Sweet Liar by Jude Deveraux

two years to the same man has a very high pain tolerance. You don’t think that’s true, do you?”
    After a futile attempt at controlling her laughter, Pat released it. Even when Mike kept saying, “Mom! Mom!” she kept laughing. Even when she knew he put the phone down in disgust, she still couldn’t stop laughing.
    Mike put down the telephone, more than a little annoyed at his mother, actually, annoyed at all women. If they thought marriage to a man was so horrible, why were they all trying to get married? All of them except Samantha, that is, he thought. Or maybe her reluctance was merely an act.
    Smiling, he went to the bedroom to dress. For Samantha he would put on a suit and tie. Maybe he’d even wear that Italian number his sister had picked out for him.
    Forty-five minutes later, he emerged from the bedroom, showered, shaved, and dressed, then checked the hall mirror and straightened his tie. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all.
    â€œSam!” he yelled up the stairs. “You ready to go?”
    He had to wait a few minutes before she came down the stairs, but when he saw her, he smiled at her and offered her his arm.

    When Samantha saw the way Mike was dressed, she wanted to die. Just plain sit down and die. She’d had dreams of embarrassing him, of making him say that he wasn’t going to be seen with her dressed as she was—that’s what her ex-husband would have said if she had appeared wearing her workout clothes—so she’d dragged an ancient pink sweat suit, worn bare in places, discolored in others, from the closet. Across the chest of the sweat shirt was emblazoned “At first he put me on a pedestal and now he wants me to dust it.”
    As Samantha stood at the head of the stairs, looking down at Mike in his beautiful dark suit, she knew she had never seen a better-looking man in her life. At least this time when her father had chosen a man for her, he had picked one who looked good. She hadn’t been as fortunate with Richard.
    After one look at Mike’s eyes, she knew he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by her. In fact, she wasn’t sure he was aware that what she had on was inappropriate. Smiling at her as though he was looking forward to going out with her, he held up his arm for her to take.
    â€œI can’t—” Samantha began. “I have to—”
    â€œSamantha, it’s eleven o’clock. If you take any longer to get dressed, the stores will be closed.”
    â€œStores,” she said, horror in her voice as she tried to pull away from him, but he held her firmly.
    â€œI cannot go to a store looking like this,” she said.
    Mike looked her up and down and read her shirt. “You look fine to me. I like pink on you. Besides, we can buy you new clothes if you want.”
    Pulling at her arm didn’t gain her release. “I have to change.”
    Giving her a look of frustration, one of those count-to-ten looks, he said with exaggerated patience, “If you didn’t like what you had on, why did you wear it?”
    Samantha wouldn’t answer that, since she couldn’t very well tell him that it had been her intention to make him refuse to be seen with her, especially not since he didn’t seem to notice what she had on.
    Feeling like a child who was being punished, her chin down, she followed him out of the house and into the streets. So far, her total experience of New York had been Lexington Avenue. Now she walked with Mike toward Madison Avenue, then to Fifth, and the closer they got to Fifth Avenue, the more Samantha became aware of her atrocious clothing. In magazines one saw models wearing gorgeous designer clothing, and a person in the real world of Middle America sometimes wondered who in the world wore those things. Most Americans wear bright-colored sportswear, looking as though they spend their lives climbing mountains or running marathons. But in New York the men and