Rachel Gibson
Sex, Lies, And Online Dating
The first book in the Sex, Lies, and Online Dating series, 2006
Prologue
From: Lucy@mysterious.com
To: clare@finis.com; adele@biteme.com;
maddie@crimepays.com
Subject: singles.com date
Hey all,
Tonight is my last Internet coffee date. His name is hardluvnman. I pray he has his teeth.
Wish me luck,
Lucy
From: clare@finis.com
To: Lucy@mysterious.com; adele@biteme.com; maddie@crimepays.com
Lucy,
Good luck with your research. Hopefully he has his own teeth and own hair and remembers to brush both.
Clare
From: adele@biteme.com
To: Lucy@mysterious.com; clare@finis.com; maddie@crimepays.com
Looking forward to hearing all about Lucy’s hardluvnman.
Adele
P.S. What kind of guy calls himself hardluvnman? Is he compensating for something?
From: maddie@crimepays.com
To: adele@biteme.com; Lucy@mysterious.com; clare@finis.com
Lucy,
For God’s sakes don’t do it. Serial killers lurk on those online dating sites. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel for them. Next thing you know, some guy is wearing your head for a hat.
Love,
Maddie
Chapter 1
Lucy Rothschild pulled her BMW into the parking slot closest to the Starbucks entrance and shoved the vehicle into park. Rain pounded the hood of her car and bounced off the asphalt as she turned off the Beemer. Her gaze slid to the front of the strip mall and sought the green-and-white Starbucks sign next to the golden glare of Blockbuster Video. Light from within the coffee shop poured out onto the wet sidewalk, while the raindrops slipping down Lucy’s window smeared vivid color and inky shadows like an abstract painting.
Lucy grabbed her umbrella from the passenger seat and opened her car door. It wasn’t as if she was going to set up a second meeting with hardluvnman or was even going to leave Starbucks with him. It wasn’t even as if she was taking this coffee date any more seriously than she’d taken the others she’d had during the past few months.
She hit the button on her umbrella with her thumb, and the red canopy opened as she stepped from the car. Like the other “dates,” tonight was about work. She had her small notepad and pen in her pocket, right next to her little can of mace. She’d brought the pen and paper in case she needed to write down interesting tidbits about hardluvnman after he left. She’d brought the mace in case he wanted to wear her head for a hat.
Damn that Maddie.
Lucy paused briefly to shut the door behind her, then moved across the parking lot, dodging puddles on her way. Unless hardluvnman was different, she wouldn’t even use the pen and paper. Unless he was different from the others, while they waited in line for coffee he’d give her the slow up and down, as if she were an Airedale at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. If she passed inspection, he’d pay for her triple grande skinny latte (hold the whip, please), ask her what she did for a living (although she’d clearly lied on her bio, stating she was a nurse), then proceed to talk about himself (what a great guy he was) and his former wife/girlfriend (and what a dumb bee-yatch she was). If Lucy didn’t pass the slow up and down, she’d pay for her own coffee. Which had only happened to her once.
Bigdaddy182 had been a real cheap bastard with a silver tooth and a neck-hair ponytail. He’d taken one look at her and said, “You’re skinny,” as if that had been a bigger abomination than his beer belly. She’d bought her own coffee, then proceeded to listen to him talk about himself for the next hour. While he’d rambled on about his run to Sturgis and his bitch of an ex-wife, Lucy had thought about different ways to kill him off. Bad, heinous ways. In the end, she’d known she’d have to stick to her female serial killer’s MO, but erotic asphyxiation had seemed too good a way for him to die.
Two steps from the sidewalk, Lucy planted her foot in a puddle. She’d almost made it. Cold water rushed over the toe of her black ankle boot and splashed the bottom of her black jeans.
