Bet Me Read online

  “The only person I want to talk to is here,” he said, smiling that GQ smile at her.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Min said. “Can you turn that off, too?”

  “Excuse me?” he said, his smile fading.

  “The constant line.” Min began to walk again. “You’ve got me for dinner. You can relax now.”

  “I’m always relaxed.” He caught up to her in one stride. “Where are we going?”

  Min stopped, and he walked a step past her before he caught himself.

  “The new restaurant that everybody’s talking about is this way. Serafino’s. Somebody I used to know says the chef is making a statement with his cuisine.” She thought of David and looked at Cal. Two of a kind. “I assumed that’d be your style. Did you have someplace else in mind?”

  “Yes.” He put one finger on her shoulder and gave her a gentle push to turn her around, and Min shrugged off his touch as she turned. “My restaurant’s that way,” he said. “Never go any place the chef is trying to talk with food. Unless you want Ser—”

  “Nope.” Min turned around and began to walk again. “I want to check out your taste in restaurants. I’m assuming it’ll be like your taste in cell phones: very trendy.”

  “I like gadgets,” he said, catching up again. “I don’t think it’s a comment on the real me.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do a study on cell phones and personality,” Min lied as they passed the Gryphon theater. “All those fancy styles and different covers, and then some people refuse to carry them at all. You’d think—”

  “Yours is black,” he said. “Very practical. Look out for the glass.” He reached to take her arm to steer her around a broken beer bottle, but she detoured on her own, rotating away from him.

  He looked at her feet and stopped, probably faking concern, and she stopped, too. “What?”

  “Nice shoes,” he said, and she looked down at her frosted-plastic open-toed heels tied with floppy black bows.

  “Thank you,” she said, taken aback that he’d noticed.

  “You’re welcome.” He put his hands in his pockets and started walking again, lengthening his stride.

  “But you’re wrong.” Min took a larger step to catch up. “My cell phone is not black. It’s green and it’s covered in big white daisies.”

  “No, it’s not.” He was walking ahead of her now, not even pretending to keep pace with her, and she broke into a trot until she was even with him. “It’s black or silver with a minimum of functions, which is a shame because you never know when you’re going to get stuck somewhere and need a good poker game.”

  When she glanced up at him, he looked so good that she stopped again to make him break stride. The key was to keep him off balance, not gape at his face, especially when he was being so annoyingly right about her black cell phone. “I beg your pardon,” she said stiffly, folding her arms again. “I know what my cell phone looks like. It has daisies on it. And I know I’m wearing a suit, but that doesn’t mean I’m boring. I’m wearing scarlet underwear.”

  “No, you aren’t.” His hands were still in his pockets, and he looked big and broad and cocky as all hell.

  “Well, with that kind of attitude, you’ll never find out,” Min said and walked on until she realized he wasn’t following her. She turned back and saw him watching her. “Uh, dinner?”

  He ambled toward her while she waited for him, and when he was beside her again, he leaned down and said, “I will bet you ten dollars that your cell phone does not have daisies on it.”

  “I don’t gamble,” Min said, trying not to back up a step.

  “Double or nothing you’re wearing a plain white bra.”

  “If you think I’m that boring, what are you doing with me?”

  “I saw the bra when you put the twenty in it. And you have conservative taste, so there’s no way you have a phone with daisies on it. The only exciting thing about you is your shoes.”

  Ouch. Min scowled. “Hey—”

  “And what I’m doing with you,” he said, clearly at the end of his patience, “is trying to take you to a great restaurant, which is just up ahead, so if we could call a truce until we’re there—”

  Min started to walk again.

  “No bet?” he said from behind her.

  “No bet.” Min walked faster, but he caught up with her anyway, with no visible effort. Long legs, she thought and then kicked herself for thinking about any part of his body. Or the fact that he’d noticed how great her shoes were. Which was just the kind of thing his kind of guy would do. Think about the bet, she told herself. He’s a beast and a gambler.

  The beast and gambler stopped in front of a dimly lit storefront window that was covered with red velvet café curtains. Above the curtains, EMILIO’S was written in gold script.

  “This is the restaurant?” Min said, surprised he hadn’t picked something flashier.

  “Yep.” He reached for the door.

  “Wait.” Min squinted at the card on the door. “It closes at ten on weekdays. It must be close to that now. Maybe we should—”

  “I’m Emilio’s favorite customer,” he said, pulling the door open. “At least until he meets you.”

  “Another line?” Min said, exasperated.

  “No,” he said with great and visible patience. “Keep busting my chops all the way through dinner, and Emilio will give you a free dessert.”

  “I thought you were his favorite customer,” Min said.

  “I am,” he said. “Doesn’t mean he won’t appreciate the show. You coming in or not?”

  “Yes,” Min said and walked past him into the restaurant.

  It was a minute and a half by Liza’s watch before the bullethead tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I believe you were staring at me.”

  Liza blinked at him. “That was disbelief. I couldn’t believe you were so slow.”

  “Slow?” He looked insulted. “Nobody could have gotten through that crowd faster than me. I didn’t even have blockers.”

  Liza shook her head. “You spotted me a good hour ago. What did you do, sit down and think about it?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I heard redheads were hard to handle.” He leaned on the bar. “I’m Tony. And you owe me.”

  Okay, here we go, Liza thought, and leaned on the bar, too, mirroring him. “I owe you?”

  “Yes.” He grinned at her. “Because of chaos theory.”

  Liza shook her head. “Chaos theory.”

  He moved closer to her. “Chaos theory says that complex dynamical systems become unstable because of disturbances in their environments after which a strange attractor draws the trajectory of the stress.”

  Liza looked at him, incredulous. “This is your line?”

  “I am a complex dynamical system,” Tony said.

  “Not that complex,” Liza said.

  “And I was stable until you caused a disturbance in my environment.”

  “Not that stable,” Liza said.

  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 Ro