You Call This Romance!?

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.

It was suddenly crystal clear what the point of Faith’s story was. Every job she took ended in disaster. And what she was now was a travel agent, his travel agent, Tippy’s double.

And she was warning him that she was all too likely to blow it.

The question was how? He could think of many, many ways. That was a big part of his job as a publicist, thinking of all the ways something could backfire. So he would spend the next four days creeping warily through a dark forest, waiting for the ogre to pop out and eat him alive.

And little did she know, this beautiful, delicate woman who sat beside him in an obvious state of performance anxiety, that inside him was an ogre threatening to pop out at any moment and nibble her into a passionate frenzy.

HE’D BEEN WRONG. He wasn’t going to spend the next four days creeping through a dark forest. The ogre manifested itself right there at the reception desk of the Inn of Dreams in downtown Reno. “What do you mean you don’t have three additional rooms reserved?”

“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.

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