Bet Me (7 page)

She looked at him with contempt again. "Please. You don't care what I do. Take the night off, Charm Boy."

"Hey." He picked up his bread. "I don't do this nightly. It's been a while since I picked up anybody."

Min looked at her watch as she chewed. She swallowed and said, "It's been twenty-eight minutes."

"Besides you. My last relationship ended a couple of months ago, and I've been enjoying the peace and quiet." She rolled her eyes and he added, "So of course, when I decide to start dating again, I pick up somebody who hates me. What's all the hostility about?"

"Hostility? What hostility?" Min stabbed her fork into her salad and tasted it. "
God
, this is good."

She chewed blissfully, and
Cal
watched her, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. She should be
liking
him. He was charming, damn it. "So what are your interests in life besides great shoes?"

"Oh, please," Min said, when she'd swallowed. "You talk. I know why I picked you out, tell me why you picked me."

He stopped with his glass halfway to his mouth. "You picked me up?"

Min shook her head. "I picked you
out
. I saw you on the landing. Well, my friend Liza saw you first, but she gave you to me."

"Thoughtful of her,"
Cal
said. "So you were expecting me when I showed up?"

"Pretty much." Min shoved the bread toward him. "Take this bread basket away from me, I'm making a fool of myself."

He pulled the basket toward his plate. "Then why did you give me such a hard time?"

Min snorted. "You think that was a hard time? You must not get much grief from women."

"Well, not in the first five minutes,"
Cal
said. "They save that for the future."

"Yes, but we don't have a future," she said, looking longingly at the bread. "I had to be proactive."

Cal
pushed the basket back to her. "Why don't we have a future?" he said, even though he'd come to the same conclusion about thirty seconds after he'd said hello in the bar.

"Because I'm not interested in sex." Min tore off another piece of bread and bit into it, and
Cal
watched while the pleasure spread across her face.

You lie
,
Cal
thought.

"And that means you're not interested in me," Min said when she'd finished chewing.

"Hey," he said, insulted. "What makes you think I'm only interested in sex?"

"Because you're a guy." She picked up the bread again. "Statistics show that men are interested in three things: careers, sports, and sex. That's why they love professional cheerleaders."

Cal
put his fork down. "Well, that's sexist."

Min licked a crumb off her lip, and his irritation evaporated. She was fun to look at when she wasn't scowling: smooth milky skin, wide-set dark eyes, a blob of a nose, and that lush, soft, full, rosy mouth....

"Yes, I know," she said. "But it's true, isn't it?"

"What?"
Cal
tried to find his place in the conversation. "Oh, the sports and sex thing? Not at all. This is the twenty-first century. We've learned how to be sensitive."

"You have?"

"Sure,"
Cal
said. "Otherwise we wouldn't get laid."

She rolled her eyes, and he picked up the bottle and filled her wineglass.

"I can't," she said. "I had too much to drink at the bar."

He slid her glass closer. "I'll make sure you get home okay."

"And who'll make sure I get away from you okay?" she said and he put the bottle down.

"Okay,
that
was below the belt," he said, more sharply than he'd intended.

She met his eyes, and he thought,
Oh, hell, here we go again.
Then she nodded and said, "You're right. You've done nothing to deserve that. I apologize." She frowned, as if thinking about something. "In fact, I apologize for the whole night. My boyfriend dumped me about half an hour before you picked me up—"

"Ah
ha
,"
Cal
said.

"—and it made me insane with rage. And then I realized that I'm not even sure I
liked
him anymore, and that the person I'm really mad at is me for being so stupid about the whole thing."

"You're not stupid,"
Cal
said. "Making mistakes isn't stupid, it's the way you learn."

She squinted at him, looking confused. "T
hank
you. Anyway, this evening is not your fault. I mean, you have your faults, but you shouldn't pay for his. Sorry."

"That's okay," he said, confused, too.
What faults
? "Now drink your wine. It's good."

She picked up her glass and sipped. "You're right. This is excellent."

"Good, we'll come here often," he said, and then kicked himself because they weren't going anywhere again.

"Another line," Min said, without venom. "We're not going anywhere again and you know it. What is it with you? You see a woman and automatically go into wolf mode?"

Cal
sat back. "Okay, was that because of the ex-boyfriend, too? Because I'm usually not paranoid, but you are definitely out to get me."

"Don't be a wimp," Min said as she tore the bread. "You've got that gorgeous face, and a body that makes women go weak at the knees, and then you whine."

Cal
grinned at her. "Do I make you go weak at the knees?"

Min bit into her bread and chewed. "You did until you whined," she said when she'd swallowed. "Now I know. The magic is gone."

Cal
watched her lick her full lower lip, and two months of celibacy plus a lifetime of habit kicked in. "Give me a chance," he said. "I bet I can get the magic back."

She stopped with the tip of her tongue on her lip, and her eyes met his for a long, dark, hot moment, and this time that glint was there, and sound faded to silence, and every nerve he had came alive and said,
This one.

Then her tongue disappeared, and he shook his head to clear it and thought,
Not in a million years
.

"I never bet," Min said. "Gambling is a statistically impractical form of generating income."

