Tony grinned. “And since you’re the strangest attractor in the room, I followed the trajectory of my stress right to you.”
“That’s not what you followed to me.” Liza turned so that her back was against the bar, her shoulder blocking him. “Give me something better than that, or I’ll find somebody else to amuse myself with.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw the other guy, the vacant-looking blond, lean down to Bonnie. “Is she always like this?” he said to Bonnie, and Liza turned to size him up. Big. Husky. Boring.
“Well, your friend isn’t exactly Prince Charming,” Bonnie said, giving him her best fluttery smile.
He beamed back down at her. “Neither am I. Is that okay?”
Oh, come on, Liza thought, and caught Tony-the-bullethead’s eye.
“He means it,” Tony said. “Roger has no line.”
“After the chaos theory debacle, that’s a plus,” Liza said.
“Poor baby,” Bonnie was saying as she put her hand on Roger’s sleeve. “Of course, that’s okay. I’m Bonnie.”
Roger looked down at her with naked adoration. “I’m Roger, and you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Bonnie’s smile widened, and she moved closer to him.
“Which doesn’t mean he’s bad with women,” Tony said, sounding bemused.
“I begin to see his appeal.” Liza turned back to Tony. “What’s yours?”
“I’m great in bed,” Tony said.
“Right,” Liza said. “You’re hopeless, but you can buy me a drink and tell me all about yourself. And your friends.”
“Anything you want,” Tony said, and waved to the curly-headed bartender. When she came down the bar, he said, “Hey, Shanna, you playing on my side of the street yet?”
The bartender shook her head. “No, but when I do, you’ll be the last to know.”
“Just so I’m somewhere on the list,” Tony said. “Shanna, this is Liza. We need refills all around here.”
“You know him?” Liza said to Shanna.
“He hangs out with my next-door neighbor,” Shanna said. “I get him by default because of Cal.”
“Cal?” Liza said, and thought, Damn, I could have just asked the bartender about him without picking up this yahoo. Well, later for her.
“You don’t want to know about Cal,” Tony was saying. “He’s no good. Women should stay far away from him.”
Shanna rolled her eyes and moved away.
“That’s interesting,” Liza said, smiling at him. “Tell me all about Cal and why he’s no good.”
“I lied. He’s great,” Tony said. “We met in summer school—”
“You went to high school together?” Liza said, taken aback.
“We went to third grade together,” Tony said. “Although why you think this is interesting—”
“I want to know everything about you, sugar,” Liza said. “I find you fascinating.”
Tony nodded, accepting this as fact. “I was born—”
“You and your friends,” Liza said. “So you and Roger and Cal—”
Tony began to talk, while behind her, she heard Bonnie say, “You know my mama would like you,” and Roger answer, “I’d love to meet your mother.”
Liza jerked her head toward Roger. “Does he say that to every woman?”
“What?” Tony said, startled out of his story about being a football star in the third grade.
“Never mind,” Liza said. “Let’s fast forward to puberty. You and Roger and Cal . . .”
Cal watched the shock on Min’s face as she caught the full force of Emilio’s for the first time, seeing his favorite restaurant in all its funky glory, the wrought-iron chandeliers with the amber flame bulbs, the old black and white photos on the walls, the red and white checked tablecloths on the square tables, the candles in the beat-up Chianti bottles, the hand-lettered menus and mismatched silver. He waited for her lip to curl and then realized it couldn’t because her mouth had fallen open. Well, she deserved it for being such a pain in the—
“This is great,” she said, and started to laugh. “My God, how did somebody like you ever find this place?”
“What do you mean, somebody like me?” Cal said.
She walked over to look at the photos of Emilio’s family for the past eighty years. “Where did they get this stuff?” She smiled, her soft lips parted and her dark eyes alight, and then Emilio came up behind him.
“Ah, Mr. Morrisey,” Emilio said, and Cal turned to meet his old roommate’s glare. “How excellent to see you again.”
