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“Don’t worry about it.”
“I promise to have the money back by tomorrow. You have my word on that.”
He grinned. “I said not to worry about it.”
“At this point, it’s a matter of pride.” She turned away and limped toward her own condo. It took him a moment to realize the heel on one of her shoes had broken off.
“Hallie?” he called out, curiosity getting the better of him. “Do you want to come in for coffee and tell me what happened?”
She paused, and he knew she was tempted to accept. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a rain check on the coffee. I’m fine, really. It was just a date gone bad.”
“From Dateline?”
“No. I decided against…I didn’t sign up with them. This was a date arranged by a friend. A former friend.” She filled in a few of the details: the questions, the restaurant bill, the car. He listened sympathetically, nodding now and then, marveling at her ability to laugh at her situation.
“Don’t let it get you down,” he advised.
“I won’t,” she said, and although she looked disheveled and pitiful, she managed a weak smile. “It’d take more than a pudgy accountant to do that.”
“Good girl.” He waited until she was all the way inside her house before he closed his own door. Only then, did he allow himself to laugh. He had to hand it to Hallie McCarthy. The lady had grit.
“What’s so funny?” Todd asked Steve the following morning.
“What makes you think anything’s funny?” Steve leaned over a pile of metal shavings to avoid meeting his friend’s gaze. Todd was right; his mood had greatly improved. It was because of Hallie, he suspected. Every time he thought about her and that jerk accountant, he found himself grinning from ear to ear. No wonder he wasn’t eager to get back into the dating scene. It made far more sense to win back his ex-wife. He only hoped Mary Lynn met up with a few of Hallie’s rejects. Then maybe she’d realize he wasn’t so bad, after all.
“You’ve been wearing this silly grin all day.” Obviously Todd wasn’t about to let the subject drop.
“Would you rather I stormed around making unreasonable demands?”
“Nope,” Todd admitted. Then he shrugged. “You ready for lunch?”
“Sure.” Steve packed his own now, same as he had when he was married—which meant he picked up something at the deli on his way into work. He and Todd headed for the small room adjacent to his office, stopping to let Mrs. Applegate, his new secretary, know he was taking his lunch break. She was working out well. He’d found her through a business college. She was older, described as a displaced homemaker, whatever that meant. But Mrs. Applegate appreciated the job and worked hard.
“Would you care for a cup of coffee with your lunch?” she asked.
“Please.”
“That woman’s going to spoil you,” Todd commented as he sat down across from Steve. He pulled a submarine sandwich from his lunch pail and peeled away the wrapper.
“I’m going to let her, too.” In comparison to Danielle and Mary Lynn, Mrs. Applegate was a paragon—organized, efficient, cooperative. He wondered how he’d ever managed without her.
“Now tell me what’s so damn funny,” Todd said after the coffee had been served. “I could use a good laugh.”
“My neighbor.” Steve could see no reason not to relay the events of the night before. “Apparently she’s on the hunt for a husband.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Why? You interested?”
Todd took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed vigorously as he considered his response. “I might be.”
“You? It wasn’t so long ago you told me you wanted nothing to do with women.”
“Some women. Go on, I want to hear what happened to your neighbor.”
“She got me out of bed at eleven-thirty last night and asked to borrow twenty bucks. The guy she’d been with acted obnoxious all evening—even made her pay for her own meal. Plus he had car trouble, blamed it on her, then dumped her on the freeway and told her to find her own way home. Which she did.”
“Good for her.”
“That’s what I said.” He bit into his pastrami-on-rye and found himself smiling again as he recalled Hallie’s story. She’d done a hilarious imitation of this Marv guy demanding his forty-something dollars.
“You like this neighbor of yours, don’t you?”
“Like? What do you mean?” Sure he liked Hallie. What wasn’t to like? But he had no romantic interest in her, and there was a difference.
“Are you going to ask her out?”
“Naw,” he answered, dismissing the suggestion. “She’s not my type.”
“Exactly what is your type?” Todd pressed.
“Damned if I know.” The only woman he’d ever loved had been Mary Lynn. She was all he’d ever wanted, all he’d ever thought about. That wasn’t going to change.
