Bet Me (4 page)

Min turned away when the bartender brought her drink, so when The Beast spoke from beside her, she jerked her head up and caught the full force of him unprepared: hot dark eyes, perfect cheekbones, and a mouth a woman would betray her moral fiber to bite into. Her heart kicked up into her throat, and she swallowed hard to get it back where it belonged.

"I have a problem," he said, and his voice was low and smooth, warm enough to be charming, rich enough to clog arteries.

Dark chocolate
, Min thought and looked at him blankly, keeping her breathing slow. "Problem?"

"Well, usually my line is 'Can I buy you a drink?' but you have one." He smiled at her, radiating testosterone through his expensive suit.

"Well, that is a problem." She started to turn away.

"So what I thought," he said, his voice dropping even lower as he leaned closer to her and made her heart pound, "was that we could go somewhere else, and I could buy you dinner."

The closer he got, the better he looked. He was the used car salesman of seducers, Min decided, trying to get her distance back. You could never get a good deal from a used car salesman; they sold cars all the time and you only bought a couple in a lifetime so they always won. Statistically speaking, you were toast before you walked on the lot. She could only imagine how many women this guy had mutilated in his lifetime. The mind boggled.

His smile had disappeared while he waited for her answer, and he looked vulnerable now, taking a chance on asking her out. He faked vulnerable very well.
Remember
, she told herself,
the son of a bitch is doing this for ten bucks
. Actually, he was trying to do
her
for ten bucks.

Cheapskate. Suddenly, breathing normally was not a problem.

"Dinner?" she said.

"Yes." He bent still closer. "Somewhere quiet where we can talk. You look like someone with interesting things to say. And I'm somebody who'd like to hear them."

Min smiled at him. "That's a terrible line. Does it usually work for you?"

He froze for a second, and then he segued from sincere to boyish again. "Well, it has up till now."

"It must be your voice," Min said. "You deliver it beautifully."

"T
hank
you." He straightened. "Let's try this again." He held out his hand. "I'm Calvin Morrisey, but my friends call me Cal."

"Min Dobbs." She shook his hand and dropped it before it could feel warm in her grasp. "And my friends would call me foolhardy if I left this bar with a stranger."

"Wait." He got out his wallet and pulled out a twenty. "This is cab fare. If I get fresh, you get a cab."

Liza would take the twenty and then dump him. There was a plan, but Liza didn't need a wedding date. What else would Liza do? Min plucked the twenty from his fingers. "If you get fresh, I'll break your nose." She folded the twenty, unbuttoned her top two blouse buttons, and tucked the bill into the V of her sensible cotton bra so that only a thin green edge showed. That was one good thing about packing extra pounds, you got cleavage to burn.

She looked up and caught his eyes looking down, and she waited for him to make some comment, but he smiled again. "Fair enough," he said, "let's go eat," and she reminded herself to ignore what a beautiful mouth he had since it was full of forked tongue.

"First, promise me no more lame lines," she said, and watched his jaw clench.

"Anything you want," he said.

Min shook her head. "Another line. I suppose you can't help it. And free food is always good." She picked up her purse from the bar. "Let's go-"

She walked away before he could say anything else, and he followed her, past a dumbfounded Liza and a delighted Bonnie, across the floor and up onto the landing by the door, and the last thing she saw as they left was David looking outraged.

The evening was turning out
much
better than she'd expected.

Liza
scowled at the empty doorway. This was not good. When Calvin Morrisey came back in and spoke to David for a moment, it didn't get better.

"Do you suppose it was the booze?" Bonnie asked.

Liza thought fast. "I don't know what it was, but I don't like it. Why was he hitting on her?"

Bonnie frowned. "It's not like you to be jealous."

"I'm not jealous." Liza transferred her scowl to Bonnie. "Think about it. Min sends out no signals, he's never talked to her so he can't know how great she is, and she's dressed like a nun with an MBA. But he crosses a crowded bar to pick her up—"

"It's possible," Bonnie said.

"—right after he's talked to David," Liza finished, nodding to the landing where a red-faced David was now moving in on the brunette.

