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    Emilio clasped her hand. "For you, my bread is poetry. I will bring my bread as a gift to your beauty, a poem to your lovely smile." He kissed the back of her hand, and Min beamed at him and did not pull her hand away.
    "Emilio, Min is my date,"
Cal
said. "Enough kissing already."
    Min shook her head at him, with no beam whatsoever. "I'm not anybody's date. We don't even like each other." She turned back to Emilio, smiling again. "Separate checks, please, Emilio."
    "Not separate checks, Emilio,"
Cal
said, exasperated beyond politeness. "But a
table
would be good."
    "For you, anything," Emilio said to Min and kissed her hand again.
    Unbelievable
,
Cal
thought, and kicked Emilio on the ankle when Min turned to look at the restaurant again. The guy was married, for Christ's sake.
    "Right this way," Emilio said, wincing. He showed them to the best table by the window, slid Min into a bentwood chair, and then stopped by Cal long enough to say under his breath, "I sent the servers home half an hour ago, you bastard."
    "You're welcome,"
Cal
said loudly, nodding to him. Emilio gave up and went back to the kitchen, while
Cal
watched Min examine the room in detail.
    "It's like an Italian restaurant in the movies," she told
Cal.
"Except not. I love it. I love Emilio, too."
    "I noticed," he said. "You're the first woman I ever brought here who was on a kissing basis with him before we sat down."
    "Well, he's going to feed me." She picked up her napkin. "That's always a good sign in a man." She spread the napkin in her lap, and then her smile faded and she looked tense again. "Except..."
Cal
braced himself for her next shot.
    She leaned forward. "I can't eat the bread or pasta, but I don't want to hurt his feelings. Can you order something else?"
    "Sure,"
Cal
said, surprised. "Salad. Chicken marsala , there's no pasta with that."
    "T hank you." Min smiled at him. "I wouldn't want to ruin his evening."
    "I think you just made his evening,"
Cal
said. Her lips were full and soft, and when she smiled her gratitude at him, her face changed from grim prison warden to warm baby doll, but the wicked glint she'd had in her eyes when she'd flirted with Emilio was gone, which was a real shame.
    Emilio brought the bread, and Min leaned forward to see it. "Oh, that smells good. I missed lunch so this is wonderful."
    "It is good,"
Cal
said. "Emilio, we'll have the house salad to start and then the chicken marsala ."
    "Excellent choice, Mr. Morrisey," Emilio said, and Cal knew it was because everything was simple to make. "And a nice red wine to accompany?"
    "Excellent,"
Cal
said, knowing they were going to get whatever Emilio had left over and open in the kitchen.
    "Ice water for me," Min said with a sigh, still looking at the bread.
    When Emilio was gone,
Cal
said, "The bread's excellent. He makes it here."
    "Carbs," Min said, her scowl back in place, and
Cal
had heard enough about carbs in his nine months with Cynthie so he let it drop.
    "So," he said, picking up one of the small loaves. "What do you do for a living?" He broke the bread open and the yeasty warmth rose and filled his senses.
    "I'm an actuary," Min said, the edge back in her voice.
    An actuary. He was on a dinner date with a cranky, starving, risk-averse statistician. This was a new low, even for him.
    "That's ... interesting," he said, but she was watching the bread and didn't notice. He held half the small loaf out to her. "Eat."
    "I
can't"
she said. "I have this dress I have to fit into three weeks from now."
    "One piece of bread won't make that much difference." He waved it, knowing that the smell of Emilio's bread had driven stronger Atkins people to their knees.
    "No." She closed her eyes and her lips tight, which was useless because it wasn't looking at the bread that was going to bring her down, it was smelling it.
    "This might be your only chance to eat Emilio's bread," he said, and she took a deep breath.
    "Oh, hell." She opened her eyes and took the bread