Сандра Браун: Fanta C

"You're all baloney. I wasn't fantasizing about anything except the ringing of the cash register. What do you think of these perfume bottles? They're made in Germany." She pushed the catalogue across the countertop.

Lilah gave the glossy pictures a cursory glance. "Very nice."

"Nice and expensive. Do you think a high-ticket item like that will sell?"

"It depends on how unfaithful the buyer has been."

Lilah had a jaundiced attitude toward matrimony, even for this day and age. Elizabeth didn't agree. "Not every man who shops here is buying a present for his wife to ease a guilty conscience."

"Of course not. Some of them are shopping for their mistresses," Lilah said drolly. "Just look at them."

She waved toward the paned-glass bay window through which the elegant lobby of the Hotel Cavanaugh could be seen. It was crawling with people, mostly men, who were either waiting to check out or check in. With few exceptions they were traveling businessmen who were uniformly dressed in varying shades of dark wool worsted. Most carried leather attaché cases and trenchcoats. They all seemed to be under a deadline and wore similar anxiety-ridden expressions.

"Hurrying home to the little woman after a week of high living on the road," Lilah said disdainfully. She was a feminist. In her older sister's opinion Lilah carried her battle for equality of the sexes a bit too far. "I'm convinced that at least half of them have dallied while they were away from home and hearth. Aren't you lucky that their guilt is good for your business?"

"What a wretched thing to say. Just because you've elected not to marry doesn't mean that there aren't happy marriages."

"Maybe one in a million."

"I believe that my customers come in here to buy gifts for the wives they have missed and will be very glad to return home to."

"You also believe in the tooth fairy. Get your head out of the clouds." Teasingly Lilah reached up and tugged on a strand of Elizabeth's pale blond hair. "Join the real world."

"You don't make the real world sound like a very pleasant place to be." Elizabeth swatted aside Lilah's hand and rubbed at a smudge on the glass showcase.

"That's because I'm not viewing it through rose-colored glasses."

"What's wrong with a little romance?"

"Nothing! I'm down on love, marriage, and all that stuff. I never said anything derogatory about sex ."

Elizabeth recoiled. "Neither did I. And keep your voice down. Somebody might hear you."

"So what if they do? You're the only one not talking about sex these days. Aren't you getting lonesome?" She ignored Elizabeth's sour look. "Sex, sex, sex. There, see? I didn't get struck by lightning. I wasn't swallowed by a whale. I didn't turn into a pillar of salt. I'm still here."

"Well, I wish you'd go away," Elizabeth grumbled. She knew what was coming. No matter how their conversations started, they always ended with a discussion about her love life… or lack of one.

The differences in their personalities and philosophies were reflected in their appearances. They bore a striking resemblance to each other. Both were blond, but Elizabeth's hair was finer and straighter than her sister's. Her features were delicately drawn. Lilah's were more voluptuous. Both had blue eyes, but Elizabeth's were as serene as a country pond while Lilah's were as restless as the north Atlantic.

Elizabeth would have felt comfortable dressing out of a Victorian lady's armoire. Lilah went for the most avant-garde fashions. Elizabeth was cautious and studious. She carefully weighed the potential consequences before taking the first step onto unfamiliar ground. Lilah had always been the impetuous, aggressive one. That was why she felt free to be so outspoken about her sister's personal life.

"As long as you're working in so fertile a playground, why don't you get in on the game?"

Elizabeth pretended not to understand. "Don't you have a session this afternoon?" Lilah was a physical therapist.

"Not till four-thirty and stop changing the subject. When one of these men catches your eye," she said, waving toward the twin bay windows on either side of the shop's door, "grab him. What have you got to lose?"

"My self-respect for one thing," Elizabeth said crisply. "I'm not like you, Lilah. To me sex isn't a game, as you call it. It's love. It involves a commitment." Lilah rolled her eyes as though saying "Here comes the sermon." "You've never been in love so how could you know?"

Lilah stopped clowning. "Okay, look, I know you loved John. It was storybook all the way. College sweetheart. One soda, two straws. Your love affair with him was so damn sweet it was sickening. But he's dead, Lizzie."

When she called her sister by the pet name, they were getting to the heart of the matter. She reached across the counter and took Elizabeth's hand, pressing it between her own. "He's been dead for two years. You weren't cut out to be a nun. Why are you living like one?"

"I'm not. I've got this shop. You know how much time it takes. It's not as though I'm sitting at home, pining away and feeling sorry for myself. I'm out every day earning a living for the children and me. I'm involved in their activities."

"And what about your activities? When you're not working and the kids are bedded down for the night, then what? What does the Widow Burke do for herself?"

"The Widow Burke is too tired by that time to do anything other than go to bed."

"Alone." Elizabeth released a long-suffering sigh that was indicative of how tired she was of this perpetual argument. Lilah paid no attention to it. "How long are you going to settle for fantasies?"

"I don't fantasize."

Lilah laughed. "I know better. You're a hopeless romantic. For as long as I can remember, you were tying tea towels on my head and making me a lady-in-waiting to you, the princess, who was waiting for Prince Charming."

"And then when he arrived, you threw him into a pit with a fire-breathing dragon," Elizabeth said, laughing at the childhood recollection, "and made him fight to prove his worth."

"Yeah, but when the dragon got to be too much for the prince, I'd run in and rescue him."

"That's the difference between us. I was always confident that Prince Charming would slay the dragon without any trouble."

"Are you waiting for another prince, Lizzie? I hate to break the news to you, but they just don't exist."

"I know they don't," she said wistfully.

"So settle for something less. Like an ordinary guy who puts on his pants one leg at a time. And takes them off the same way," Lilah added with a mischievous grin.

Elizabeth slipped back into her fantasy. The stable hand hadn't taken off his pants at all. He'd been too impatient. Impatience like that was exciting. Her heart fluttered, bringing her back into the present. This erotic daydreaming must stop. It was ridiculous. She blamed her absorption with sex on her sister. If Lilah wouldn't talk about it all the time, then maybe she wouldn't be reminded how deprived she was.

"Well, even the ordinary men are hard to find," she said. "And I'm not going to tackle one as he walks past this door."

"Okay then, let's focus on someone closer to home." Lilah's brows furrowed. "What about your neighbor?"

Elizabeth got busy with a squirt bottle of Windex and a cleaning cloth. "What neighbor?"

"How many single men live in the house behind you, Elizabeth?" Lilah asked with asperity. "The hunky one with gray hair. Broad shoulders."

Elizabeth scrubbed harder at the smudge on the glass. "Mr Randolph?"

Lilah's laugh was downright wicked. "Mr Randolph?" she mimicked in a high, singsong voice. "Don't play innocent with me. You've noticed him, right?"

Elizabeth stashed the bottle of glass cleaner and the cloth behind the counter and, with annoyance, pushed back a wayward strand of hair. "He's the only single man in my neighborhood."