The waitress left.

"Cool," she said, bouncing a little on the cushy red vinyl. "This is the kind of c.r.a.p I missed most when I was married."

"How do you mean?"

She waved her palm in an arc, taking in the place with a sweep of her hand. "See all these people? None of them are looking at me. None of them are gonna stay up all night wondering where I am if I don't call to check in with them. And I don't have to worry or wonder about any of them either. Because-" She raised her voice. "I don't care! We're strangers and we're also grown-ups, so we can do whatever the h.e.l.l we want without answering to anybody."

I thought of my apartment, empty of anyone who'd miss me if I disappeared for a day...or for forever, and my heart clenched. "That's what you liked best about being single? Not having someone around who cares about your well-being?"

"h.e.l.l, yeah." She paused. "Well, kind of. I mean, there are no more restrictions. No expectations. n.o.body else's standards that I have to deal with every G.o.dd.a.m.n day. I'm free."

I squinted at her. "What did Alex do to you, Di?"

She looked at me, startled, then looked away. "Nothing. He was just an idiot."

"C'mon," I said. "Tell me the truth. This all didn't come out of nowhere, did it?"

The waitress returned with our food: thick shakes, platters heaped with greasy fries and burgers that would've toppled over if not for the gooey cheese gluing them to the bun.

Di doused her plate with half a bottle of ketchup and slurped on her chocolate milk shake. "Mmm," she said, ignoring my question.

I decided to let it go. It was a b.l.o.o.d.y miracle the two of us were even sitting in a restaurant having what would appear to anyone on the outside as a cordial meal together. She didn't want me psychoa.n.a.lyzing her and, h.e.l.l, I'm sure nothing I came up with would've even been close.

Jane, of course, had her own theories.

Ask your sister if her husband was in any way an abusive man, Jane urged.

Uh, no. There were few things I knew with certainty about my sister, but one was that she'd break the bones of any guy who'd try to hit her. Even our brother, as a toddler, knew better than to raise his hand at Di.

"Want my onions?" I asked Di instead, picking mine off the burger.

"Nope," she said. "I plan to be making out with some hot-blooded man before midnight." She wrinkled her nose. "Not an early-to-bed wimp like Alex." She mumbled something about men who'd lost touch with their dreams and didn't believe in having fun anymore.

Perhaps Mr. Evans was unfaithful, Jane proposed. That would be most intolerable.

Boy, I doubt he was, I told Jane. I never got the sense that Alex would- Ask her, Jane insisted.

I sighed. "Was there someone else in the picture?" I said aloud. "For either of you?"

Di attacked a couple of ketchup-covered fries and snorted. "Not hardly."

Might it be possible, then, Jane said, that she is with child and afraid?

I choked on a mouthful of milk shake.

"You okay?" Di asked, shooting me a strange look.

"Um, yeah," I said, wiping my lips with a paper napkin. "I just swallowed too fast."

She shrugged. "Look, I appreciate your concern and everything, but it's not like there was any one thing that caused this. Alex and I are just different people now than we were four or five years ago. He's been acting like a f.u.c.king control freak for the past few months, but it's not like he screwed around on me. I'd have killed him." She took a huge bite out of her burger and the juices dripped down her chin.

"So, you already tried working things out with him? Talking about it?"

"Oh, yeah, we talked about it all right. I told him last week if he didn't give me some G.o.dd.a.m.n s.p.a.ce, I'd walk. And he didn't give me any s.p.a.ce."

Ah, Jane said in her Appraising voice. Mr. Evans may have been attempting to compel your sister, and rightly so, to act in a more ladylike manner and- Di belched. "Sorry," she said. "Anyway, it's time for me to meet someone new. The four-and-a-half-year itch and all."

"So, you're really serious about replacing him?" I said. "You're really ready to move on?"

"Yep," Di replied. "But I'm not looking for a new husband. I just want to get laid."

I nodded. Jane didn't offer further suggestions.

An hour later we walked into the club.

The Dragon's Lair thrummed with energy and loud dance-mix tunes. Colored lights flashed around us like comet streaks, and I could feel the compulsive beat of rhythm all the way to the tips of my boots.

