"Hey, Dad."

He turned back.

"What do you know about air conditioners?"

Charlie shrugged. "Enough to make sure they stay running. Why do you ask? Somebody need some help?"

"Not sure yet. Stay tuned."

"You just give me a call, okay? I'll hop right over."

When Alison hadn't heard from Greg by midafternoon the next day, she was starting to think maybe he didn't exist after all and Brandon really had skipped town with her fifteen hundred bucks. She was up to her eyeballs in a report comparing consumer opinions about the crispness of their new peanut butter sandwich cookies. They had to be tough enough to stand up to milk dunking, but not so tough they cracked molars. Judging from the feedback on the prototype, something needed to change or Spangler Sweets was going to be paying a lot of dental bills.

She eyed the Mallorific bar on the corner of her desk. She'd put it there that morning as today's test to see how long she could go without ripping it open and snarfing it in three heavenly bites. She checked her watch. Two forty-five. If she went until three o'clock, she'd set a new record. Eventually-say, by the time she retired-she'd be able to go an entire day without succumbing to her sweet tooth in spite of the fact that she worked at Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

The truth was that just about everyone who worked for Spangler Sweets was addicted to some product it produced, and most of those people were just a little bit overweight. Okay, most were downright hefty. A good percentage of her co-workers would probably accept regular home shipments of Choco-Pretzels or Coconutty Drops in lieu of health insurance and a decent pension. It was a daily struggle for Alison to keep her hands off the merchandise, which was spread far and wide throughout the building. On the other hand, it was nice to work in a place where she could stand next to her co-workers and feel thin by comparison.

She'd held this job for just over a year and loved it, particularly when she compared it to her last job. When she graduated from college, marketing jobs had been few and far between, so to pay the bills, she'd applied for the loan officer training program at Southwestern Savings Bank. After several years doing the most boring job imaginable, for which she was entirely unsuited, she'd gotten this job at Spangler Sweets and had been thankful ever since.

When her phone rang a few minutes later, she had to dig under mounds of paper and a Subway sack before she found it. When she saw Greg's name on the caller ID, her heart kicked up a notch. Before she picked it up, she took a deep, calming breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth, which was the only thing of value that had stuck with her from the yoga class from hell.

As it turned out, Greg sounded nice. Normal. As if he'd never had even a passing thought about having two women in his bed at once, blowing his nose on a cloth napkin, or coming out of the closet. A few minutes later, they'd made a date for seven on Saturday night at Sonoma Bistro, a trendy wine bar in the West Village. He offered to pick her up. A nice gesture, but a violation of First Date Protocol would have doomed the date from the start. By the time she hung up, her faith in Brandon had risen. Just a little. No sense in getting all girly excited when so much could still go wrong.

"Hey, Alison."

The voice was so close behind her that Alison nearly jumped out of her chair. She turned to see Lois Wasserman hanging over her like a vulture. Lois was approximately as wide as she was tall, a dead ringer for Rosie O'Donnell. Assuming, of course, that Rosie gained fifty pounds, bleached her hair, and then teased it into a fright wig.

Lois nodded down at the Mallorific bar on the corner of Alison's desk. "You gonna eat that?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna eat it."

"You are?"

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."

Alison turned back to her spreadsheets again, which should have been a signal to any member of the civilized world to turn around and walk away. Not Lois. She was clearly raised by those vultures she loved to imitate-a flock of overbearing, overeating creatures that had taught her how to circle unobtrusively, then go in for the kill. Several seconds later when Lois was still standing there, Alison turned back with a frustrated sigh.

"Lois. There are plenty more in the kitchen."

"Plumbers are in the kitchen. The sink backed up all over the floor."

"I thought you kept a stash at your desk."

"I'm on a diet."

"You're on a diet, but you want my Mallorific bar?"

"I didn't say it was a good diet."

Lois shifted her considerable bulk from one foot to the other, still focused on that Mallorific bar, annoying Alison to no end. In fact, she annoyed just about everybody who worked there. Probably the only reason she still had a job was that, by some freak of nature, she just happened to be an amazing graphic artist. She could wear a wrinkled pea green blouse, a multicolored broomstick skirt, and flip-flops to the office, only to turn around and produce work so beautiful it made the bigwigs weep with joy. It was a mystery nobody had ever been able to figure out.

But right now, Alison had the most unsettling feeling that if she kept saying no about the Mallorific bar, Lois would peck her eyeballs out.

"Take it," she said finally.

"What?"

"Take the candy bar."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Is it your last one? I don't want to take your last one."

"Yes, it's my last one. On second thought-"

Before Alison even knew what was happening, Lois was on that candy bar like a vulture on a hyena carcass, ripping open the wrapper with a flick of her wrist and then digging her beak-uh, teeth-right into it.

"Sounded like you were making a date earlier," Lois said as she gnawed through the gooey lump of marshmallow, cashews, and chocolate. "Were you making a date?"

"Yeah. I was making a date. Thanks for eavesdropping. How else would I know you care?"

"Must be nice to have a date. I haven't had a date in forever. That customer service guy Jonathan asked me out last week, but he stinks."

"Stinks?"

"Yeah. He stopped wearing deodorant. Said it was killing the planet."

Alison had news for Lois. If Jonathan thought it was a good idea to ask her out, body odor was the least of his problems.

"So don't breathe when you're around him," Alison said.

