“If I ate that much cheesecake by myself, I would look like our Christmas tree.”

“Bless you, child,” Cathy said.

Mark walked out of his office. “Did someone say cheesecake?”

“Elise is sharing the cheesecake her friend sent her.”

He walked over and looked at the box. “S&S cheesecake,” he said. “I’ve heard of that. It’s the best. And pricey. They sell it by the ounce. Like gold.”

I cut the cheesecake up with a plastic knife, and work stopped while everyone ate. Mark closed his eyes as he savored a bite. “Incredible,” he said. “If you don’t marry that guy, I will.”

“Your wife might have something to say about that,” Cathy said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Zoey said. “I’ve got first dibs.”

Nicholas and I didn’t have lunch that day because he was in court, but that evening he picked me up at my apartment at six.

“How was your day?” I asked, as we walked to his car.

“Good. We won.”

“Do you always win?”

“No. But more than I lose.” He opened the car door for me then walked around and got in. “How was your day?”

“Good,” I said. “The cheesecake was a hit.”

“It doesn’t get better than S&S.”

“How did you know about them?”

“I’m not as provincial as you might think.”

“Believe me, I’ve never thought of you as provincial. You’re the most cosmopolitan person I know.”

“Well, I’m definitely not that either. I just love cheesecake, and I discovered S&S from a client who sent me one last Christmas. That’s one of the advantages of having rich clients.”

The holiday traffic was heavy as we made our way downtown to Abravanel Hall, Salt Lake City’s main concert hall and home to the Utah Symphony. The hall was designed by the same acoustical consultant who had designed the Avery Fisher Hall renovation in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In the gold-leafed lobby was a thirty-foot-tall red blown-glass sculpture designed by renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly.

The event I had chosen for us was a Messiah sing-in with the Utah Symphony, which basically meant that we were part of a three-thousand-member choir. To make sure we sounded good, the singing organizers brought in a few ringers, peppering the audience with about a hundred voices from the University of Utah and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We were handed paper scores as we walked into the concert hall.

“I thought we were going to hear a choir sing the Messiah,” Nicholas said to me as we found our seats. “I didn’t realize we were the choir.”

“It’s more fun this way,” I said. “I asked if you sing.”

“I just thought you were curious.”