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

She’d just reached her desk when the telephone rang. She heard the scratchy static, the fade-in, fade-out sounds of a car phone. “You forgot to ask me when,” the voice said.

“Cabot?” She knew it was Cabot because the bottom sort of dropped out of her stomach, and she could feel the flush climbing her cheeks, prickling up into her scalp.

“How can you make reservations when you don’t know when the honeymoon is?”

“Well, of course there are the preliminary steps, the general approach, the data-gathering—what are the best hotels and so on and so on.” She was gesturing a lot, she noticed, which wasn’t going to help make her point over the phone.

“Bull. You forgot to ask. We’re getting married on the Fourth of July. Independence Day. You see the irony.”

“Yes,” Faith said faintly.

“And there’s also the fireworks connection. Ought to make good copy.” His voice picked up speed. “Less than six months between now and then. I’ve got a lot to do and I have to know where I’m doing it. So get going.”

He hung up. Faith sat still for a moment, feeling stunned. Good copy? Electricity? Lighting? Were these things a man should be thinking about when he was marrying a lovely, sweet-as-she-was-pretty starlet like Tippy Temple? The one thing Faith knew was that Cabot Drennan was in for a hot honeymoon. But that would make good copy, too.

Focus, Faith. Focus, Faith, Focus…

“Okay, okay,” she muttered to the screen saver, and with considerable effort, turned her mind toward scuba-diving gear for the Muldens.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Cabot was back at the house Tippy had rented in the chic Bel Air district, sitting beside her at the pool. At high noon on a perfect Southern California January day, she was turning Nordic-golden before his very eyes while he sweated in his three-piece suit.

“Reno! Awesome! I feel better already,” Tippy said, popping her chewing gum at him. “Get us one of those honeymoon suites with a round bed, okay? And a Jacuzzi. I’ll look great in a Jacuzzi.”

Tippy kept her weight down to nothing by smoking and kept her cigarette count down by chewing bubblegum in between cigarettes. Just now one of her all-time biggest and best bubbles practically obscured her slim, lovely face. Cabot steeled himself for the eventual…

Pop! “The arrangements are underway,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Gr-r-eat,” Tippy said. Her lower lip began to tremble. “An’ I really appreciate you bein’ willin’ to marry me, after that…that…” Tears welled up.

“Don’t cry, Tippy,” Cabot said, thinking, Don’t start up with the swearing! “It’s my pleasure. I mean, what’s a publicist for?”

One huge droplet slid down her flawless skin as she gazed at him earnestly. “This is going to work for me, isn’t it, Cabot? The publicity? Just a little publicity is all I need, right?”

“Jack and I are sure of it,” he told her, feeling more kindly toward her. Her agent, Jack Langley, had hired him to promote her to the top ranks and Cabot was determined to do it. She deserved a break, this kid from Brooklyn with no connections. So did he, for that matter, a kid from Hollywood with no connections beyond the ones he’d worked his butt off for. And he wasn’t going to let his conscience get in a twist about this thing he’d agreed to do. Whatever Tippy’s private faults, she was, damn it, a good actress.

He felt a smile curving his lips. Good enough to fool that travel agent, Faith Sumner. He’d spotted her from the front door of the agency and had known at once she was the right agent for the job. With her head obviously full of dreams, she’d never figure out that this marriage was made in a publicist’s office, not heaven.

She was a pretty little thing. He kept thinking of her as being little. She was about five-five, he’d guess, but with all that curly blond hair floating around her face—hair a lot like Tippy’s, actually—and the fluttery way she had about her, she seemed smaller than her size and could easily pass for eighteen.

Her gray eyes were like dark pearls.

Back on track, Drennan. “Tippy,” he said gravely, “you do understand we have to keep this quiet.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

He hoped she said “I do” and not “Shoo-uh” when they made their vows. “We can’t let anybody figure out this is just a publicity stunt.”

“I unnerstan’ poifectly, Cabot.” Tippy switched from gum to tobacco. “We’re in love and we’re gonna get married.”

Right. Here he was, getting married to a woman he felt sort of protective toward and that was it. And he was doing it entirely to get her name, and his, in the papers. And he figured if the marriage didn’t do the trick, the not-so-discreet divorce would.

He fanned the smoke away from his face. “I went to a low-key travel agency in Westwood,” he explained. “They’ll be less likely to figure it out than one of the agencies around here, and even if they figure it out, less likely to talk.”

She turned huge blue eyes on him. No longer wet, now they were calculating. “Low-key? Are you sure they can do it up classy-like?”

“I’ll see to it that they do.”

“Maybe we ought to do a dry run.”

“A what?”

“You know. Rehearse the honeymoon. Go see what this low-key agency set up for us. Take the crew along. Finalize a script for the video. Work on the lighting. Try out the bed. Find me a psychiatrist. See if there’s a good pastrami sandwich anywhere. Check out the Chinese restaurants.” She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for a fresh pack of bubblegum.

He was startled, as always when Tippy’s hard-headed practicality showed itself. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “It’ll be expensive,” he warned her, knowing she was rapidly spending the money she’d made from the film Faith had rhapsodized about.

“It’ll pay off.” She blew a huge bubble.

It had better. On the way to the car, Cabot fiddled with his cell phone, got out Faith’s card, started to punch in her office number, then decided not to call her yet. It could wait until morning.

A dry run. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“RENO’S PREMIER HONEYMOON HOTEL. Six spectacular honeymoon suites, featuring water beds, his-and-hers baths with Jacuzzis, his-and-hers dressing rooms…”

Why not his-and-hers beds? Snuggled into her own bed, which was much cozier than a water-filled bed sounded, Faith gazed at the laptop monitor that showed a lurid suite reminiscent of one you’d see in the movies of the fifties. The white-carpeted room was huge. At least, it had been photographed from an angle to make it look huge.

The heart-shaped bed, swathed in pink satin, was the central feature, naturally.

She cuddled a little more deeply into her mound of pillows as the ache of frustrated desire began its climb through her center. She could envision Cabot Drennan, dressed in a paisley silk dressing gown and nothing else, turning down that bed and tossing her, dressed in Passion perfume and nothing else, onto it. Resolutely she substituted a fuzzy image of Tippy Temple for the clear image of herself. If she couldn’t allow herself even the briefest, most fleeting thought of sharing that bed with Cabot, at least she was giving him up to a woman who deserved him.

Still, it was disappointing to meet the man of her dreams on the eve, so to speak, of his marriage to another woman.

“…magnificent Olympic pool, saunas, dramatic casino, big-name entertainment, twenty-four-hour room service.”

She sighed deeply. Honeymooners would like that—room service at any time of the day or night.

“…European-trained hairstylists and manicurists on the premises, full range of business services…”

This perked her up a little. Cabot would like that, too. He’d need a break from Tippy now and then, surely. While she had her hair and nails done, he could catch up with life at his office. Maybe even call his travel agent to tell her—

—that he’d made a terrible mistake! That he wished he could take it back! Annul the marriage! Come back to Los Angeles to the woman he really…

Yes, this hotel, the Inn of Dreams located right in the heart of downtown Reno, seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.

An e-mail alert popped up in the corner of the screen. Faith opened it. “Hold off on the July reservations until we talk. I’m coming in to your office when it opens. C. Drennan.”

Her heart beat a rat-a-tat. Could it be? Were her dreams about to come true?

She leaped out of bed, whirled back to save the data she’d gathered on a diskette to take with her to the office and then darted toward the shower. She had exactly thirty-nine minutes to make herself presentable and beat Cabot to the agency. It was going to be a stretch.