decided. Only time would tell. And that time she would spend in Louise’s comfy house. A very nice place to hide.

      She gave the bathroom a quick, efficient scrubbing, then kicked off her shoes, let her khaki pants drop to the floor and stripped off the baggy shirt. While the tub filled with hot, soapy water, she looked at herself in the mirror. Wouldn’t people be surprised to know that under the baggy pants and men’s shirts was a body like this—high breasts, flat tummy, round butt, long, lean, shapely legs. She preened a bit, one arm over her head, the other stretched behind her back. Then she reversed her pirouette. Something else was growing in—pubic hair. She had endured years of waxing in what was called a Brazilian—total hair removal. Nick had no idea about her natural hair color.