Jack knew he had no right to such feelings, considering the ambivalence he had about becoming involved with any woman. After the loss of his family, he’d been unsure if he ever wanted to make himself vulnerable to such pain again. At the same time, he’d come to admit both his loneliness and how much he enjoyed Laurie’s company.

“You won’t be breaking up any party,” Laurie assured him. “It’s going to be a very, very casual dinner. But we have something we want to show you. Something that is going to surprise you and maybe even make you want to give yourself a boot in the rear end. As you can probably tell, we’re pretty excited.”

“Oh?” Jack questioned. His mouth had gone dry. Hearing Lou laughing in the background, and putting two and two together, Jack knew what they wanted to show him; it had to be a ring! Lou must have proposed!

“Are you coming?” Laurie asked.

“It’s kind of late,” Jack said. “I’ve got to shower.”

“Hey, you old sawbones,” Lou said. He’d snatched the phone from Laurie. “Get your ass over here. Laurie and I are dying to share this with you.”

“Okay,” Jack said with resignation. “I’ll jump in the shower and be there in forty minutes.”

“See ya, dude,” Lou said.

Jack hung up the phone. “Dude?” he mumbled. That didn’t sound like Lou. Jack mused that the detective must be on cloud nine.

“I wish I knew what I could do to cheer you up,” Darlene said. She’d made the effort to put on a slinky silk teddy from Victoria’s Secret, but Raymond hadn’t even noticed.

Raymond was stretched out on the sofa with an ice pack on his head and his eyes closed.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” Darlene asked. She was a tall woman over five feet ten, with bleached blond hair and a curvaceous body. She was twenty-six years old, and as she and Raymond joked, halfway to his fifty-two. She’d been a fashion model before Raymond had met her in a cozy East Side bar called the Auction House.

Raymond slowly took his ice pack off and glared at Darlene. Her bubbly vivaciousness was only an irritation.

“My stomach is in a knot,” he said deliberately. “I’m not hungry. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“Well, I don’t know why you are so upset,” Darlene persisted. “You just got a call from the doctor in Los Angeles, and she’s decided to come on board. That means we’ll soon have some movie stars as clients. I think we should celebrate.”

Raymond replaced the ice pack and closed his eyes. “The problems haven’t been about the business side. That’s all been going like clockwork. It’s these unexpected snafus, like Franconi and now Kevin Marshall.” Raymond was loath to explain about Cindy Carlson. In fact, he’d been trying to avoid even thinking about the girl himself.

“Why are you still worried about Franconi?” Darlene asked. “That problem has been taken care of.”