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company. One of the many benefits of being single was that he got to be alone a lot in a quiet place, so he dropped the book on the floor and pushed himself out of his ancient leather armchair, determined to get rid of whoever it was.
    But when he yanked the door open, it was Quinn, swathed to her nose in a thick, fuzzy blue scarf, her copper hair shining under the porch light, and shutting the door on Quinn was never a possibility. She was holding a skinny black dog that looked at him with imploring dog-orphan eyes, so he said, “I don’t want a dog,” but he stood back to let her in.
    Quinn brushed by him and put the dog down as he shut the door. She pulled the scarf from her mouth and said, “That’s good because you can’t have her.” She smiled down at the dog, who was cautiously surveying the apartment, and then she turned to him, all shining eyes and glossy hair, her cheeks glowing red in her round little-girl face. “I’m keeping her.”
    “Dumb idea,” he said, but he said it without heat, smiling at her from habit and from pleasure because she was there. “Drink?”
    “Yes, please.” Quinn unwound her scarf and dropped it on the hardwood floor next to his mother’s old braided rug, and the dog immediately curled up on it, looking at Nick as if it expected to stay. Don’t even think about it, dog.
    “Boy, what a day,” Quinn said.
    “So tell me.” Nick went out to his tiny kitchen and she followed, taking a glass down from the pine shelves over his sink while he cracked ice from a tray in his ancient fridge.
    “I don’t even know where to start,” she said.
    The kitchen was a tight fit for two, but it was Quinn, so it didn’t count. She held the glass to her chest because they were too close for her to hold it out, and he dropped the ice into it and then reached past her for the Chivas on the shelf, absent-mindedly enjoying her nearness. “Start with the worst stuff,” he told her, as he poured about a quarter inch in the glass for her. She was driving home, so that was all she was going to get. “That way we’ll end on an up note.”
    She grinned up at him and said, “Thank you. Can I have some more?”
    “No.” He nudged her toward the living room with his hip as he put the Chivas back. “You’re too young to drink anyway.”
    “I’m thirty-five.” Quinn dropped to the rug beside the dog, all long legs and bright hair above her paint-stained sweater and jeans. “I’m allowed to do anything I want.” She stopped as if she’d just heard herself say something radical instead of sarcastic, and then she shrugged. “Okay, the worst is that I had a fight with Bill.”
    Nick appreciated the color for a moment, the copper in her hair, the honey of the oak floor, the soft blue of her sweater and the faded greens of the rug, and most of all Quinn herself, everything she was, glowing in the middle of all that warmth. Then he registered what she’d said. “What?”
    “I had a fight with Bill. At least, I think it was a fight. It’s hard to tell because he never gets mad. I told him I was keeping this dog and he said no. Like I was a little kid or something.”
    Quinn was so flustered, widening her big hazel eyes at him, that Nick grinned. “Well, you act like a little kid sometimes. You live in an apartment. Where are you going to keep a dog?”
    She shook her head, her hair swinging like copper silk. “That’s not the point. The point is that I want it, and he just said no.”
    “Well, he doesn’t want it.” Nick settled back into his armchair, determined not to get sucked into Quinn’s fight but not worried about it. He could resist getting involved in Quinn’s life. He just couldn’t resist her company. “He shouldn’t have to live with an animal if he doesn’t want to.” The dog looked at him reproachfully, so he ignored it.
    Quinn shook her head. “And I shouldn’t have to live without one.”
    “So one of you will give in,” Nick said. “You’ll work it