Bet Me

  Bet Me

  Jennifer Crusie

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  Table of Contents

  A Letter from Jennifer Crusie

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Also by Jennifer Crusie

  Praise

  Copyright

  Dear Reader,

  I didn’t set out to write a fairy tale.

  Bet Me began as a straightforward romance novel, the second one I wrote. It was bad. Really bad. Everybody-in-New-York-and-Toronto-turned-it-down bad. So I stuck it away on my hard drive and spent ten years learning craft and practicing it, and then one day, I found Bet Me on my hard drive and read it again.

  It was still really bad.

  But there was something there, and as I started to rewrite, the idea of the bet—a truly lousy premise for a story—fused with the idea of a woman who was practical and minimized risk and a man who liked to win and therefore calculated the odds coming up against the implacable chaos of Fate.

  So when I saw Fate bearing down on Min and Cal with a spark in her eye, the fairy tale happened. I loved the idea that they’d fight against Fate because Fate was being ridiculous, and that Fate would send them a musical snow globe, seats next to each other at the movies, an Elvis serenade, and a feral cat, and in so doing defeat them utterly. I loved Min saying, “I don’t believe in fairy tales,” and her best friend saying, “I don’t think it matters; the fairy tale believes in you.” But mostly I just loved the idea of two people who were too practical to believe that they deserved a happily-ever-after getting one because Fate wanted it that way.

  All I needed to do was believe in the fairy tale myself, so I wrote “Wildly Romantic” on a post-it, stuck it on my computer screen, cut about 95,000 words of the original manuscript, and went for it. That’s why this book has a hero who has to climb thirty-two steps and two flights of stairs to get to his love, a pumpkin couch, a red-hooded cape, a lethal fairy godmother, an impressive number of shoes, and a firm belief in the power of love.

  Here’s hoping you believe, too, and that you love this book as much as I do.

  Jenny

  For

  Monica Pradhan McLean

  Because her price is above rubies

  Which she knows how to invest,

  And because every book she writes

  is a diamond

  Acknowledgments

  My Thanks To

  Meg Ruley

  for selling this book against my better judgment

  and for being right again,

  Jen Enderlin

  for buying this book against my better judgment

  and for being right again,

  St. Martin’s Press

  especially John Sargent, Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear,

  Kim Cardascia, John Karle, and John Murphy,

  for being supportive beyond the call of publishing

  (and a big kiss to Sally for matchmaking the movie option),

  Mollie Smith

  for improving my Web site,

  organizing my business records,

  critiquing my book, and illuminating my life,

  Val Taylor

  for working with me again

  even though I promised her I’d never rewrite this one,

  The Ladies of XRom

  especially Jo Beverley

  for coming up with the pumpkin couch,

  The Cherries

  for critiquing the first scene, researching recipes,

  putting up with my moaning, and being Cherries,

  and

  The Nantucket Beach Patrol,

  Police Department,

  Fire Department, and

  Cottage Hospital Emergency Room Staff,

  whose speed and skill ensured that

  this wasn’t a posthumous book.

  (If you’re going to have an asthma attack in the surf,

  I strongly recommend you do so in Nantucket.)

  Women’s total instinct for gambling

  is satisfied by marriage.

  —Gloria Steinem

  Chapter One

  Once upon a time, Minerva Dobbs thought as she stood in the middle of a loud yuppie bar, the world was full of good men. She looked into the handsome face of the man she’d planned on taking to her sister’s wedding and thought, Those days are gone.

  “This relationship is not working for me,” David said.

  I could shove this swizzle stick through his heart, Min thought. She wouldn’t do it, of course. The stick was plastic and not nearly pointed enough on the end. Also, people didn’t do things like that in southern Ohio. A sawed-off shotgun, that was the ticket.

  “And we both know why,” David went on.

  He probably didn’t even know he was mad; he probably thought he was being calm and adult. At least I know I’m furious, Min thought. She let her anger settle around her, and it made her warm all over, which was more than David had ever done.

  Across the room, somebody at the big roulette wheel–shaped bar rang a bell. Another point against David: He was dumping her in a theme bar. The Long Shot. The name alone should have tipped her off.

  “I’m sorry, Min,” David said, clearly not.

  Min crossed her arms over her gray-checked suit jacket so she couldn’t smack him. “This is because I won’t go home with you tonight? It’s Wednesday. I have to work tomorrow. You have to work tomorrow. I paid for my own drink.”

  “It’s not that.” David looked noble and wounded as only the tall, dark, and self-righteous could. “You’re not making any effort to make our relationship work, which means . . .”

  Which means we’ve been dating for two months and I still won’t sleep with you. Min tuned him out and looked around at the babbling crowd. If I had an untraceable poison, I could drop it in his drink now and not one of these suits would notice.

  “. . . and I do think, if we have any future, that you should contribute, too,” David said.

