The DA’s office took one look at the case and kicked it (hell, Julia wasn’t making a profit selling the tickets at face) and Frankel promptly asked her to go with him to a Knicks game the following week.

He’d proposed less than a month later.

It had been impulsive—but at the time he thought Julia was the best thing that had ever happened to a kid who grew up among the factories in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Julia had been runway model gorgeous and the sex had been incredible—not that Frankel had much experience in that department, having had only two semiserious girlfriends, who paled by comparison.

“Sounds like you were really in love with her,” Rachel had said after Frankel offered her a more romanticized and less libido-inspired version of the courtship.

“I certainly thought so.”

She indicated the ring on his hand again. “And then she broke your heart.”

It hadn’t happened overnight. Pablo, the building super that Julia had set up bar and house with in Hawaii, had just been the last nail in the marriage coffin.

They had actually lasted close to a decade. Pretty good for starting out by eloping to Atlantic City because Julia’s father didn’t approve of his only daughter choosing a cop. It might have had something to do with the shady furniture business that Frankel’s father-in-law ran on the Lower East Side. Frankel didn’t really look the other way when it came to how Leo Molinari made his money—he just made sure to discuss local sports teams when they got together on holidays. They couldn’t even agree on Giants versus Jets—with Leo pledging allegiance to the latter because Joe Namath was a great Italian American, even though Frankel had repeatedly told him that the Super Bowl III hero was of Hungarian descent.

In the end, Frankel realized what had brought them together in the first place had been what drove them apart. Julia would always be that girl looking for a quick score while Frankel was making sure everyone played by the rules.

“Now, with Pablo, I think Julia finally found what she was looking for.”

“My favorite band,” Rachel said with a grin.

“U2? Isn’t that a bit sacrilegious? With your family from Liverpool; the Beatles? Aren’t they an Irish band?”

“They’re everyone’s band,” countered Rachel.

“I’ll drink to that,” said Frankel, ordering another round. “Though they’ll have to go into the Octagon with Bruce and the E Streeters. I did grow up off Exit 13 on the Jersey Turnpike.”

The next round of toddies allowed Rachel to reminisce about all the boys she’d loved before. There had only been two—and both had ended with the realization that Rachel still hadn’t found what she was looking for.