“No, we won’t.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do I need to kiss you again?”

I took a hasty step back and watched my toe draw a pattern in the carpet.

“No,” I muttered.

“Christ, I need to get my head examined.”

My head snapped up.

“What does that mean?” I asked angrily.

“Nothin’. Be here when I get back.”

“Sure.”

Not on his life.

* * * * *

Ally Nightingale had yet to decide on a career. Currently, she was on her one hundred and eleventh bartending job. She already had a Bachelor’s degree (majored in political science and squeaked by), was a certified radiology technician (a tough gig but she saw it through and worked the MRI machine at Swedish Medical Center for two months before quitting, Malcolm’s head nearly exploded after that one) as well as a certified nail technician.

Of all those things, Ally gave good nails but she found sitting in a chair all day filing, polishing and forming plastic glop into nail shapes was not compatible with her energetic personality.

Luckily, bartending left most of her days free and whenever she needed a bit of cash (which was often), she worked part-time for me at Fortnum’s.

Before coming over with Kitty Sue, Ally had gone to my house and chosen an Ally-outfit for me. If I was to choose a search-for-Rosie outfit or a night-after-Liam outfit it would have included Levi’s. But then most of my outfits included Levi’s unless I had a backstage pass.

Ally had chosen a denim skirt that was mini in the sense that it hit five inches above my knees (not mini in the way Ally wore them, which was five centimeters below her ass), my vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt (I wasn’t a Stones fan but the shirt was way cool), a wide, red belt with a big silver buckle with a delicate filigree-and-braided design and my red cowboy boots.

After Lee and Kitty Sue left, I filled Ally in on the whole Rosie Debacle and my plan to find him. She (not surprisingly) immediately volunteered her assistance and I (equally not surprisingly) took her up on it.

I showered and dressed while Ally tried (and failed) to call Duke.

Then we went to the bookstore to help Jane. With Duke and Rosie out, Jane was alone at the store and was in a tizzy because she was handling the espresso machine by herself and thus, actually had to speak to people. Jane was not good at speaking to people, she could shelve a mean book and was really good at tidying, vacuuming, updating our computer book inventory but customer relations was not her strong suit.

Ally and I worked alongside Jane until the morning crush was over. The regulars weren’t happy that Rosie wasn’t there but we’d all been working alongside Rosie enough to be able to do a fair imitation. Still, it wasn’t the same.

Then Ally swung by Rosie’s house on the off chance he was there. This was off-limits for me because Lee might have found out Rosie’s address using one of his mysterious “ways” and might be there and I didn’t want to bump into Lee just yet. Especially not searching for Rosie or the diamonds, he didn’t know my plan and I wasn’t about to let on.

And anyway, business on a weekday didn’t really die down until after the lunch hour and I couldn’t leave Jane on her own.

While Ally was doing the stop off at Rosie’s place, my cell rang.

It was Dad.

“Hey Daddy-o,” I said.

“What’s this about you hookin’ up with Lee?”

Shit.

Kitty Sue.

“We’re taking it slow.”

“Take it real slow,” Dad said. “That boy’s a tomcat. Jesus, why couldn’t you choose Hank? Hank’s a good guy, a solid cop, has a job where both of his feet are planted on the right side of the law.”

Yikes.

Dad went on. “Don’t get me wrong, Lee’s his own man, doesn’t take shit from anyone, gotta respect that but, hell. My daughter?”

I was silent and Dad was on a roll. You couldn’t really get much in when Dad was on a roll.

“Kitty Sue is beside herself. Your mother and her had some sort of blood pact where they stuck their thumbs with pins and put them together, silly girl crap, and they promised their kids would get married, have babies and that way, they’d be related.”

That sounded familiar.

Dad’s voice changed from frustrated to coaxing. “Hank’ll have a good pension.”

“Dad, I’d make Hank’s head explode, we’d last, like, a day.”

“Shee-it.”

Dad knew this was true.

He didn’t say much more before he rang off.

Guess Lee didn’t have the Dad Vote.

I shook off the call and mentally assigned Lee the duty of letting his mother down easy. He’d gotten us into this, he’d have to get us out.

I decided to call a couple of Rosie’s friends that he’d put down in his file as emergency contacts to see if Rosie was with them or if they’d seen him. I got no response from one, the other was home, sleeping it off, unhappy to be disturbed and had not heard from Rosie in a few days.

I called Duke again. Twice. No answer. No answering machine either. Duke really needed to get into the twenty-first century and I mentally added items onto my Christmas-present-buying list.

Then the door opened to the Marianne Meyer walked in.

Marianne Meyer lived next door to the Nightingale’s in Washington Park all the while we were growing up. She was between Lee and Ally and me in age and she was a good friend. She had been fettered by a scoliosis brace in junior high and orthodontics in high school. She married a jerk, got a divorce and moved back in with her parents a year ago. Marianne was taking her divorce hard and living with her parents at age thirty-one harder. She was five foot five and used to be cute as a button, but the divorce was taking its toll and she was drowning her sorrows in Oreos. She was a nurse at Pres-St. Luke’s, took the evening shifts so she’d have her days free and had made house-hunting a full-time hobby.

She rushed up to me at the espresso counter, her cheeks flushed.

“I heard you finally hooked up with Lee Nightingale,” she said.

Shit, shit, shit.

Marianne was intimately acquainted with my lifelong crush and had been recruited for some of my Lee Maneuvers in the past. She probably thought I was in seventh heaven and needed a friend to take me wedding-dress-shopping.

“We’re taking it slow,” I said.

“Have you… you know… done it yet?” Her eyes were beginning to glaze over at the very thought of doing it with the legendary Liam Nightingale.