Romano's Revenge. Sandra Marton

Barrys, the oh-boy, we-are-broke Barrys…

      Lucinda Barry, who had moved from the east coast to the west and sworn off men forever after her fiancé had dumped her for a brainless twit with money…

      Lucinda Barry, whose landlord had just tossed her out for nonpayment of rent, who’d taken a quick course in desperation cooking from Chef Florenze at the San Francisco School of Culinary Arts, who was to start her very first job ever tomorrow as a cook for a sensitive, charming, undoubtedly gay gentleman she hoped would be too kind to notice that pretty much all she could do right was boil water and, amazingly enough, whip up terrific gelato…

      That Lucinda Barry stood in the marble-and-gold powder room of the house on Nob Hill, eyed herself in the mirror and wondered why Fate should have done this to her.

      “I can’t do it,” Lucinda whispered to her blond, green-eyed reflection.

      Of course you can, her reflection said briskly. You don’t have a choice.

      The girl hired to jump out of the cake had come down with food poisoning.

      “Not from our food,” Chef Florenze had said coldly as the ambulance took the writhing young woman away. Then he’d frowned, scanned the little crowd of would-be culinary school graduates gathered around him for the night of cooking that would be their final exam, and pointed a stubby finger at Lucinda. “You,” he’d roared, and when Lucinda stepped back in horror, saying no, no, she was a cook, not a stripper—when she did, the chef smiled unpleasantly and said she wasn’t a cook, either, not until he handed over her graduation certificate…

      “Ms. Barry!”

      Lucinda jumped at the knock on the door.

      “Ms. Barry,” the chef demanded, “what on earth is taking you so long?”

      Lucinda straightened her shoulders and looked at herself in the mirror.

      How tough could it be to trade her white chef’s hat, jacket and trousers for a gilded tiara, a pair of demitasse cups and a thong, and then jump out of a cardboard cake?

      “Not as tough as being broke, jobless and homeless,” Lucinda muttered grimly, and set about the business of transforming herself from a cook into a cookie.

      CHAPTER TWO

      OKAY. Okay, so the transformation wasn’t going to be easy, but then, she hadn’t expected it to be.

      Cinderella had done it with the help of a fairy godmother.

      Lucinda looked at the cake costume and shuddered. All she had to rely upon were spangles, sequins and Lycra.

      Solemnly, she took off her chef’s hat and laid it aside. She unbuttoned her spotless white jacket, took it off, rebuttoned it, folded it carefully and put it next to the hat. Her trousers went next. Zipped, folded neatly on the crease, she added them to the sad little collection.

      Then she took a deep breath, stepped into the bikini bottom and yanked it up over her hips.

      It didn’t fit. The thong didn’t fit! Hope rushed through her veins. She couldn’t be expected to jump out of a cake in her chef’s outfit. If the costume didn’t fit…

      Oh, hell.

      Lucinda moaned softly as she looked at herself in the mirror.

      Of course the thong didn’t fit. How could it, when she’d tried pulling it on over her white cotton underpants?

      She almost laughed. What a sight she was! Wire-rimmed glasses. No makeup. Hair pulled severely back from her face. A utilitarian, white cotton bra, the white cotton panties…And, over the panties, the thong.

      She looked like a cross between Mary Poppins and Madonna.

      The desire to laugh slipped away. Lucinda gritted her teeth, shucked off both the thong and the panties, then put the thong on again.

      Goodbye, Mary Poppins.

      The view wasn’t so bad from the front. Well, it wasn’t good. Still, it covered what had to be covered. But from the back…Her face went from pink to red as she twisted and turned and peered at herself in the mirror. The thong went up. It went straight up. It just went up there and disappeared.

      “Ms. Barry!”

      The door jumped under the pounding of Chef Florenze’s fist. Lucinda jumped, too.

      “Ms. Barry, do you hear me?”

      How could she not hear him, she thought bitterly. He was shouting. He had to, she supposed, to make himself heard over the rock and roll music blaring from the ballroom.

      Okay, she couldn’t expect a bunch of men at a bachelor party to be listening to Mozart but for heaven’s sake, did they have to listen to some idiot singing that he’d been born to be wild?

      Whatever had happened to Chopin?

      “You have five minutes, Ms. Barry!”

      Five minutes.

      Lucinda swung towards the mirror and stared at herself again. The cotton bra did nothing for the thong. Or maybe it was the thong that did nothing for the bra, she thought, and bit down on her lip.

      “This is not funny,” she told herself severely.

      And it wasn’t. The desire to laugh had nothing to do with seeing anything even slightly humorous in the situation. She was verging on hysteria. She remembered the first time it had happened, that out-of-place, overwhelming bark of laughter. It had been the day after her father’s funeral when his attorney had gently told the truth to her mother, and to her…

      Lucinda lifted her chin.

      “Just do it,” she said grimly, and she stripped off the cotton bra, put on the spangled demitasse cups, and faced herself in the mirror again.

      It was her reflection that seemed to want to laugh this time. Who are you kidding? it seemed to say.

      Never mind the silly excuse for a bra and the thong. She looked about as sexy as a scarecrow.

      Any self-respecting male would take one look and beg her to jump back into the cake.

      Lucinda frowned. Well, so what? Even if—if—she did this, whether she looked sexy doing it or not wasn’t her problem. Popping out of the cake was her problem, but as she’d learned over the past two years, desperation could make you do a lot of things. Like waitressing, and flipping hamburgers. Like admitting that being descended from Cotton Mather didn’t mean scratch compared to being descended from a father who’d left behind a house that was mortgaged to the hilt, a defeated wife and a disappointed mistress.

      The mistress had found a new man. The wife—Lucinda’s mother—had found a new husband.

      And Lucinda was finding a new life.

      At least, that was the plan. It was why she’d put three thousand miles between herself and Boston, come to a city where nobody’s eyebrows would lift when they heard the name “Barry,” and nobody would say, with a little smirk, “Why, Lucinda, however are you, dear?” when what they really meant was, “Oh, Lucinda, how nice to see that the mighty have fallen.”

      Lucinda’s shoulders straightened. It had been a silly life, anyway. The theater. The opera. Charity balls, and endless parties for the needy cause of the moment. Well, she was her own needy cause now. But she’d be a productive citizen, once she had her cooking school certificate in hand.

      Once she had that job, tomorrow.

      And there’d be no job, without that certificate.

      Lucinda leaned forward, palms flat on the marble top of the vanity, and stared unflinchingly into the mirror. Oh, yes, she thought wryly. Looking like this, she’d definitely be a big hit at that stag party.

      One by one, she took the pins from her chignon and shook out her hair. Unbound, the straight-as-sticks ash-blond tresses fell heavily to her shoulders.