OUT-OF-TOWNER. After spending all his sixty years in NYC, Mario Capelli could spot a newcomer with one eye closed. But any fool could see that the redhead wearing a taxi-yellow sundress and pulling a flower-print suitcase hailed from somewhere other than New York. For one thing, she was smiling. New Yorkers didn’t smile while waiting for a cab, especially coming off the red-eye.

For another thing, she had all that color going on-yellow dress, blue-and-yellow purse, gaudy flowered suitcase. Mario counted the cabs in front of him and the people standing in front of the redhead. Unless he’d miscounted, she’d be his fare. Perfect. From the minute he’d seen that smile and that cloud of dark copper hair, he’d started thinking of Zach.

Mario didn’t believe in coincidences. He did believe in fate. For six months he’d wanted to find somebody for Zach, somebody who could save him from becoming a jaded corporate hack, somebody whose glass was not only half-full, but seriously overflowing. Mario thought he might be looking at her.

As he inched up to the head of the line, so did she. The more he studied her, the more he could see her with Zach. She was stacked, and Zach liked stacked women. It didn’t hurt that she had a pretty face, either. Mario even liked the way she stood so straight, with her shoulders back. Too many women slouched these days, trying to look like a magazine model or a bored superstar.

Her red hair was a bonus. Adrienne was blonde, and Mario didn’t want to introduce any echoes of Adrienne into the equation. Anyone who’d dump a guy like Zach for somebody with a bigger bank account wasn’t worth remembering, but Zach was sensitive enough to remember, and he might be off blondes for the time being.

Of course, Zach would object if he knew Mario was trying to fix him up. He would hate it, in point of fact. So Mario would have to be sneaky about the whole deal. He could do that. He hadn’t spent thirty-five years with the NYPD for nothing.