"Like a box of petit fours -- you can't have just one!"

I'm not a huge fan of anthologies, because the stories are often too short for my taste and there's no uniformity in quality. Generally I'll love one story and be lukewarm about the rest. SINFUL was an exception, an anthology centered around a piece of lingerie and the role it plays in bringing two lovers together. All the tales are uniformly well-written and sexy, but each maintains the author's unique voice and style.

Suzanne Forster is one of my favorites, and "Unbuttoning Emmalina" doesn't disappoint. Jeff Weston, deal maker extraordinaire, bets an old friend and rival that he can get Emmalina Price out of her house, the only piece of property he lacks for a multi-million dollar project. He'd like to talk her out of her Victorian bloomers too, but Emmalina Price is the Immovable Object. She loves the old Victorian home that houses her shop, and prefers the gentility of the nineteenth century to the frantic pace of the twenty-first. Jeff finds a loophole that will gain the land and win the bet -- but he may have lost his heart to a prim and lovely lady. Can an Irresistible Force move an Immovable Object? Forster answers this with a resounding "YES". Her hero and heroine are endearing, her dialogue witty, and even the minor characters in this gem are memorable.

"Tangled Images" by Lori Foster centers around male lingerie and Mack Winston, the unwilling model for his sister-in-law's lingerie catalog. His attitude changes when he learns that the photographer is the older woman and single mom he fantasized about in college, but who pointedly ignored him. Jessica had written him off as a frat rat interested only in a good time, but while she snaps pix of him in underwear, she comes to realize that Mack is more than just a pretty face or a great pair of buns. Boxes or briefs? Neither! A sweetly romantic tale based in the character's vulnerabilities -- Jessica afraid to love again after a disastrous early marriage, Mack desperate to grab this second chance. This one will linger fondly in your memory.

Kimberley Randall's "Sinderella" is the name of a scandalously slinky lingerie line, epitomized by the sensuous and masked Fantasy Girl featured in their ads. Practical construction boss Frankie Brannigan, inspired by her brother's engagement, dons the mask and an almost-there black teddy to make a play for the man she'd always wanted, Connor, before it's too late and he too settles down. Carried off from the Valentine's masquerade and engagement party by the man of her dreams, she has a glorious night of sex -- still wearing the lacy mask, which somehow gets left behind when she flees in the morning. But she has to get that mask to the shop before the salesgirl (who lent it to her without her boss' knowledge) loses her job. Connor meanwhile is wondering just who was that Masked Woman -- and how can he get her back? This is a delightful comedy, and I really loved the bit with the cantankerous chihuahua.

"Leather and Lace" by Maggie Shayne is another tale about an unwilling lingerie model, this one female and unemployed and in desperate need of money after losing her job to a bimbo her hottie bachelor boss wanted to make time with (or so she believes). But a misstep on the runway launches near- sighted Martha Jane right into the lap of that ex-boss, and he carries her off for magical Valentine's night. The new lingerie line is a hit, and so is Martha Jane, because Richard desperately wants a second date with luscious masked model -- only to realize that he recognizes the handwriting on the note she left him. Like Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, he realizes that he's been missing out a lot by clinging grimly to bachelorhood, and he sets out to win his Valentine.

A satisfying collection of stories, Sinful is like a box of petit fours -- you can't have just one!

Sensuality Guide: steamy monogamous sex; romantic but not erotica

Reviewed by Gillian Fitzgerald
Posted February 7, 2002