“Emilio,” Cal said. “This is Min Dobbs.” He turned back to Min. “Emilio makes the best bread in town.”
“I’m sure you make the best everything, Emilio,” Min said, offering him her hand. She looked up at him from under her lashes, and her wide smile quirked wickedly.
Emilio cheered up, and Cal thought, Hey, why didn’t I get that?
Emilio clasped her hand. “For you, my bread is poetry. I will bring my bread as a gift to your beauty, a poem to your lovely smile.” He kissed the back of her hand, and Min beamed at him and did not pull her hand away.
“Emilio, Min is my date,” Cal said. “Enough kissing already.”
Min shook her head at him, with no beam whatsoever. “I’m not anybody’s date. We don’t even like each other.” She turned back to Emilio, smiling again. “Separate checks, please, Emilio.”
“Not separate checks, Emilio,” Cal said, exasperated beyond politeness. “But a table would be good.”
“For you, anything,” Emilio said to Min and kissed her hand again.
Unbelievable, Cal thought, and kicked Emilio on the ankle when Min turned to look at the restaurant again. The guy was married, for Christ’s sake.
“Right this way,” Emilio said, wincing. He showed them to the best table by the window, slid Min into a bentwood chair, and then stopped by Cal long enough to say under his breath, “I sent the servers home half an hour ago, you bastard.”
“You’re welcome,” Cal said loudly, nodding to him.
Emilio gave up and went back to the kitchen, while Cal watched Min examine the room in detail.
“It’s like an Italian restaurant in the movies,” she told Cal. “Except not. I love it. I love Emilio, too.”
“I noticed,” he said. “You’re the first woman I ever brought here who was on a kissing basis with him before we sat down.”
“Well, he’s going to feed me.” She picked up her napkin. “That’s always a good sign in a man.” She spread the napkin in her lap, and then her smile faded and she looked tense again. “Except . . .”
Cal braced himself for her next shot.
She leaned forward. “I can’t eat the bread or pasta, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Can you order something else?”
“Sure,” Cal said, surprised. “Salad. Chicken marsala, there’s no pasta with that.”
“Thank you.” Min smiled at him. “I wouldn’t want to ruin his evening.”
“I think you just made his evening,” Cal said. Her lips were full and soft, and when she smiled her gratitude at him, her face changed from grim prison warden to warm baby doll, but the wicked glint she’d had in her eyes when she’d flirted with Emilio was gone, which was a real shame.
Emilio brought the bread, and Min leaned forward to see it. “Oh, that smells good. I missed lunch so this is wonderful.”
“It is good,” Cal said. “Emilio, we’ll have the house salad to start and then the chicken marsala.”
“Excellent choice, Mr. Morrisey,” Emilio said, and Cal knew it was because everything was simple to make. “And a nice red wine to accompany?”
“Excellent,” Cal said, knowing they were going to get whatever Emilio had left over and open in the kitchen.
“Ice water for me,” Min said with a sigh, still looking at the bread.
When Emilio was gone, Cal said, “The bread’s excellent. He makes it here.”
“Carbs,” M
in said, her scowl back in place, and Cal had heard enough about carbs in his nine months with Cynthie so he let it drop.
“So,” he said, picking up one of the small loaves. “What do you do for a living?” He broke the bread open and the yeasty warmth rose and filled his senses.
“I’m an actuary,” Min said, the edge back in her voice.
An actuary. He was on a dinner date with a cranky, starving, risk-averse statistician. This was a new low, even for him.
“That’s . . . interesting,” he said, but she was watching the bread and didn’t notice. He held half the small loaf out to her. “Eat.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I have this dress I have to fit into three weeks from now.”
“One piece of bread won’t make that much difference.” He waved it, knowing that the smell of Emilio’s bread had driven stronger Atkins people to their knees.
“No.” She closed her eyes and her lips tight, which was useless because it wasn’t looking at the bread that was going to bring her down, it was smelling it.
