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reminds meof the Christmas when I wanted a red ten-speed Bianchi bike and found a five-speed Schwinn under the tree.”
    She made a startled little noise that might have been the word Oh, and looked crestfallen.
    He said, “I’ll tell you what. You bring Cameron to the party, and we’ll see what happens. I’ve never really talked with her. All I know is she broke Carl Moosegow’s wrist.”
    “He grabbed her in a bar!” Mary Anne exclaimed. “And not on the arm, either. She’s studied martial arts. It was a case of ‘no mind,’ like Bruce Lee used to talk about. She just reacted as she’d been trained to do.”
    “I’ll be careful where my hands stray,” said Graham, who had counseled female clients on maintaining boundaries—and dealing with men who did not observe them. “By the way, are you trained in martial arts?”
    Without a word, she spun away, grabbed her purse and left the office.
    Graham grinned as he watched her go…and exchanged a look with the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, who grinned right back.
     
    H E HADN’T LET HER do something nice for him, and Mary Anne was unsure whether “It’s the thought that counts” applied to good deeds required to activate love potions. A simple solution would have been to agree to go to the party with him, but Mary Anne didn’t like him, so how could that have been doing him a good deed? She couldn’t have gone with him, though. Because of Cameron. Cameron liked him, and Mary Anne didn’t want to hurt Cameron.
    Objecting to the idea of putting more effort into the love potion project, yet unwilling to simply abandon it, shetook a gift certificate for Pizza Hut pizza that she’d won at the high school’s kickoff carnival and slipped it into Graham’s In tray. After that, the only thing to do was mildly discourage Cameron’s interest in Graham, play down any possibility that Graham actually liked Mary Anne herself and prepare to slip Jonathan Hale a love potion.
     
    “D O I LOOK OKAY ?” she asked Cameron on the night of the engagement party. “Do these jeans make my butt look big?”
    “You have an excellent butt,” Cameron replied matter-of-factly. Blessed with a figure that Mary Anne, for one, believed was the answer to every man’s fantasies, Cameron had absolutely no interest in discussing Mary Anne’s figure flaws. “And your clothes are cool. You look like a model.”
    Low-rise flare jeans, baby T-shirt and her favorite hat. She also wore her favorite moss-green wrap sweater coat.
    In her handbag was the precious vial she’d bought from Clare Cureux.
    Tonight was the night.
    Taking her turn in front of the mirror, Cameron babbled, “Jonathan asked Paul to play for the party but I told Paul he couldn’t, because if he’s there I have to pretend we’re together.”
    It was a situation Mary Anne still couldn’t get her head around, but all she said was, “And so he turned down the gig?”
    “Oh, sure. That’s not usually part of our agreement, but he knows how badly I want to go out with Graham.” After a moment, she said, “Besides, he knew he could get a different gig tonight. He just told Jonathan he was booked, and then he got a gig—so he was.” She changed the subject. “Do I look okay?”
    Mary Anne scrutinized her cousin. Cameron was dressed up, for her. She wore a low-backed brown dress and clunky platform shoes. She looked sexy and great and had probably spent a total of six dollars on the ensemble. “You’re an eleven,” Mary Anne told her, blowing her a kiss. “He’s lucky you’re coming, but you’ll get to see for yourself what he’s really like.”
    Cameron gave a mischievous grin that showed her chipped front tooth, an anomaly in her otherwise perfect bite. “Graham Corbett, here I come!”
    Mary Anne decided that if Graham tried to flirt with her tonight instead of her cousin, she would pour a drink on him.
     
    T HE PARTY TOOK PLACE in the Embassy Ballroom, which occupied the entire floor above the