LITMIR.BIZ

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on Cathy. She drew a deep breath, lifted her chin. She was strong, she reminded herself. She was smart. As for sexy…well, she could always fake that.

      Because she was woman. Incomparable, undeniable, phenomenal woman.

      You can do this, she told her reflection, momentarily entranced by the lift of her amused smile, the slant of her chin. The gleam in her squinting eyes. Zack’s worth the effort. And the potential humiliation.

      “Yes.” Julia gave her a squeeze. “Go for it.”

      Faith goggled, a bitten tuna sandwich suspended halfway to her mouth.

      Allie said, “Wow,” and dove her head into her purse.

      “But remember, this is only a make-believe seduction,” warned Laurel, her airy tone edged in ice. She held up a pair of tweezers like forceps. “The purpose is to give Heartbreak a taste of his own medicine.”

      “Of course,” Cathy murmured, scarcely listening.

      Though Julia lifted a discerning brow, she didn’t say a word.

      “SO WHAT’S WITH my new neighbor?” Zack said, applying his elbow to Fred Spangler’s gut when the man attempted a rush toward the basketball. Zack dribbled around his old college friend, made a feint that put Fred further off balance, then pulled up and sent the ball arching toward the basket.

      Swish.

      Fred staggered off the court, red-faced and dripping with sweat. “You win. Again. Man, Zack.” He collapsed onto a bench. “Thought you said you’d gone soft in Idaho.”

      “Not soft enough.” Zack grabbed the spinning ball off the cement court and beamed it toward Fred’s bulging midsection. “Allie’s turned into a good cook?”

      Fred caught the ball and shot it back as hard as he could. “She’s terrible.”

      The ball slammed into Zack’s waiting hands. He laughed, glad to be home, among friends with a shared history. “Yeah. I remember her Home Ec experiments. Chicken-fried salmon. Salsa-flavored taffy. Snow pea flambé.”

      “Since the kids came, Allie’s given up on cooking. The munchkins get PB&Js. The adults get Chinese take-out three times a week. She even lets me order in pizza at midnight.” Fred yanked off his sweatband, releasing a floppy halo of golden curls. “It’s great. Just like our fraternity days. Except with a woman at hand there’s also regular sex.”

      “Married sex.”

      “Way better than college sex, bud.”

      “Maybe for you.”

      “Yeah, well, we can’t all be the campus heartthrob.”

      Zack shrugged. “I never applied for the job.”

      “I know, man, I know. The coeds just handed it to ya.” Fred cackled. “It’s a nasty job…”

      “But someone’s got to do it,” Zack finished, somewhat sheepishly. He’d never intended to become known as a ladies’ man. He’d just always done what he’d been brought up to do. Which was the right thing. The polite thing. The considerate, generous, honorable thing.

      Women seemed to appreciate it.

      He palmed the basketball and held it threateningly over Fred’s blond head. “Say, Shirley T, you’re never gonna rev up enough to beat me subsisting on take-out food. Try tofu instead.”

      Fred sneered at the old nickname, braced himself for a ball bouncing off his skull, and asked mildly, “You eat health food?”

      Zack set the ball on the bench. He swiped his damp forehead with the ragged hem of his T-shirt. The light breeze cooled the hot skin of his abdomen. “It’s not so bad.”

      “Yeah, sure. You just go for the nature girls. Long hair. No bras. Equal opportunity Kama Sutra.” Fred squinted into the sunshine. “Got a recipe?”

      “For Allie?” In Allie’s hands, tofu would take on terrifying configurations. Maybe Fred was referring to one of the more complicated positions from the dog-eared copy of the Kama Sutra they’d studied in college, some of which ought to come with a recipe. And scorecard.

      “Naw,” Fred said. “For me. One of us has got to learn how to cook healthy pretty damn soon. The sex won’t be much good if I can’t see past my gut.”

      “Exercise,” said Zack. “Swimming. Low-impact aerobics.” He slanted a smile at Fred. “Good for the stamina. I’m sure Allie’d appreciate it.”

      “Don’t you worry. Allie’s a tiger in the sack. Got enough stamina for both of us.”

      “Hey, that’s my childhood pal you’re talking sleaze about.” Zack scooped up the ball, bounced it a few times, went up on the balls of his feet and lined up another perfect shot.

      Swish.

      Fred groaned. “Show-off.”

      Zack let the ball roll away along the cracked cement. They’d chosen to play one-on-one at the old Riverpark courts instead of the busy set of courts at the youth center. Zack was still unsure of his reception. The Barnards had a lot of friends around town and he hadn’t felt like running into their public disapproval quite yet.

      He walked to the bench and sat, then flexed his hands and laid them on his thighs. “So.”

      Fred lifted an arm and took a sniff. “Man. I stink like a goat. Gotta go home and take a shower before I head back to the car lot.”

      “What about the neighbor?” Zack prodded.

      “Eh. Allie knows her. But she’s not your type.” Fred rested his head against the chain-link fence. He made quotation marks in the air, his tenor rising and falling like a graph. “She’s creative. Which translates to sensitive and temperamental in my book. High maintenance. She presides over a coven of crafty women at her store on Central Street.”

      “And her name?” Zack thought of the woman, splendidly nude, bathed in golden light, a visual poem of languid female grace. She’d been natural, yet seductive. Enchanting. Even today, he was feeling kind of strung out, empty and restless, hungry for another sight of her.

      “Cathy Timmerman,” Fred said with a grunt. “New in town.”

      “Boyfriend?”

      “How would I know?”

      “Allie.”

      Fred scratched his head. “Yeah, like I listen when she talks.”

      In college, he’d fallen hard and fast for Allie the first time she’d visited Zack. Within a day, Fred had shaved off his incipient goatee, torn down his Cindy Crawford posters and started dogging Allie like a Springer Spaniel. At the moment, Zack was too lazily distracted to point that out.

      “Man, your radar must be off,” Fred complained. “Trust me, Zack. You don’t want this one—she wears baggy clothes, Birkenstocks and Mr. Magoo glasses. She’s not in your league.” Absently, he stroked his belly. “Hell, I don’t think her type even has a league.”

      “Outside of softball, neither do I.” Were they talking about the same woman? They had to be. Instead of being put off, Zack felt…privileged. As if Cathy Timmerman’s beauty was his alone.

      “Yeah, sure,” scoffed Fred. “Like Laurel Barnard isn’t in a class by herself. Talk about high maintenance!”

      Laurel. Zack gritted his teeth until his jaw bulged.

      “Yup.” Fred nudged his pal in the ribs. “Laurel. She’s still mad at you.”

      “I assumed as much.”

      “I heard she said that if you ever showed your face in town again, she was gonna sic her daddy on you. Planned to sue you big time—public humiliation, alienation of affection, something like that. She’s out to recoup the cost of the, uh, wedding.”

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