You Call This Romance!?

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not. That’s going too far.”

“It’s no different from putting a wig on a double.”

The stylist, a young man with a roosterlike haircut and a diamond stud in one ear, sounded waspish. His shrunken black T-shirt rode up to show his navel, which brandished a ring set with a matching diamond. But he was good. He had to be good to afford diamonds that big. He had to be good for Cabot to hire him. Look what he’d done for Tippy already, the way he’d groomed her for those television interviews. Made her look like an angel. But Cabot wasn’t backing down on this one.

“We’re talking about her eyes, Joey,” he said firmly. “I don’t want you messing with her eyes.”

“A pair of blue contacts isn’t ‘messing with her eyes,’” Joey said, rolling his own, which were a suspiciously unnatural shade of turquoise. “Blue contacts and she’ll be a perfect double for Tippy.”

“She doesn’t need to be that perfect.”

“What? What? This is Mr. Has-to-be-Perfect I’m hearing? If you want a good take on the lighting she needs blue eyes. Period.”

“She’s not getting them. Period.” Cabot figured he weighed twice what Joey did. When it came to a showdown, the guy didn’t have a chance. He’d sulk for a day or two, and the whole time in Reno he’d be saying, “Well, if her eyes were the right color…” But Cabot had gotten to be an expert at handling sulky people.

He didn’t want Faith to lose those pearly-gray eyes. That was where he was coming from. When the truth was, it might be a good idea for her to lose them. He was pretty sure he needed to know her better, but that was an indulgence he’d have to postpone until after the dry run, after the wedding, after the honeymoon, after the divorce….

After the confession.

“Well,” Joey said, putting a fist on his hip. “I refuse to back down on the hair. You promised you’d send her to Tippy’s hairdresser.”

“I promised and I’ll send her. If she’s agreeable.” Faith’s hair was already enough like Tippy’s that…There I go again.

Joey tossed his head, but the crisis was over. Cabot went back to scripting the video, plotting potential shots, glancing from time to time at his one-year calendar. October, November. It might be that long before he could even ask Faith to go to a movie with him. The time loomed ahead of him, tedious and lonely.

A FEW THINGS WERE MISSING from the picture. Her mother and sisters should be with her, fluttering around her, making sure she’d remembered everything. While her body zinged with anticipation, what she was anticipating was a weekend of top-level frustration. Her groom had ignored her from the moment she agreed to go on the honeymoon. But she looked uncontrovertibly bridal, even if she didn’t feel that way.

She was dressed in her blue going-away suit; the rest of her clothes were packed in the three-piece set of tapestry luggage with golden leather trim that Cabot had had delivered the day before. The limo she’d hired to take them to the airport would be along soon. Everything was fine, at least as fine as it could be under the circumstances. So why did she have this niggling feeling she’d forgotten something?

Of course she’d forgotten something. She always forgot something. Usually it was something replaceable—toothpaste, panty hose, a nail file. Then again, she’d once left for Europe without a passport, and she’d made that wretched trip to the Gulf Coast without her credit card, had gone to a baby shower without the present and on one memorable occasion, had started out for the travel agency without her skirt.

Fortunately, her landlord had been leaving for the office at about the same time and had mentioned the omission to her in the most tactful way someone could mention a thing like that. He’d said, “I see the micro-mini is back in style.”

So the question was what had she forgotten and could she remember what it was before it was too late to do anything about it.

She stepped swiftly into the kitchen to be sure she’d turned off the coffeepot—she hadn’t—and the iron—that was still on, too. Even then the niggle didn’t go away. If anything, it gained intensity.

She ought to take a coat. Reno could be warm even in February, but one of the restaurants was in the Sierra Nevadas that surrounded the town. She had a yummy new coat, too, a Christmas present. She got it out, tossed it on her pile of luggage and waited for a feeling of comfort to settle in now that she’d checked that item off her mental list. It didn’t.

She lived in this tiny dream cottage behind the Mathiases’ large, elegant house in return for keeping an eye on the house during their frequent absences and watering their dozens of houseplants, since their staff traveled with them. She’d watered the plants thoroughly yesterday afternoon and explained to them exactly how long she’d be gone, since the ficus tree, in particular, was prone to anxiety attacks. She’d set the alarm system and notified the neighborhood security watch that she’d be away for the weekend. It was probably just a bad habit to feel nervous before a trip because of the sure and certain knowledge she’d forgotten something important.

