Barbara Daly - You Call This Romance!?

She was a pretty little thing. He kept thinking of her as being little. She was about five-five, he’d guess, but with all that curly blond hair floating around her face—hair a lot like Tippy’s, actually—and the fluttery way she had about her, she seemed smaller than her size and could easily pass for eighteen.

Her gray eyes were like dark pearls.

Back on track, Drennan. “Tippy,” he said gravely, “you do understand we have to keep this quiet.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

He hoped she said “I do” and not “Shoo-uh” when they made their vows. “We can’t let anybody figure out this is just a publicity stunt.”

“I unnerstan’ poifectly, Cabot.” Tippy switched from gum to tobacco. “We’re in love and we’re gonna get married.”

Right. Here he was, getting married to a woman he felt sort of protective toward and that was it. And he was doing it entirely to get her name, and his, in the papers. And he figured if the marriage didn’t do the trick, the not-so-discreet divorce would.

He fanned the smoke away from his face. “I went to a low-key travel agency in Westwood,” he explained. “They’ll be less likely to figure it out than one of the agencies around here, and even if they figure it out, less likely to talk.”

She turned huge blue eyes on him. No longer wet, now they were calculating. “Low-key? Are you sure they can do it up classy-like?”

“I’ll see to it that they do.”

“Maybe we ought to do a dry run.”

“A what?”

“You know. Rehearse the honeymoon. Go see what this low-key agency set up for us. Take the crew along. Finalize a script for the video. Work on the lighting. Try out the bed. Find me a psychiatrist. See if there’s a good pastrami sandwich anywhere. Check out the Chinese restaurants.” She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for a fresh pack of bubblegum.

He was startled, as always when Tippy’s hard-headed practicality showed itself. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “It’ll be expensive,” he warned her, knowing she was rapidly spending the money she’d made from the film Faith had rhapsodized about.

“It’ll pay off.” She blew a huge bubble.

It had better. On the way to the car, Cabot fiddled with his cell phone, got out Faith’s card, started to punch in her office number, then decided not to call her yet. It could wait until morning.

A dry run. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“RENO’S PREMIER HONEYMOON HOTEL. Six spectacular honeymoon suites, featuring water beds, his-and-hers baths with Jacuzzis, his-and-hers dressing rooms…”

Why not his-and-hers beds? Snuggled into her own bed, which was much cozier than a water-filled bed sounded, Faith gazed at the laptop monitor that showed a lurid suite reminiscent of one you’d see in the movies of the fifties. The white-carpeted room was huge. At least, it had been photographed from an angle to make it look huge.

The heart-shaped bed, swathed in pink satin, was the central feature, naturally.

She cuddled a little more deeply into her mound of pillows as the ache of frustrated desire began its climb through her center. She could envision Cabot Drennan, dressed in a paisley silk dressing gown and nothing else, turning down that bed and tossing her, dressed in Passion perfume and nothing else, onto it. Resolutely she substituted a fuzzy image of Tippy Temple for the clear image of herself. If she couldn’t allow herself even the briefest, most fleeting thought of sharing that bed with Cabot, at least she was giving him up to a woman who deserved him.

Still, it was disappointing to meet the man of her dreams on the eve, so to speak, of his marriage to another woman.

“…magnificent Olympic pool, saunas, dramatic casino, big-name entertainment, twenty-four-hour room service.”

She sighed deeply. Honeymooners would like that—room service at any time of the day or night.

“…European-trained hairstylists and manicurists on the premises, full range of business services…”

This perked her up a little. Cabot would like that, too. He’d need a break from Tippy now and then, surely. While she had her hair and nails done, he could catch up with life at his office. Maybe even call his travel agent to tell her—

—that he’d made a terrible mistake! That he wished he could take it back! Annul the marriage! Come back to Los Angeles to the woman he really…

Yes, this hotel, the Inn of Dreams located right in the heart of downtown Reno, seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.

An e-mail alert popped up in the corner of the screen. Faith opened it. “Hold off on the July reservations until we talk. I’m coming in to your office when it opens. C. Drennan.”

Her heart beat a rat-a-tat. Could it be? Were her dreams about to come true?

She leaped out of bed, whirled back to save the data she’d gathered on a diskette to take with her to the office and then darted toward the shower. She had exactly thirty-nine minutes to make herself presentable and beat Cabot to the agency. It was going to be a stretch.

CABOT PACED UP AND DOWN in front of Wycoff’s Worldwide wondering why no one was there at two-and-a-half minutes before nine. How could you start working at nine if you didn’t get there well beforehand, have your coffee, go through your In box, be ahead of the game before the day actually began? He’d e-mailed his agent that he’d be there at opening time. He’d expected her to be waiting at the door.

He’d wanted her to be waiting at the door.

What was he doing here anyway? Now that he’d seen who he was working with, now that he’d decided to trust her, why hadn’t he just relied on the telephone. He did everything else on the telephone. Well, almost everything else. At this stage in his life, he didn’t do much that couldn’t be done on the telephone. But it was too late now. He’d said he’d be here and he was here, and where the hell was she?

Exactly at nine, it all happened in a perfectly synchronized fashion. A portly man came to the door and unlocked it at the same time two women and two other men materialized on the sidewalk. Neither of the women was Faith. The group outside forged to the inside, carrying Cabot along with them as they said good-morning to each other and the portly man, then the Wycoff group paused expectantly, waiting.

A minute later Cabot found out what they were waiting for. He heard the squeal of worn tires, the roar of a car engine that needed a new muffler, the grinding of brakes that needed new linings. And in another moment Faith flew through the door, her hair surrounding her face like a golden cloud, her eyes as wild as pearl-gray eyes could get and her silky gray pantsuit in need of a pressing.

A ray of sun shot through the window and straight through her hair, and for a second, Cabot was blinded. He stared at the apparition, trying to still the pounding of his heart.

He strongly felt that he ought to fall to his knees and repent for something or other, and he’d gotten so hard so fast that he actually had something specific to repent.

But the cloud of fire and mist that was Faith Sumner rushed toward him, smoothing her suit with one hand and her hair with another, and gradually reality seeped back.

“Oh, Cabot, sorry you had to wait. Mr. Wycoff—” she turned to the portly man “—sorry to be late. I…”

“Don’t waste time apologizing,” Cabot interrupted her. He gestured toward her desk. “My plans have changed and I have exactly seventeen minutes to explain the situation.”

He observed with satisfaction that the other travel agents immediately began slinking toward their work stations. Wycoff opened his mouth, then closed it and went through a doorway into what was undoubtedly his office, a private one where he would be protected from the hustle and bustle of the actual work.