“This might be your only chance to eat Emilio’s bread,” he said, and she took a deep breath.
“Oh, hell.” She opened her eyes and took the bread from him. “You really are a beast.”
“Who, me?” Cal said, and watched her tear off a piece of the bread and bite into it.
“Oh,” she breathed, and then she chewed it with her eyes shut, pleasure flooding her face.
Look at me like that, he thought, and felt something nudge his shoulder. He looked up to see Emilio standing with a half bottle of wine, staring at Min. He nodded at Cal and whispered, “Keeper.”
Min opened her eyes and said, “Emilio, you are a genius.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Emilio said.
Cal took the wine from him. “Thank you, Emilio,” he said pointedly and Emilio shook his head and went back to the kitchen for the salads.
When he’d brought them and was gone again, Cal said, “So you’re an actuary.”
She looked at him with contempt again. “Please. You don’t care what I do. Take the night off, Charm Boy.”
“Hey.” He picked up his bread. “I don’t do this nightly. It’s been a while since I picked up anybody.”
Min looked at her watch as she chewed. She swallowed and said, “It’s been twenty-eight minutes.”
“Besides you. My last relationship ended a couple of months ago, and I’ve been enjoying the peace and quiet.” She rolled her eyes and he added, “So of course, when I decide to start dating again, I pick up somebody who hates me. What’s all the hostility about?”
“Hostility? What hostility?” Min stabbed her fork into her salad and tasted it. “God, this is good.”
She chewed blissfully, and Cal watched her, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. She should be liking him. He was charming, damn it. “So what are your interests in life besides great shoes?”
“Oh, please,” Min said, when she’d swallowed. “You talk. I know why I picked you out, tell me why you picked me.”
He stopped with his glass halfway to his mouth. “You picked me up?”
Min shook her head. “I picked you out. I saw you on the landing. Well, my friend Liza saw you first, but she gave you to me.”
“Thoughtful of her,” Cal said. “So you were expecting me when I showed up?”
“Pretty much.” Min shoved the bread toward him. “Take this bread basket away from me, I’m making a fool of myself.”
He pulled the basket toward his plate. “Then why did you give me such a hard time?”
Min snorted. “You think that was a hard time? You must not get much grief from women.”
“Well, not in the first five minutes,” Cal said. “They save that for the future.”
“Yes, but we don’t have a future,” she said, looking longingly at the bread. “I had to be proactive.”
Cal pushed the basket back to her. “Why don’t we have a future?” he said, even though he’d come to the same conclusion about thirty seconds after he’d said hello in the bar.
“Because I’m not interested in sex.” Min tore off another piece of bread and bit into it, and Cal watched while the pleasure spread across her face.
You lie, Cal thought.
“And that means you’re not interested in me,” Min said when she’d finished chewing.
“Hey,” he said, insulted. “What makes you think I’m only interested in sex?”
“Because you’re a guy.” She picked up the bread again. “Statistics show that men are interested in three things: careers, sports, and sex. That’s why they love professional cheerleaders.”
Cal put his fork down. “Well, that’s sexist.”
Min licked a crumb off her lip, and his irritation evaporated. She was fun to look at when she wasn’t scowling: smooth milky skin, wide-set dark eyes, a blob of a nose, and that lush, soft, full, rosy mouth. . . .
“Yes, I know,” she said. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“What?” Cal tried to find his place in the conversation. “Oh, the sports and sex thing? Not at all. This is the twenty-first century. We’ve learned how to be sensitive.”
“You have?”
“Sure,” Cal said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t get laid.”
She rolled her eyes, and he picked up the bottle and filled her wineglass.
“I can’t,” she said. “I had too much to drink at the bar.”
He slid her glass closer. “I’ll make sure you get home okay.”
“And who’ll make sure I get away from you okay?” she said and he put the bottle down.
“Okay, that was below the belt,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended.