She picked up her little blue clutch bag and the folder that held all their travel information, took a quick peek in the mirror at the slant of her blue straw hat and started for the front door just as the doorbell rang.

Her driver. She was ready exactly on time. Pretty good, for her.

A vase of daisies sat on the small round table she used for eating and everything else. Maybe the flowers were responsible for the niggle. She should have thrown them away. The water would smell vile by the time she got back, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it now. She hesitated, then plucked one daisy blossom out of the bunch, tossed it up in the air as if it were the bridal bouquet—and caught it herself.

A good omen, even if the contest had been fixed.

She opened the door to a grinning, freckled driver who hoisted her luggage and steered her down the flagstone walkway and around the Mathias’ house. In front of the main house, he gestured grandly toward the curb. “Enough flowers for you?” he said.

Stunned, Faith eyed the long white limousine, relieved that the Mathiases were not at home to see what their impoverished renter was using for transportation these days. The car was awash in flowers, old-fashioned English garden flowers mingled randomly with huge tropical blossoms in the most garish colors imaginable. They were arranged in swags strung through wreaths, with the occasional sheaf to add visual interest. “It’s a leftover Rose Bowl Parade float,” she said at last.

“No way! Parade flowers are real. These are made of the purest virgin plastic.”

“I sensed, somehow, that they were.”

“Indestructible at the highest speeds, in rain, sleet or snow.”

“Are we anticipating any of those things today in Southern California?”

“High speeds, maybe.”

Faith gave him a sharp look, but he seemed to be serious and quite proud of his vehicle. “Do the doors still open?” she asked him, and they were on their festive way.

Twenty minutes later they reached the Little Chapel in the Pines, and Faith caught her first glimpse of Cabot. It seemed like centuries since she’d last seen him, and he took her breath away. In his black suit, black shirt and black tie, he stood on the cobblestone pathway that led from the historic chapel to the street. Surrounded like a god among mortals by the camera crew with their equipment, he gave every appearance of a man who was issuing orders.

He shot one arm out in front of him and gestured behind himself with the other. Then he stuck both arms straight out to the sides and swiveled a little. Every movement was filled with a masculine energy that quickened Faith’s pulse. She especially liked the swivel. She hoped the driver didn’t notice she was drooling.

And then he caught sight of her. She could tell he’d seen her, could see his expression change, could sense his awareness of her. He took a step toward her, then another, almost like a man sleepwalking.

“If you’re having second thoughts, now’s the time to run.”

“What?” The voice of the driver had broken the spell and Faith hurriedly gathered herself up to get out of the car.

“Just kidding,” the driver said as he got out and came around to her door.

Cabot was still behaving like a sleepwalker, taking one slow step and then another, but, Faith observed with disappointment, his focus was not on her but on the limousine. Furthermore, the camera crew had fallen into step behind him, and they all marched toward her like a live version of Night of the Living Dead.

He had reached her side. “Don’t hurt the driver’s feelings,” she whispered hurriedly. “I’ll be sure you have something a bit more…ah…restrained for your honeymoon.”

“This is very…flowery,” he said.

“I think it’s too…” Faith said.

“It’ll really show up on film,” the cameraman said. He seemed transfixed.

“Like a zit on your nose,” Faith said, “but I can…”

“Speaking very frankly, Raff,” drawled a crew member, the one with the rooster haircut and an enviable diamond stud in one ear, “I’ll have to insist that we restrict the flowers to moderate zone species or tropicals. Not both.” He gazed at the car another moment, his head tilted to one side. “Or to pastels or vivids, but not both.”

“Pastels would…” Faith began.

“It could handle sheaves or wreaths,” said the one female member of the crew.

“But not both,” they chorused together, and at this point, Faith simply chimed in.

“So what I think we’re saying, Cab,” said the cameraman, “what I think we’re all in agreement on here—do I have this right, Chelsea, Joey, Miss…whatever?—is that the car…”

“Could be toned down some,” Cabot said. “But not much. Tippy will like it. Okay, you guys, let’s get to work.”

