The Things We Do for Love by Margot Early Page B

was pleased with the choice. It was the kind of restaurant where you ordered at the counter, which made it seem less like a date.
    Because she didn’t want a date with someone else’s fiancé.
    No, she wanted Jonathan Hale to break his engagement to Angie Workman.
    Is that what you really want, Mary Anne? Just twenty-four hours earlier the answer would have been… of course.
    But suddenly, everything in her life seemed to be unfolding in ways she hadn’t expected.
    She’d just stepped back inside when the phone rang. She snatched it up to hear Graham ask if she’d received the envelope.
    “Yes. Thanks.”
    “And I’m hoping you’ll join me for dinner Saturday night at Rick’s. We can talk about how the show went and have some fun, too.”
    “Oh,” Mary Anne stammered. This wasn’t a dinner invitation shouted across the tarmac at the dump. This was an invitation issued in a respectful fashion. Which meant she should pull herself together and prove someone had raised her right. But what about Cameron? For a moment, she didn’t know what to say, as if she’d forgotten how to refuse dates. And she found herself blurting, “Thank you. I’d enjoy that.”
    “Great. Shall I make a reservation for seven?”
    “Yes. Sure. Thank you,” she repeated. Oh, God, what am I going to tell Cameron? Why did I say yes?
    Mary Anne hadn’t spoken with Cameron since bumping into her at the recycling center. Had Cameron seen what had happened there, noted the obviously nonplatonic attention Graham had been paying to Mary Anne?
    Mary Anne punched 4, which was her code for Cameron’s number. Her cousin would be at work but might pick up anyhow.
    “Hello?”
    “Hi, Cameron. It’s Mary Anne.” How am I going to tell her?
    “Hey. Has Graham gotten you to go out with him yet?”
    The straightforward question was entirely Cameron, and Mary Anne felt almost relieved. Almost. “Um. I’m supposed to have dinner with him after the show, Saturday. I don’t know why I said yes.” Forgive me! Forgive me!
    “How about, ‘Because he’s handsome and nice and intelligent and has the hots for me’?”
    “Cameron, I’m sorry. Jonathan asked me out to dinner tonight, and I’m all off-kilter and not thinking.”
    “Cousin,” Cameron said sternly, “your refusing to go out with Graham Corbett is not going to make him go out with me.”
    “And by the way,” Mary Anne said, although it wasn’t “by the way” at all, “how did Paul Cureux find out about the love potion?”
    Cameron explained about taking firewood to Clare and what Clare had said to her and what Paul had then surmised.
    “I guess there’s not much client confidentiality in the love-potion business,” Mary Anne said, feeling stung.
    “Well, Paul says that they’ve been trained from a young age to be discreet about anything to do with their mom’s clients, midwifery or otherwise.”
    “Obviously, that really took hold.”
    “Well, he only mentioned it to you,” Cameron said, using an argument she would have found completely inadequate in any other context.
    Mary Anne changed the subject. “Did you know Graham was a widower?”
    “I think I did,” Cameron said faintly, as if trying to remember.
    “Well, I didn’t.” Mary Anne was intrigued aboutGraham’s wife’s death. Did this mean she was interested in Graham? She couldn’t be interested in Graham. It was one thing to be on his show, go out with him once and report back to Cameron that he was as disappointing as she’d always known he would be. It was quite another to become attracted to him. “Do you know how she died?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
    “No clue. Why don’t you look on the Internet? See if there is anything there?”
    Good idea. When she’d moved in with Nanna and started working for the newspaper, Mary Anne had arranged wireless service, so that she could work from home. When she and Cameron had talked some more about Jonathan and his date with Mary Anne that