Relentless. Leslie Kelly

so much as attempted a single grope in the entire six months of their relationship! He’d kissed her, yes, sweetly gentle kisses that hinted at a restrained passion. But nothing more.

      So why are you marrying him? she asked herself in a rare moment of pessimism brought on by whiskey sours and itchy spangled underclothes.

      She didn’t have to search for an answer; she knew why. Peter might not have seduced her physically, but he had bowled her over emotionally. She’d never met another man with whom she was so perfectly in sync. They shared the same tastes in everything—from sports teams and ice cream to rock groups and political affiliations. They’d never had a single argument, never exchanged a cross word. Given Pamela’s battles with her parents, she found Peter to be a soothing presence in her world.

      It went even deeper than that. Peter was also the first man she’d dated who completely and without reservation supported and applauded her career decisions. He encouraged her to keep fighting for the underprivileged teens she felt so passionately about. He consoled her when she cried in frustration at her parents’ continuing refusal to accept the choices she’d made in her life—choices that didn’t include their country clubs, golf dates or yachting trips.

      In their minds, she was merely going through a stage, or intentionally being difficult as she had been when she was a child. Okay, so she’d been a tough little cookie as a kid. She’d performed operations on her stuffed animals on the kitchen table, and used green and brown markers to draw camouflage outfits on all her Barbie dolls. She’d dreamed of making the basketball team rather than being a cheerleader. Not out of a desire to be difficult, but because she’d been born with a need to be true to herself—which meant being different from those who loved her!

      Peter had supported that. He’d appealed to her brain, seducing her completely with his unwavering support.

      But as for her body…. Had there been touches? Heated caresses? Seductive whispers or downright horny grins? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

      Pamela wasn’t a sexual connoisseur—far, far from it!—but she had enough experience to know that people who were supposed to be in love enough to marry one another usually had some physical desire going on, too. Yet Peter had never made one serious effort to make love to her, even though she’d hinted that she wanted him to.

      She’d heard about his reputation as a ladies’ man. She’d been around her father’s offices enough to know that Peter had had more than his share of female companionship—though, of course, that was all in the past. That fact made his disinterest in pursuing a physical relationship with her even more disturbing.

      She’d gone so far as to plan the most romantic, enticing honeymoon she could think of! Egged on by one of those seductive ads in the back of a bridal magazine, she’d paid a small fortune to book them a room at a new honeymoon resort at Lake Tahoe. Peter thought they were going to a friend’s lakefront cabin, and Pamela wasn’t too sure how he might react to her surprise when they arrived at the luxury resort that promised to “wash away the outside world…and every inhibition.” What if he hated it? What if he wanted to leave?

      She shouldn’t be having these fears about the man she was going to marry. They bothered her. More than bothered, they concerned, even angered her. So much so that, tonight, at her own bachelorette party, she’d allowed too much alcohol to loosen her tongue and had spilled her secret to her bridesmaids.

      Sue’s eyes had widened. Wanda had given her a look of outright skepticism. And LaVyrle had shrieked, “He’s gay! I’m tellin’ you, girl, you’re about to marry a man who hangs out in steam rooms and goes to Bette Midler concerts!”

      “He’s not gay,” Pamela muttered inside the cake. She knew Peter was straight, particularly given his love ’em and leave ’em history, yet she was unable to come up with a more logical explanation for her fiancé’s physical disinterest in her.

      One thing was sure. She could not be married to a man who had no interest in sex. Love was wonderful and she felt sure…pretty doggone sure, anyway…that she loved Peter. What wasn’t to love? What woman wouldn’t want to be married to a handsome, successful man who anticipated her every need, agreed with her every thought?

      “Maybe a woman who needed some passion in her life,” she muttered. Pamela simply could not imagine a marriage without desire. Not after seeing the passionate love her parents had for each other, still, after thirty years of marriage.

      “My parents,” she said with a grimace. If they could see their little princess/pumpkin/pookie-face Pamela now, they’d both be clutching their hearts, leaning against their matching red Beamers in horror.

      “Okay, honey, we’ve got us a plan,” LaVyrle said from somewhere above and to the right of Pamela’s cakey coffin. “Sue’s going to go in and tell Peter she has to talk to him about a last-minute wedding problem. While they’re talking, Wanda and I are gonna bust in and say there’s a bomb and everybody has to get outside. Only Sue’ll hold Peter back.”

      “That’s the stupidest idea I have ever heard,” Pamela yelled. “Don’t you think Peter’s going to wonder why Sue wants him to stay and risk blowing up if there’s a bomb?”

      “She’ll tell him you’re the bomb, sweet cheeks! Besides, you got any better ideas?”

      Pamela blew at a wisp of brown hair that had slipped from the loose mass of curls at her nape to fall over one eye. “Why not just tell the groomsmen there’s a wet T-shirt contest in the bar?” Beneath her breath, she added, “Peter probably wouldn’t be interested anyway.”

      “Yeah, Peter probably wouldn’t be interested in that, anyway,” LaVyrle said with a snorty chuckle.

      Pamela muttered an obscenity.

      “I guess it’ll do. You just sit tight—don’t you go anywhere now.” The other woman snickered again. “We’ll go find out where the bar is and then come up to the suite to get the other men out. Back in ten or fifteen minutes to getcha.”

      “Please, LaVyrle,” Pamela pleaded, “make sure you get every other man out of there. This is humiliating enough—the possibility that anyone other than Peter could be there to see me come out of this cake is too horrible to think about.”

      Particularly since most of the men at the party were Peter’s coworkers—which meant they also worked for Pamela’s father! The image of all of her father’s navy-blue-suit-and-tie-wearing middle managers seeing her in the pasties and thong was beyond bearable.

      “Back soon, Pammy,” she heard Sue whisper. “It’ll be okay.” She listened as the three women walked away, their giggles lingering after them. That left Pamela alone in the small alcove near the hotel suite where the bachelor party was taking place. They’d moved her here after helping her get into the giant cake, which had been prepared for LaVyrle’s stripper friend, Nona.

      What an oddly bad coincidence that LaVyrle had happened to know the woman who was performing at Peter’s bachelor party tonight. What a worse one that Pamela had chosen tonight to overdo it with the spiked punch. She’d been tipsy enough to spill her guts about her concerns regarding her potential sex life with her future husband. Her three friends hadn’t let up once LaVyrle had gotten the idea for Pamela to switch places with the stripper.

      And now look where she found herself. Mostly naked. Inside a paper cake covered in icing so sweet the smell was making her nauseous. Curled so tight her legs were probably going to fall asleep and give out before she could pop out of the cake like a deranged, spangled jack-in-the-box. Unable to stop shaking as she waited to see either a wonderful look of lust or a horrible grimace of disdain on the face of her groom.

      Why, oh, why had she agreed to do this?

      As she had explained the time she’d broken her arm trying to see if she could fly by leaping off the roof of her parents’ garage, Pamela muttered, “I guess it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

      KEN MCBAIN sat in a back corner of the opulent hotel suite, alone, nursing a beer and asking himself