"It's not a method of generating income,"
Cal
said. "It's a way of life."

"Could we be any more incompatible?" Min said.

"Can't see how,"
Cal
said, but then her eyes went past him and he watched while she drew in her breath.

Cal
turned and saw Emilio, this time with a fragrant platter of chicken
marsala
, golden-brown filets and huge braised mushrooms floating in luminous dark wine sauce.

"
Oh, my Lord
," Min said.

Emilio beamed at her as he served. "It's a pleasure to serve someone who appreciates food. Taste it."

Min cut into the chicken and put a forkful in her mouth. She looked startled and then she closed her eyes and began to chew, her face flushed with pleasure. When she'd swallowed, she looked up at Emilio, her eyes shining. "This is
incredible,'"
she said, and
Cal
thought,
Me, look at me like that.

"Try the mushrooms," Emilio said, happy as a half-Italian clam.

"Go away,"
Cal
told him, but Emilio stayed until Min had bitten into one of the huge mushrooms and told him with heartfelt passion that he was a genius.

"Can I get some credit for bringing you here?"
Cal
said when Emilio was gone.

"Yes," Min said. "You are a genius at restaurants. Now be quiet so I can concentrate on this."

Cal
sighed and gave up on the conversation for the rest of the meal. There was a skirmish at the end when Min tried to insist on separate checks, but
Cal
said, "I invited you, I pay. Back off, woman." She looked as though she were going to argue for a moment, and then she nodded. "T
hank
you very much," she told him. "You've given me a lovely meal and a new favorite restaurant," and he felt appreciated for the first time that night.

When they left, she kissed Emilio on the cheek. "Your bread is the greatest, Emilio, but the chicken is a work of art." Then she kissed him on the other cheek.

"Hey,"
Cal
said. "I'm right here. I
paid
for the chicken."

"Don't beg," Min told him and went out the door.

"Morrisey, I think you just met your match," Emilio said.

"Not even close,"
Cal
said, grateful to be without her for a moment. "This was our first, last, and only date."

"Nope," Emilio said. "I saw the way you looked at each other."

"That was fear and loathing,"
Cal
said, opening the door.

"God, you're dumb," Emilio said, and
Cal
ignored him and went out into the dark to find Min.

Infatuation is the fun part of falling in love," Cynthie said to David when they were ensconced in Serafino's and the waiter had brought their very expensive filets and departed.

David smiled at her and thought,
I bet Min isn't talking psychology with Cal
. God knew what Min was doing with Cal. Whatever it was, he was going to have to find a way to stop it.

"Infatuation triggers a chemical in the brain called PEA," Cynthie said. "Your heart races, and you get breathless and dizzy, you tremble, and you can't think. It's what most people think of when they think of falling in love, and everybody goes through it." She smiled a lovely, faraway smile. "Our infatuation was wonderful. We couldn't resist each other."

"Hmm." David picked up his blue-frosted margarita glass. "Tell me again how it's not working out for them."

"Well," Cynthie said, "about now, he should be realizing it's time to cut his losses. He'll take her to her car to make sure she's safe, and then he'll shake her hand and say, 'Have a nice life,' and that'll be it."

"What if he was attracted to her?"

"I told you, he wasn't," Cynthie said, but her smile faded. "But if he was, which he wasn't, then he'd ask her out again and look for more cues, more evidence that she's somebody he should love. Like whether his family and friends like her. But she's not Roger's type, he likes giggly little blondes, and I doubt Tony even saw her since he's pretty much a breast-butt-legs man, so it wasn't his friends who prompted him to pick her up."

"Hard to tell what made him do that," David said, trying to sound innocent.

"And she's not going to meet his family, but even if she did, his mother would hate her, his mother disapproves of everything, so that wouldn't be a cue, since Cal needs his family to approve of him."

"So you're saying that's all it would take for them to reject each other?" David said. "Friends and family disapproving?"

"Unless she doesn't like her family or wants to rebel against them. Then their disapproval would push her into his arms, but it doesn't sound like that's the case."

"No," David said, thinking of two dinners with Min's parents in the past two months. "They're very close."

"Then family and friends are very powerful," Cynthie said. "Which is why I've been nice to Tony for nine months. But, David, it's not going to happen.
Cal
is in the mature love and attachment stage with me, which means he won't be attracted to Min."

"Mature love. That would be the, uh, fourth stage," David said, trying to show he'd been listening.

"Right," Cynthie said. "Infatuation doesn't last because it's conditional and conditions change, but if it's real love, it turns into mature, unconditional love, and new chemicals are released in the brain, endor-phins that make you feel warm and peaceful and satisfied and content whenever you're with the one you love." She took a deep breath. "And miserable when you're without him because if he's not there, the brain won't produce the chemicals."

"Oh," David said, understanding now. "So you're going through endorphin withdrawal."

"Temporarily," Cynthie said, her chin up. "He'll be back. He's going without sex, which is pain, a physiological cue to deepen his attachment to me."

"Pain," David said, thinking anything that hurt
Cal
was a good idea.

