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  “You guys okay?” Brian said.

  “What?” Cal said, jerking his head up.

  “Is there something wrong with the chicken?” Brian frowned at them both. “You guys looked strange.”

  “No,” Min said, picking up her fork again. “The chicken is wonderful.”

  “Okay,” Brian said. “You need anything else?”

  “A waiter with some class?” Cal said.

  “Yeah, right, like I’d waste that on you,” Brian said, and wandered off.

  “So anyway,” Min said, scrambling for a safer topic, “when Diana told me about the cake, I turned to Emilio in my hour of need, and he called his grandmother. So he’s my hero.”

  “Wait’ll you taste the cake,” Cal said. “She only makes it for weddings and it’s like nothing else in this world.”

  “When did you eat wedding cake?” Min said.

  “When Emilio got married,” Cal said. “When my brother got married. When everybody I’ve ever known got married. Tony, Roger, and I are the last hold-outs, so there have been a lot of weddings. And now Roger’s going down for the count.”

  “Well, at least you and Tony will have each other,” Min said brightly. “So you have a brother. Younger or older?”

  “Older. Reynolds.”

  Min stopped eating. “Reynolds? Reynolds Morrisey?”

  “Yes,” Cal said. “Husband to Bink, father to Harry.”

  “Isn’t there a fancy law firm called Reynolds Morrisey?”

  “Yes,” Cal said. “My father, his partner John Reynolds, and my brother.” He didn’t sound too thrilled about any of them.

  “Cozy,” Min said. “So how is Harry?”

  “Permanently scarred from watching us on a picnic table.”

  Min winced. “Really?”

  “Hard to say. I haven’t seen him since. Bink probably has him in therapy by now. So what’s your take on Bonnie and Roger?”

  “They’ll be engaged before fall,” Min said, and they began to discuss Bonnie and Roger and other safe topics for the rest of the meal. When they were finished and Cal had signed the charge slip, he said, “So lunch with me is risky. Does that mean you need an apology for our last lunch?”

  “No.” Min smiled and tried to look unfazed. “I’ve been working on the theory that if we don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. Although a lot of people seem to know about it. Greg, for example. He ratted us out, and now my mother wants you to come to dinner.” Cal looked taken aback for a minute, and she said, “I told her you were a complete stranger so dinner was unlikely.” Then out of the blue, she blurted, “So what was that on Saturday?”

  “Well.” Cal took a deep breath. “That was chemistry. And it was phenomenal. I’d be more than interested in doing that again, especially naked and horizontal, but—”

  Min’s pulse picked up, but she slapped herself in the forehead to forestall him and her own treacherous imagination.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m remembering why you never ask guys to tell you the truth,” she said. “Because sometimes they do.”

  “My point is,” Cal said, “that Liza was right, I had no business kissing you like that because I don’t want anything that serious. I just got out of a relationship that was a lot more intense than I’d realized and—”

  Min frowned. “How could it have been more intense than you’d realized?”

  “I thought we were just having a good time,” Cal said. “She thought we were getting married. It ended okay, there are no hard feelings—”

  Min looked at him in amazement. “She wanted to get married, you didn’t, but there are no hard feelings.”

  “She said if I wasn’t ready to commit, she’d have to move on,” Cal said. “It was pretty cut and dried.”

  “And you’re the guy who’s supposed to be a wizard at understanding women. It was not cut and dried. She either hates you, or she thinks you’re coming back.”

  Cal shook his head. “Cynthie’s very practical. She knows it’s over. And so are we because, even though it was great, this is not something either one of us wants to pursue.”

  “Right,” Min said, understanding completely if not happily. “It would be different if we were at all compatible. I’m not averse to commitment, especially if it’d be that much fun, but the last thing I need is to fall for somebody I already know is no good for me just because he kisses like a god. Also, I’m waiting for the reincarnation of Elvis and you are not him. But—”

  She stopped because Cal had a strange look on his face.

  “What?” she said. “I was kidding about Elvis.”

  “I’m no good for you,” he said, “but I kiss like a god?”

  Min considered it. “Pretty much. Why? Did you have a different take on it?”

  Cal opened his mouth and then stopped and shrugged. “I guess not. I don’t think you’d be bad for me, I just can’t take the hassle. You’re not a restful woman.”

  “This is true,” Min said. “But you ask for it. You’re such a wolf.”

  “I’m retired,” Cal said. “All I want now is some peace and quiet. I just need a break.”

  “That’s my plan,” Min said. “I’m taking a break from dating.”

  “Until Elvis shows up,” Cal said.

  “Right. As far as I can see, there’s no downside to this at all.”

  “No sex,” Cal said.

  “I can stand that,” Min said.

  “Yeah, you’re good at denying yourself things.”

  “Hey,” Min said, insulted. “We were doing just fine there and then you had to take a shot at me.”

  “Sorry,” Cal said.

  They got up to go, Min kissed Emilio good-bye, and they went out into the street.

  “Okay, it’s broad daylight and my office is only six blocks away,” Min said. “You don’t have to walk me.”

  “Fair enough.” Cal held out his hand. “We’ll probably meet again at Roger and Bonnie’s wedding. In case we don’t, have a nice life.”

  Min shook his hand and dropped it. “Likewise. Best of luck in the future.”

  She turned to go and he said, “Wait a minute,” and made her heart lurch. But when she turned around, he was holding her shoe, the red ribbons fluttering in the light breeze.

  “Right,” she said, taking it. “Thank you very much.”

  He held on to it for a moment, looking into her eyes, and then he shook his head and said, “You’re welcome” and let go, and she set off down the street without looking back, full of excellent food but not nearly as happy as she should have been.

  Charm Boy, she thought, and put him out of her mind.

  On Tuesday, Min looked at the salad on her desk at lunch and thought, There has to be more to life than this. It was Cal’s fault; she’d had real food in the middle of the day and it had tainted her. Until Cal, she’d never thought about food except as something she couldn’t have. Even before she’d started dieting for the bridesmaid’s dress, there’d been no butter in her life. There should be butter, she thought, and then realized the folly of that.

  But there could be chicken marsala.

  Min shoved her salad to one side, logged onto the net, and did a search for “chicken marsala” because doing a search for “Cal Morrisey” would not have been helpful to her damn plan.

  “Very popular dish,” she said when she got 48,300 matches. Even allowing for the weird randomness that more than 48,000 of them would demonstrate if she ever got that far, that was still a lot of recipes. There was one with artichokes, that was insane. One had lemon juice, which couldn’t be right, another peppers, another onions. It was amazing how many ways people had found to garbage up a plain recipe. She printed off two that sounded right and went to log off the net, but instead, on a random impulse, Googled for “dyslexia” instead. An hour later, she logged off with a new respect for what Calvin Morrisey had accomplished.

  When she got off work, she stopped by the grocery. There was something about having a