  Oh, I don’t, Min thought, which meant that David had a point. Still, lack of sex was no excuse for dumping her three weeks before she had to wear a maid-of-honor dress that made her look like a fat, demented shepherdess. “Of course we have a future, David,” she said, trying to put her anger on ice. “We have plans. Diana is getting married in three weeks. You’re invited to the wedding. To the rehearsal dinner. To the bachelor party. You’re going to miss the stripper, David.”

  “Is that all you think of me?” David’s voice went up. “I’m just a date to your sister’s wedding?”

  “Of course not,” Min said. “Just as I’m sure I’m more to you than somebody to sleep with.”

  David opened his mouth and closed it again. “Well, of course. I don’t want you to think this is a reflection on you. You’re intelligent, you’re successful, you’re mature. . . .”

  Min listened, knowing that You’re beautiful, you’re thin were not coming. If only he’d have a heart attack. Only four percent of heart attacks in men happened before forty,
but it could happen. And if he died, not even her mother could expect her to bring him to the wedding.

  “. . . and you’d make a wonderful mother,” David finished up.

  “Thank you,” Min said. “That’s so not romantic.”

  “I thought we were going places, Min,” David said.

  “Yeah,” Min said, looking around the gaudy bar. “Like here.”

  David sighed and took her hand. “I wish you the best, Min. Let’s keep in touch.”

  Min took her hand back. “You’re not feeling any pain in your left arm, are you?”

  “No,” David said, frowning at her.

  “Pity,” Min said, and went back to her friends, who were watching them from the far end of the room.

  “He was looking even more uptight than usual,” Liza said, looking even taller and hotter than usual as she leaned on the jukebox, her hair flaming under the lights.

  David wouldn’t have treated Liza so callously. He’d have been afraid to; she’d have dismembered him. Gotta be more like Liza, Min thought and started to flip through the song cards on the box.

  “Are you upset with him?” Bonnie said from Min’s other side, her blond head tilted up in concern. David wouldn’t have left Bonnie, either. Nobody was mean to sweet, little Bonnie.

  “Yes. He dumped me.” Min stopped flipping. Wonder of wonders, the box had Elvis. Immediately, the bar seemed a better place. She fed in coins and then punched the keys for “Hound Dog.” Too bad Elvis had never recorded one called “Dickhead.”

  “I knew I didn’t like him,” Bonnie said.

  Min went over to the roulette bar and smiled tightly at the slender bartender dressed like a croupier. She had beautiful long, soft, kinky brown hair, and Min thought, That’s another reason I couldn’t have slept with David. Her hair always frizzed when she let it down, and he was the type who would have noticed.

  “Rum and Coke, please,” she told the bartender.

  Maybe that was why Liza and Bonnie never had man trouble: great hair. She looked at Liza, racehorse-thin in purple zippered leather, shaking her head at David with naked contempt. Okay, it wasn’t just the hair. If she jammed herself into Liza’s dress, she’d look like Barney’s slut cousin. “Diet Coke,” she told the bartender.

  “He wasn’t the one,” Bonnie said from below Min’s shoulder, her hands on her tiny hips.

  “Diet rum, too,” Min told the bartender, who smiled at her and went to get her drink.

  Liza frowned. “Why were you dating him anyway?”

  “Because I thought he might be the one,” Min said, exasperated. “He was intelligent and successful and very nice at first. He seemed like a sensible choice. And then all of a sudden he went snotty on me.”

  Bonnie patted Min’s arm. “It’s a good thing he broke up with you because now you’re free for when the right man finds you. Your prince is on his way.”

  “Right,” Min said. “I’m sure he was on his way but a truck hit him.”

  “That’s not how it works.” Bonnie leaned on the bar, looking like an R-rated pixie. “If it’s meant to be, he’ll make it. No matter how many things go wrong, he’ll come to you and you’ll be together forever.”

  “What is this?” Liza said, looking at her in disbelief. “Barbie’s Field of Dreams?”

  “That’s sweet, Bonnie,” Min said. “But as far as I’m concerned, the last good man died when Elvis went.”

  “Maybe we should rethink keeping Bon as our broker,” Liza said to Min. “We could be major stockholders in the Magic Kingdom by now.”

  Min tapped her fingers on the bar, trying to vent some tension. “I should have known David was a mistake when I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with him. We were on our third date, and the waiter brought the dessert menu, and David said, ‘No, thank you, we’re on a diet,’ and of course, he isn’t because there’s not an ounce of fat on him, and I thought, ‘I’m not taking off my clothes with you’ and I paid my half of the check and went home early. And after that, whenever he made his move, I thought of the waiter and crossed my legs.”

  “He wasn’t the one,” Bonnie said with conviction.

  “You think?” Min said, and Bonnie looked wounded. Min closed her eyes. “Sorry. Sorry. Really sorry. It’s just not a good time for that stuff, Bon. I’m mad. I want to savage somebody, not look to the horizon for the next jerk who’s coming my way.”

  “Sure,” Bonnie said. “I understand.”

  Liza shook her head at Min. “Look, you didn’t care about David, so you haven’t lost anything except a date to Di’s wedding. And I vote we skip the wedding. It has ‘disaster’ written all over it, even without the fact that she’s marrying her best friend’s boyfriend.”

