Shrugging, she said, "Go for it." After the third burger and fries, Cade felt as if he'd make it through the night without quite starving. Beth had occasionally stared at him as he'd put away the third basket of food, but she'd only remarked that he might want to see a doctor sometime about his appetite. It occurred to Cade that he'd made no eliminations of solid or liquid waste since he'd nibbled on Mandi. That pretty much had to mean that anything he ate or drank was being used fairly completely by the conversion process. He wondered if he could take that to mean that any mass would do in a pinch. If so, a phone book would do as well as a steak dinner as a midnight snack. He put that thought on the shelf as he realized water would do, too, and nobody'd miss any amount of water he could possibly drink. "Beth," he said, "How come you were free to make me take you to dinner tonight?" "Make you? I didn't make you... Oh. You want to know why I don't have a boyfriend, huh?" "Yup. May I speak freely?" "Uh... Okay, I guess so." Nodding, Cade said, "Okay, then, I'll run with it. Regardless what you may think of yourself, most men see you as a fine looking woman..." "You've decided that based on your opinion and what Tony said upstairs?" "No, and don't run yourself down around me, okay? He was right and you know it. Men glance at every woman, but they only really eyeball the best ones. You've got great legs and a fine figure and you don't even come close to qualifying as plain or ugly. So, unless you're a closet lesbian, why is there no man in your life?" Before she could answer, he raised a hand and added, "And if you are a lesbian, that's something I don't need to know about while we're both working for the government." Giving him an amused look, Beth asked, "If I were a lesbian, would that bother you?" Shaking his head, Cade said, "Not even a little bit. A couple of my friends back in Florida are lesbians and we get along just fine. They make stuff for my online store and use me as an escort now and then." Beth blinked at him and asked, "An escort?" "Yeah. One works for a company that throws those damned 'one big happy family' employee parties. We go as a group and I pretend to be her boyfriend." With a chuckle, Beth said, "That must be interesting." Shrugging, Cade said, "We usually make an appearance, circulate a bit so she can say she attended, and leave unless there's a reason not to. We also babysit each others' cats." "You have cats?" "Yup. Three." "I thought men preferred dogs." "Not this one. Don't like sports, either, if that's where you're going next." She nodded and said, "Yeah. I was. No football, huh?" "Nope. No team sports. Boring. Remember how you said I could speak freely?" Beth's reply sounded rather cautious as she said, "Yes." "How freely?" Still sounding cautious, she said, "'Freely' means freely."