ALWAYS TRUE TO YOU IN MY FASHION

A slick ladies' man is forced to reconsider his philandering ways in this mature, believable romance. After more than 15 years of friendship and casual sex, 35-year-old painter Medora Jackson finally kicks her womanizing so-called boyfriend, art dealer Randall Hollis, to the curb. She is so fed up that when she learns she is pregnant, she decides to raise the child without him. Randall promptly takes up with two women, one 13 years older than Medora, the other nine years younger: Ana is a well-to-do patron of the painters Hollis represents and Taylor is a privileged grad student with an eye on a career in the arts. What Randall doesn't know is that Ana's son is Taylor's ex-boyfriend and that they all travel in the same gossipy social circles, so it's only a matter of time before he is found out. Wesley (Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do; the Tamara Hayle mysteries) spends plenty of time getting inside her protagonists' heads, though often at the expense of her plot: Medora's father, also a painter, was a lousy parent and husband; Randall's dying mother is an emotional vampire and he never knew his father; Ana's two marriages ended badly; Taylor's twin died at birth and her father left her mother for a younger woman. Despite all this, Wesley avoids histrionics, allowing her complex characters to evolve as they learn from their own mistakes and others'; from the Freudian haze emerge some valuable observations on love, self-respect and responsibility. Agent, Faith Hampton Childs. 7-city author tour. (Dec.)