You Call This Romance!?: You Call This Romance!? / Are You For Real

“Um, Cabot…” Faith murmured.

“I mean, we have two rooms for your crew and a honeymoon suite for you, Mr. Drennan, and you’re pretty darned lucky we had that cancellation, because this is the weekend before Valentine’s Day.”

Cabot gazed at the man for a long moment. “Excuse us for a second,” he said, and pulled Faith over to the side. She was wearing a stricken expression.

“I forgot to book a room for myself,” she whispered.

“You forgot to book a room for me,” he corrected her. “And the hotel staff thinks we’re really on our honeymoon, right?”

“Well, of course,” Faith said. “If they thought we were just advancing the honeymoon, they wouldn’t treat us the same way they’ll treat you and Tippy in July.”

That, at least, made sense. “You didn’t register in Tippy’s name.”

Her eyes were very wide and very gray. “Of course not. We’re registered as Mr. and Mrs. Cabot Drennan.”

Something lurched inside Cabot’s stomach, but he stoically ignored it. “Well, let’s see what we can do about this,” he said gruffly, and herded her back to the desk. “We really have to have three extra rooms,” he told the clerk. “As you can see,” and he gestured back toward Raff, Joey and Chelsea, who milled about restlessly, sensing a problem, “I have three crew members of various, um, sexes and persuasions.” This was merely an excuse. Raff and Joey were rooming together. That third room was for him, and every second he spent with Faith made the need for a room of his own more crucial.

The clerk merely shrugged.

He knew a stone wall when he saw one. “Excuse us again,” Cabot said, and withdrew his people into a huddle in the artificial shade of an artificial potted palm.

“Okay,” he said to his entourage, “it looks like we have to get along with two extra rooms. I’ll share a room with Raff and Joey can bunk in with Chelsea.”

“No!” Joey shrieked as he stamped his foot.

“Why not?” Cabot said, aware that Faith’s lovely gray eyes were following the conversation anxiously.

“You promised me Raff,” Joey said, and fell into a pout.

“Hey, hold on a minute,” Raff said, scowling. “If Chelsea has to share with somebody, it has to be you.”

“That’s right, Joey,” Cabot said. “I can’t share with Chelsea.”

“Unless you want Carlos to break your neck,” Chelsea said in a soft, gentle voice with an accent that spoke of a Southern upbringing. “He’s real rigid about things like that.”

“Ah,” Cabot said. He’d met Carlos, a wrestler, whose adoration of Chelsea was the only indication that he possessed a brain, and the only indication that inside the quiet Chelsea was a tiger about to escape from the zoo. He sent a meaningful glance around the group, then settled it on Faith.

“We’ll have to manage somehow, I guess,” he said. “It is a suite, after all. It’ll have a living room. With a sofa. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“No, I’ll sleep on the sofa. This is all my fault and I’ll accept the consequences.”

“Don’t argue. Tradition decrees that the biggest person sleeps in the smallest space.”

She could see the exasperation in the lines around his mouth. “We’ll break with tradition. I will definitely—”

He whirled and went back to the desk clerk. They all followed him like baby ducks. “You must have an extra single room somewhere,” he said.

The desk clerk wore the look of an about-to-be-discovered movie star. “In Carson City, maybe,” he drawled.

Cabot gave up. “Okay. Fine. Show us to our rooms.”

The look he gave Faith started out as a withering one. He wasn’t sure how it turned out.

“SO WE’LL SEE YOU GUYS LATER,” Cabot told the crew.

“Nope, you’ll see us now,” Raff informed him. “We have to work on the ‘carry over the threshold’ scene.”

Faith supposed you couldn’t expect a professional video-making crew to put romance into what was, for them, a livelihood. For her, too, she reminded herself swiftly. She’d better be thinking of it as the “carry over the threshold” scene, too.

Cabot’s mouth was set in a grim line. She was sure he’d rather drop her over a cliff right this minute than carry her over a threshold.

“Okay, then, follow us up.” He went from annoyance to resignation in a split second.

They were pretty noticeable, Faith thought, the five of them trotting along behind a bellhop dressed the way bellhops dressed in the old movies, when they delivered luggage to gorgeous women in blue satin dressing gowns.

Raff the cameraman was loading his gun, so to speak, Joey was making darts and dashes at her with a makeup pencil, trying to correct her eyebrow line on the run without destroying her vision and Chelsea was screwing lights into sockets, while she struggled not to trip over tripods that kept opening of their own accord.

“Here we are, folks,” sang the bellhop. “Try to get my left side,” he said sotto voce to Raff as he flung open the door of the suite.

“Da-dum! Welcome to the Tahoe Jungle Suite!”

“Ah-h-h,” Faith moaned.

“Me Tarzan,” Cabot muttered.

The five of them hovered outside the door of the suite. “I can’t go in until I’ve had some food,” Joey said.