We found a free spot near the bar, and Di went to grab us a couple drinks. "Jack Daniel's straight up for me. Fruity wine cooler for you." She rolled her eyes. "Boring, but then again, you're driving us home."

I accepted my bottle. "Thanks. Next round is on me."

She waved her hand as if dismissing the idea. "Don't worry about it. I've actually got a lot of money saved, and I'm getting another raise in three weeks."

Di had been working at Fashion Plate, a suburban clothing store, for close to a decade. I'd never thought about it before, but she must've been pretty good at her job to be at it that long and to get so many promotions. She was now a senior manager.

"Congratulations," I said.

She grinned at me. "Thanks. You done paying off grad school yet?"

"Yeah. I'm finally beginning to build up my savings account."

"Good. You do that. You can't trust a guy to provide for you. Even marriage isn't a guarantee."

I raised my eyebrows, wanting to ask her more about Alex, but she gave me a Don't-Go-There look and so I took a long drink instead.

Still, this conversation had my head reeling, and it was clearly uncharted territory for both of us.

Di and I, discussing our finances.

It felt so bizarrely adult. And it kept forcing me to look at my sister in ways I'd never before considered.

"Are you thinking of going back to school?" I asked her. She'd squeaked through college and gotten a four-year general business degree, which was impressive given her lack of study habits in high school, but she'd vowed never to do the grad-school thing.

"Nah, I don't think so. I'm pretty happy where I am. Well, with my career and all."

"Gregory seems to like his job, too," I said. "All those computer-techno thingies he does."

"Yeah, but-" She made a face. "He and Nadia are getting too serious, too fast. Those guys are practically living together, you know."

I didn't know, although I'd suspected. Gregory couldn't keep his hands off his latest and most curvaceous girlfriend, not even in front of our parents, to Mom's eternal agitation.

"Did you talk with him about it directly?" I asked. "Did he tell you his plans?"

"Yep. Get engaged before the end of the year. Get married next year. Move to Colorado, if they can swing it, because the skiing is really great there. Squeeze out a couple of kids sometime after that." Di raised up her second shot of Jack. "Here's to them."

I lifted my bottle also and clinked with her, aware we weren't merely talking theory. When Gregory set his mind to doing something, it pretty much went down that way. In a flash I saw the rest of my brother's life whizzing before my eyes like so many of the colored lights at the club.

Di turned her attention to the guys in the room, not being remotely subtle about it. She stared, mouth agape, at one hunky specimen who pa.s.sed by our table.

"How old is he, do you think?" she asked me. "Twenty-nine? Thirty?"

"Yeah, probably. Why?"

"Because he looks experienced enough. I think I'll sleep with him."

"Di!"

"What?"

"You don't just look at a guy and decide to proposition him. He could be married or here with his fiancee or...his boyfriend." Although, from the predatory way the man moved, he certainly seemed well suited to the hetero set.

My sister considered my words. "He's not gay," she said dismissively, "and he's sitting at the bar with a group of five very naughty-looking men. No adoring woman on his sleeve, though. No gold ring on his finger."

Not exactly proof of singlehood, since Di was still technically married and didn't have a ring on her finger either. But I had to admit to being impressed with Di's powers of observation. She took in quite a lot on first glance.

I, too, studied the guy in question. He was tall, muscular, Slavic-looking. His longish, dark blond hair swayed against the back of his neck as he walked or, rather, prowled. He had the natural gait of a panther.

"Help me pick him up," Di said.

"No," I whispered, not so much because I didn't want to help her but because the man kind of frightened me. "Are you sure he's your type? What about one of them?"

I pointed toward a couple of harmless-looking accountant types on the dance floor, and Di snickered. "What are you, blind? If you think those guys are hot prospects, you need to get laid more than I do."

"Look, Di, this whole idea is-"

"Shut up. I just caught his eye."

Cripes. I stole another glance at Slavic Man and his Bad-Boy Posse. He looked right back at us, his light eyes bright with growing interest. My psyche plummeted back in time, to high school and to what it felt like to gaze at a group of guys across a crowded dance floor. Everyone eyeing each other, n.o.body talking.

I remembered Jason Bertignoli.

And Sam Blaine, of course.

