Sex, Lies, and Online Dating (7 page)

“How was it?” Adele asked as she reached for a pitcher of blue margaritas in the center of the table.

Lucy bit her bottom lip, but the corners of her mouth turned up anyway. “Amazing.” She looked across her shoulder at Clare’s smile. Out of the three of them, Clare would be the only one to give her wholesale support. Clare truly did believe in what she wrote for a living. In romance and soul mates and happily ever after. Clare was also the most delusional when it came to men.

“How long have you known this Quinn guy?” Maddie wanted to know. “A week?”

“A little over a week. Tonight will be our third date,” Lucy answered with a stretch of the truth. If she counted the first time they’d met at Starbucks. Which she really didn’t. Nor had she considered the drink they’d had together a real date, until he’d kissed her. The kiss had been
very
real.

Adele poured margarita into her glass and set the pitcher back in the center of the table. “And you let him kiss you on your first date? That’s not like you.”

Let.
Once his mouth had touched hers, there’d been no thought of letting. Just doing.

“You have to be careful, Lucy,” Maddie said as if she were her mother when, in fact, Maddie was only a year older than Lucy.

“He’s just a nice normal guy. He’s a plumber and owns his own business.”

“I think you should go for it.” Clare paused to take a drink of her own blue margarita, then added, “I know you all don’t believe in it, but there is such a thing as love at first sight. It happens all the time.”

Lucy smiled to herself. Or lust at first kiss, at any rate.

A frown puckered Adele’s brow. “I don’t know, Lucy. I dated a plumber once. He was weird.”

“Where did you meet him?” Lucy asked to take the attention off herself.

“At The Society for Creative Anachronism.” Adele shrugged, then dug into her fajita salad.

Maddie’s fork paused on the edge of her plate. “You’re shitting me.”

Adele shook her head. “No. I was writing my medieval time travel and I needed to do some research. They meet in that park off Fort, a few blocks from my house, to sword fight and all that. So I decided to watch and ask questions.”

“Was your boyfriend Sir Lancelot?” Maddie asked.

“No.” Lucy nudged Clare in the arm with her elbow. “Isn’t it Sir Lance of Lotta Love?”

Clare smiled, her blue eyes alight with humor. “It’s Sir Steely Lance of Love.”

“Funny.” One corner of Adele’s mouth turned up as she tried to look offended. “He was Sir Richard the Resplendent.”

“Not to repeat, Maddie,” Lucy said as she reached for her margarita, “but you’re shitting me. Right?”

Adele shook her head. “No. His real name was Dexter Potter. And he looked
good
in a pair of tights. Large codpiece, if you get my meaning.”

“Oh.”

“Well then.”

Maddie picked at her chicken burrito and pushed the tortilla to the side with the rice. “Are we talking ‘come to momma,’ big? Or ‘I ain’t birthing no babies,’ big?” Maddie held up one finger. “Because there is a difference, ladies. More than nine inches is—”

“Gee, Maddie,” Clare interrupted as she glanced about. “Time and place.”

“What? No one can hear me.”

Lucy laughed and changed the subject again. “Are you still doing Atkins?” she asked Maddie.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “And it’s a bitch. I’m getting really tired of eating steak with a side of pork chops and a pound of butter for dessert.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy.” Adele reached for the pepper and came close to dipping one large breast into her salad. “What does Mr. hardluvnman look like?” she asked Lucy.

Lucy cut into her chicken chimichanga. “He’s tall, dark, and very good looking.” And he could kiss all rational thought right out of her head. “He likes to bird hunt with his dog, and he watches
Cold Case Files.
His family lives here in town, and his father died a few years ago.” He could put sex into his voice and take her breath away. “His wife died last year, and he’s lonely.”

“Uh-oh.” Adele replaced the pepper and sat back.

“What uh-oh?” Lucy asked, although she knew the answer.

“You’re going to try and rescue him just like all the others.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You always say that,” Clare reminded her. “And you always get your heart broken.” She cut into her enchilada and shook her head. “If you get involved with him, you make sure he treats you right. Like Lonny. He’s the love of my life.”

