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  Cal grinned, and she relaxed because he looked like Cal again. “Nah, I just like kissing you.”

  “Oh, good,” Min said, recovering. “Except, stop that because we’re not doing that. I was just relieved because I thought you were never going to want to see me again. I’m positive your family doesn’t want to.”

  Cal put the key in the ignition and started the car. “Oh, some of them do.”

  “Harry.” Min leaned back in her seat, and tried to think about something else besides kissing him. “That’s just because I gave him my ice cream.”

  Cal slowed the car. “He had yours and his?”

  “Yes,” Min said. “He said he didn’t throw up ice cream.”

  “He lied.” Cal stopped the car. “It’s sugar in general that makes him sick.”

  “Do we have to go back?” Min said, alarmed.

  “Christ, no.” Cal pulled out his cell phone. When he’d warned Bink about the imminent vomiting, he started the car again.

  “Great, I poisoned her kid,” Min said. “Now she hates me, too.”

  “No. She knows Harry and the cons he pulls for sugar. She likes you.”

  “She didn’t look like it.”

  “No, she really likes you,” Cal said as he pulled out into the street. “She offered me a hundred thousand dollars to marry you.”

  “What?” Min laughed. “I didn’t think she had a sense of humor.”

  “She does, but she wasn’t joking. She can afford it.” Cal picked up speed as they left his parents’ street and sighed. “Thank God, we’re out of there.”

  “Wait a minute,” Min said, not laughing. “She honestly offered you—”

  “She’s been going to dinner there every Sunday for ten years,” Cal said. “That was the first one she enjoyed. When you figure that my parents are in their fifties and likely to be around for at least another thirty years, she’s looking at a minimum of sixteen hundred more miserable Sundays. That’s her estimate. Add in holiday dinners, and she says a hundred K would come out to about sixty dollars a dinner, which is a real bargain in her book.” He thought about it. “Actually, that’s a bargain in my book, too, although nothing on this earth could get me there every Sunday.”

  “My Lord,” Min said.

  “Plus Harry’s been singing ‘Hunka hunka burning love’ since we went to lunch yesterday. She said the expressions on my parents’ faces alone were worth a hundred grand.”

  There was a smile in his voice now, and Min said, “Well, that’s a mind-boggler.”

  “It wasn’t the only one this afternoon.” They drove on for a while and then he said, “How did you know I was dyslexic?”

  “Roger told Bonnie so I looked it up on the net. And then you wouldn’t write the recipe for chicken marsala down when I asked. You never say no to me, so I knew it had to be something you couldn’t do.” Min rolled her head on the back of her seat to look at him. “Are you upset?”

  “No,” Cal said. “Is that true, about dyslexics starting their own businesses?”

  “Yes,” Min said. “Everything I told them was true. How’d you know about my promotions?”

  “Bonnie told Roger,” Cal said, and turned into a parking lot.

  Min squinted at the storefront. It looked expensive and snotty. “Be right back,” he said, and went inside. Fifteen minutes later he came back with a glossy shopping bag embossed in gold, which he tossed in her lap as he got in the car.

  “What?” she said, catching it. It was heavy, so she peered inside at the square white cartons sealed with gold labels.

  “The ice cream my mother serves,” he said as he pulled out of the lot. “Eight flavors. I’ll send flowers, but you deserved this now.”

  “Oh.” Min clutched the bag tighter. He really wasn’t mad. Relief swept over her, and she realized just exactly how much she didn’t want him out of her life. It was not a good realization.

  “Everything okay?” Cal said, and she forced a smile at him.

  “Well, no,” she said, trying to sound exasperated. “Where’s the spoon?”

  Without taking his eyes from the road, he took a plastic spoon from his suit pocket and handed it to her.

  “I’m crazy about you,” she said without thinking.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m crazy about you, too.”

  “In a friendly kind of way,” she said, hastily.

  “Right,” Cal said, shaking his head.

  “Just so you know,” Min said, and opened the first carton.

  “He calls her Minnie,” Cynthie said when David picked up the phone that evening. “He gave her his ball cap.”

  “Well, if he gives her his class ring, let me know,” David said. “Could I have one Sunday in peace?”

  “I don’t know, David,” Cynthie said, her voice dangerous. “You want any of them in the future to be with Min?”

  “Yes,” David said. “But she hated lunch, and she won’t return my calls. Look, Cal always dumps his girlfriends after a couple of months. It seems to me the smartest thing to do is wait until he dumps her and then comfort her.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you that he’s going to be fucking her blind for those two months?” Cynthie said.

  “Hey.” David sat up. “That’s—”

  “You have no idea what that man can do to a woman in bed,” Cynthie said. “What makes you think you’re going to be able to please her once she’s slept with him?”

  “I do just fine in bed,” David said, outraged.

  “Cal does more than fine,” Cynthie said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t wait until she finds out how much more.”

  “Cynthie, this is distasteful.”

  “Fine,” Cynthie said. “Let him win.”

  Her voice was like a fingernail down a blackboard. “It’s not about winning,” David said and thought, The bastard’s going to win.

  And he’d lose Min. It was all her fault, really. She was the kind of woman who just asked to be taken for granted, and now that Cal Morrisey was showering attention on her to win a bet, she was flattered. He thought about how grateful Min would be if he went back to her and paid attention. She was such a simple woman. Which was why Cal could get to her. Which meant it was his duty to stop Cal. And save her.

  “David?” Cynthie said, prompting him. “You do want her back, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” David said.

  “Then go over to her apartment and dazzle her,” Cynthie said. “Tell her how important she is. Take her a gift, she likes snow globes, take her a snow globe. Give her joy, damn it.”

  “Snow globe,” David said, recalling there had been some on Min’s mantel.

  “And if she resists, leave something there so you can go back and get it and try again the next day,” Cynthie said. “Your tie or something.”

  “Why would I take off my tie?” David said.

  There was a short silence, and then Cynthie said, “Just do it, David. I don’t have time for remedial seduction lessons.”

  “All right,” David said. “I’ll go over after work. I’ll surprise her. We’ll talk about marriage.”

  “Talk?” Cynthie said, exasperated. “For once in your life, could you do more than talk?”

  “Well, I’m not going act like a caveman with her,” David said.

  “Ever tried that?” Cynthie said.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then how do you know it doesn’t work?”

  “Well,” David said. “Oh, hell, all right. I’ll kiss her. She’s a good kisser.”

  “Good to know,” Cynthie said. “Don’t screw this up, David.”

  “I won’t,” David said, but she’d already hung up. “God, you’re a witch,” he said to the dial tone, and then he hung up, too.

  On Monday morning, Nanette called Min to find out how dinner at the Morriseys’ had gone. “Tell me everything,” she said.

  “Mother, I’m at work,” Min said.

  “Yes, but your father would never fire you,” Nanette said. “He