But for a moment he lingered, staring at the garishly decorated car. He had to stare at the car, because if he let himself look at Faith he would risk embarrassing both of them. He hadn’t let himself go back to the agency or participate in the fittings and hair-dresser visits. Three weeks had gone by, and now he was struck all over again by her sheer loveliness. While Joey the stylist had the ability to make Tippy look like an angel, Faith was an angel. In the pale-blue suit, her hair floating out from under the broad-brimmed hat, she was a vision of sweetness and beauty.

Faith was what he wished Tippy could be, or could be turned into.

“Shoo-ah,” he could hear Tippy saying.

He could sense the tables turning on him in the worst possible way. He didn’t have the slightest problem going on a platonic honeymoon with the real Tippy, while the weekend with Tippy’s “double” was going to be a struggle with his conscience from this moment on.

Make that retroactive to the day he met her.

“Talent,” barked the cameraman, “get in position outside the chapel door.”

“Raff,” Cabot called across the churchyard, starting in Raff’s direction with Faith in his wake, “we are not ‘the talent.’ We are a bride and groom—”

“Real groom, fake bride,” Faith interrupted.

“—who want a professional-looking wedding and honeymoon video.” He turned away from Faith in order to give Raff a hard, meaningful look.

He’d had to tell the crew the truth. They’d worked with him many times before, and unlike Faith, they were way too savvy to buy the idea of a honeymoon video that had to be scripted and rehearsed. They were also professionals, as aware as he was that a slip of the tongue could cost them their careers. No one outside their little circle could know the truth. Jack Langley had even conned that worthless twerp Josh Barnett into believing Tippy had actually fallen for her publicist. But Cabot had a feeling that however innocent Faith was, she was a lot smarter than Josh Barnett. Raff needed to watch his words.

“Sorry, boss,” Raff said. “Old habits, y’know. I keep forgetting this job’s personal.” His grin was unrepentant.

Still, feeling sure that Raff wouldn’t let him down, he glanced at Faith to find her beautiful eyes infused with ominous suspicion. Cabot’s stomach tightened up.

Faith had started to worry about the bride she was doubling for. The way Cabot had said, “Tippy will like it,” it being that Celebration of Plastic that was the going-away car, indicated his complete lack of understanding of Tippy Temple’s personality, her hopes and dreams. Each example of this insensitivity made Faith more sure that Cabot had not consulted Tippy about the arrangements, but was instead barreling ahead in his forceful fashion toward a glitzy media splash of a honeymoon that would offend the daylights out of his true love.

She didn’t intend to let him get away with it, but there was nothing she could do about it now, because Raff had just said, “Okay, let’s do a take of the leaving-the-church scene,” and Joey had echoed, “I want to see a little snuggle-up moment,” and all the stray thoughts that had been going through her head flew out when Cabot put his arm around her shoulders.

“Oh, yummy. So sweet. Okay, that’s good,” Joey was saying. “You got it, Raff? Can you stand a little taller, Miss…whatever…” His diamond stud flashed in the morning sun.

“Her name is Faith Sumner,” Cabot said a bit irritably, “and of course she can’t stand any taller. Just get on with it.”

Get on with what? She really didn’t want to get on with what they were getting on with right this minute, which was Cabot’s arm holding her closer and closer, snuggling her into the warmth of his shoulder, turning the warmth into raging heat.

“Tilt your head, honey.” Joey again. “Chelsea, get the light right there on her…that’s it. If she were just a smidge taller, and if her eyes were blue…”

Faith fanned herself. Joey rushed forward with a powder puff and plunged it onto her nose. Faith sneezed. Chelsea rushed forward with a tissue. A spotlight rocked on its tripod just behind her, and she tossed the tissue to Faith with one hand and rescued the light with the other.

“Oh, for…” Raff said disgustedly. “Can we just get a shot or two here?”

“The sooner the better,” Cabot said, and before Faith had a chance to register his grim tone, he tightened his hold around her shoulders, tilted her chin up, which made her grab for her hat, gave her an intimate smile and settled his mouth over hers.

That was when the real trouble began. At the first touch of Cabot’s lips, Faith made a firm, if unilateral, decision that she would go on kissing him for a year or so, continuously, no breaks, maybe win some kind of kissing contest. Her mouth melted into his, velvet against velvet, as her insides bubbled like a hot spring.

