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when they broke for lunch, he saw her
walking away from him in the company of the three women he’d seen
her with all morning.
    As he watched them disappear outside, he
noticed Jack near the door wearing a rather grand shit-eating grin
as Michael came striding forward. “I told you I had a surprise,”
Jack said with a wink.
    “Yeah, that was a surprise, all right,”
Michael said with a sigh of resignation. “So how’d you do it?”
    Jack grinned. “Remember New York?”
    Dear God, how could he have forgotten it? It
had been his first glimpse of Leah in five years. “What I remember
is that your brother couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
    “And I remember you were awfully interested
in a certain laxative commercial. Imagine how surprised and
delighted I was when you won the Costa Rica gig and left me to sit
through three days of casting, only to find a gem of a laxative
girl among so many? It was the cherry on top of my sundae.”
    What were the odds? Seriously, what were the
odds?
    Jack laughed and gave him a good ol’ boy
clap on the back. “So . . . I was right. She does mean something to
you.”
    “No, no, it’s not that,” Michael said, and
instantly hated himself for trivializing her.
    But Jack had known him for
a long time and was on to him. “I know, I know, it’s never that ,” he joked. “Not
for the Extreme Bachelor. Not for our man about town. But Mikey,
whoever she is, she’s hot.”
    Michael smiled halfheartedly. “I know.”
    “That’s why I added a couple of your other
old flames to the list. You know, to make things interesting. I
just want you to have fun,” he said with a laugh.
    “Why, thanks, Jack. I
believe I owe you. And don’t forget that—I owe you, man.”
    “My pleasure,” Jack said.
    The sound of two women laughing caught their
attention. They turned to look, and Michael recognized one of them
as the production assistant he’d dated a couple of times.
    “Gotta run,” Jack said, already striding
toward the two women.
    Michael walked outside of the gym, where he
paused and stopped in the middle of the walk, his hands on his
hips.
    It had to be karma.
Marnie, Eli’s girlfriend, was always talking about karma. If they
signed a really great gig, she said it was karma. If they turned
down a gig, she said it was karma. If they ordered pizza in, she
said it was pizza karma. Okay, that was a little overboard, but
if this wasn’t
karma, then it sure was one hell of a coincidence.
    Granted, the guys were always trying to set
him up for a fall, to get back for their chief complaint that he
took all the women out of the available women pool. Okay, so he had
a reputation, but so what if he’d had a few flings? Variety was the
spice of life. And honestly, no one was more surprised than him
each time a woman would consent to go out with him. There was still
a nerdy little kid inside him, wishing Candace Flores would notice
him.
    “I hate going anywhere with you and that
romance-novel face,” Cooper had complained one night when they’d
gone clubbing and everyone had been rejected—except Michael.
Michael had met a young woman from Kansas who intrigued him and
gave him her number. “It ain’t right, man. Five women walk up, and
all five of ‘em are looking at you.”
    Michael had laughed, but Jack had agreed
with Cooper. “I don’t know what it is about you, Raney, but you
always leave us out in the cold,” Jack said. “Women flock to you
like flies to a dead cow.”
    “That’s such a touching image, Jacko—I
didn’t know how you truly felt,” Michael had responded with a
grin.
    “You know what I mean,” Jack had groused.
“You just need to get your own bar with your own little throne and
let them line up around the block. Coop and I will just hang out in
pool halls with the rest of the rejects until we die.”
    Michael had tried to tell these idiots more
than once that he found the whole idea of his appeal extremely
funny, but they didn’t want to hear