Cynthie nodded. "In order to move from infatuation to attachment,
Cal
will have to feel joy or pain when he's with Min. The joy could be great conversation or great sex, the pain could be jealousy, frustration, fear, almost anything that adds stress. The pain cue is the reason there are so many wartime romances. And office romances."

"Right," David said, remembering an intern from his earlier years.

"But I don't think that's going to happen tonight. I think he's going to be bored. I must say that it's a great comfort to know that your Min is dull and frigid."

"I didn't say she was dull and frigid," David said. "I wouldn't date somebody who was dull and frigid."

"Then you should have stuck it out," Cynthie said. "Infatuation lasts anywhere from six months to three years, and you can't know you've found the right person until you've worked your way through it. You quit at two months so you couldn't have reached attachment and neither could she." She shrugged. "Mistake."

"Six months to
three years
?" David said. "And you pushed
Cal
after nine months?" He shrugged. "Mistake."

Cynthie put down her fork. "Not a mistake. I know
Cal
, I have written articles on
Cal
, and he is in the attachment stage, we both are."

David stopped eating, appalled. "You wrote about your lover?"

"Well, I didn't call him by his real name," Cynthie said. "And I didn't say he was
my
lover."

"Isn't that unethical?"

"No." Cynthie pushed her plate away, most of her dinner untouched. "That's how we met. I'd heard about him through a couple of my clients. He had quite a reputation."

"I know," David said, thinking vicious thoughts about Cal Morrisey, God's Gift to Women. "Totally undeserved."

"Are you kidding?" Cynthie said. "I was
studying
him, and he got me." Her mouth curved again. "Nature gave him that face and body, and his parents gave him conditional affection as a child. He's been trained to please people to get approval, and the people he likes to please most are women, who are more than willing to be pleased by him because he looks the way he does. So his looks guarantee assumption and his charm guarantees attraction. He's one of the most elegant adaptive solutions I've ever observed. The papers I wrote on him got
a lot
of attention."

David tried to picture Cal Morrisey as a child, trying to earn affection. All he could come up with was a good-looking dark-haired kid in a tuxedo, leaning on a swing set and smiling confidently at little girls. "Did he know you wrote papers on him?"

"No," Cynthie said. "He still doesn't. He never will. I finished that work, it's over. I'm writing a book now, already under contract. It's almost done." She smiled, a satisfied feline smile. "The point is, I'm not some silly woman moaning, 'But I thought he loved me,' I have clinical proof he does love me. And he'll come back to me soon, as long as your Min doesn't distract him."

"So," David said, leaning closer. "If we wanted to make sure they didn't get to—what was it? Attraction?—what would we do?"

Cynthie's eyes widened. "Do?" She put her wineglass down and thought about it. "Well, I suppose we could talk to their friends and families, poison the well, so to speak. And we could offer them joy in different forms to counteract whatever happens between them. But that wouldn't be ... David, we don't have to do anything.
Cal
loves me."

"Right," David said, sitting back.
Family
, he thought.
I have an in with the family
.

Cynthie smiled at him. "I'm tired of talking about them," she said. "What is it that you do for a living?"

David thought,
It's about time we got to me
. He said, "I'm in software development," and watched her eyes glaze over.

Outside Emilio's, Min took a deep breath of summer night air and thought,
I'm happy
. Evidently great food was an antidote to rage and humiliation. Good to know for the future.

Then
Cal
came out and said, "Where's your car?" and broke her mood.

"No car," Min said. "I can walk it." She held out her hand. "T
hank
you for a lovely evening. Sort of. Good-bye."

"No,"
Cal
said, ignoring her hand. "Which way is your place?"

"Look," Min said, exasperated. "
I can walk
—"

"In the city alone at night? No, you can't. I was raised better than that. I'm walking you home, and there's nothing you can do about it, so which way are we going?"

Min thought about arguing with him, but there wasn't much point. Even one short evening with Calvin Morrisey had taught her that he got what he wanted. "Okay. Fine. T
hank
you very much. It's this way."

She started off down the street, listening to the breeze in the trees and the muted street noises, and
Cal
fell into step beside her, the sound of his footfalls matching the click of her heels in a nice rhythm.

"So what is it you do for a living?" she asked.

"I run a business seminar group with two partners."

"You're a teacher?" Min said, surprised.

"Yes," he said. "So you're an actuary. I have a great deal of respect ,for your profession. You do it for money. I do it for recreation."

"Do what?"

"Figure out whether something's a good bet or not." He looked down at her. "You're a gambler. You do it with millions of dollars of an insurance company's money. I do it with ten-dollar bills."

"Yeah, but I don't lose any of my own money," Min said.

"Neither do I,"
Cal
said.

"You win
every
bet?" Min said, disbelief making her voice flat.

"Pretty much,"
Cal
said.

"Hell of a guy," Min said. "Is that why you went into business for yourself? So you could control the risk?"

"No, I just didn't want to work for anybody else,"
Cal
said. "That didn't leave me any other options."

"We turn here," Min said, slowing as they came to the corner. "Look, I can—"

"Keep walking,"
Cal
said, and Min did.

"So what's the name of this company?"

"Morrisey, Packard, Capa."