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Not that Mara thought she was ugly, but her mirror told her the truth and she had no illusions about her appearance. No one would ever call her dainty. Nor would they ever call her beautiful, especially since she did almost nothing to enhance her appearance as many women did, as her own mother had done in all the portraits Mara had seen of her—Mara had never wanted to stand out.
She had also wanted to downplay her resemblance to her dead mother, especially when her father was around. And even though he was dead now, that habit was engrained in her. Unadorned by anything more than the faintest trace of makeup, her face was reasonably attractive but indistinguishable from the faces of thousands of other women. Her eyes, her best feature, she discounted.
As for her body, in a long-ago era her figure would have been much admired, but not in today’s fashion conscious world, with its emphasis on thin bodies. Fashion designers still wanted to design clothes for her to wear, but only because the world took notice of what she wore, not because she was model thin.
She wasn’t fooled either by the paparazzi who had followed her everywhere she went before she came to America incognito. They weren’t photographing her because she was drop-dead gorgeous as Juliana was now. They just wanted to sell pictures. And pictures of a princess sold well. And if the pictures were embarrassing in any way, that only added to their salability.
Mara sighed to herself and shook those thoughts off. She’d had a lot of practice walling off her emotions, putting them in little boxes where they couldn’t hurt her. Or at least, where the hurt could be contained. She had never cared before about her appearance this way. Had never cared about appealing to a specific man. But then, she had never met Special Agent McKinnon before.
She pasted a smile on her face. “Tell me about Mount Evans, please. You have been here many times, yes?”
Mara listened quietly as Special Agent McKinnon talked, loving the sound of his deep voice; watching the animation on his face. He was a complex man, and she wished she knew more about him. Wished she knew if there was a special woman in his life. Wished she had what it would take as a woman to make him lose that iron self-control.
When they reached Echo Lake Special Agent McKinnon directed the chauffeur to pull into the parking lot, and told her, “We’ve got to stop here. I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never seen anything like Echo Lake.”
Mara saw the pathway leading from the parking lot. “Can we walk all the way around the lake?”
He shook his head. “No, but we can walk as far as that cove over there,” he said, pointing. “See the piece of land that sticks out into the lake?” When she nodded he added, “The walkway stops right before that. It’s fairly flat so it’s not a difficult walk, but it’s a bit of a distance. Are you up to it?”
Mara shot him a look of incredulity. “I told you I have hiked the mountains surrounding Drago. This is nothing compared to that.”
He laughed. “I stand corrected.” She started to get out but he stopped her. “Take your jacket,” he warned. “We’re above ten thousand feet elevation. It might seem warm now, but it can get chilly if the wind picks up.”
They walked together in companionable silence for several minutes. Special Agent McKinnon automatically shifted positions a couple of times to put his body between hers and those of strangers they passed, but he let her set the pace. She knew she’d surprised him when they quickly outdistanced most of the crowd of people milling around Echo Lake Lodge.
The lake was beautiful, the water crystal clear, like glass, reflecting the blue of the sky above them. The scent of pine trees was overpowering, and the trees were mirrored in the still waters. “You are right,” Mara told him softly after a while. “I have not been all over the world, like you, but I have been to many places, and it is like no other lake I have seen.”
They stopped for a minute at a point where the walkway came right up to the rocks at the water’s edge. “Tell me about some of the places you have seen,” she invited. “Not Zakhar—we will talk of Zakhar another day. But where else have you been that you cannot forget?”
Special Agent McKinnon propped one foot on a boulder in front of him, leaned an arm on his knee, and contemplated the view across the lake for the space of several heartbeats. Mara watched him, scarcely realizing she was holding her breath as varied emotions crossed his face. Finally he said, “I’ve seen a lot of beautiful places that will stay with me forever—places I want to remember. But there’s only one place I can’t forget—and wish I could.”
