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      To Tara Hughes Gavin,

       so she has a matched set. Okay, Mike, to you too…

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter One

      Every woman has a fantasy. Some wish for a handsome prince to come riding up on his white charger and carry her away to that legendarily well-touted Happily Ever After. Some long for fame on stage or screen, being the one woman in the world every man sees, desires, goes majorly stupid over. Some long to be captains of industry, and can actually see themselves in snazzy corner offices, wielding their power with a brilliance that earns them the cover of Time magazine.

      Holly Hollis had set her sights a little lower this fall day in New York City.

      All she wanted—and only for an hour, at that—was a man. Living, breathing, capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

      Just give her a man.

      Ah, come on, somebody send her a man.

      Oh, and could some kind providence please make him a size thirty-eight long…?

      Fifteen minutes earlier…

      “Jackie! Brides glide. They do not clomp. Maybe you’re modeling Eddie Bauer Mountain Momma wear next week, but this week it’s Sutherland’s, and Sutherland designs call for gliding. Got that?”

      “I can’t help it, Holly. It’s these shoes. They’re too small.” Jackie, the six-foot-tall model, her bones and skin—she may have had a fat cell sometime in her life, but she’d banished it long ago—made a face. She was clad in a Sutherland bridal gown, looked fabulous, but walked toward Holly Hollis like a duck in hip boots.

      “Shoes!” Holly called out to anyone who’d listen, and within moments there were a half-dozen hands holding out a half-dozen pair of shoes. White satin pumps. Ivory lace-covered heels. Plain shoes. Shoes with silver buckles. Shoes with heels so curved they looked as if they’d warped.

      “Size? Come on, come on. Concentrate, Jackie. What size shoe do you wear?” Holly commanded, and Jackie told her. Holly smiled. There is a God, and She gives small pleasures when She can. “Okay, somebody find me a size twelve for Jackie.”

      “Gosh, Holly,” Irene Collier said, frowning. “I don’t think we have any twelves. Twelves? Couldn’t she just wear the boxes?”

      Think, think. Holly had to think. “Okay, look,” she said to Jackie, tipping her head back to glare up into the model’s eyes. “Tell me what shoes you wore here today. Maybe they’ll work.”

      Jackie frowned. Not a lot, because she was twenty-eight now, and the thought of frown lines were one of her obsessions. “Hiking boots. Brown lace-ups.”

      Holly pursed her lips, sort of swung them back and forth over her teeth as she searched her left brain, then her right brain, hoping for inspiration. “Nope. Some designers would put hiking boots with a wedding gown and call it a new look. But not Sutherland. Okay, here’s the deal. Barefoot, Jackie. You’re going down that runway barefoot.”

      Jackie raised one well-waxed eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”

      “Wrong,” Holly said, taking the model by the elbow and guiding her over to the short set of steps that led up to the curtain behind the runway. “You’re a blushing bride. On the beach in Maui. At dawn. Irene—tell her escort to get rid of his shoes. And his socks! Don’t forget his socks. Then tell him to go down the runway first, stand at the end, holding his arms out for Jackie’s entrance.”

      “At the end of the runway? Barefoot? You sure?”

      “Don’t push, Irene. I’m working on the edge here. Okay, Jackie. You carry your flowers—Irene, flowers! That’s it. Now, Jackie, you carry your flowers in one hand, use your other hand to sort of lift the front of the gown as you trip along the beach to your intended. Not clomp, not jog, not even trot. You dance across the sand, love in your eyes, your heart pounding, your veil caught in the ocean breeze. Feel it, Jackie. Feel the morning sun on your face. Smell the salt air. Irene, give me tear-jerker romance music. Something with swells in it or something like that, okay?”

      Jackie had her eyes closed, “feeling” the scene. Jackie was a “method” model, whatever the hell that was. Something like a “method” actor, Holly supposed, except she got paid better, and the hours weren’t so long. “I see it,” Jackie said. “Yes, I see it.”

      “Well, whoop-de-do, she sees it,” Holly muttered as Jackie went tripping off to Maui—or down the runway set up in the main ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. “Size twelve? The woman could stomp out small villages. Okay, Irene, what’s next?”

      “You are overworked, aren’t you? That’s it, Holly. Jackie was the last before the grand finale, and that’s all set, already running like clockwork. We’ve got a good crew, one person assigned to each model. Take a break, maybe even breathe. We’ve got fifteen minutes before the last bride goes down the runway and you have to go out there.”

      Irene handed Holly a clipboard, then went in search of a flower girl model who she’d just seen—in her lovely white gown—ripping open a chocolate bar.

      Holly staggered over to the refreshment table, snagging a can of diet soda before finding an empty chair and collapsing into it. This was her first showing without her boss and friend, Julia Sutherland Rafferty, by her side, and if she ever had to do another one without Julia’s help she’d have to first go heavily into self-medication.

      Holly had come to work with Julia when Sutherland was little more than a dream. They’d set up shop in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Julia concentrating on ready-to-wear clothes for the young and young at heart. Washable, affordable, cut on simple yet classic lines—perfect for the young mother, the female executive, the increasingly fashion-conscious grandmother set.

      In other words, Julia’s designs had a universal appeal, and the small Allentown business grew in leaps and bounds, until Julia’s designs were shown twice yearly in New York, just like all