“Well, I was just thinking about it.”

“We don’t have any plans for tonight. Would you like to check out some kittens?”

“Yes!”

At nine-thirty Kate and Dave struggled through Kate’s front door under an enormous burden of boxes and bags and a cat carrier. Kate collapsed on her new couch and swung her leg up on the coffee table. “I’m never going shopping with you again. You’re a maniac! You’re a bad influence on me. Look at all the money I’ve spent!”

“You didn’t spend any money. You charged everything.”

“That’s even worse. How am I ever going to pay for all this? It’ll take me years.”

“No, it won’t. You’re going to marry me, remember? I’m rich.”

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “That was a joke.”

Dave took the tiny black kitten from its carrier and set it in her lap. “Not to me it wasn’t.”

“Dave, we have nothing in common.”

He sat beside her and stroked the kitten. “We love each other, don’t we?”

It was true. She couldn’t deny it.

“And we both like Uncle Scrooge comic books, and we both like freshly squeezed orange juice, and we fit together very nicely.” He put his arm around her and cuddled her close to him to prove his point. “See?”

Kate tilted her face toward him for his kiss. “Mmmm. That’s all true.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“You’ve neglected to mention our differences.”

He kissed her again. “Nothing insurmountable.”

She set the kitten on the floor and stood up to get some distance from him.

“You don’t know. You’ve never been married and divorced. Everything is insurmountable when you’re married. The fact that you want to talk at the breakfast table and he insists on reading his paper is insurmountable. Leaving the seat up on the toilet is insurmountable. Getting peanut butter in the jelly jar is insurmountable. People don’t change just because they’re married. All those little habits and personality quirks that you previously thought were trivial become the bane of your existence. And the major problems, like different outlooks on life, are crushing.”

“No relationship is perfect. You have to weigh the odds and make a decision—”

“Damn right. And our odds are terrible.”

Dave felt anger boiling in him. He’d waited a long time to fall in love, and just his luck it had to be with an obstinate redhead. “You’re running scared from Anatole and not looking clearly at what we have going for us.”

Elsie opened the front door with her key and stood at the entrance to the living room. An elderly man stood behind her. “Lord,” Elsie said, “you can hear the two of you shouting at each other clear out on the sidewalk. Haven’t you got anything better to do than to yell at each other?”