Power Play. Nancy Warren

the Elk Mall still the only shopping center in town? Oh, and I’ll need a list of other hotels.”

      She’d last been in town a few months ago for a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Her mom had moved away from Elk Crossing before Emily was even born, but she’d dragged the family back so many times over the years that Emily knew the town pretty well.

      While she was speaking, the young girl dug down into the bin and handed her a pair of black polyester satin pants, the pink polyester silk shirt and a fluorescent-green windbreaker with a tear in the pocket.

      Emily looked at the crumpled garments hanging from her hand. “Can I at least wear my underwear?”

      “No. Everything gets washed.” The girl sent her another sunny smile. “But these are all clean. We always wash them before they go in the lost and found.”

      “That’s good to know.” Especially since she’d be going commando.

      “Yep, Elk Mall’s still the place. It has a Wal-Mart now,” she added with pride. “And we’re finding you another room. We should have you settled in a couple hours. Your clothes need to be separated into washable and dry-clean-only piles.”

      “I don’t want another room in this hotel,” Emily said in the pleasant but firm tone she used on her massage therapy clients who didn’t do their exercises. “I want a list of other local hotels.”

      “Won’t do you any good. They’re all full.”

      “Every hotel room in Elk Crossing is full?” This town was so insignificant it only appeared on regional maps, but she didn’t think it was that small. The wedding was adding a hundred people, tops, and most of them were billeted. “I don’t mind driving.”

      The chambermaid shook her head. “Not a hotel room, motel room or bed-and-breakfast is left. Even the campgrounds are full. There’s nothing for fifty miles. It’s the Over-Thirties Hockey Tourney this week. They’ve booked everything.”

      Emily pushed a wet curl back off her forehead. “Tell me you have some good news.”

      “Sure. Your room’s comped. And we’re serving free coffee and breakfast in the restaurant.”

      She sighed. As good news went, she hadn’t exactly won the lottery. “What time does Wal-Mart open?”

      2

      ONLY THE THOUGHT OF BEDBUGS got Emily out of her room once she’d forced herself to dress in the lost and found clothes. The polyester silk pants were too short, ending about three inches from her ankles, but making up in width what they lacked in length, so she’d had to use a safety pin to hold the waistband in place.

      By contrast, the shirt was too small, and she was braless. Which was the only reason she finally slipped her arms into the bright green windbreaker.

      Unable to resist, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror and tried to see the humor in the situation, but at the moment, she didn’t feel like laughing. She looked like a scarecrow that had been left out one winter too many. Loads of her family lived here in Elk Crossing and she had friends here. She had her pride, and her mother’s pride in her to think of. They simply could not see her like this.

      The only plan she had was to hit Wal-Mart the second it opened, grab something and scoot into the change room. If she could do that, her vanity would be partly spared.

      She opened her door and slipped into the hallway, casting one last look at her clothes, neatly separated into wash and dry-clean piles. Naturally, she’d brought her best clothes with her for the interminable wedding breakfasts, lunches, rehearsal dinners, stagette night and whatever other events her inventive relatives could come up with. When someone in her family got married, they liked to drag the thing out at least a week.

      She made her way to the restaurant and found about a dozen refugees from her part of the hotel standing around drinking coffee, looking like a convention of hobos. As she entered, the hairy guy who’d diagnosed the bedbug problem glanced up and took in her outfit with interest. Something about his regard made her conscious of her underwearless state, which made her snappish.

      Especially as he’d somehow snagged an oversize navy sweater and jeans. Apart from the fact that his jeans didn’t go much closer to his ankles than her satin pants, he could pass for normally dressed. She poured herself coffee from an urn and turned to him. “How did you score clothes that actually fit?”

      He snorted and lifted the huge sweater. Apart from noticing the same gorgeous abs she’d sighted earlier, she saw a widely gaping fly and, since he was also going commando, she got the impression that his chest wasn’t the only place he was impressively hairy.

      “I do up this zipper, I’ll be singing soprano for the rest of my life,” he informed her, and then dropped the sweater back in place. “Did you get bitten?”

      “No. You?”

      He shook his head. “Far as I can tell, it’s only the two women with bites.”

      “Are they going to be okay?”

      He nodded. “They took both of them to the clinic to be looked at, one of them had some kind of reaction, but they should be fine.”

      She shuddered.

      A waitress came out of the kitchen bearing a tray of Danish and fruit.

      As she helped herself to a Danish, Emily asked the waitress, “What time does the Wal-Mart open?”

      “Seven.”

      “It’s going to be a long hour,” she muttered.

      The traveling salesman type, wearing faded blue track pants that said Dancer across the butt, a red soccer jersey with a bleach stain on the chest and his bare feet stuck into sneakers, suddenly bellowed, while indicating his new outfit, “Would you buy insurance from this man?”

      His comment broke the ice and as they all laughed, the bedbug refugees began trading stories and lamenting the bad clothing, bonding over the disaster.

      By five to seven, Emily was in the shopping center parking lot, as close as she could get to the Wal-Mart entrance. The minute the doors were unlocked, she put her head down and ran for the entrance. Once inside, she headed straight for the women’s clothing section.

      She found a simple black skirt and flipped through a rack of silky tank tops, almost weeping when she thought of the suitcase of her good clothes that was currently at the local dry cleaner’s mercy.

      Naturally, the underwear was in a different area of the store, but she found the intimate apparel at last and was flipping through the bras when a voice said, “Can I help you with anything?”

      “No, thanks,” she said, not raising her head, hoping desperately the woman with the vaguely familiar voice would move on.

      She felt the warm air stirring around her, almost as though the woman’s breath was surrounding her as she stood rooted to the spot.

      “Emily Saunders, is that you?”

      Oh, crap. Her worst nightmare had just been realized. She raised her head and thought that in a list of the top ten people she would have wanted to avoid at this moment, Ramona Hilcock would have made the top three.

      “Ramona!” she cried with false delight.

      “I almost didn’t recognize you,” the woman said, looking her up and down with barely disguised revulsion.

      Ramona had been a friend of her younger cousin Leanne’s in high school. Emily remembered her as a gossip and president of the sewing club. She still sewed, and Emily was willing to bet, from the way the woman eyed her outfit as though storing every detail, still gossiped.

      “You here for Leanne’s wedding?”

      “Mmm-hmm.”

      “Oh, good. I’m getting off shift early today, to attend the lunch. Of