Something Different/Pepper's Way by Kay Hooper Page B

why did you—”
    “I can’t talk now,” she interrupted hurriedly, and hung up before another word could be uttered. There was a dead silence from behind her. She decided not to turn around.
    “Should I ask?” he inquired finally in a mild voice.
    “No.” Gypsy sought hastily for something to divert his mind. Although why she should feel so guilty…! And who the
hell
had been calling her all this time? she wondered. “Uh… Chase, about that favor… ?”
    “I’d forgotten. Other things on my mind, I’m afraid.” His voice was disconcertingly formal. “What is it?”
    Gypsy mentally flipped a coin. She lost. Or won. Or maybe, she thought miserably, it didn’t matter either way. She arranged her face and turned to gaze up at him. “Would you please help me get these clothes off?” she requested baldly.
    It diverted his mind.
    Chase blinked at least three times, and Gypsy could definitely see some sort of struggle going on beneath his tightly held expression. And then he relaxed, and she knew that she had won after all. A jade twinkle was born in his eyes.
    “I thought we were doing well,” he murmured.
    Gypsy fixed him with a plaintive look. “I don’t think I can get them off by myself. The dress has tiny hooks and eyes, and the corset… well, I tied the strings in a knot. And I’m not very good with knots,” she added seriously.
    He sat down on the arm of the couch and folded his arms across his chest, bowing his head and laughing silently.
    “It’s very uncomfortable!” she told him severely.
    “Sorry.” He wiped his eyes with one hand. “It’s just… dammit, Gypsy—Cyrano de Bergerac couldn’t romance you with a straight face!”
    “Oh, really?” She lifted a haughty brow at him.
    “Really.” He pulled her into his lap, and both of them watched, totally deadpan, as her hoop skirt shot into the air and poised there like a quivering curtain.
    She turned her head to stare at him. “You may have a point.”
    “Yes.”
    “This never happens to heroines in the movies.”
    “Uh-huh.” Chase looked as though his expressionless face was the result of enormous effort and clenched teeth.
    “They
never
get stuck in their dresses,” Gypsy persisted solemnly.
    “God forbid.”
    “Or lose control of their hoops.”
    He choked.
    “Or have to put their corsets on backward.”
    Chase bit his bottom lip with all the determination of a straight man.
    “Or ask a man, with absolutely no delicacy, to take their clothes off.” Gypsy reflected a moment, then amended gravely, “Except a certain kind of heroine, of course.”
    “Of course,” Chase agreed unsteadily.
    There was a moment of silence, broken only by a peculiar sound. Gypsy looked down at her tightly corseted stomach disgustedly. “Or have stomachs that growl like volcanos,” she finished mournfully.
    It was too much for Chase. He collapsed backward on the couch, pulling Gypsy with him, unheeding and uncaring that her hoop was doing a fan dance in the air above them. He was laughing too hard to notice. So was Gypsy.
    She finally struggled up, fighting her hoop every step of the way and sending Chase into fresh paroxysms of mirth. Sitting on the edge of the couch and clutching the hoop to keep it grounded, she requested breathlessly, “Please unfasten this damn dress—it hurts to laugh!”
    Gaining a finger-and-toe-hold on his amusement, Chase rose on an elbow and began working with the tiny fastenings of her dress. They were undone much faster than they’d been done, and she was soon rising to her feet and wrestling yards of material up over her head. When she emerged, flushed and panting, she tossed the dress carelessly onto a chair and looked at Chase.
    No man had ever beheld a woman stripping with more appreciation, she decided wryly. Chase was all but rolling on the couch, and if a man could die laughing, he was clearly about to.
    She posed prettily, one hand holding the bare hoop and the other patting tousled curls in vain.