“His French is mind-blowing,” she answered Emily frankly with a long drawn-out sigh of pleasure.

“Oh. Wow. Has he called you yet? Have you infected his every waking thought?”

“He hasn’t called me. I…I didn’t give him my number.”

“You didn’t give him your number? Why not? Did he have bad body odor? Crooked teeth? They didn’t look crooked in his photo. Did he push too hard for more than just a kiss?”

“No. He was perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

“Then why didn’t you give him your number?” Emily whined.

“Because he gave me his. He left it in my hands whether I would call him or not.”

“Oh. Well, that’s very gentlemanly of him. It must be a Portuguese thing. And are you going to call him?”

“Yes,” Renee said with a secret smile for herself. “I’m going to call him.”

“Woohoo!” Emily whooped on the other end of the phone “Finally! Your love life has been nonexistent for way too long. It wasn’t just a dry spell, it was a frickin’ desert!”

“Emily!” Renee scolded with a laugh.

“So is he tall? He looked tall. Tall, dark, and handsome.”

“Yes, he is all of those. And well-mannered and well-spoken. If not for his accent you wouldn’t know he hadn’t been born here. It’s very faint though. Just enough of one to make him seem exotic.”

“Oh, he sounds divine!” Emily said with a longing sigh.

“Well…he is divine,” Renee said with another smile. She loved Emily and her unbridled enthusiasm. She always reminded Renee to keep having fun, no matter what.

“So when are you going to call him?” Emily asked.

“Oh. I don’t know. When can I call him that won’t seem too eager?”

“Nonsense. No one worries about that anymore. And anyway you don’t want to wait too long or he’ll think you aren’t interested.”

“Ugh. This is the part I hate about dating. The part where people play games.”

“It’s not playing a game. Not if you don’t want it to be. Just pick up the phone sometime this afternoon and thank him for taking you out last night. Then you ask him out again. Simple. It’s the ABC’s of dating.”

“You make it sound so simple, Em. But it’s actually quite complicated. I mean…there’s got to be something wrong with him. Something I’m not seeing.”

“Something you’ll only discover once you’ve dated him a few times,” Emily said. “In the meantime, just enjoy yourself.”

“I suppose you are right. No sense looking for trouble. I’ll just go about my normal life and see what happens.”

“See? I give good advice sometimes.”

“All the time,” Renee said fondly. “Anyway, it was just a meal. I barely had any makeup on so I looked like a train wreck. I’m sure I didn’t make a very good impression on him. He probably thinks I talk too much about myself.”

“Did he ask you about yourself?”

“Well, yes. But—”

“Then stop worrying. It’s a first date. The whole point is that you get to know each other and you can’t do that without talking about yourself. I’m sure he said a lot about himself too.”

Renee frowned slightly. Come to think about it, he hadn’t had all that much to say about himself. He had kept steering the conversation to her. If they saw each other again, she would see to it that she got to know him better too.

“Next time we’ll talk more about him than me,” Renee said to Emily.

“Ah! So there is going to be a next time! Excellent!”

“Yes, there is,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ll call him this afternoon.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good! Keep up the good work. I look forward to meeting him.”

“Oh, Em! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ll have to see him quite a few times before I’m brave enough to expose him to you!”

Emily laughed uproariously. “This is so very true! Well, I have faith. I have a good feeling about this one.”

“Calm down. It was just one date and it only lasted an hour or so. It was hardly a date at all.”

“Didn’t he kiss you?”

“Well…yes.”

“Then it was a date.” Emily chuckled. “And just how good of a kiss was it?”

“It was…”

“Divine” was the word that popped into her mind. And mystifying because she could barely remember anything that happened afterward. Should she be worried about that? Had something nefarious occurred that she simply couldn’t recall?

No. She distinctly remembered falling into her bed and going to sleep. So what if she hadn’t undressed. She’d just been really tired was all. That must be it.

No. She’d had a very nice time last night, and he had been a very nice guy. True, she didn’t know him well enough to know if that was going to stick, but she was willing to find out.

“Em, I need a shower. We can talk some more later. Some of us have to brave this weather in order to get to work.”

Renee glanced out the window and saw the world was caked in white and that it was still snowing. The roads looked terrible from where she was standing.

“Be careful out there,” Emily said with concern.

“I always am. Mwah! Later!” Renee hung up in tandem with Emily. She and Emily were two very different people, but they made good friends.

As she stripped and stepped into the shower she was smiling. The date she’d had last night might not have been half so much fun if it wasn’t for Emily. As Renee washed her hair she gave a thought to all the men and relationships she had shared with Emily. The men had changed, but Em had always stayed steadfast. She truly was her best friend and she didn’t know what she would do without her.

Renee dressed for work, fighting through a sense of lethargy that she couldn’t explain. If she weren’t required to make her shift at the precinct, she would have liked to have stayed home, curled under the covers with a good book and a cup of hot coffee. She settled for the coffee and went out into the still heavily falling snow. She woke up her smartphone and got the lowdown on the winter storm. They were expecting it to last another day. She had every intention of remaining inside the precinct until it was all over and a semblance of cleanup had been done, but odds were that wasn’t going to last. Murder didn’t stop for bad weather.