I closed my eyes. I was getting too d.a.m.ned old for this.

"Ladies," a deep, accented voice said. "May we treat you to another drink?"

I opened my eyes to the vision of Slavic Man leaning on the table, his ruddy lips curved into a wicked smile, his gaze boring through me like Superman's X-ray vision. I managed to glance at Di, whose eyes were fixed on the attractive black-haired, brown-eyed man standing just behind him. A few yards away, the now smaller group of Bad Boys looked on with fat grins.

Finally recalling that an answer would be expected of us, I said, "That's very kind of you, but we're-"

"We'd love another drink," Di blurted.

The guys nodded briefly at their gang (obviously acknowledging they'd all but scored with these ditzy American chicks) and then pulled up two chairs beside us.

"You are from Chicago, yes?" the dark-haired guy asked us in broken English.

"Yeah," Di said. "But you two aren't, are you?" She grinned at them and laughed her flirtatious laugh. She'd been a pro at that laugh since high school. Both men turned appreciative eyes upon her.

"We are Russian," Slavic Man said. Oh, shocker. "This is my friend Mikhail." He pointed to the dark-haired guy. "And I am Andrei. Andrei Sergiov."

In spite of myself, I smiled. The way he said his name reminded me of James Bond, only Andrei was more like one of the evil guys 007 battled. He was all Slavic suave and loads of untamed pa.s.sion. My head filled immediately with Pushkin's verses of Russian Romanticism.

East versus West colliding yet again.

But, in one of Pushkin's most famous poems, "Eugene Onegin," it was Western intellectualism and decadence that supposedly contaminated Eastern virtues. That night, though, I wasn't sure just who was going to be tainting whom.

Di, meanwhile, introduced us to the guys. She seemed mesmerized by both men, unable to decide which would make a better one-night stand. Her gaze darted between them and, a few times, she looked over at me, mystified.

After her third questioning glance, I gave her a slight shrug and mouthed, "Take your pick." I sure wasn't about to make the decision for her.

The Russians ordered drinks all around. Even though I was driving, I agreed to another wine cooler. I got the sense from the way these two guys settled into their chairs that we'd be there for several more hours. Long enough for me to regain a clear head and pull my sister away from certain disaster before hitting the road.

Besides, I needed something to occupy my hands. The urge to run them through Andrei's wavy hair had become uncomfortably tempting.

Mikhail leaned in and said, "You are beautiful sisters." He licked his lips in a manner so lascivious I almost laughed. Was he being serious or was he mocking the whole hooking-up-with-a-stranger-at-a-bar convention?

I shot a look at the original Slavic Man. Andrei raised an eyebrow in his buddy's direction, and his lips twisted into a perplexed grimace. Perhaps he and I were wondering the same thing.

As if in confirmation of this, he turned his magnetic gaze on me. The change in his expression was so subtle as to be unnoticed by the other two, but I could read it clearly. He wanted me to know he was better at this game than Mikhail, and I ought not to forget it.

No freaking chance of that. I hoped for the first time that night that my sister would set her sights on the attractive but moronic dark-haired stud and leave The Panther to me.

As miracles would have it, she did.

Di slid her chair closer to Mikhail and nodded once in my direction. In response, I moved my drink a few inches nearer to Andrei's. The teams were decided.

The boys sized up the situation remarkably fast and relaxed into their roles.

Mikhail soon began whispering jokey comments into my sister's ear. She laughed uproariously, although I feared the real comedy-inducer was the one-two punch of good ole Jack D. combined with being on the verge of achieving her evening's objective.

On my side of the court, Andrei rested a large, warm hand on the back of my chair and, against all reason, my heart swelled with delight at this territorial gesture.

"Ellie," he said to me, his accent making my name sound erotic and exotic simultaneously. "I wish to hear of your work during daytime hours."

I smiled at his phrasing. If he'd been an American, his words might've implied something darker, as if my nighttime activities were somehow nefarious compared to whatever occupied my time during the day. But I knew he meant only to ask about my job, so I told him about being a high-school librarian.

Unlike 99 percent of the American men I'd met since I started my career, Andrei, to my shock, did not consider my occupation to be bland and unexciting.