You Call This Romance!?. Barbara Daly

      1

      CABOT DRENNAN STARED at the woman across the wrought-iron table from him. She meant more to him than anyone else in the world at this particular moment in his life. She meant what Charlie McCarthy meant to Edgar Bergen all those long years ago, what Judy Garland meant to the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio, what Groucho meant to the Marx Brothers, what Larry and Curly meant to Moe.

      Tippy Temple—blond, beautiful, angelic, today’s supporting actress and with Cabot’s expert advice and assistance, tomorrow’s biggest box-office hit—was hysterical.

      “I’m gonna kill ’im, Cabot,” she screamed, her exquisite mouth twisted into something downright ugly. “That…” From that mouth came a string of expletives that sent chills up Cabot’s spine—chills of fear that the neighbors might be listening. “He can’t do that to me. He promised!” She burst into tears.

      Cabot watched in despair. These were not the pretty tears that had run down her pristine face in A Kiss to Build a Dream On. They were tears of the purest, most vindictive rage.

      One thing you could say about Tippy. She was a damned fine actress.

      The tears ceased abruptly as Tippy reached for a cigarette. “I’m gonna call home and get a contract put out on him,” she said. “I’m gonna tell ’em to kill him slow, cut off his…”

      “Tippy!”

      “…toes one at a time and then his…What?” Sulkily she blew a stream of smoke through the nostrils of her perfect nose.

      “There’s nothing we can do to Josh Barnett,” he said, struggling for a calm he himself did not feel. These were his hopes and dreams going up in smoke, as it were. “Josh agreed to marry you for the publicity, and he’s backed out on us. It was his right. It’s not like money changed hands, or we signed a—” Thinking it over, Cabot decided not to bring up the word contract again. “—a legal document.”

      Tippy’s face contorted again. “He did more than back out, that…”

      Cabot winced as another string of expletives bristled through the smoke. He’d had no idea there were so many pejorative phrases in the English language. “He eloped with Kathy, that…” Now the adjectives turned on Kathy Simpson, the star who’d beaten Tippy out for the lead in Kiss and now, it seemed, had stolen the co-star, Josh, as well. Tippy’s scowl deepened. “I’m gonna get her taken out, too, that…”

      “Tippy, we must be calm and think this over.”

      “Oh,” she said with a sudden breeziness, “I don’t need to think it over. I know exactly how I want it done. I’ll have the mob asphyxiate her with hair spray.”

      Cabot closed his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was, we need to think what to do next. I’ve already scheduled the chapel, the flowers, the reception. All we need is a groom.”

      She threw her slender, golden arms up in the air. “Well, ain’t that just great. All we need’s a groom. Yeah, sure. So whadda you gonna do? Tour the agencies? Ask ’em, ‘Hey, who’ll marry Tippy? Anybody’ll do.’ You think that won’t get around in a New York minute?”

      Tippy also surprised him occasionally with her intelligence, which was hard to see through the smoke. “Of course not,” he said, although that possibility had been going through his mind. “If Josh leaks the news to anybody, we’ll spread the word that you ditched him for…for…somebody else,” he finished lamely.

      “Who?”

      “That is the question,” he admitted.

      He was unnerved to see that she was gazing at him speculatively. She stubbed out her cigarette, reached for a stick of gum, chewed it vigorously, pursed her full, sweetly bruised mouth and blew a bubble, all the while gazing at him with those big blue eyes.

      “I’ll give it some thought,” he said hurriedly. “While I’m thinking, I’ll move right ahead with the honeymoon plans. You just relax, calm down, don’t spend another minute worrying about it. Leave it all up to me.”

      She took the gum out of her mouth and deposited it in a tissue. The big blue eyes filled with tears in a way that made her look like the on-screen Tippy again. “I really had hopes for Josh and me,” she said in a soft, wistful voice that carried not a hint of Brooklyn in it. “I thought maybe we’d fall in love for real, live happily ever after just like in the fairy tales. But Kathy won, on-screen and off, and my heart is b-b-broken.” She burst into the most beautiful sobs he’d ever heard.

      FLYING DOWN THE FREEWAY in his powerful sports car, he pondered what he was going to do now. Tippy Temple had talent, looks, a frightening determination, everything it took to succeed. From that point on it was up to him, her publicist, to see that she did succeed. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to move her toward stardom. And his career would take off along with hers. Just one big star would make him among the most sought-after publicists in the film industry.

      He needed that.

      So he had a little challenge here. Josh Barnett, Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, had backed out, had eloped with an actress who’d already made it, figuring Kathy could do more for his screen career than Tippy could. Or maybe Josh had actually fallen in love with Kathy Simpson during the making of Kiss. It happened sometimes. Cabot growled softly. Forget love. He had to be thinking about who was going to marry Tippy.

      Did the “who” really matter? Wasn’t the wedding what it was all about? Tippy saying her vows while every local television station filmed her, the video of her splashy honeymoon picked up by the national film news programs, Tippy’s declarations of happiness alongside the photographs in Variety. It was all about Tippy getting married. Who cared who the groom was?

      Might as well be…

      Aw, no. I don’t want to. But who else am I going to get? He thought and thought. In the old days the Hollywood studios took care of arranging marriages, dates, even children for their stars. Now the job was up to publicity agents like him. He chewed his lower lip and thought some more. Tippy was right. He couldn’t go after an endless number of groom prospects without the word getting out that her marriage was nothing more than a publicity stunt. This town fed on gossip—a low-fat, low-carb, high-energy diet. That’s why everybody was so thin.

      There was only one answer, and Tippy had figured it out faster than he had. He’d already compromised his principles by dreaming up this sham marriage as a way of boosting Tippy to stardom. What would one more compromise matter?

      A lot, that’s what. He wouldn’t do it.

      Unless he had to.

      PALM FRONDS RUSTLED in the gentle breeze, making drowsy whishing sounds. The sand gleamed golden, warming her feet as she stepped dreamily toward an ocean of everchanging green and blue, white tipped, frothy and enticing as a key-lime pie.

      “Faith?”

      Her loose, lacy white shirt slipped down her tanned shoulders as she neared the shore, and with an impatient gesture she flung it to the sand, longing for the touch of the sun-warmed water against her desire-heated skin. She…

      “Faith Sumner!”