Archie was nervous, which Clio found adorable.

"What's wrong? You've met my dad already. You liked him! He liked you!" She jostled Archie's arm as they walked along Lexington Avenue.

"I wasn't screwing his daughter then," Archie replied tensely.

"Excuse me, but you're not screwing his daughter now," Clio responded with a laugh.

"I'm a lot closer now, though."

"Well, he doesn't know that, unless you've told him?" Clio questioned, leaning to look at his face.

"How stupid do I look?"

"You really want me to answer that?" Clio teased.

It was a brisk October day, and Clio looked beautiful to Archie in a yellow and orange dress with boots and a hat.

Archie was wearing black skinny jeans with a button down shirt and gray cardigan, looking very English somehow, which Clio found very fetching. Archie hoped he looked respectable, and worthy of escorting someone of Clio's class and caliber around New York City to her father.

"Hey aren't you Heath Spencer?" a girl asked Archie as they waited to cross at a red light.

"No, I get that a lot, though," Archie replied, doing a fair American accent.

"Wow, you look just like him, man," the girl responded.

"Sorry," Archie said as the light changed.

"I think Francie's coming, too," Clio mentioned as they continued to walk, holding hands.

"Doesn't she have school?"

"Some kind of testing that she doesn't have to do." Clio shrugged. "Oh, there they are!

"Dad! Francie!" She waved to her father and sister, who turned at the sound of her voice.

Even at nearly forty, Pete Santangelo cut an imposing figure. He was tall, with a mane of black hair that had just a glint of silver at the temple. Today he was wearing trousers as skinny as Archie's, along with Chelsea boots and a pea coat over a flannel shirt. He smiled at Clio, turning to include Archie as well.

And Francie, even though he'd seen her before, well, Francie was stunning. She was just wearing jeans and a sweater, but wow. Curly blonde hair fell halfway down her back, round blue eyes lit up as she waved back to her sister, and she filled her blue sweater and jeans perfectly. No wonder she was called "the body" at school. But, Archie noticed, she wore no make up, and really didn't seem to care about it at all.

"Well, bad news," Pete was saying as Archie and Clio joined them in front of the restaurant. "The place seems to have closed, permanently. However, I know another place about three blocks from here that serves pretty good pizza, shall we walk over?

"Oh, and even better news, your mother can join us, so let's just wait a minute for her and we can walk over together, okay?"

Everyone agreed, so they waited for Daisy, who showed up within a couple of minutes.

"Cara, there you are, and you look lovely, veramente," Pete declared.

"Thanks, Pete," Daisy said, smiling for her husband, and Archie realized that if Clio had grown up with Pete as her standard, it was a high bar indeed for any man to meet, though her mother was of course a beautiful woman.

Daisy was in a dark brown dress that hugged her curves with knee boots and black tights. As usual, her red hair foamed all over in all its glory. She certainly did not look like a mother of five in her late thirties.

The quintet turned to walk in the beautiful fall afternoon. New York was at its autumn best. The air wasn't humid, the colors were at their peak, and everyone was in a good mood with the coming of the holidays.

They continued walking with Clio, Francie and Daisy naturally walking together to catch up and gossip the way women were wont to do after they haven't seen each other for a couple of days, even if they lived in the same house.

They passed a construction crew, who, naturally, catcalled the beautiful women, calling out lewd remarks and whistling after them. They saw Archie and Pete and made some off-color comments about how of course such good-looking guys would score such hot women.

"Hey, watch your mouth," Archie shouted back, but Pete was over where the men were calling in three strides.

"Those women are my daughters and my wife," he said to the three men in question. "They are not meat, they are not things to be objectified or commented about in loud, rude, voices." Daisy, Clio and Francie were standing, looking at the men, unembarrassed, apparently used to what was happening.

"Now," Pete continued, "Do you find my daughters and my wife attractive?" The men were silent. "Do you?" he asked, his voice getting dangerously threatening.

The three men nodded.

"Would you like to tell them so?"

Again, the men were silent.

"Please, tell them," Pete encouraged.

"You are the most beautiful women we've seen here all day," one of the men said.

"All week," another man amended.

This remark made Clio smile.

"Thank you," Francie said.

"That's very nice of you to say," Daisy added.

"Your husband's a real lucky guy," the third man said. "I mean, I assume you're the wife, the other two look like teenagers."

"Yes, I'm the wife," Daisy said with a nod.

Pete, too, smiled.

"You see? Compliments like that, most women will appreciate," he said. "Not all, for sure, but it's so much nicer, don't you agree? If you feel you must say something, try being nice. And if you still give offense, apologize and stop, of course." He gestured to Clio, Francie, and Daisy. "But it makes me crazy to hear people say such things about my family, capite? And I'm Italian, we invented catcalling, you know?"

Whether they took his words to heart or not, the workers had the good grace to look abashed and contrite.

"We're sorry, ladies," they said, even going so far as to remove their hats.

"Thank you," they responded.

"Nicely handled, sir," Archie told Pete as they continued walking.

"I just can't stand it, you know? It was bad enough when it was just my wife, but when my girls started getting old enough for it to happen to them, I thought my head was going to blow up, oddio."

