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He raised a brow. “Unless you don’t think you can do it…”
    Now Peter was playing on her competitive streak, and it was working, dammit. Let the games begin. She narrowed her eyes.
    “I can do it. You’re on.” She thrust out her hand. “Let’s shake on it. To our dating partnership.”
    Peter grasped her hand and shook. “To our dating partnership. Long may it reign. No, scratch that. May it be short and sweet and end in both of us walking down the aisle so I don’t have to spend another Saturday night babysitting you.”
    “Or I you,” she countered with a nod.
    “Amen,” Peter added.
    And the more Maureen thought about this crazy plan, the more she realized praying couldn’t hurt.

Chapter Four
    Maureen wandered through her workday, bracing herself both physically and mentally for the task at hand. Peter had secured them dates for this weekend, and he had done it in a mere few days. The damn guy had an entire flock of gay men to call. They all stuck together and ran in packs, like rats.
    Did rats run in packs? She didn’t know. All she knew was that he only had to make a few phone calls and they were, amazingly, both set. She had an impossible deadline to match his record and no one with expertise in her dating pool to draw from except her nemesis, the dreaded Tiffany.
    Since it was already afternoon, she couldn’t put it off any longer. Maureen strode up to Tiffany in the copy room. “Do you know any single men, straight or gay?”
    She cringed inwardly at being reduced to groveling before Tiffany for a favor.
    “Sure. Tons. Which one do you want? Gay or straight?” Tiffany frowned, looking a bit confused. Although to be fair, Tiffany looked confused often.
    How to get around this? She didn’t want the Tiffster to know just how desperate her dating life, or lack thereof, had become. Time for a good lie, or at least a stretch of the truth. “It doesn’t really matter. Either or both. It’s for a bet. I bet my gay friend that I could get us both dates in less time than he could.”
    “Ooo. That sounds like a fun game. I can’t believe I never thought of it.”
    Leave it to Tiffany to not see how wrong using live men to win a bet was. Good thing you could always count on her to be predictably superficial though. That made things easy.
    “Come to my desk. I’ll get you a few names from my contact list. Are you actually going out on the dates or do you just have to get the date?”
    Maureen sighed as she got herself in deeper with Tiffany, the shallowest person she knew. “We’re actually going to go.”
    “I can give you a rundown on each one of them if you want. That way you know who to choose and what you’re getting yourself into. Is there another part of the bet too? Like who gets the guy to buy them a present first or who gets him to say I love you first?”
    Jeez. Does her cruelty have no bounds? “Um, we haven’t really worked out all those details yet.”
    “Well, you should think about upping the stakes a bit. It might be fun.” Tiffany sat absorbing this new pretend game as she scribbled names and numbers and in some cases email addresses on a pad of paper and then handed it to Maureen.
    “Okay. Some of them have web pages with photos on them so I marked that down so you can see for yourself. But I assure you, they are all cute. The ones with G next to their names are either gay friends of mine or guys I dated who should be gay in my opinion.”
    Maureen bit her lip to keep herself quiet. Most likely those should-be-gay guys just didn’t fall for Tiffany’s shit, and that made her consider them gay. Maureen should call them first. At least they would have lots to talk about on the date. They could share Tiffany horror stories.
    It had taken just minutes, and she was now holding a list that covered one side of a single page of lined legal paper. She had to admit, it paid to go to an expert. As much as she hated it, Tiffany was that.
    “Wow. Thank you so much, Tiff. I mean, I