Twisting the oven dial to Warm, she wandered back to her bedroom with one hand on the side zipper of her cream-colored A-line skirt. In a moment, the linen garment was gracing the bright tulip pattern of her comforter. Pick it up, Greer.

She not only picked up the skirt but hung it up as well, feeling abnormally virtuous. The feeling was rare and didn’t last long. Once she’d peeled off her stockings, she let them lie exactly where they fell on the poppy-red carpet. One could be good for only so long. Her workday had been both long and unusually tedious.

Halfway to the closet for her white cotton robe, Greer caught a glimpse of her reflection in the dresser mirror. There was nothing strictly wrong with the chartreuse slip she was wearing…except that one required sunglasses to appreciate its fluorescent brilliance. Her dresser drawers were full of expensive lingerie with equally minor flaws-sort of a fringe benefit of working for Love Lace.

The flamboyant satin slip cupped a well-developed pair of breasts, pinched in for a minuscule waist, and then swayed alluringly over rounded hips and long, slim legs. There was no excess fat, just luxuriant curves that would have made a calendar photographer deliriously happy. Greer, as usual, scrunched up her nose at the reflection in passing.

If she’d had her choice, she would have been flat-chested and tiny. If Greer’s mother had had the choice, her daughter would have had the poise and presence of a svelte Greer Garson. Neither had had her choice.

Nature had endowed her with a voluptuous body and a certain shyness-an unfortunate combination, in Greer’s view. As a teenager, she’d been avidly pursued by more than her share of hormone-happy boys. Other girls had envied her; Greer had suffered a lot from mortification. If the boys had just looked above her neck, they might have noticed she was simply an average nice-looking girl, with myopic but sensitive big brown eyes and a mop of untamably curly hair. But boys that age weren’t too interested in anything above a girl’s neck.