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you’d have a shot, you charmer.”
    Yanof sniffed, muttered something else, and toddled back into the shop.
    “Billy,” I said, “you think Georgia would have fought that thing last night?”
    “Yes,” he said without a second’s hesitation.
    “She going to be upset that you did it?”
    “No.”
    “Even though some folks got hurt?”
    He blinked at me. “No.”
    “How do you know?” I asked.
    “Because”—he shook his head—“because she won’t. I know her. Upset by the injuries, yes, but not by the fight.” He shifted to a tone he probably didn’t realize was an imitation of Georgia’s voice. “People get hurt in fights. That’s why they’re called fights.”
    “You know her well enough to answer serious questions for her when she isn’t even in the room, man,” I said quietly. “You’re ready. Keep the big picture in mind. You and her.”
    He looked at me for a second and then said, “I thought you’d say something about love.”
    I sighed. “Billy. You knob. If you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t be stressed about losing what you have with her, would you.”
    “Good point,” he said.
    “Remember the important thing. You and her.”
    He took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah,” he said. “Georgia and me. The rest doesn’t matter.”
    I was going to mumble something vaguely supportive, when the door to the fitting room opened and an absolutely ravishing raven-haired woman in an expensive lavender silk skirt-suit came in. She might have been my age, and she had a lot of gold and diamonds, a lot of perfect white teeth, and the kind of curves that come only from surgery. Her shoes and purse together probably cost more than my car.
    “Well,” she snapped, and put a fist on her hip, glaring first at Billy and then at me. “I see you are already doing your best to disrupt the ceremony.”
    “Eve,” Billy said in a kind of stilted, formally polite voice. “Um. What are you talking about?”
    “For one thing, this,” she said, flicking a hand at me. Then she gave me a second, more evaluative look.
    I tried to look casual and confident, there in my Spider-Man T-shirt and black briefs. I managed to keep myself from diving toward my jeans. I turned aside to put them on, maintaining my dignity.
    “Your underwear has a hole,” Eve said sweetly.
    I jerked my jeans on, blushing. Stupid dignity.
    “Bad enough that you insist on this . . . petty criminal taking part in a ceremony before polite society. Yanof is beside himself,” Eve continued, speaking to Billy. “He threatened to quit.”
    “Wow,” I said. “You speak Sloboviakstanese?”
    She blinked at me. “What?”
    “Because Yanof doesn’t speak any English. So how did you know he threatened to quit?” I smiled sweetly at her.
    Eve gave me a glare of haughty anger and defended herself by pretending I hadn’t said anything. “And now we’re going to have to leave out one of the bridesmaids. To say nothing of the fact that with him standing up there on one side of you and Georgia on the other, you’re going to look like a midget. The photographer will have to be notified, and I have no idea how we’ll manage to rearrange everything at the last moment.”
    I swore I could hear Billy’s teeth grind. “Harry,” he said in that same polite, strained voice, “this is Eve McAlister. My stepmother-in-law.”
    “I do not care for that term, as I have told you often. I am your mother-in-law,” she said. “Or will be, whenever this ongoing disaster you’ve created from a respectable wedding breathes its last.”
    “I’m sure we can work something out,” Billy assured her, his tone hopeless.
    “Georgia is late and is letting the voice mail answer her phone—as though I needed something else to occupy my thoughts.” She shook her head. “I assume the lowlifes you introduced her to kept her out too late last night. Just like this one did to you.”
    “Hey, come on,” I said, careful to keep my tone as reasonable