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me.”
    Sure you didn’t, buddy. “No problem.”
    He was on her so fast she didn’t have time to get away. Trapped between the car and his saggy trying-to-watch-my-carbs gut, Arden had no room to move. Greg’s face loomed in front of her like a scene from a very bad B-movie, the leer on his lips as unmistakable as the gleam of lust in his eyes.
    Arden managed to duck the kiss at the last possible second, so his mouth landed on the corner of hers instead of full-on. She’d been trying to catch it with her cheek. As it was, his mouth squirmed on her skin like a worm on a hook, and—oh, mercy, yuck, oh no—she felt the tentative tickle of his tongue before he withdrew in apparent surprise at her ducking maneuver.
    He didn’t pull away far enough for her to escape. Despite what he’d said about garlic making him bloat, he must have had some of it sometime recently because she smelled it on his breath. His body pressed against hers as he pinned her with his gaze.
    “I don’t have to be back at the office for another half-hour,” Greg whispered.
    “Greg?”
    Now he smiled, a dreamy yet lascivious grin that turned her stomach. “Yes?”
    “If you don’t get off me in three seconds, I’m going to knee you in the nuts.”
    He stepped away from her, hands up, like she’d threatened to shoot him. Which wouldn’t have been a bad idea either, Arden thought. She wiped his slime from her face and fixed him with a level glare.
    “I’m not sure exactly what made you think I was willing to hop into bed with you after knowing you for oh, let’s see—” she looked at her watch, “—one hour and seven minutes. But you’re so wrong, if wrong were rain, we’d be building an ark.”
    For an instant, anger flashed in his eyes, but maybe the pity-me routine had worked for him too many times before. Greg’s brow creased and he frowned.
    “Sure. I get it.” He sighed. “I should’ve known better. I mean, after what happened to me, I should’ve known. I don’t expect you to understand…”
    His sob-story persona had been working her nerves from the beginning, but now, with his garlic stench still clinging to her nostrils, Arden’s temper exploded.
    “What don’t I understand? Why your fiancée left you? If you behaved with her the way you acted with me, that’s easy to figure out. But if you’re saying I don’t understand what it’s like to lose somebody you love, then you are riding the bus down Wrong Street again. My husband died, Greg. Died. He didn’t run off, didn’t cheat on me, didn’t find someone he liked better. He died.”
    Arden paused to take a breath, realized her hands were clenched, and unclenched them. She calmed herself. “My advice to you would be get over it, move on, and quit trying to play the wounded soldier to get a sympathy fuck. It’s not a pretty sight.”
    And, leaving him to stand gape-mouthed on the corner, Arden got into her car and drove away.

Chapter Four
    “Don’t ask,” she said later to Lida on the phone while she washed the dinner dishes. “I already talked to Heather about disaster date two. She’s promised to buy me cheesecake to make up for it.”
    “That bad, huh? Hold on a minute. Henry, put that screwdriver back where you found it! Sorry, Arden. Anyway, that bad?”
    Arden looked at her two angels, each ensconced in her favorite chair, doing homework. She laughed at the vision of the chaos reigning in Lida’s house. “Yes. That bad.”
    “You’re laughing. It couldn’t be that bad. Henry! Cats do not like to wear underpants!”
    “You’d better go.”
    Lida sighed. “I’m going to beat that child.”
    “You won’t, and you know it.”
    “He’s a terror.”
    “And you love him.”
    Lida laughed. “Yes. I do. But I’d better go before he destroys something. Tell me about your date later, okay?”
    “Sure.”
    Arden hung up and helped Aislin and Maeve finish their assignments. They played a quick game of Clue before bed, she read a chapter of