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  “Min,” her sister’s voice said. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget the fitting tomorrow. It’ll be nice to see you.” Diana sounded a little woebegone, which was not like her, and Min replayed the message to hear her again. Something was wrong.

  “The Dobbs girls cannot win,” she said, and thought about Calvin Morrisey. She went over to her battered mantel and looked over the snow globes lined up there into the tarnished mirror that had once hung in her grandmother’s hall. A plain round face, plain brown hair, that’s what Cal Morrisey had looked at all night. And now it had a nice bruise. She sighed and picked up the snow globe Bonnie had given her for Christmas, Cinderella and her prince on the steps of their blue castle, doves flying overhead. Cal Morrisey would look right at home on those steps. She, on the other hand, would be asked to try the servants’ entrance. “Just not the fairy tale type,” she said and put the globe down to go turn on her stereo, hitting the up button until Elvis started to sing “The Devil in Disguise.”

  “And let’s not forget that’s what Calvin Morrisey is, Dobbs,” she told herself, and went to put arnica on her bruise and take a hot bath to wash the memory of the evening away. At least the part with David in it. There were some moments after David that weren’t entirely horrible.

  But she definitely wasn’t going to see Calvin Morrisey again.

  When Cal got to work the next morning, the sun was shining through the tall windows in the loft office, the smell of coffee permeated the room, Roger waved to him from his desk by the window, and Elvis Costello was singing “The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes” on the CD player. All right, Cal thought. He dropped a folder on the frosted glass desktop, poured himself a cup of coffee, and pulled out his Aeron chair, ready to make the world a better place for people trapped in business training seminars.

  Tony came through the door and slapped him on the back. “Nice going last night. Tell me you won.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cal said.

  “The bet with David,” Tony said. “The one about the gray-checked suit. Tell me you won it.”

  “Sure.” Cal dropped into his desk chair. “You saw me leave with her.”

  “You’re right, you’re right, I should have had faith. You want to tell David or should I?”

  “Tell him what?” Cal turned on his Mac and hit the GET MESSAGE button for his e-mail.

  “That you had sex with the suit,” Tony said.

  “What?” Cal said, squinting at the screen while Elvis sang backup to his morning. “Of course I didn’t.”

  “Oh.” Tony nodded. “Well, you’ve still got a month.”

  “Tony,” Cal said as the list of messages showed up in the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m positive it’s wasting my time.”

  “David bet you that you could get the suit into bed in a month,” Tony was saying with obvious patience. “I could use the money, too, so if you’d—”

  “No,” Cal said. “I did not make that bet.”

  “David thinks you made the bet,” Tony said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Cal said. “Now that he’s sober he does not think that he bet me ten thousand dollars I could get a strange woman into bed. Now could we get some work done? There’s money in it for you. They pay us to do this stuff.”

  He slid the folder on his desk across to Tony, who picked it up and leafed through it. “Piece of cake,” he said, and began to move away. “Oh, just so you know, Cynthie left with David last night.”

  “Good for them.” Cal turned back to his e-mail.

  “This doesn’t bother you?” Tony said.

  “Why are you harassing me this morning?” Cal said, putting an edge on his voice.

  “I just want to make sure you’re not going back to her,” Tony said. “My future is on the line here.”

  “How?” Cal said.

  “Well, you’ll get married first,” Tony said, coming back to sit on the corner of Cal’s desk. “You always do everything first. And then Roger will get married and you’ll both move to the suburbs. And Roger is going to marry somebody as uptight as he is, which means I’ll have to live with you, and since Cynthie never did like me, she’d be a problem to convince on that.”

  “So would I,” Cal said. “Get off my desk.”

  “It wouldn’t be with you, not in the house,” Tony said. “I figure a nice apartment over the garage. It’d be convenient for you. You could come over and watch the game and get drunk and not have to drive home. And I could baby-sit the kids when you and the wife wanted to go out.”

  “First,” Cal said, “I’m not getting married, so forget the wife. Second, if I was insane enough to get married, I wouldn’t have kids. Third, if I was insane enough to get married and have kids, it would be a cold day in hell I’d let you baby-sit.”

  “Well, we’ll both have matured by then,” Tony said. “I wouldn’t let me baby-sit now, either.”

  “I’m getting married first,” Roger said.

  They both turned to him, and he smiled back, big, blond, and placid in the sunlight from the big loft windows.

  “I’m going to marry Bonnie,” Roger said.

  Cal frowned at him. “Who’s Bonnie?”

  “The mini-blonde he met last night,” Tony said, disgust in his voice.

  “Her name is Bonnie,” Roger said, his voice like ice, and both Cal and Tony straightened.

  “He’s serious,” Cal said to Tony. “What happened?”

  “The redhead wanted me,” Tony said. “So I went over. And Roger followed and hooked up with the mini . . . with Bonnie. And sometime between then and now he lost his mind.” He shook his head at Roger. “This is a woman you’ve known less than twelve hours. It took you a year to pick out a couch, but you’re seriously—”

  “Yes,” Roger said. “She’s the one.”

  “Maybe,” Cal said, thinking, The hell she is. “You didn’t tell her that, though. Right?”

  “No,” Roger said. “I thought it was too soon.”

  “You think?” Tony said. “Jesus.”

  “I’m going to marry her,” Roger said, “so stop yelling and get used to it. She’s perfect.”

  “No woman is perfect,” Tony said. “Which is why we must keep looking. You going to see her tonight?”

  “No,” Roger said. “They have some Thursday night thing they do every other week. Bonnie called it their ‘If Dinner.’ ”

  “They?” Tony said.

  Roger nodded. “Bonnie, Liza, and Min.”

  “Who’s Min?” Tony said, lost again.

  “The one I’m not going to sleep with,” Cal said. If Bonnie was anything like Min, Roger was in big trouble.

  “You seeing Bonnie on Friday?” Tony said to Roger, sticking to the basics.

  Roger nodded. “She said they’ll be at The Long Shot. It’s not their regular hangout, but she said she’d look for me there. And she’s coming to the game Saturday. And we might go to dinner Saturday night.”

  “She’s coming to watch you coach a kid’s baseball game?” Cal said. “She must love you a lot.”

  “Not yet,” Roger said. “But she will.”

  “Friday,” Tony said, ignoring them. “That’s good. I can hit on Liza, and Cal can move on the suit.”

  “No,” Cal said.

  Roger looked sympathetic. “What happened?”

  Cal went back to his computer. “She’s a conservative, anti-gambling actuary who spent dinner bitching at me. Then I took her home, climbed fifty-eight steps to her apartment to make sure she didn’t get mugged, and elbowed her in the eye. It was the worst date of my life, and I’m sure it was in her bottom five.”

  “You hit her?” Tony said.

  “By accident,” Cal said. “I’d send flowers to apologize, but she’s anti-charm, too. It’s over. Move on.”

  “So you’re going to give up on another one,” Tony said, shaking his head.

  Cal looked up at him, annoyed. “Now tell me about your deep and lasting