Carolina Isle (Edenton 2)

“I think the lines would be out the door. Just imagine the gossip you’d hear!” David had meant the comment as a joke, but the minute he said it, they looked at each other.

“What do you think I could find out?” she whispered.

“Anything. Everything. You could get the women to tell you what’s really going on.” He’d gone from laughing to serious. “Ariel, honey, exactly what can you do? Could you do one of those drugstore makeovers?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it before, but a lot of times when I see a woman I think about what she could wear or how she could do her hair to make her look better. Take Britney, for instance.”

“Who?”

“Britney. The woman you love. The one you stayed in Arundel for, remember?”

David gave a little laugh. “Yeah, love of my life. Britney. What about her?”

“She could be pretty if she tied her hair back and quit drawing that black liner on a quarter inch outside her eyes. And her mascara clumps too much. If she—”

Ariel stopped talking because David put his hand to the back of her head and pulled her mouth to his. It was the first time he’d kissed her in any way except brotherly. It was a hard, firm kiss that let her know that he wasn’t her brother.

When he broke off, he stood up, his back to her, and stretched. “I think I’ll take a shower, and when I get out, we’re going to see about getting this started.” He didn’t glance back at her until he was at the bathroom door. When he saw that Ariel was still sitting there, a shocked look on her face, he smiled. Sink or swim, he had decided to let her know how he felt about her.

Chapter Eighteen

“YOU PROMISE, RIGHT?” PHYLLIS SAID, looking at herself in the mirror. She had on half the makeup she usually wore, and was wearing a man’s shirt and trousers that, to her mind, looked too big. But she had to admit that she looked … different. Classy, almost.

“I swear it,” Ariel said. “R. J. Brompton will put you up in New York for one week and he’ll introduce you to at least four eligible men. What happens after that is up to you.”

“And Saks?”

“A five-thousand-dollar shopping spree.”

“With a stylist,” Phyllis said.

Behind her, Ariel made her hands into claws, but smiled and nodded when Phyllis looked at her again.

“I don’t know …” Phyllis said, looking back at the mirror. “I’m not sure how people would take it if I helped you.”

“I understand,” Ariel said, straightening Phyllis’s cosmetics. She’d had to pound on the bedroom door to waken the woman from

her drunken sleep, and Phyllis hadn’t understood a word Ariel was saying to her. “You want to do what to me?” Phyllis had asked. In the end, David had had to pull the woman from the bed and set her in front of her mirrored dressing table.

“He is gorgeous,” Phyllis whispered to Ariel as she was putting brown eyeshadow on her. “Is all of him beautiful?”

Ariel glanced up at David and for the first time in her life, she felt jealousy. How many women had he been to bed with? she wondered, then shook her head, annoyed with herself. “I have no idea,” Ariel answered, trying to concentrate on the eyeshadow. Only once before had she applied makeup on a person and that had been a maid who was going out to dinner with her boyfriend of three years. When she returned with an engagement ring, Ariel felt as if she’d helped.

“You’ve never torn his clothes off?” Phyllis asked.

Ariel wanted to set the woman on her ear, to give her a look that said she should keep her lusting to herself, but she knew she was going to have to swallow her pride if she wanted to find out anything. “If a woman tried that, David would fight her.” Ariel had meant that David was a man of honor, but it didn’t sound like that.

“You mean he’s gay?”

Ariel smiled. “As pink tea roses.”

“Maybe I could change him.”

“Believe me, a lot of women have tried. You should talk to Britney. She’s tried for years, but …”

“Failed?”

“Completely.” David is going to kill me, Ariel thought, but she was smiling. However, without the promise of David’s “services,” so to speak, she’d had to think up something else to get Phyllis Vancurren to help them. Ariel had made one promise after another.