While Clare looked down at her lunch, the other three gave each other meaningful glances. Clare’s boyfriend, Lonny, was a nice guy, and he did treat her well. He remembered birthdays and holidays and wasn’t jealous or possessive. He would have been the perfect boyfriend if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was gay. Everyone knew it. Everyone, it seemed, but Clare. Either she wasn’t as smart as all of her degrees suggested, or she was in deep denial. Lucy and the others tended to believe the latter. Clare was a great person and a wonderful friend, but it was like she had a force field in front of her face and anything unpleasant bounced off. They were all secretly afraid of what might happen when she found out “the love of her life” was out loving men at the Balcony Bar behind her back.

“You’re all wrong. I’m not attracted to Quinn because I feel sorry for him. Or because he needs to be rescued. I’m attracted to him because…” She thought of his intense brown eyes and long lashes. His square jaw covered in five o’clock shadow and the sensual curve of his mouth. “Because when he looks at me, he’s looking at
me.
When he asks me about my life, I feel like he really wants to know. That he’s not asking just so he can spend the rest of the time talking about himself. When I’m with him, he makes me feel like he’s really into me.” She took a bite of her lunch and looked at the stunned faces of her friends. “What?”

“You sound like you’re falling for him,” Maddie pointed out.

“Yep,” Adele added.

Clare nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“No, it doesn’t. I have a book to write. I don’t have time to squander on a man.” Lucy reached for her drink. “And besides, I don’t know him well enough to be falling for him. Half the time I don’t know whether to be flattered by his attention or scared.”

A crease appeared between Maddie’s dark brows. “Why are you scared? Is he crazy? What did he do?”

“Nothing. Maybe scared is too strong a word.” Lucy paused and tilted her head to one side. “Puzzled might be better.”

“Why are you puzzled?”

“Because he wants to see more of me. He wants to call me and take me out and—”

“He’s pursuing you,” Clare pointed out.

“I guess.” Lucy paused a moment to collect her thoughts. “It’s just that I’ve never met a man who wanted to see so much of me right off. You know how men are, they take you out and might call you again in a week or two or not at all. Quinn doesn’t seem to know that he’s supposed to keep me waiting by the phone, wondering why he isn’t asking me out again.”

“Wait.” Adele held up her fork. “You don’t want to go out with him because he seems really interested in you? Now
that’s
crazy.”

Lucy shrugged. Maybe, but there was something about him that she just couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that told her he was too good to be true, and in her experience, if something looked too good to be true, it
was
too good to be true. “Maybe I don’t trust the whole my-wife-died thing. I don’t get the impression that he’s lying about it—exactly. I can’t put my finger on it, but I just don’t trust him completely.” She shook her head and cut into her chimichanga. “Maybe I’m being overly suspicious.”

Adele looked up from her salad. “Get him to take you to his house. If he won’t take you, then it’s probably because his wife isn’t really dead.”

“Are you high? That’s how Richard Franko got five of his victims,” Maddie said, referring to the serial killer she’d written about several years ago. “He just invited them home and, like lambs to slaughter, they went. Lucy could be walking into a nightmare.”

It really was no wonder Maddie didn’t date. She viewed most men she met as psychopathic killers. “He’s not a killer. I just wonder if he’s too good to be real.”

“Adele might be on to something,” Clare said. “If you see his house, you can tell right away if he’s still married, or if he’s set up a shag pad. If he won’t take you home, he’s married. If he does take you home—”

“Then he’ll expect sex,” Maddie interrupted.

“True.” The thought of having sex with Quinn wasn’t unappealing, but so soon after meeting him was out of the question.

“If you’re going to be foolish enough to go to his house,” Maddie said, “be sure and take the personal protection I’ve given you.”

“I will,” Lucy promised. For Christmas the previous year, Maddie had given them all pepper spray, a personal alarm, a stun pen, and a pair of brass knuckles. “And I’ll make sure I have my car,” she added, even though she wasn’t even sure she would ever end up at Quinn’s house. “So I can leave before there’s any danger of getting naked.”

