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grandmother's old pumpkin-colored sofa, listening to Elvis's
Moody Blue
album. Maybe she wasn't the type to date, maybe she should just give in to her well-upholstered genes and become a kindly maiden aunt to Diana's inevitable offspring. It wasn't as if she wanted kids of her own. And what other purpose did men serve? Well, sex, but look how they acted about that. Honestly—
    A cell phone rang behind her, and she started. When she turned, it was Calvin Morrisey, back again. He reached in his jacket and took out his phone, the kind that had more bells and whistles than any human being needed, and it confirmed her decision: There was no way in hell she was going to spend three weeks with a soulless yuppie just to get a date to Diana's wedding. She'd go Dutch on dinner and then say goodbye forever;
that
was a plan.
    She crossed her arms and waited for him to impress her with a business call, but he turned the phone off.
    Min raised her eyebrows. "What if it's important?"
    "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.
    "T hank 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