Prologue

      “OKAY, ON THE COUNT of three, we start taking our clothes off. One—”

      “Stop counting! We can’t just strip in a department store aisle, Meg!”

      “Why not? It’ll teach them to put their fitting rooms in obvious locations, won’t it?”

      Wendy gave her an exasperated look. “Either you quit it right now, or I’m going to call your mother on my cell phone and tell her what you’re doing. I don’t think the current president of the Women’s Garden Club will be amused.”

      Meg Kendall assessed her best friend for seriousness of intent and decided Wendy Jones would do exactly as she’d threatened. Besides, Meg didn’t really intend to follow through with her daring plan. Her conservative upbringing hadn’t exactly encouraged wild spontaneity—but it was fun to kid about it. “Oh, all right, you win.” Shifting her armload of new spring outfits, Meg again scanned the vicinity for anything resembling a fitting room. “What now, fearless leader? Got any ideas?”

      “Yes. We keep looking.” Doing just that, Wendy slowly turned around, searching. Suddenly, she pointed off to their left. “Ha. Right over there. See?”

      Meg looked where Wendy indicated and saw a subtle but promising doorway cut into a wall of the very upscale department store anchoring one end of Tampa’s fabulous International Plaza. She brightened. “Good eye, Wendy.”

      She set off, weaving her way around several carousels hung with pants and shirts. Mere feet from her destination, Meg was stopped by a restraining hand on her arm. She spun around to face her friend. “Whoa, head rush. What are you doing, Wendy?”

      “We can’t go in there. These are—” she lowered her voice to a whisper “—the men’s fitting rooms.” Though equally laden with her own choices in outfits, Wendy managed to point above their heads.

      Meg looked up, only now seeing the big blocky letters affixed above the entry. “Oh. So they are. Well, who cares?”

      “I do. It’s against the law.”

      “Oh, please. It used to be against the law for women to vote or go braless, but did that stop us? No.” Meg again surged forward.

      Wendy held her firm. “Men could be in there undressing.”

      Instant full-color, centerfold-quality snapshots popped into Meg’s mind. Hard-bodied athletes and cops and firefighters, all half-naked or better. Whew. She shook her head to clear the pictures. “Gorgeous men with their clothes off. How, exactly, is that supposed to dissuade me?”

      Wendy released Meg’s arm. “What if they look like Maury instead?”

      A replacement mental vision of the short, barrel-chested and blustery four-thousand-year-old sweetheart of a little old man who lived in the same complex as she and Wendy did in trendy South Tampa had Meg grimacing her distaste. “Thanks. Now I have to gouge out my mind’s eye.” She shook her head to clear the image. “Nice try. But I’m still game. I’m tired, my arms are about to fall off from carting these clothes all over the place, and I’m not getting any younger.”

      “Same here, but first let’s think this through…”

      “Oh, please, Wendy, not that.”

      “Just listen. If we go in there, we run the risk of getting caught by the security guards and being charged with a crime, disowned by our families and convicted. If that happens, we’ll be sentenced to jail, where, just to survive, we will have to become some big, sweaty chicks’ bitches—”

      “Big, sweaty— Where do you get this stuff?” Meg could hardly believe some of the things that came out of her cute blond, blue-eyed friend’s mouth.

      “I’m not done. You have to promise me that if we get thrown into jail, we’ll pretend to be each other’s bitch so no one else will mess with us.”

      Disbelief rounded Meg’s eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you.”

      Wendy nodded. “Go on…promise. I’m waiting.”

      Knowing from long experience that Wendy would not budge until Meg promised her, she exhaled dramatically. “All right, fine. If we get caught and thrown in jail, I promise we will—and I can’t believe I am even going to say this—pretend to be each other’s…bitch. There.”

      “And no farming me out in exchange for cigarettes or chocolate.”

      “Seriously?” Meg pretended to weigh the pros and cons of such a course of action—Wendy promptly smacked her arm a glancing blow. “Ouch! Okay, fine on the cigarettes. I don’t smoke, anyway. But if it comes down to you or chocolate, I’m giving you up, honey.”

      “That’s not funny—”

      “Look, if you don’t have the guts for this, keep looking for the women’s fitting rooms. But don’t expect me to wait for you once I’ve found the dress of my dreams.”

      Wendy rolled her eyes. “Oh, whatever. But one of these days, I’ll figure out why I let you talk me into doing dumb things.”

      Meg instantly brightened. “It’s not dumb, and you do it because you secretly admire my courage.”

      “Yeah, that’s it.”

      “I know it is.” With Wendy once again on her heels, Meg breezed under the forbidden arch. Quickly, she moved down the row of louvered doors, checking to see that each one was indeed empty. For all her bravado, she didn’t want to embarrass or alarm some guy. Or go to jail. Or be anybody’s bitch.

      From behind her, Wendy said, “Back to Maury Seeger, he’s quite the character.”

      Meg couldn’t help but warm to the subject of their elderly neighbor. “Maury and his Mafia-mobile,” she said, and smiled. Meg could visualize the little old man’s hulking, chrome-armored black tank of a car. “I just love Maury and his stories. The way he’s always going on about how he was a Mafia don in his younger days and how they called him The Stogie because of his cigars.”

      “But don’t you think Maury—and I mean this in a loving way—has got to have a screw loose? Maybe a whole handful loose?”

      Meg shrugged. “Probably. Who doesn’t?” Having finished casing the room, she said, “Oh, good, come on—they’re all empty.” She chose a stall and indicated to Wendy that she should take the one next to hers. Stepping in and closing the door after her, Meg called out, “By the way, did I tell you that I’m going out Saturday night with Maury’s great-nephew from out of town?”

      “Yeah, you did. That’s my point.” Wendy’s raised voice and the sound of a closing door told Meg her friend had gone into her own fitting room. “This guy is from the same murky gene pool as Maury. Have you thought about that, Meg? And what about Carl? You just broke up with him last weekend. Are you sure that’s really over?”

      “Beyond sure. Carl’s a two-timing jerk. He is so out of the picture.” Tamping down her simmering anger born of catching Carl out on a date with a woman who definitely had not been her, Meg sorted out the outfits she’d brought with her and hung her choices on the hooks provided. “My evenings are free now, so why shouldn’t I go out? Besides, this isn’t an actual date. It’s a blind date that isn’t even really that.”

      Wendy’s voice became teasing instead of scolding. “If it isn’t a date, why did it require an evening trek to the mall in the middle of the week to buy a new outfit?”

      “It didn’t. We came for you. You’re the one looking for something to wear on the airplane Friday afternoon.” Meg tossed her purse down and unsnapped her lightweight denim dress. “I just got lucky and found some cool things I like. Anyway, what’s the harm in wanting to make a good first impression?”

      “I knew it! Tell me again how this