Breakfast At Bethany's. Kathleen O'Reilly

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      Sexy blonde is looking for Mr. Right Now. Could that possibly be you? Need someone who knows how to laugh and is smart enough to make me smile.

      HIS APARTMENT WAS CURSED.

      For over an hour he’d been trying to work, but his concentration had been shot to hell. The constant buzzing of his cleaning woman’s vacuum was driving him batty.

      “Sophie!”

      Still the buzzing continued. How the hell was he supposed to work in a war zone?

      “Sophie!”

      God bless it, the buzzing ceased.

      Sophie appeared in the doorway to his study, clad in her latest red spandex jogging shorts, which accentuated curves she didn’t need to advertise. Sophie, however, was a woman who’d never recovered from the eighties. “You rang, Mr. James?” she asked in the clipped English accent she used when she was feeling unservile.

      “Can you please keep it down to a moderate level? Ten decibels? I’m trying to work here.”

      “That’s interesting, Mr. James, because you’re paying me to clean, and well, here I am, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, cleaning my little heart out. Now you want me to be quiet. If you’re determined to work, I can go into the living room and sit and wait. I’ll just turn the TV down really, really low.”

      “You wouldn’t mind?” Spencer asked. Usually Sophie wasn’t the most cooperative of cleaning ladies. That’s why she was cheap.

      “Not if I’m still on the clock. And, Mr. James, I’m still on the clock.”

      Now why had he thought she’d suddenly become human? Someday he was going to hire a real cleaning service. Anonymous little elves who would clean and then disappear into the immaculately dusted woodwork. Someday.

      “Vacuum,” he snapped. “Vacuum until your little toes are sucked right off.”

      “Mr. James, are you flirting with me?”

      Spencer shot out of his chair and growled. She grinned back at him and he slammed the door in her face.

      AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, his stomach rumbled and he realized he’d missed lunch—and dinner. All afternoon he’d been listening to the interview tape, pretending to take notes, but so far the page was blank. When she spoke, you actually could hear her smile in her voice.

      Spence rubbed his eyes. Next thing, he’d be buying her flowers, and then maybe taking her on a date, and before you knew it, they’d be headed to divorce court and he’d be forced to endure fifteen more years of Sophie’s slipshod work.

      Hell would freeze first. Besides, Mr. Right Now was somewhere out there, just waiting for her, waiting to be graced with that careless smile, waiting to taste her strawberry kisses.

      Well, Mr. Right Now could have her.

      Not willing to go further down that strawberry-laden path, Spencer pushed himself back from his desk and walked over to the refrigerator. Now to play the new and exciting what’s-for-dinner game.

      Leftover pasta from Thursday night at Via Concetta. No. Leftover chicken from Wednesday night at Via Concetta. No. Would his luck change in the freezer? Frozen pizza. Frozen lasagna.

      The lasagna wins, the crowd goes wild.

      He popped the package into the oven, set the temperature and then slammed the door just as the doorbell rang. Odd. He hadn’t buzzed anyone up. “You’re going to have to wait. Don’t embarrass me now,” he said to his stomach.

      Spencer didn’t get many visitors. He tried to discourage the practice of stopping by without calling first. It tended to disrupt his concentration, and he’d forgotten how to make small talk, not that he really cared.

      The bell rang again. It was most likely another salesman who couldn’t read the No Soliciting sign. He should use a bigger font. Prepared to deliver his standard I’m-just-the-house-sitter line, he opened the door.

      It was his onetime best friend, Harry, who mostly wrote sports for their paper.

      “Spence, got three tickets to the Bulls game tomorrow. Want to come?” Harry said, shrugging out of his coat and slinging it over the chair.