By now they were at the restaurant, so everyone went in as they continued talking about catcalling and how often it happened to women on the street.

"I must admit, I never really thought about it," Archie said as they put in their orders. "I don't think it was ever really an issue for my mum," he said with a laugh, " and I've never really walked a lot of places with my sister where it was likely to happen."

"Well, in New York it happens a lot," Daisy told him. "And when it started happening to the girls, they didn't know what to do, they were so upset. Although I do remember once when it happened to Clio, Francie went over and nearly tore the man's face off."

"No, really?" Archie looked over at Francie. "How old were you?"

"Ten," she answered with a smile. "I saw Clio's face, and how embarrassed and upset she was, and I was so mad, you know?"

"So what did you do? What did you say?"

"I walked up to him and I said, 'That girl you just whistled and yelled to? Well, she's my sister, and she's only thirteen, I want you to know. And if you did half the stuff you just said you wanted to do, you'd go to jail, mister, and you'd never get out. And do you know what they call people like you? CHOMOs, that's short for CHILD MOLESTER, I know that because I saw it on Law & Order: SVU, and you'd get butt raped every day, because they hate chomos in jail more than any other kind of criminal, so there!' or something like that."

By now everyone at the table was laughing, and Clio leaned over and gave her sister a kiss.

"My sister loves me very much," Clio declared.

"And well she should," Archie added.

"Francie can always defend others, even when she can't defend herself," Pete said fondly. "I don't know why, though. Mimma, why is that, hm?"

Francie shrugged. "I don't know, they seem to matter more, for some reason. Not that I don't matter," she added. "It just makes me more angry when it's someone else, whether it's an animal or a human."

Their food arrived then, and for a couple of minutes there was just the sound of cutlery clinking as everyone dug in to their meals. New York was a great place to be a vegetarian, Archie had found.

"So, Francie, are you thinking of law school, with your altruistic feelings for all living creatures?" Archie asked as he ate.

Francie beamed. "I am, as a matter of fact," she replied.

Her family smiled at her with pride. "I'm thinking of specializing in third world law for underrepresented minorities, you know, women and religious minorities in places like Afghanistan and Iran, Sierra-Leone, Niger, DRC, Somalia--"

Her family's smiles disappeared.

"Unclench, you guys, I have years of school ahead of me before I'm actually in harm's way," she said, looking around the table. "Besides, it's not like Clio wants to fix rich people's deviated septums on the Upper East Side, you know."

Pete and Daisy looked at their oldest daughter, who was staring at her younger sister, eyes narrowed.

"What's she talking about, Clio?" Daisy was asking. "I thought you wanted to go into pediatrics?"

"I do," she answered, setting her fork down. "Jesus, Francie Pants, you just can't keep your mouth zipped, ever, can you?"

Francie looked at her sister, blue eyes huge. "Was it a secret, Clio?"

"No, not a secret, exactly, it was just on a need to know basis, and mom and dad didn't exactly need to know yet, did they?"

She turned to her parents. "I want to specialize in surgeries for children in developing nations who can't afford prenatal care. Cleft palates, club feet, things that shouldn't matter, but are ruining their little lives because their parents don't have money."

Archie reached over and took her hand.

"You two make what I want to do sound so superficial and silly," he said, embarrassed.

"Why? What do you want to do?" Pete asked, taking a drink of his wine.

"I want to spay and neuter every feral animal on the planet," Archie admitted. "And put down every unwanted cat and dog, every suffering, starving stray."

"Not at all," Daisy said, grasping the arm that wasn't holding Clio's hand. "That's just as important as anything else that's been said at this table, and you won't find anyone here who disagrees with me."

Everyone was nodding.

"Pete got a lot of shit for making one of the wings of his Angel Charities the ASPCA, but it was important to us, and he wouldn't change it," Daisy said. "In fact, that's where I was before I came here."

Daisy's primary job over the years had become the running of Pete's charitable foundation, Angel Charities, and overseeing the dispensation of funds. It was the perfect job for her, and it made her very popular.

"I think that's a wonderful way to spend your life, Archie, and I admire you for it," Clio said, leaning over to plant a soft kiss on his mouth.

Archie suddenly felt like he'd hung the moon.

"So I guess all the subtle questions we were going to ask about Zeke Steiner are out the window," Daisy remarked drily. "Zeke's out and Archie's in?"

"Zeke was never in, Mom," Francie told her mother. "They've only ever been friends."

"Even when you were little? Even when he gave you the braccialetto?" Pete asked, remembering Clio's eleventh birthday.

Clio smiled, remembering the beautiful little bracelet with the butterflies on it. But she shook her head. "Even then," she said. "I mean, I may have had some sort of generalized crush, because he was the first boy to take an interest in me, the first boy to give me a present, but I never really felt anything for him."

"Well, the reverse isn't true, sadly for Zeke," Daisy said, thinking of the poor boy's face every time he looked at her daughter. He was in for some heartache for sure.

She looked at the young man sitting next to Clio now, with the dark brown hair pulled into the curly pony tail and the dark blue eyes. He was one handsome fellow, that was for sure, with as much charisma as Pete, and as much charm.

Welcome to Clio's life, Archie Spencer.