You Call This Romance!?: You Call This Romance!? / Are You For Real. Barbara Daly

“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.”