"Right," Lois said, rolling her eyes. "Like I can do that for a whole date?" Chomp, chomp, chomp. "So where'd you meet this guy you're going out with?"

"He's a friend of a friend."

"Blind date?"

"Not exactly."

Chomp. "Then what exactly?"

"None of your business."

"Fine. Don't tell me." Chomp, chomp. "But I know you got a date because you're skinny. Guys always like skinny women. What chance do the rest of us have?"

She walked off, stuffing the last bite of the Mallorific bar in her mouth, and Alison felt a surge of contentment. God, she loved working there. Nowhere else on the planet was she seen as the skinny girl who scooped up every man in sight, cherry-picked the good ones, and tossed out the rest for the more undesirable women to fight over.

She looked at her watch. Two forty-nine. If she waited eleven more minutes before checking to see if the plumbers were finished, it counted toward her record. Then again, if she laid off the Mallorific bars and all other sweets between now and this weekend, she might be able to squeeze into that cute little skirt she'd bought at the spring clearance sale at Ann Taylor. But the closer the clock crept to three, the more she got to thinking maybe her little black dress that showed off her cleavage, didn't cling to her hips, and had room for a sack of Mallorific bars from the inside out was a way better choice for a first date, anyway.

A minute after three, she congratulated herself on her new personal best, then tiptoed across the justmopped kitchen floor behind a guy who was putting away his tools and hiking up his Wranglers to cover his butt crack. She snagged a Mallorific bar, then couldn't resist grabbing a bag of Butterscotch Bits from a box on the counter to round out her afternoon snack.

Yep. The little black dress it was.

The next morning, Brandon sat at his desk, going through files, wondering for the umpteenth time if he had a chance of making this business work. His only successful match so far was for Jack Warren, the guy he'd signed as a client a few days ago. He'd introduced him to a thirtyeightyearold attorney named Melanie Davis. Neither one had ever been married except to their jobs, and both were allergic to children. She liked his wine expertise and his West Plano McMansion. He liked her biting wit and her cosmetically enhanced breasts. They made plans to see each other again before the first date was even over. With luck, Alison's first date with Greg would be equally successful.

Now, if only he could generate more new business that brought in new money.

Just then his grandmother's land line rang. He looked at the caller ID. Unknown caller. Could it be the new business he was looking for?

With a surge of hope, he picked up the phone. "Matchmaking by Rochelle."

A long pause. "Brandon? Is that you?"

At the sound of that voice, Brandon's blood turned to ice. "Yeah. It's me."

"Hey, Brandon! How's it going, kid?"

Tension instantly filled him, decades of anger and resentment swirling around inside his head. "What do you want, Darryl?"

"Wow. That's a pretty frosty way to greet your old man, isn't it?

A dozen different emotions washed over Brandon, and not one of them was welcome. After what had happened all those years ago, the word "Dad" no longer crossed his lips, and frosty was a really good way to describe the way he felt every time he heard his father's voice.

"I didn't know if I'd find you there or not," Darryl said. "I don't have your cell number anymore."

Damned right you don't. "You missed the funeral."

"Oh. Yeah. About that. I was tied up. Couldn't make it."

Brandon knew what that meant. Either he was up to no good and lying low, or running from some guy he'd hustled and shouldn't have.

"You couldn't make it to your own mother's funeral?" Brandon said.

"I told you," he said, anger creeping into his voice. "I was tied up."

You're a damned liar. "Why are you calling?"

"Because I thought maybe I'd like to see you."

No. No way. If he saw his father, it would be just like the last time in New Orleans when they'd barely gotten through one drink before the fight started all over again. Darryl had stalked out of the bar, leaving Brandon with the tab and the sick feeling that nothing had changed. That nothing would ever change.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Brandon said.

"You know, you might think about letting go of that grudge one of these days. Family's family after all, isn't it?"

That made Brandon's blood boil. Family. The man didn't know the meaning of the word. And when it came to holding a grudge, no one on this earth was better at it than his father.

No one.

"Just tell me what you want," Brandon said.

"Okay. Fine. It appears my mother made a small mistake in her will. Seems she left everything to you."

"That's right."

"Do you think that's fair?"

"Wasn't my decision to make."

"It is now. The house-"

"She left it to her church."

"Her church? You've got to be kidding me."

"Are you really surprised about that?"

Darryl let out a humorless, derisive laugh. "Now that you mention it, no. In fact, I'm surprised she didn't leave every dime to some Bible-beating televangelist."

Brandon bristled at that. As a teenager, he'd hated like hell when his grandmother had dragged him to church. As an adult, he hated like hell to hear his father mock it.

"So if she left her house to the church," Darryl said, "why are you there?"

"It's mine as long as I want to stay here. But I won't be staying long."

"What's still in the house?"

"Nothing that's worth much."

"Maybe I should come take a look."

Brandon imagined what that would be like. His father wanted to sift through the house to see if there was anything worth pawning. He'd open cabinets, pick through closets, and turn over sofa cushions. And when he was satisfied there was nothing to add to his bottom line, he'd be gone. But suddenly the last thing Brandon wanted was his father touching a single thing in this house. And he sure as hell didn't want him in the middle of the business he was trying to get off the ground.

"I told you there's nothing here you'd want," Brandon said.

"The Brunswick. That's bound to be worth something."

"No. It's in bad condition. Maybe I'll restore it someday, but for now it's pretty worthless."

"There has to be something else. China? Jewelry?"