Читать книгу You Call This Romance!?: You Call This Romance!? / Are You For Real - Barbara Daly, Barbara Daly - Страница 15

CABOT PULLED A SWEATER over his head, and just as he’d reached that point of no return, with both arms in the air and his head still trying to push through the turtleneck, he heard Faith say, “I need to do a little shopping.”

“Forgot something?” He wanted to say, something else, but restrained himself.

“Ah, yes, a thong or two.”

Nah, she couldn’t have said that. His head popped through the sweater. “What?” He could see her now, and her face was flushed pink.

“A thing or two,” she mumbled.

Female stuff probably. All he needed to put the perfect shine on the weekend was a surrogate bride with PMS. For a second he tried to imagine Tippy with PMS, but he didn’t have to imagine it. Tippy acted like a woman with PMS all the time. “There are shops in the hotel. Go buy your stuff and I’ll…” He would lie down quietly on some animal’s skin and try to recover from Faith, from the tackiness of the room, from having to share the tackiest room in the world with Faith, all of those things. He might even experiment with the hammock, find out just how bad the night was going to be.

“Don’t forget to confirm the restaurant reservation,” he couldn’t keep himself from adding. “Let’s see, I’ve got all those written permissions to film. You got a separate table for the crew, right?”

“A sep—yes, of course,” she said hastily.

“Because I don’t want to treat them like staff. They’ll do the filming between courses, and they’ll be less obtrusive if they have their own table. Did you get the chart telling you what to wear when?”

“Ah…” She scrambled for a minute through a folder that had little pieces of paper sticking out randomly from three sides. “Yes.”

“Be back in time to change.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said, and saluted smartly.

He had to admit he was being a nag. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s a bad habit.”

“Everything will be fine,” she said, and gave him a sunny smile as she tripped out the door, her little blue crocodile sandals not making a sound on the three-inch-thick jungle-green carpeting.

HER SMILE FADED as she raced through the hotel, which seemed to be one endless casino, looking for a private spot. At last she found a small foyer with a marble bench and collapsed onto it. With shaking hands she took the restaurant reservations sheet out of the folder and dialed the number of that night’s restaurant—the nicest one in the hotel—on her cell phone.

“Confirming a reservation for two this evening in the name Drennan,” she said in her best travel agent’s voice.

“Yezz, of courzz,” came the purring response. “We’re eggspecting you.” The voice cooled slightly. “You are the ones who are going to be vilming.”

“Yes,” Faith said. “We’ll also need a nearby table for three, same time,” she added, and held her breath.

“That is quite impozzible,” the voice intoned at last. “We are vully booked.”

“But it’s very important,” Faith said. What had she thought the crew would do? Stand around their table filming them having dinner all evening? “My job depends on it.”

“I’m sorry about your job, but I can’t make a table where there izz no table.” The purr was rapidly turning into a snarl.

“Oh, but you can,” Faith said with enthusiasm. “Just set up an extra table for three next to our table. We don’t mind being crowded.”

“Miss, zizz is not our style at Arturo’s of the Inn of Dreams.”

“Would you tell me your name, please?” Faith said, feeling desperate.

“Mario.”

“Mario,” she said, “maybe I should come into the restaurant and discuss this with you privately.” So if necessary, she could slip him fifty dollars of her total liquid assets—one hundred thirty-six dollars and change. “I hesitate to tell you over the phone who will be filmed this evening, but she has strong democratic tendencies and will be appalled if her film crew doesn’t have its own table.”

“Izz this ‘she’ you refer to a…famous person?”

“Very.”

“In politics?”

“Oh, heavens no.”

“In the…film industry?”

There it was again, that sound of reverence. “I’m not at liberty to say,” Faith said primly. “Her public is very demanding. She values her privacy.”

“Ah-h-h,” breathed Mario. He sounded as if he were starting to pant. “Well, let me see, Mizzz…”

“I’m their travel agent,” Faith said.

“I think if we juggle here, and stagger there…” He seemed to be plotting it out visually. “Yezz. We will have that zecond table ready for your party, Mizzz…”

The purr was back, intensified. She’d saved herself fifty dollars. She wasn’t bad at this stuff, just always a little late. Now she had to do the same thing four more times, the two lunches and the two other dinners. She punched viciously at her cell phone.

AN HOUR LATER she stood in front of the hotel’s lingerie shop. Bad news, from the window display of silk and lace in Valentine colors of red and white. But surely they had plain white cotton panties and bras hidden away in the drawers, and she had about enough credit left on her credit card for two sets she could keep washing out.

“I need some underwear,” she told the clerk.

“Doesn’t everybody?” she simpered. “What sort of thing were you looking for?”

“Panties and bras. I forgot mine.”

“Ooh, do I ever have some pretty things for you.” She whipped out a white silk thong edged in lace and a bra that neither did nor hid anything, as far as Faith could tell.

“No, no, I was thinking more along the lines of…”

“Something more seductive. Aha.” The woman laid out another matched set on the counter. This time the thong was black, covered in embroidered red hearts, and the bra was red with two large black hearts forming the cups. “This has been a hot number the last few days,” she said.

“It would be a hot number any old time,” Faith said. She felt rushed and flustered, and yet she couldn’t keep from imagining herself wearing all those hearts, ambushing Cabot at the door of their own tiny honeymoon cottage.

And visions of that insidious sort were exactly the reason she needed to be buying plain white cotton panties and bras. “I’d prefer something simple,” she said, “cotton, preferably.”

“Cotton?”

“Cotton,” Faith said firmly.

“We only have one cotton line,” the woman said, casting a dubious glance at Faith. “But—lucky you, it’s on sale.”

“Wonderful,” Faith said. “I’ll take…” She looked down at the counter. They were cotton all right, thin cotton animal prints.

“Mix and match,” the clerk said gaily. “Wear the leopard with the zebra, or be conservative and wear tiger top and bottom.”

“They’d go well with my room,” she murmured.

“Oh! Are you in the jungle suite? Lucky you!”

“Uh-huh,” Faith said. The panties were, of course, thongs. The bras scooped so low that Faith wondered why anyone would bother to wear one of them. “I don’t suppose you have a camisole,” she said.

“No, I’ve got a teddy,” the clerk said.

“No teddies,” Faith said sharply. She was running out of time. “I need something to sleep in, too,” she said. She thought about Cabot, and added, “A pair of pajamas, long-sleeved pajamas with long pants. Neck-to-ankle coverage.”