Page 55 of About Last Night

"The most sacred of vows," he noted dryly, but he was wavering.

"Manny, I'm not going to marry Steve Larsen."

His eyes bulged even wider.

"Besides the fact that I don't have enough money to pay for the ring, it's an heirloom. Irreplaceable." She adopted a pleading expression. "Please help me."

At last he sighed. "Okay, but let me do all the talking."

Hope soared in her chest. "You won't regret it."

He shot her a disbelieving look, but a half hour and a half-dozen lies later, they slipped out the side entrance. Flashlight in hand, her feet swimming in a pair of Derek's canvas lace-up tennis shoes, they made their way to the area beneath the balcony—easy to locate since her yellow flip-flop fairly glowed in the moonlight.

"What the heck were you doing up there?" Manny asked, holding up the sandal.

Instead of answering, she snatched the shoe.

"Oh," he said, the solitary word saying it all.

"We' re looking for aring," she reminded him, shining her flashlight over the grass.

"Is this yours, too?" He held up the half-empty bottle of water.

She nodded.

A few minutes later he asked, "And this?" The napkin she'd wrapped around Derek's hand waved in the breeze. The honey butter smelled pungent and had left some odd-looking stains on the cloth.

She gave him a tight smile, then took the napkin from him and tucked it in the waistband of her—make thatDerek's—sweatpants.

He harrumphed. "I'm not touching anything else I find unless it's fourteen-carat gold."

"The ring is platinum," she corrected him.

He let out an impressive, sad whistle. "Well, we'd better split up and cover this area systematically. I'll start here and go to the tree, then back to the wall."

With her heart thumping and her fingers crossed, Janine started crisscrossing the area opposite Manny. Taking baby steps in her huge shoes, she stared at the beam of light until her eyeballs felt raw. After only a short while, her neck and shoulders ached. "Manny, have you found it?"

"Yeah, Janine, I found the ring ten minutes ago, but I just like walking humped over in the dark."

She smiled ruefully. A paper clip, then a foil candy wrapper raised and dashed her hopes. After an hour, she was blinking back tears. Manny came over to stand next to her, rubbing the back of his neck. "Nothing. Are you sure it fell off your finger when you were on the balcony?"

"I think it did."

He pursed his lips. "Youthinkit did? I have two mosquito welts on my face the size of Stone Mountain, and youthinkit did?"

"Well, we couldn't find it in the room, so I just assumed... I mean, we dropped so many things—"

He held up one hand. "I get the picture." Manny shook his head, and chuckled. "Wow, when you mess things up, you mess them up in a big way."

"Well, it's not like I lost the ring on purpose."

"Maybe not consciously."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

"Something," she prompted.

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