"I do like men," Kate insisted, fidgeting as her toenails were painted. The salon's cotton-candy-pink and spun-sugar-white decor was designed to put a woman into a relaxed and festive mood. It made Kate itchy. "I just don't have a lot of time for them."

"You won't need time after Candy gets done," Laura said. She sipped her sparkling mineral water and relaxed in the deep cushions of the high-backed swivel chair. "By the time she gets through spreading the word, any man within a hundred-mile radius is going to avoid you like a vasectomy."

"Well, maybe it's a blessing." Kate flipped through the stack of fashion magazines on the table beside her and found nothing of interest. "It might discourage that jerk Bill Pardoe from calling me all the time."

"Bill is a very sweet and decent man."

"Then you go out with him, let him tickle your knee under the table and call you honeybunch."

"She's always been too picky." Margo kept her eyes closed, nearly purring as her feet were massaged. "She'd have had more fun in her life if she'd gone looking for Mr. Goodbar instead of Mr. Perfect."

"I look for more in a date than a fat portfolio and a penis."

"Girls, girls." Laura picked up her mineral water again. "We have to stick together now. If Candy follows through and files charges for assault, it could get sticky."

"But, officer," Margo cooed, batting her lashes. "It was just high-spirited, girlish fun. Shit, she'd never humiliate herself by admitting in public that for the second time in her life she'd been trapped naked in a gym locker. She'll be more subtle than that. I say within a week we all have new identities. The slut, the shrew, and the dyke."

"I might like being the shrew," Laura decided. "Being the wimp gets old fast."

"You were never the wimp," Margo said loyally.

"Oh, yes, I've been a practicing wimp for years. It's going to take some doing to make the leap to shrew. But I might give it a shot. Josh?" She blinked as her brother walked into the salon, looking hot and harassed.

"Ladies." He plopped down in a vacant chair, picked up Margo's glass of water, and guzzled it down. "Well don't you all look…" He paused, skimmed his eyes over three faces packed in green goo. "Hideous. Been having fun?"

"Go away." Living with a man didn't mean he had to see you in a seaweed pack, Margo thought. "This is a girl thing."

He set her empty glass down, picked up Kate's, and guzzled that too. "I was into my second set with Carl Brewster on the courts here. You know Carl Brewster, television journalist, investigative reporter, and anchor on Informed, that long-running, highly rated, and revered newsmagazine."

The tone of his voice had Laura biting her lip. "I've heard of it. How is Carl?"