His answer appeared to satisfy Todd, who nodded. “Same way I feel. I might date again, and I might not. Sure as hell, the minute I start getting serious about a woman I’ll run into problems, just like I did last time. So I figure, if I meet someone, fine. Great. But I’m not going out of my way.”
Steve frowned as he listened to Todd. It distressed him that Mary Lynn seemed to be involved with another man, and according to his kids, had been dating for some time.
“You look upset,” Todd remarked.
Steve set his sandwich aside, his appetite gone. “Mary Lynn’s seeing someone.”
“I know, you told me earlier. You’ve been divorced a year or better—what did you expect?”
“I expected her to see the light,” Steve muttered.
“Well, it’s not going to happen. She wanted out of the marriage. And as far as I can see, nothing’s changed.”
“When did you become an expert on my relationship with my ex-wife?” Steve asked irritably. They’d had this discussion before, and it irked him that his friend saw things differently. More than anyone, Todd knew he hadn’t wanted the divorce. More than anyone, Todd knew he loved Mary Lynn as much now as he had the day they’d married.
Todd threw up his hands in disgust. “Let’s drop it, all right? I butted in where I didn’t belong. You want to moon over Mary Lynn, for the rest of your life, then be my guest.”
Seven
Make Mine A Double
“D onnalee Cooper’s holding for you on line two,” Bonnie said. Hallie stared at the blinking phone. It wouldn’t help to put it off any longer. Her friend had a right to know—even to gloat.
“Hi, Donnalee,” she said with forced cheerfulness.
“You didn’t phone,” Donnalee accused. “What happened?”
“You don’t want to hear.”
“I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t. I haven’t got much time, either. I’ve got clients due in five minutes, so cut to the chase, will you?”
“Okay, then—gloat. This guy was a jerk. Big time. He wanted to investigate my family genes to make sure I was qualified to bear his children. When I told him I didn’t think we clicked, he made me pay for my half of the dinner. Then his car broke down on the freeway and I was stuck finding my own way home. To add insult to injury, I had to get my neighbor out of bed and borrow twenty bucks to pay the cabdriver.”
A lengthy pause followed her condensed version of the previous night. Hallie suspected Donnalee had covered the receiver with one hand to hide her laughter.
“Well?” she challenged. “Say something.”
“Okay,” Donnalee replied slowly. “Are you ready to invest in Dateline yet?”
“No.” Hallie was determined to pay off her credit cards, not add another two thousand dollars to the balance. “Besides, I have another date.”
“Who?” Donnalee—predictably—sounded skeptical.
“Bonnie’s uncle Chad.” Bonnie had mentioned him early in January, but Hallie had wanted to be at her best before agreeing to a date with him. “You know that old saying about getting back on the horse after you fall off? Well, I accepted a dinner invitation this very morning.”
“When are you seeing him?”
Hallie didn’t know what to make of Donnalee’s tone. It was a mixture of wonder and patent disapproval. “Soon,” Hallie said. “Monday night.” Actually she wondered how smart this was herself. Monday was only three days away.
Chad Ellis had sounded nice enough over the phone, and Bonnie had said he was her favorite uncle. Someone related to a member of her trusted staff seemed a safe bet—especially after the disastrous Marv.
“Did you go out with Sanford last night?” The change of subject was deliberate.
“Yes—and it was wonderful. He’s a dream come true,” Donnalee said with the same wistful note she used whenever his name was introduced into the conversation.
“Have you talked to him today?” Hallie didn’t know why she insisted on torturing herself.
“He sent me a dozen red roses this morning.”
“Roses?” Hallie was almost swooning with envy. While Donnalee was being courted and pampered, she’d been grilled for hours and then abandoned on the freeway.
“I’m falling in love with this guy,” Donnalee confessed. “Head over heels.”
“So am I, and I haven’t even met him.”
Her friend chuckled. “I wish you’d reconsider Dateline. Chad might be Bonnie’s uncle, but how much do you really know about him?”
“Just what Bonnie told me. He’s divorced, has been for five years. He sells medical equipment and is on the road quite a bit, but he’ll be back in town after the weekend. For a while, anyway.” She wasn’t sure if that was luck or fate. Their one all-too-brief conversation had taken place that morning. He sounded…interesting. Which, come to think of it, was the same word she’d used following her telephone chat with Marv.
“If you don’t call me Tuesday morning, I’ll track you down and torture the information out of you,” Donnalee warned.
