Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance by Fran Baker

other hourglass attributes. Her only jewelry was a new pair of jet eardrops, but her sequined cardigan sweater was guaranteed to light up the night.
    Standing in front of the mirror in the boutique, her confidence buoyed by a two-hour session with the beauty consultant, she had thought she looked pretty glamorous. But now, seeing the woman in red reflected in her own mirror, she feared she’d gone too far in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
    “How’s Linda?” Arie asked.
    “Oh, she’s fine.” Stretching the telephone cord as far as it would go, Dovie began rummaging frantically through her closet for a different dress to wear tonight. “I stopped by the hospital before I went for my make-over this morning, and she said the doctor is going to release her tomorrow.”
    “Who does the baby look like?”
    “A clone of Curtis.” Glancing back at her bedside clock, Dovie saw that she had less than an hour toundo the damage before Nick picked her up for the party. She grabbed the first thing she found, a simple wool crepe sheath—in black, of course—then turned and took a bra and slip out of her chiffonier drawer.
    “I’ll bet Curtis is just busting his buttons over that baby.”
    “I suppose.” Remembering the way he’d snubbed her when she entered Linda’s hospital room earlier that day, Dovie felt angry and guilty at the same time. It was ridiculous! He was behaving like a spoiled brat and she was wondering where she’d failed him. She sighed and reached around behind her back again to unzip her beautiful red dress.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Come on, you can’t kid an old kidder. Something’s wrong and I’m not hanging up until you tell me what it is.”
    The line grew silent for a long time, with only some distant electronic beep making noises in their ears. Dovie gripped the phone with both professionally manicured hands. She desperately needed a sounding board, but she’d never dreamed it would be her little sister.
    She finally exploded. “You’re right; something
is
wrong! It’s the abominable way everyone in this family is acting now that I’ve started seeing Nick.”
    “Everyone?”
    Dovie never knew before that she could hear a smile. “Except you, of course.”
    “Go on, I’m listening.”
    “Well, Curtis hasn’t given me the time of day since I left him in the Intensive Care Unit. You’d think I’d abandoned him, when, in reality, he and Linda and the baby wouldn’t even be alive if Nick and I hadn’t rushed over there that morning. And Jack’s been in a snit ever since I told him I couldn’t baby-sit because I was going to a party tonight. Then yesterday, both Lon
and
Ray had the gall to call me up and tell me I was behaving like a teenager!”
    Dovie paused then and drew a deep breath. “Whew! Who’ve I left out?”
    “Mary and Merle.”
    “Oh, right. How could I have forgotten Mary’s reaction? When she stopped by this afternoon with a dress she wanted me to hem, she took one look at my hair and makeup and burst into tears.”
    “You haven’t gone punk, have you?”
    “Of course not.” Dovie looked closely at her reflection in the mirror. The hair at her crown had been layered to release its natural body, while the sides were smoothed behind her ears with a little styling mousse to highlight her facial features. The makeup had been done tastefully, giving her cheeks delicate hollows, her eyes luminosity and depth, and her lips a bead of light as if she’d just wet them with her tongue. “Quite frankly, I like the new me!”
    “Last but not least, there’s Merle.”
    “Oh, you know Merle … he thinks ‘Thou ShaltPreserve the Status Quo’ is the Eleventh Commandment.”
    “That may be part of the problem.”
    “Come again?”
    “Did you ever stop to think that the ‘old them’ might need some time to adjust to the ‘new you’?”
    She hadn’t, of course. Dovie mulled that over while she zipped up her red