"Well, me either. But I can't seem to stop it, and I can't tell who did it from touching her. And we can't leave for a while, I guess."

"Do you want to leave?"

I was buckling my seat belt. "What does that mean?" The tone of his voice had put me on guard.

"You usually can hardly wait to get out of town after we finish up with a client, but you haven't said anything about leaving for a day or two. You want to be here? What's the attraction? Manfred Bernardo? Or Joel Morgenstern? Or Seth Koenig?" He turned the key in the ignition with unnecessary force. He was definitely not looking at me.

"Huh?" I stared at him as if he'd started speaking in Swedish.

Then, as his meaning sunk in, I laughed. It was just too ironic. The thing was, in past times there might have been some basis for his question. I might have been thinking about Manfred, or having secret fantasies about Seth Koenig, or Joel Morgenstern. His wrestler's body was fit and powerful, also good fuel for fantasies—Ooooh, pin me to the mat, Joel! But being pinned down was never a fantasy of mine.

And though our age difference was minimal, I regarded Manfred Bernardo as a boy.

"Tolliver, I meant it when I told you I'm not interested in Joel. Plus, he seems happy in his marriage and I've never wanted to be an adulterer. Now Manfred, mmmm." I smacked my lips. "That's different. You can't help but wonder what's under all the leather."

Tolliver gave me an incredulous glance, saw I was smiling, and had the good sense to look embarrassed. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry," he said. "The truth is, I'm in kind of my own situation."

"What?" I was instantly serious. "What's up?"

"Felicia has stepped up her phone calls," he said. We were at a stoplight, and he looked at me steadily.

"Despite the way she acted yesterday? Like she'd never seen you before?"

He nodded. "Yeah. She's called, like, four times since we left the hotel."

"You sure you don't want her to call?" I was kind of feeling my way through this, because I couldn't tell what Tolliver was leading up to.

"I definitely don't. You've told me before that sometimes you felt men were dating you because you were so—so different from other women?"

I nodded.

"Well, that's kind of the way I'm feeling." The light changed, and he turned his eyes to the road ahead. "We never seemed to have that much in common. She never acted affectionate, or like she wanted to get to know me better. I can't understand her constantly trying to hook up now, again. And then when she actually sees me, she acts like she never was with me. And then she calls me again."