“I’ll phone,” Hallie promised. No date could possibly be as awful as the one with Marv. Sheer chance assured Hallie that the odds of Chad’s being a decent date were good.
At this point she wasn’t even looking for Mr. Right. Mr. Almost Right would satisfy her nicely. If she’d learned anything from the experience with Marv—and she had —it was that she needed to lower her expectations. No Mr. Knight-In-Shining-Armor was going to gallop up to her front door. On her way home that evening, Hallie stopped off at the bank for cash. Her ATM card remained in her bottom dresser drawer, along with her credit cards—safe from temptation.
Wanting to put the task of repaying her neighbor behind her, Hallie headed directly for his condo after she parked her car. His lights were on and she assumed he was home, but it was Meagan who answered the door. “Hi, Hallie!”
“Hi, Meagan. Is your dad there?”
“Yeah. He’s in the shower. You can wait, can’t you?”
“I don’t actually need to talk to him.” She pulled the twenty-dollar bill out of her purse. “Would you give this to him?”
“Sure.”
“Give me what?” Steve strolled barefoot into the hallway, wearing jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt. A damp towel was draped around his neck, and his dark hair glistened with water. “Oh, hi, Hallie.”
“Hi.” She smiled weakly, embarrassed about their last meeting.
“Hey, Dad,” Kenny shouted, leaping off the sofa. “Hallie brought you twenty bucks. Let’s go out for pizza, okay?”
“Uh…” Steve hesitated.
Meagan’s eyes were as bright as her brother’s. “Can Hallie come, too?”
“I…can’t. Really.” Hallie looked over her shoulder at her empty condo, tempted to suggest she had places to go, people to meet. It would have been a lie. “I just wanted to repay the loan and thank you for coming to my rescue. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t answered the door.” Well, she would have managed—she would’ve retrieved her bank card from the bottom drawer and…But Steve had saved her time and spared her inconvenience. She’d been in no shape to go driving around with a seriously annoyed cabbie, looking for a bank machine.
“Can we go out for pizza, Dad?” Kenny asked again, his hands folded in prayerlike fashion. “Please, please, please?”
“I don’t see why not,” Steve relented, grinning. He turned to Hallie. “You’re welcome to come along. Actually, I wish you would. The kids will desert me for the video games the minute we arrive and I’ll be stuck sitting there with no one to talk to.”
She wavered. Even if she didn’t have any plans, she didn’t want to intrude.
“Please come!” Meagan urged.
“Sure,” Hallie said before she could change her mind. Although it wasn’t the thought of her empty condo or equally empty refrigerator that persuaded her. It wasn’t even Meagan’s invitation. It was the pizza. Pizza, loaded down with cheese, spicy sausage and olives. After nearly two months of exercise, after week upon week of eating lettuce and vegetables, skinless chicken and Dover sole, she deserved pizza. She’d walk an extra mile on her treadmill, but heaven help her, she wanted that pizza.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” Meagan told her when they arrived at the local pizza parlor, a five-minute drive away. To Hallie’s relief, Steve had taken his car—not his truck, which he’d left at work.
The place was filled with Friday-night family business, the noise roughly equal to that of a rock concert. While Steve stood in line at the counter to order their dinner, Hallie steered the kids toward one of the few empty tables.
Steve returned five minutes later with two soft drinks, a couple of beers and a pile of quarters. Kenny’s eyes lit up like the video games he loved and he reached forward to grab the coins. “Twelve quarters each,” Steve said, gazing sternly at his offspring. “And they have to last you all night. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Got it?”
“Got it.”
The quarters disappeared along with Meagan and Kenny.
Steve sat down across the picnic-style table from Hallie. She spread one of the red-checkered napkins on her lap, aware that it was taking her an inordinately long time to do so.
“It was kind of you to invite me,” she finally said, slightly uneasy at being left alone with Steve. To her surprise she found herself revising her earlier estimation of him. He was really quite good-looking. Funny she hadn’t realized that earlier. The fact that he’d been willing to help her out only added to the attraction.
“Hey, I appreciate the company. Mary Lynn and I used to bring the kids here once a month. Meagan and Kenny would like to come more often, but I feel stupid sitting by myself.”
“What about trying your hand at the videos?”