Her body relaxed into his, seeking him as if it had its own script, her breasts brushing his chest. She sensed his tongue searching for hers, then retreating, holding back. Why would he be holding back? Tentatively she met him halfway, jolted by the electrifying surge of first contact.

“Hold it!” Raff barked.

Of course she would hold it. Hadn’t she already promised herself to hold it forever and ever and ever?

“Cut!” she heard above the pleasant buzzing in her ears, and Cabot dropped her as if she were a hot saucepan.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered into her ear. “I don’t know what happened there.”

“No, it was my fault,” Faith murmured back. “I—” I what? “I was trying to seem taller by, ah, reaching up like that.” Murmuring was a good idea anyway, since she was having trouble talking.

“No, I overstepped…”

“No, I overacted…”

“No, I…”

“Help her into the car next,” Raff said. “Great job, you two. But next time, Miss…ah…”

“Her name,” Cabot said through his teeth, “is Faith. Surely you can master one name. This is my final warning, all three of you. Her name is Faith. She is not ‘she’ or ‘her’ or ‘Miss Whatever.’ Faith. Got it?”

And while he issued his ultimatum, Faith thought, Next time? Omigosh, can I survive a next time?

5

DAZED FROM KISSING FAITH, which had been the surprise of his life and had shaken him to his jaded core, Cabot wasn’t sure what to do next. One thing he did observe was that they got plenty of attention on the way to LAX in the garish limo. Tourists lifted their cameras and snapped pictures when they pulled up to the terminal, and they’d do the same thing in July, not even knowing that Tippy Temple was about to step out of the car. When you were in his line of business, attention was a good thing.

Once he’d gotten his little party settled in first-class, with Faith beside him in the window seat and the video crew scattered out in front of him where he could keep an eye on them, it seemed time for small talk. Any kind of talk would do except talk about that kiss and its impact, and since the kiss was all he could think about, he didn’t have a clue how to begin. “Nice suit” wouldn’t work, because she hadn’t had anything to do with choosing it.

Joey and Tippy had chosen it, had chosen the entire trousseau. Tippy loved shopping with Joey. Cabot wished he’d thought to ask Joey if he’d like to marry Tippy, since it was only for show.

Modern Day Pygmalion Story: Stylist Marries His Creation. Cabot could see the headline in his mind’s eye, and wished he could see it on the cover of Variety. And People. And Vanity Fair. If Tippy were marrying Joey, he, Cabot, could spend this weekend profitably, which in his addled state meant kissing Faith numerous additional times. And doing more than kissing, if she wanted to.

He wondered if Faith’s mental processes felt like his did right this minute—electrical impulses leaping from right brain to left, from front to back and skittering off on the diagonal. If so, he felt sorry for her.

“…and I’m finally figuring out what my sister Charity has been going through as a model,” Faith was saying, “except that her shoes never fit. Maybe that’s why she’s so determined to be a scientist instead. Comfortable shoes.”

Since she’d come to his rescue, effortlessly supplying the small talk he couldn’t seem to dredge up, Cabot thought he’d better help. “Let me guess,” he said. “You have another sister and her name is Hope.”

“Yes. How about you?”

He gave her a sidelong glance to find that she wasn’t even smiling, when that lovely, surprisingly wide mouth seemed to smile so easily. She seemed nervous. Fear of flying? I don’t think so. Fear of me is more like it.

“One sister, which I thought was one too many when I was a kid. She’s married, now, with two kids. She’s an artist, he’s a stockbroker. I don’t know what they talk about.”

“I told you about Charity,” Faith rattled on after her brief interest in Cabot’s family. “Hope’s a big businesswoman in New York. We’re all so different. Hope and Charity got all the brains, though.”

She sounded so glum that Cabot found himself wanting to make her feel better. “Being brainy doesn’t necessarily make you successful,” he suggested, “and being successful doesn’t mean you’re brainy.” It sounded good, but he wasn’t sure he’d said anything meaningful. “You’re a good travel agent, and that’s not easy.”

She suddenly whipped an earnest gaze around to him and he felt himself melting under it, or at least some of him was melting and some of him was impersonating a stalagmite.