She met his eyes, and he thought, Oh, hell, here we go again. Then she nodded and said, “You’re right. You’ve done nothing to deserve that. I apologize.” She frowned, as if thinking about something. “In fact, I apologize for the whole night. My boyfriend dumped me about half an hour before you picked me up—”
“Ah ha,” Cal said.
“—and it made me insane with rage. And then I realized that I’m not even sure I liked him anymore, and that the person I’m really mad at is me for being so stupid about the whole thing.”
“You’re not stupid,” Cal said. “Making mistakes isn’t stupid, it’s the way you learn.”
She squinted at him, looking confused. “Thank you. Anyway, this evening is not your fault. I mean, you have your faults, but you shouldn’t pay for his. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” he said, confused, too. What faults? “Now drink your wine. It’s good.”
She picked up her glass and sipped. “You’re right. This is excellent.”
“Good, we’ll come here often,” he said, and then kicked himself because they weren’t going anywhere again.
“Another line,” Min said, without venom. “We’re not going anywhere again and you know it. What is it with you? You see a woman and automatically go into wolf mode?”
Cal sat back. “Okay, was that because of the ex-boyfriend, too? Because I’m usually not paranoid, but you are definitely out to get me.”
“Don’t be a wimp,” Min said as she tore the bread. “You’ve got that gorgeous face, and a body that makes women go weak at the knees, and then you whine.”
Cal grinned at her. “Do I make you go weak at the knees?”
Min bit into her bread and chewed. “You did until you whined,” she said when she’d swallowed. “Now I know. The magic is gone.”
Cal watched her lick her full lower lip, and two months of celibacy plus a lifetime of habit kicked in. “Give me a chance,” he said. “I bet I can get the magic back.”
She stopped with the tip of her tongue on her lip, and her eyes met his for a long, dark, hot moment, and this time that glint was there, and sound faded to silence, and every nerve he had came alive and said, This one.
Then her tongue disappeared, and he shook his head to clear it and thought, Not in a million years.
/> “I never bet,” Min said. “Gambling is a statistically impractical form of generating income.”
“It’s not a method of generating income,” Cal said. “It’s a way of life.”
“Could we be any more incompatible?” Min said.
“Can’t see how,” Cal said, but then her eyes went past him and he watched while she drew in her breath.
Cal turned and saw Emilio, this time with a fragrant platter of chicken marsala, golden-brown filets and huge braised mushrooms floating in luminous dark wine sauce.
“Oh, my Lord,” Min said.
Emilio beamed at her as he served. “It’s a pleasure to serve someone who appreciates food. Taste it.”
Min cut into the chicken and put a forkful in her mouth. She looked startled and then she closed her eyes and began to chew, her face flushed with pleasure. When she’d swallowed, she looked up at Emilio, her eyes shining. “This is incredible,” she said, and Cal thought, Me, look at me like that.
“Try the mushrooms,” Emilio said, happy as a half-Italian clam.
“Go away,” Cal told him, but Emilio stayed until Min had bitten into one of the huge mushrooms and told him with heartfelt passion that he was a genius.
“Can I get some credit for bringing you here?” Cal said when Emilio was gone.
“Yes,” Min said. “You are a genius at restaurants. Now be quiet so I can concentrate on this.”
Cal sighed and gave up on the conversation for the rest of the meal. There was a skirmish at the end when Min tried to insist on separate checks, but Cal said, “I invited you, I pay. Back off, woman.” She looked as though she were going to argue for a moment, and then she nodded. “Thank you very much,” she told him. “You’ve given me a lovely meal and a new favorite restaurant,” and he felt appreciated for the first time that night.
When they left, she kissed Emilio on the cheek. “Your bread is the greatest, Emilio, but the chicken is a work of art.” Then she kissed him on the other cheek.
“Hey,” Cal said. “I’m right here. I paid for the chicken.”
“Don’t beg,” Min told him and went out the door.
“Morrisey, I think you just met your match,” Emilio said.
“Not even close,” Cal said, grateful to be without her for a moment. “This was our first, last, and only date.”
Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Page 41