“I don’t know which is more dangerous,” Adele said. “You at some guy’s house you don’t know, or driving your car.”

“I’m an excellent driver,” Lucy insisted.

“That’s what Rain Man said,” Clare pointed out.

Lucy knew that her friends thought she was a bad driver, but she wasn’t. Sure, she drove a little fast and yelled things at other cars, but she hadn’t had a wreck in five years. “How’s everyone else’s love life?” she asked, purposely changing the subject once again.

“Nonexistent,” Maddie complained. “There aren’t any men in this town.”

Adele reached for her margarita. “I found an old face scrubby and a Crock-Pot on my porch yesterday.”

“Dwayne,” the other three said, all at the same time. A lean, mean, buff machine, Dwayne Larkin hung drywall for a living, and for two years Adele had thought he just might be Mr. Right. She’d overlooked his habit of picking his teeth at the table and smelling the armpits of his shirts before he put them on. Because he looked kind of like Viggo Mortensen, she’d put up with his beer-guzzling, belching ways, right up to the moment he’d told her she was getting a “fat ass.” No one used the f-word in reference to Adele’s ass, and she’d kicked him out of her life. Too bad he wouldn’t go completely. Every few weeks, Adele would find one or two of the things she’d left at his house sitting on her front porch. No note. No Dwayne. Just random stuff.

“Sheesh. He just doesn’t give up.”

“It’s like he’s holding your stuff hostage,” Lucy commented. “Doling it out like body parts or something.”

“It’s creepy.”

“How much more does he have?”

Adele shrugged. “I don’t know. We were together for two years, and I stayed at his house a lot. I’m sure there’s more.”

“If I hadn’t already killed Dwayne off in
Shot of Love,
” Lucy said, referring to her third book, “I’d kill him for you.”

“Thank you.”

The subject changed from men to writing, and by the time Lucy paid her portion of the check, they’d given Adele advice on what to do about her problem with Dwayne and helped Clare plot the next three chapters of her book.

Earlier, Lucy had printed out the first six chapters of her current manuscript for Maddie to look over for inconsistencies and mistakes. Maddie might be a little freaky and inappropriate sometimes, but she was brilliant and gave excellent critiques. In turn, Lucy helped Maddie out when she needed it.

Maddie followed Lucy to her car. “Promise you’ll be careful about this Quinn guy.”

Lucy handed over the manuscript pages and looked into Maddie’s brown eyes. Sometimes Lucy got the feeling that her friend was hiding from something. Something that she hid behind her brash personality. Something she never shared with anyone. Lucy wasn’t the sort of person to dig and pry, but if Maddie ever wanted to share, Lucy would be there to listen. “I promise,” she said. “And you promise not to be such a hard ass.”

Maddie said but didn’t promise a thing.

Lucy jumped in her car. On the drive home, her thoughts returned to Quinn. Maybe Adele and Clare were right. Maybe he was just a normal man pursuing her. Maybe she was looking for trouble.

She wove in and out of traffic and blew through a yellow light on Thirteenth and Fort, telling herself that it was safer to go through a yellow than to slam on her brakes. As she drove past the junior high she’d attended as a teenager, the rational part of her brain took the opportunity to ask her if normal men trolled for women in chat rooms. No, they didn’t. Not unless there was something wrong with them. Or…they were in it for sex.

After a few more turns, she pulled into the alley behind her house. When she was with Quinn, she didn’t get the perv or creep vibe. On the contrary. More like he had a smooth sexual energy vibe. One that she had to admit was a little mesmerizing.

She hit the garage door opener pinned to the visor and waited for the old wooden door to lift. A lot of the houses in Boise’s North End had been built around the turn of the twentieth century and still had carriage blocks by the curbs. But once Packards started rolling into town, Boiseans abandoned their carriages and built small detached garages in their backyards. Many of the single-car structures like Lucy’s were still in use because there wasn’t room for anything larger.