"Oh." Bonnie looked stricken. "Oh, no."

"There's only one thing we can do." Liza squared her shoulders. "We've got to find out what Calvin the Beast is up to."

"How—"

Liza nodded at the mezzanine. "He was with those two guys. Which one do you want, the big dumb-looking blond or the bullet head?"

Bonnie followed her eyes to the landing and sighed. "The blond. He looks harmless. The bullet head looks like all hands, and I'm not up to that tonight."

"Well, I am." Liza put her drink on the bar and leaned back. The bullet head was looking right at her. "The last time I saw a brow that low I was watching slides in anthropology class." She met his stare dead on for a full five seconds. Then she turned back to the bar. "Two minutes."

"It's a crowded room, Lize," Bonnie said. "Give him three."

David had watched
Cal
open the street door for Min and felt a flare of jealous rage. It wasn't that he wanted to kick
Cal
. He always wanted to kick
Cal
. The guy never broke a sweat, never made a bad business move, never lost a bet, and never hit on a woman and missed.
Your therapist warned you about this,
he told himself, but he knew it wasn't just his need to be first in everything. This time the jealousy had an extra twist.

This time
Cal
had taken Min. Min who was good, solid wife material except for that stubborn streak which he could have worn down, she'd have come back eventually. But now—

He stiffened as
Cal
came back through the door and motioned him over.

"We're going to dinner,"
Cal
said, holding out his hand. "Ten bucks."

He sounded mad, which made David feel better as he took out his wallet and handed
Cal
the ten.

"Smart move not tipping me that she hates men,"
Cal
said.

Then he was gone, and David went back to the railing and said, "I think I just made a mistake."

"You, too?" Cynthie said, her voice sad over her martini glass.

David glanced at the door. "So it wasn't your idea to break up with
Cal
?"

"No." Cynthie stared at the door. "I thought it was time to get married, so I said, 'Now or never.'" She smiled tightly up at David. "And he said, 'Sorry.'" She drew in a deep breath and David tried not to be distracted by the fact that she was braless under her red jersey dress.

"That's lousy." David leaned against the rail so he couldn't look down her dress since that would be crass, something Cal Morrisey would do. "
Cal
must be a moron."

"T
hank
you." Cynthie turned back to watch the bar as Tony got up from the next table and walked down the stairs with Roger following. Her hair moved like TV hair, a dark silky fall that brushed her shoulders. "I'd love to know how
Cal
met that woman. I could have sworn he wasn't dating anybody."

David considered telling her that
Cal
had picked up Min because of the bet and then thought,
No.
The bet had not been his finest hour. In fact, for the life of him, he couldn't think why he'd done it, it was as if some malignant force had whispered in his ear. No, it was
Cal
's fault, that's what it was, and it was a disaster because if Min ever found out he'd made that bet...

"Do you know her?" Cynthie said.

"She's my ex-girlfriend."

"Oh." Cynthie put her drink down. "Well, I hope
Cal
's sorry he picked her up. I hope he realizes what he's lost once he gets her back to his place."

"They're not going back to his place," David said. "She won't." Cynthie waited, and he added, "She doesn't like sex."

Cynthie smiled.

David shrugged. "At least, she wouldn't try it in the two months we were together. So I ended it."

Cynthie shook her head, still smiling. "You didn't give the relationship enough time. What does she do for a living?"

David stiffened at the criticism. "She's an actuary. And it strikes me that
two months
—"

"David," Cynthie said, "if you wanted sex in the first five minutes, you should have dated a stripper. If she's an actuary, she's a cautious person, her career is figuring out how to minimize risk, and in your case, she was right."

David began to dislike Cynthie. "How was she right?"

You left her over sex." Cynthie leaned forward, and David pretended not to watch her breasts under the jersey. "David, this is
my
specialty. If you loved her, you wouldn't have given her an ultimatum over sex."

"What is it you do?" David said, coldly.

"I'm a psychologist." Cynthie picked up her drink, and David remembered some of the gossip he'd heard.

"You're the dating guru," he said, warming to her again. She was practically a celebrity. "You've been on TV."