Crazy for You Read online

  He slipped his hand under her sweater as he leaned over to whisper in her ear, and she shivered as every nerve she had came alive. “Ever had screaming naked sex in the front seat of a pickup at the drive-in while the whole town around you watches a really bad copy of Bachelor Party and your dog eats your popcorn?”

  “It’s time for a change,” Quinn said, and took off her sweater.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Jennifer Crusie’s

  New York Times bestseller

  Bet Me

  NOW AVAILABLE

  FROM ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS

  Once upon a time, Minerva Dobbs thought as she stood in the middle of a loud yuppie bar, the world was full of good men. She looked into the handsome face of the man she’d planned on taking to her sister’s wedding and thought, Those days are gone.

  “This relationship is not working for me,” David said.

  I could shove this swizzle stick through his heart, Min thought. She wouldn’t do it, of course. The stick was plastic and not nearly pointed enough on the end. Also, people didn’t do things like that in southern Ohio. A sawed-off shotgun, that was the ticket.

  “And we both know why,” David went on.

  He probably didn’t even know he was mad; he probably thought he was being calm and adult. At least I know I’m furious, Min thought. She let her anger settle around her, and it made her warm all over, which was more than David had ever done.

  Across the room, somebody at the big roulette wheel—shaped bar rang a bell. Another point against David: He was dumping her in a theme bar. The Long Shot. The name alone should have tipped her off.

  “I’m sorry, Min,” David said, clearly not.

  Min crossed her arms over her gray-checked suit jacket so she couldn’t smack him. “This is because I won’t go home with you tonight? It’s Wednesday. I have to work tomorrow. You have to work tomorrow. I paid for my own drink.”

  “It’s not that.” David looked noble and wounded as only the tall, dark, and self-righteous could. “You’re not making any effort to make our relationship work, which means…”

  Which means we’ve been dating for two months and I still won’t sleep with you. Min tuned him out and looked around at the babbling crowd. If I had an untraceable poison, I could drop it in his drink now and not one of these suits would notice.

  “…and I do think, if we have any future, that you should contribute, too,” David said.

  Oh, I don’t, Min thought, which meant that David had a point. Still, lack of sex was no excuse for dumping her three weeks before she had to wear a maid-of-honor dress that made her look like a fat, demented shepherdess. “Of course we have a future, David,” she said, trying to put her anger on ice. “We have plans. Diana is getting married in three weeks. You’re invited to the wedding. To the rehearsal dinner. To the bachelor party. You’re going to miss the stripper, David.”

  “Is that all you think of me?” David’s voice went up. “I’m just a date to your sister’s wedding?”

  “Of course not,” Min said. “Just as I’m sure I’m more to you than somebody to sleep with.”

  David opened his mouth and closed it again. “Well, of course. I don’t want you to think this is a reflection on you. You’re intelligent, you’re successful, you’re mature….”

  Min listened, knowing that You’re beautiful, you’re thin were not coming. If only he’d have a heart attack. Only four percent of heart attacks in men happened before forty, but it could happen. And if he died, not even her mother could expect her to bring him to the wedding.

  “…and you’d make a wonderful mother,” David finished up.

  “Thank you,” Min said. “That’s so not romantic.”

  “I thought we were going places, Min,” David said.

  “Yeah,” Min said, looking around the gaudy bar. “Like here.”

  David sighed and took her hand. “I wish you the best, Min. Let’s keep in touch.”

  Min took her hand back. “You’re not feeling any pain in your left arm, are you?”

  “No,” David said, frowning at her.

  “Pity,” Min said, and went back to her friends, who were watching them from the far end of the room.

  “He was looking even more uptight than usual,” Liza said, looking even taller and hotter than usual as she leaned on the jukebox, her hair flaming under the lights.

  David wouldn’t have treated Liza so callously. He’d have been afraid to; she’d have dismembered him. Gotta be more like Liza, Min thought and started to flip through the song cards on the box.

  “Are you upset with him?” Bonnie said from Min’s other side, her blond head tilted up in concern. David wouldn’t have left Bonnie, either. Nobody was mean to sweet, little Bonnie.

  “Yes. He dumped me.” Min stopped flipping. Wonder of wonders, the box had Elvis. Immediately, the bar seemed a better place. She fed in coins and then punched the keys for “Hound Dog.” Too bad Elvis had never recorded one called “Dickhead.”

  “I knew I didn’t like him,” Bonnie said.

  Min went over to the roulette bar and smiled tightly at the slender bartender dressed like a croupier. She had beautiful long, soft, kinky brown hair, and Min thought, That’s another reason I couldn’t have slept with David. Her hair always frizzed when she let it down, and he was the type who would have noticed.

  “Rum and Coke, please,” she told the bartender.

  Maybe that was why Liza and Bonnie never had man trouble: great hair. She looked at Liza, racehorse-thin in purple zippered leather, shaking her head at David with naked contempt. Okay, it wasn’t just the hair. If she jammed herself into Liza’s dress, she’d look like Barney’s slut cousin. “Diet Coke,” she told the bartender.

  “He wasn’t the one,” Bonnie said from below Min’s shoulder, her hands on her tiny hips.

  “Diet rum, too,” Min told the bartender, who smiled at her and went to get her drink.

  Liza frowned. “Why were you dating him anyway?”

  “Because I thought he might be the one,” Min said, exasperated. “He was intelligent and successful and very nice at first. He seemed like a sensible choice. And then all of a sudden he went snotty on me.”

  Bonnie patted Min’s arm. “It’s a good thing he broke up with you because now you’re free for when the right man finds you. Your prince is on his way.”

  “Right,” Min said. “I’m sure he was on his way but a truck hit him.”

  “That’s not how it works.” Bonnie leaned on the bar, looking like an R-rated pixie. “If it’s meant to be, he’ll make it. No matter how many things go wrong, he’ll come to you and you’ll be together forever.”

  “What is this?” Liza said, looking at her in disbelief. “Barbie’s Field of Dreams?”

  “That’s sweet, Bonnie,” Min said. “But as far as I’m concerned, the last good man died when Elvis went.”

  “Maybe we should rethink keeping Bon as our broker,” Liza said to Min. “We could be major stockholders in the Magic Kingdom by now.”

  Min tapped her fingers on the bar, trying to vent some tension. “I should have known David was a mistake when I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with him. We were on our third date, and the waiter brought the dessert menu, and David said, ‘No, thank you, we’re on a diet,’ and of course, he isn’t because there’s not an ounce of fat on him, and I thought, ‘I’m not taking off my clothes with you’ and I paid my half of the check and went home early. And after that, whenever he made his move, I thought of the waiter and crossed my legs.”

  “He wasn’t the one,” Bonnie said with conviction.

  “You think?” Min said, and Bonnie looked wounded. Min closed her eyes. “Sorry. Sorry. Really sorry. It’s just not a good time for that stuff, Bon. I’m mad. I want to savage somebody, not look to the horizon for the next jerk who’s coming my way.”

  “Sure,” Bonnie said. “I understand.”

  Liza shook her head at Min. “Look, you didn’t care about Da