  “Her best friend’s ex-boyfriend. And I can’t skip it. I’m the maid of honor.” Min gritted her teeth. “It’s going to be hell. It’s not just that I’m dateless, which fulfills every prophecy my mother has ever made, it’s that she’s crazy about David.”

  “We know,” Bonnie said.

  “She tells everybody about David,” Min said, thinking of her mother’s avid little face. “Dating David is the only thing I’ve done that she’s liked about me since I got the flu freshman year and lost ten pounds. And now I have no David.” She took her diet rum from the bartender, said, “Thank you,” and tipped her lavishly. There wasn’t enough gratitude in the world for a server who kept the drinks coming at a time like this. “Most of the time it doesn’t matter what my mother thinks of me because I can avoid her, but for the wedding? No.”

  “So you’ll find another date,” Bonnie said.

  “No, she won’t,” Liza said.

  “Oh, thank you,” Min said, turning away from the over-designed bar. The roulette pattern was making her dizzy. Or maybe that was the rage.

  “Well, it’s your own fault,” Liza said. “If you’d quit assigning statistical probability to the fate of a union with every guy you meet and just go out with somebody who turns you on, you might have a good time now and then.”

  “I’d be a puddle of damaged ego,” Min said. “There’s nothing wrong with dating sensibly. That’s how I found David.” Too late, she realized that wasn’t evidence in her favor and knocked back some of her drink to ward off comments.

  Liza wasn’t listening. “We’ll have to find a guy for you.” She began to scan the bar, which was only fair since most of the bar had been scanning her. “Not him. Not him. Not him. Nope. Nope. Nope. All these guys would try to sell you mutual funds.” Then she straightened. “Hello. We have a winner.”

  Bonnie followed her eyes. “Who? Where?”

  “The dark-haired guy in the navy blue suit. In the middle on the landing up by the door.”

  “Middle?” Min squinted at the raised landing at the entry to the bar. It was wide enough for a row of faux poker tables, and four men were at one talking to a brunette in red. One of the four was David, now surveying his domain over the dice-studded wrought-iron rail. The landing was only about five feet higher than the rest of the room, but David contrived to make it look like a balcony. It was probably requiring all his self-control to keep from doing the Queen Elizabeth Wave. “That’s David,” Min said, turning away. “And some brunette. Good Lord, he’s dating somebody else already.” Get out now, she told the brunette silently.

  “Forget the brunette,” Liza said. “Look at the guy in the middle. Wait a minute, he’ll turn back this way again. He doesn’t seem to be finding David that interesting.”

  Min squinted back at the entry again. The navy suit was taller than David, and his hair was darker and thicker, but otherwise, from behind, he was pretty much David II. “I did that movie,” Min said, and then he turned.

  Dark eyes, strong cheekbones, classic chin, broad shoulders, chiseled everything, and all of it at ease as he stared out over the bar, ignoring David, who suddenly looked a little inbred.

  Min sucked in her breath as every cell she had came alive and whispered, This one.

  Then she turned a
way before anybody caught her slack-jawed with admiration. He was not the one, that was her DNA talking, looking for a high-class sperm donor. Every woman in the room with a working ovary probably looked at him and thought, This one. Well, biology was not destiny. The amount of damage somebody that beautiful could do to a woman like her was too much to contemplate. She took another drink to cushion the thought, and said, “He’s pretty.”

  “No,” Liza said. “That’s the point. He’s not pretty. David is pretty. That guy looks like an adult.”

  “Okay, he’s full of testosterone,” Min said.

  “No, that’s the guy on his right,” Liza said. “The one with the head like a bullet. I bet that one talks sports and slaps people on the back. The navy suit looks civilized with edge. Tell her, Bonnie.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bonnie said, her pixie face looking grim. “I know him.”

  “In the biblical sense?” Liza said.

  “No. He dated my cousin Wendy. But—”

  “Then he’s fair game,” Liza said.

  “—he’s a hit-and-run player,” Bonnie finished. “From what Wendy said, he dazzles whoever he’s with for a couple of months and then drops her and moves on. And she never sees it coming.”

  “The beast,” Liza said without heat. “You know, men are allowed to leave women they’re dating.”

  “Well, he makes them love him and then he leaves them,” Bonnie said. “That is beastly.”

  “Like David,” Min said, her instinctive distrust of the navy suit confirmed.

  Liza snorted. “Oh, like you ever loved David.”

  “I was trying to,” Min snapped.

  Liza shook her head. “Okay, none of this matters. All you want is a date to the wedding. If it takes the beast a couple of months to dump you, you’re covered. So just go over there—”

  “No.” Min turned her back on everybody to concentrate on the black and white posters over the bar: Paul Newman shooting pool in The Hustler, Marlon Brando throwing dice in Guys and Dolls, W. C. Fields scowling over his cards in My Little Chickadee. Where were all the women gamblers? It wasn’t as if being a woman wasn’t a huge risk all by itself. Twenty-eight percent of female homicide victims were killed by husbands or lovers.