at her left hand quickly. "Oh, I'm sorry. You're wearing a ring." He took a deep breath. "I thought . . ." He shook his head and looked out the kitchen window into the tiny backyards of the apartments.
She read disappointment in his face, his eyes, the set of his shoulders.
"I was widowed four years ago," she told him. "As for asking me out, well—" She had, in the past four years, become very good at saying no. Saying yes turned out to be surprisingly tough. "Maybe. I think I'd like that."
Someone out in front of the house laid on an air horn—the blast rattled the windows.
All three people in the kitchen jumped.
"The tow truck—" Dayne said.
"Why did they have to get here so fast?" Adam muttered.
Paige hung back and said nothing.
It was indeed the tow truck, driven by someone who was apparently in a great hurry. Whoever it was had just hooked the tow hook under the Porsche's front bumper.
"NOT LIKE THAT!" Adam howled, and took off down the steps and across the apartment lawn as if he'd sprouted wings. Dayne, standing behind her screen door, watched him charge after the idiot with the tow truck and read him the riot act.
"He's going to ask you out," the voice behind her said.
"Paige, I'll believe it when it happens."
"Are you going to be a sane person and accept?"
Dayne turned to look at her friend. "This is the first time in years I've even been interested. If he actually calls me up and asks, I almost certainly will go out with him." She looked at the scene in front of her house, where Adam was showing the man with the tow truck how to tow a Porsche.
"I'm afraid he was just being polite when he said he'd like to call me, though."
Paige shrugged. The tow truck drove off with Adam in it and his dead car following behind. "So let's not think about it. Some of Mike's n