Bare Necessities. Marie Donovan

her bosom. “I never thought of that.”

      “Tell you what. I’ll make you a nice, supportive, everyday bra and matching thong on spec. Your money back if it’s not the most comfortable bra you’ve had. And you can keep the thong.” She couldn’t exactly resell a used thong.

      Sugar paused from pulling on her white V-necked T-shirt. “A risk-free offer.” She grinned. “I like it.”

      “Good.” Bridget smiled. “What color would you like?”

      “Ivory lace. And cut lower in the front so I can wear my plunging-neckline shirts.”

      “No problem.” Bridget made a note on Sugar’s client file. “So, I’ll see you Friday at four when you come for the silver bra.”

      “Great.” Sugar pulled on a pair of painted-on pencil-leg jeans and white ankle socks. She sighed as she tied her running shoes. “Stupid plantar fasciitis. My podiatrist says I’ll need foot surgery unless I save my high heels for the stage. And dates, of course.”

      “No, those wouldn’t work on a date,” Bridget agreed. Not that she’d been on any in quite a while. “Unless you were going to the Cubs’ game.”

      “True.” Sugar got a speculative look on her face. “Or maybe I could choreograph a routine around my sneakers. An unbuttoned baseball jersey with a bra and thong underneath.”

      “With a team logo over each breast and one in the front of the thong,” she suggested, half-jokingly. Although she could buy patches and appliqué them onto matching bras and thongs. Would the major-league franchises sue her if they found out? Probably nobody cared. Professional athletes were always going to strip clubs and they’d get a kick out of it.

      “Brilliant! The baseball season openers are in a couple weeks, and I could wear a football jersey during the fall.”

      “Go Bears!” Bridget made a cheering motion. She was a Green Bay Packers fan herself, something she didn’t advertise living only a few miles away from Soldier Field, the ancestral home of Chicago’s favorite gridiron underdogs.

      Sugar picked up her duffel bag. “Go money! That’s what I cheer for. Speaking of…” She handed Bridget several bills. “Always get cash up front, that’s my advice.”

      Bridget wrote a receipt and handed her the carbon duplicate. “To make your accountant happy.”

      “And I want to keep her happy. She used to dance at the Love Shack to pay for her CPA classes, so she knows the business inside and out. See you Friday.” Sugar breezed out of Bridget’s apartment and waved as she disappeared down the two flights of stairs to the quiet street.

      Bridget returned to her working area. She’d only been able to afford a one-bedroom apartment, so she’d turned her entire living room into her design studio and sewing room.

      The room’s corner was curtained off into a changing area. Most of her clients didn’t bother to use it, not being the shy types. Her large drafting table faced the window to get the maximum light for her design sketches and pattern cutting. The trifold mirror and carpeted pedestal for fitting appointments were next to the huge sewing table with her machine on it.

      Her sewing table was actually the old Ping-Pong table from her family’s basement. It was big and sturdy enough to hold heavy projects like beaded wedding dresses, but had been a pain in the butt to move, needing Dad, her two brothers, Colin and Dane, and Adam to haul it into her third-story walk-up.

      Adam had acted funny the whole time she was moving in, only talking to her when he needed to know where to set a box. It had been so awkward that she’d pulled Colin aside to ask him what the problem was. As usual, Col was clueless except to offer that Adam’s girlfriend had made plans and wasn’t happy that Adam had already agreed to help Bridget move.

      A dutiful obligation. And that was just why she’d moved away from Wisconsin, from being Bob and Helen Weiss’s baby girl and Colin and Dane’s kid sister. She brushed some scraps of silver material and bits of underwire into her palm and threw them away.

      She peered down her neckline as she bent over the wastebasket and saw a boring white bra. She also distinctly recalled pulling on discount-store cotton briefs that morning. Why didn’t she take her own advice and wear something nicer? She’d left her family to go to fashion-design school in the big bad city exactly so she could create pretty, comfortable lingerie for women who were difficult to fit, large or small.

      Bridget grabbed her sketchpad and markers. Sugar wasn’t the only one who was going to get a sexy lace bra and matching thong. And whatever lucky man eventually got to see Bridget in lingerie wouldn’t be thinking of her as somebody’s little sister.

      ADAM HALE CHECKED the number on his ringing cell phone. He sighed but answered anyway. He’d been ducking this call long enough. “Hello?”

      “Hey, Adam, what’s up?” It was Colin Weiss, his old college roommate.

      Adam settled into his leather desk chair and minimized the futures trading window on his laptop. Colin was a bit of a talker, and Adam didn’t want to get distracted during their conversation and accidentally buy high and sell low. No point in getting canned before he finished building his nest egg.

      “Hey, Colin, nothing much. How are Jenna and the kids?” Colin had married his college sweetheart right after they graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison and already had two rug rats.

      “Fine, fine. In fact, we’re expecting another one in about five months.”

      “Congrats!” Three kids, and he and Colin were only twenty-eight. Adam couldn’t even imagine having one kid. Of course, he kind of needed to actually find a woman to settle down with first. He looked at the pile of work on his desk and realized the futility of that wish.

      “Yeah, well, what can I say? She can’t keep her hands off me.”

      “After a full day of chasing after a five-year-old and three-year-old?” Adam laughed. “You wish, Col. How’s the farm doing?” Colin had majored in dairy sciences and had taken over his in-laws’ small dairy farm a half hour away from his parents’ farm in rural Wisconsin.

      “Busy as hell, but you remember that from when you visited.”

      “Right.” During those visits, they all worked hard. Adam, Colin’s parents, younger brother, Dane, and Bridget, his younger sister.

      As if he’d read Adam’s thoughts, Colin brought up the subject Adam wanted to avoid. “How’s Bridget doing, Adam?”

      “Fine, as far as I know. I stopped by her apartment a couple times to make sure she got settled and I’ve left her a bunch of voice mails.” Bridget hadn’t been home when he’d visited and she never returned his calls. Adam wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

      “Man, I wish she hadn’t moved down there,” Colin fretted. “She’s a farm girl, sweet and naive. You know what those city guys are like.”

      “Almost as bad as you country guys,” Adam retorted. “You weren’t always the happily married father of three and you had plenty of stories to tell about those so-called sweet, naive farm girls.”

      Col grunted. “Bridget’s different. I couldn’t believe it when Mom and Dad let her move to Chicago to go to that fashion-design school. What was wrong with going to school at the university in Menomonie?”

      “That isn’t exactly Chicago, Col.” Menomonie was in northwestern Wisconsin and its flannel-clad residents were not notably fashion-conscious. “Besides, Bridget’s twenty-four, a full-grown woman.” He veered away from that dangerous path. Col didn’t need to know how much a woman he considered Bridget.

      “She’s only been home once in the six months since she moved, and we hardly ever hear from her. Mom calls every week and we get occasional e-mails, but we don’t really know how she is. You’d be doing me a big favor if you could see her, take her for coffee—”

      “And