“I’m not going in without hip waders,” Raff said. “The bride and groom can test the waters while we set up for the shoot.”

Cabot still didn’t move any farther into the room, so neither did Faith. She was not Jane, and she was afraid to try it alone. Something might drop down from the ceiling, like an anaconda.

The Tahoe Jungle Suite was the realization of a decorator’s worst nightmare. Vines twisted up the walls and across the ceiling to form a canopy over a jungle of large-leaf plants, plants with a shine that said, “Plastic!” The “suite” was really one large room, and in the seating area, hammocks replaced sofas. The hammocks were fitted with pads covered in tiger-print satin fabric. The end tables and the coffee tables resembled sections of tree trunk. Plastic tree trunk. With round Lucite tops.

Faith focused on the bed. Enormous, resting on a platform painted to look like a rock ledge, it was the focal point of the room. The base was made of twisted boughs. Plastic boughs, of course. More animal prints—leopard, zebra, cheetah—covered the duvet, the many pillows. It looked like there’d been a massacre of endangered species.

She looked back to find Cabot staring at a hammock. Imagining himself there, maybe.

“I didn’t ask what the room theme was,” Faith said limply. “I thought hearts and flowers.”

The bellhop gave her a you’re-not-from-around-here-are-you look. “This is the weekend before Valentine’s Day,” he said. “The hearts and flowers were booked fifteen months ago. The rest of the year, this is our most popular suite.” He did another sweep with his arm. “You have your visual effects,” he said dramatically, “and your audio effects!” He pushed a wall switch and the space resonated with the caws of tropical birds, insect twirps, a distant waterfall and a swishing sound that Faith decided was probably the anaconda waiting patiently to pounce.

“Really gives the place character,” the bellhop said. He nodded with satisfaction, and his tall, boxy hat bounced on his head.

“It does do that,” Cabot said.

Faith couldn’t bring herself to look at him. He had to be dying from sheer disgust. It was too much to hope he might be dying to laugh.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” Faith said.

“Yes, it is,” Cabot said. “Tippy will like the ambiance. You ready out there, guys?”

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Raff called back.

“It’s show time, folks,” Cabot said. “Hold on a minute. I want to splash some water on my face first.”

The next thing she heard was a roll of thunder, a crackle of lightning and a sound from Cabot that, if his voice weren’t so masculine, she might have called a scream. As the waiting crew muttered curses and flung down their equipment to dash to the rescue, the bathroom door opened. Cabot emerged, water dripping from his hair and clothes, clutching a leopard-print towel.

“I guess that wasn’t the light switch after all,” he said, deadly calm.

“It was your rain-forest effects,” Faith said.

He stared at his crew for a long, silent moment. “We’ll ‘cross the threshold’ tomorrow,” he said in the same overly calm voice. “When the rainy season has passed.” He slammed the door in their startled faces.

He glared at her, then turned his back and opened his suitcase. She gazed at his back, watching the elegant, black, soaking-wet suit crumple up, then opened her own large bag the bellhop had positioned on a luggage rack.

“When’s dinner?” Cabot said, pulling things out of his suitcase and depositing them in a zebra-striped dresser.

“We have an eight-o’clock reservation,” she said, hoping she’d remembered right.

“We have to stay here until eight?” There was an edge of panic in his voice.

She could understand the panic. She couldn’t wait to get out of this place herself.

“It will be eight by the time we’ve unpacked and freshened up and…” It hit her like brand-new information that she was sharing the Tahoe Jungle Suite with a man she found almost irresistible. “And it will be time for dinner before you know it. Cabot…”

“What?” he said, sounding impatient as he unzipped a leather bag and pulled interesting-looking items out of it. Socks, underwear, turtlenecks…

Faith accepted the sad but true fact that everything about Cabot interested her, even his underwear. “I realize this isn’t the mood you want for your honeymoon,” she said. “By July the demand for hearts and flowers will slow down, and I’m sure I can—”

“I already said,” he answered her, bent over a suitcase, “Tippy will like it just fine.”

This time the familiar words didn’t annoy her. She felt sympathetic, amused, willing to educate him. He didn’t have a clue as to what a woman would like. Except that the woman would like him. What woman could keep herself from liking him. Wanting him. Loving him. Giving herself to him…

“I’ll confirm the reservation,” she said, and hastily involved herself in her unpacking.

Makeup and toiletries, the beautiful outfits with their matching shoes and handbags, belts, chiffon scarves, pashmina stoles. Jewelry—stunning, fake, and, Cabot had told her, borrowed. The pale-blue dressing gown. With shaking fingers she scrambled through the bags, unzipping pockets and ripping open Velcro cubbyholes before finally giving up the search.

That thing that had been niggling at her as she was leaving town—now she knew what it was. She’d forgotten to bring a stitch of underwear.

6

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.”

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