“Tell me.”

“I’m thinking . . .” He was looking down at the ground, still putting the pieces together in his head. “I think . . . we need them distracted, yeah? And we want to make sure Will has a brilliant night.”

I nodded. “But it’s got to be more than booze. Those two have been drinking all night and somehow still seem to be functioning. I don’t want them blind or facedown in a gutter somewhere.”

“Obviously.” Max pulled out his phone and began scrolling through the contacts. I shifted from foot to foot and kept glancing over my shoulder, waiting for Henry to come out and drag me back by my collar to the table.

When I turned back to Max, he’d stopped on a number. “Who are you calling?”

“Mr. Johnny French,” he said.

“How do you know him, anyway? An old friend?”

Max laughed. “Not sure I’d call him a friend. Not sure he’d call anyone a friend, really. But he does owe me a few favors and as you’ve seen, caters to the type of crowd that might be helpful in our situation.”

“I’m afraid to see where this is going.”

“A little faith, mate. Will is a bit of a ladies’ man,” he said, smiling. “We’ll just . . . help him.”

“Help him?”

Max shrugged, meaningfully.

“You mean get him a hooker?” I practically shouted.

Max shushed me and glanced around. “A little louder perhaps? And who’d have thought you’d be such a prude, Ben? I’m a little surprised,” he said. “I’m not going to let him sleep with her. We just want a distraction. We’re getting him a distraction.”

“But—”

He held up a finger to silence me, and put the phone on speaker between us. It rang a few times before it was answered by a man with a deep, serious voice: Johnny French.

“What can I do for you, Max? Again,” he said.

“How are you this evening, Mr. French?” Max asked.

“Still fine.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you?”

A gravelly laugh filled the line. “Funny. I trust you found everything to your liking?”

Max smiled and I raised an eyebrow. It occurred to me that I really had no idea what Max had been up to in there. I knew it involved Sara, but now I was beginning to wonder if the details were a bit more . . . sordid than I’d originally thought.

“It was brilliant. Bloody brilliant. As usual, of course. You have one hell of a place there.”

“Good, glad to hear it. Now get to the point.”

“I’d like to call in a favor.”

“I assumed as much,” Johnny said flatly.

“The thing is that we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a predicament here, and need a little help getting out of it.”

“I’m listening.”

“We need a distraction. A decoy.”

“A distraction.”

“Yes. Sara is here, as you know. But so are our friends.”

“I see . . . And you’d like to ditch them.”

“Not exactly. We just want them . . . entertained. One friend in particular. We’d like him safe but maybe . . . occupied for a few hours.”

“So you can run off and be with your girls on Valentine’s Day.”

Max smiled. “Something like that.”

Silence filled the line and Max and I looked up at each other in question.

“Did he hang up?” I mouthed.

Max shrugged. “Still there, mate?” he asked.

“I’m here. And yeah, no problem. Pretty sure I have the perfect distraction in mind.”

“I don’t trust him,” I said on our way back to the restaurant.

“Stop worrying. Johnny is a man of his word, I assure you.”

“He didn’t exactly sound happy with you.”

Max waved me off. “He’s never going to be the guy to give me flowers and tell me I’m lovely.”

“He sounded like we were ass**les.”

“We are arseholes.”

He had a point. “So what about Henry?” I asked, stopping at the stairs just outside the restaurant.

“Do you think he’ll be a problem?”

“I think if I shoved a thousand bucks in his pocket I wouldn’t see him again until Tuesday morning.”

“Brilliant. So we have a nice dinner, wait for Johnny to send someone over, and then find our girls. If all goes well I won’t see your ugly mug until the morning, when we can start this weekend properly.”