“Do you really think I could be a good travel agent?” she asked him.

He shifted uneasily in the upholstered seat that would magically become his life jacket if he needed one.

“Because it’s practically my last chance to succeed,” she said mournfully. Her mouth tilted down at the corners. Cabot wanted to settle his fingers right there and tilt it back up. “I’m thirty years old and my résumé reads like a terrorist’s dossier.”

“Now I can’t believe you ever…”

“I haven’t caused any actual explosions—well, a fire or two—but disaster strikes on every job I’ve ever held. First there was the Marrakesh caper.”

“That sounds…”

“Yes. Very exciting, doesn’t it? And I thought it would be. A very famous author—you’d recognize his name if I dared to say it aloud even now—hired me right out of college to be his research assistant. He was writing a thriller set in Marrakesh.”

Cabot settled in. It seemed he was going to hear the story of her life, which was better than discussing the fact that he hadn’t acted very professional when he kissed her. “He sent you to Marrakesh?”

“He sent me to the library. He wasn’t about to let go of enough money to send me to Marrakesh. Unlike you. You’ve spent a fortune already researching your own wedding! And I think that’s wonderful. Tippy deserves that kind of thoughtfulness.”

She was gazing earnestly at him again, but there at the end he thought her gaze slid off to the right a little. “It’s tax deductible,” he said without thinking, because what he was thinking about was Faith’s full pink mouth. Forget the mouth! “I’m charging the dry run to my firm,” he added, improvising rapidly, “because I can apply the kind of information we’ll be gathering to my other clients.”

“Would have been for him, too,” Faith said. “Tax deductible, I mean. Anyway, I was slaving away in the M stacks and files, and then—” she paused, and a dreamy look came over her face “—one day when I was doing an online search for ‘Moroccan Meteorological Trends’, I noticed a book called Explore Madagascar, and then another one, The Romance of Mozambique, and Don’t Miss Macao. So of course I had to find out what those places were like.”

“You forgot about Marrakesh.” How could she forget about Marrakesh when she could remember the names of three books she’d read maybe eight years ago that weren’t even about Marrakesh, the topic she was supposed to research. The flight attendant hovered over them, and although Cabot didn’t drink martinis, the word just fell out of his mouth, probably because it was alliterative.

“Oh,” Faith was saying to the woman, “I’d love some white wine, but I’d better not. I’ll have—”

“What about a Mai Tai?” Cabot said. “Or a Manhattan.”

“I was about to say tomato juice,” Faith said, giving him an odd look. “I’m barely competent stone-cold sober. And this may be vacation time for you, but I’m working.”

While the attendant got the drinks, it occurred to Cabot that Faith was spilling out the story of her work history to make a point, and that the point might come as unpleasant news for him and his current enterprise.

“So how did the job end?” he asked as soon as he’d taken a restorative gulp of vodka.

Her mouth turned down again. “I woke up one morning and realized he was expecting me to hand him his Marrakesh background the very next day and I had almost nothing for him but basic geography and a printout of a Web site for tourists. So I checked out every old movie that had been set in Marrakesh and filled in the details from those.”

“Uh-oh,” Cabot said, “most of those were probably made on an MGM lot.”

“But still,” she argued, “I figured that somebody at MGM would have done better research than I had. Unfortunately, they’d done that research in 1938 or ’39 or ’40.” She sighed deeply. “He had to set the book in 1941 and make it a World War II espionage story.”

“And it bombed.” He was getting bombed, too.

“No, the publisher promoted it as his first historical novel and it stayed on the bestseller list for sixty-three weeks.”

“But he’d already fired you.”

“And I’d already taken a job as interpreter for an aide to the ambassador to Argentina. Want to hear about that?”

“Well, I…”

“That was going well—I’m quite fluent in Spanish,” she murmured modestly, “until one day I got distracted during one of his conversations with a lobby group—something about beef. I hadn’t listened to what he was saying, so when it came time to translate I had to make something up.” She halted, then turned to him, looking quizzical. “Do you remember that little civil uprising in Argentina about seven years ago? When the beef producers marched on Buenos Aires?”

The last drops of vodka dribbled down the front of his shirt, but Cabot didn’t care. “You did that?” he said. He felt as if he were strangling.