Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

Which Lucy supposed could be true but, she reminded herself, probably wasn’t. Not that it mattered. After tonight, she would never see this hunk of hardluvnman again. Which was kind of too bad, since he was the best- looking thing she’d seen outside of a men’s magazine.

“I’m Quinn.” He held his hand toward her, and the sides of his jacket fell open across his chest to reveal hard pecs and abs of steel all wrapped up in his tight T-shirt. The kind of pecs and abs that begged the question: Why did a guy like him have to go online to find a date? It didn’t take her long to come up with the answer. Inside that hard body, there was something wrong with him. Had to be.

Lucy took his hand, and his warm palm pressed into hers. Calloused. Strong. The kind that actually might belong to a plumber. She took her hand back and wrapped it around her cup. “Aren’t you going to get a coffee?”

“I’m good.” As he sat, his dark scrutiny touched her face, her hair, and cheeks, then slid to her mouth. His voice dropped a little lower when he asked, “Are you good?”

Was she good? She blinked several times and asked, “At what?”

He chuckled. “Do you need another coffee?”

“Oh. No. Thanks.” She placed her palms flat on the table and slid them into her lap. “I’ve had too much caffeine.” Obviously. She wasn’t the sort of woman to get all rattled over a good-looking man. Usually. “That’s the problem with these late-night coffee meetings.”

“How many of these dates have you been on?”

Dates? “Enough.” She tilted her head to the side and concentrated on finding a flaw. Just because she was a bit rattled didn’t mean she’d forgotten what this meeting was all about. “How many have you been on?”

“Not many. It’s been a long time since I dated, and this whole Internet, chat room, dating stuff is new to me.”

There it was. He trolled the chat rooms. She’d been right. There was something wrong with him. Something that hid behind those dark eyes and long black lashes and smooth, masculine voice. “I read in your bio that your wife died. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” He took off his hat and combed his fingers through the thick black strands of his hair. The ends curled up around his knuckles. “She died six months ago.”

Which seemed a relatively short time to seek a replacement, Lucy thought. It could mean he was lonely. Or a callous bastard. “How’d she die?”

“Car accident. It was our tenth wedding anniversary and she’d run to the store for a bottle of champagne. I waited at home with two dozen daisies, but she never returned.”

Daisies? Was he a cheap callous bastard?

He laughed uncomfortably and pulled his hat back on his head. “Daisies were her favorite flowers.”

Okay, that made her feel a little mean. It was possible he was telling the truth. Or it was just as possible he was a scammer. A scammer with a body that scrambled a sensible woman’s brain. “You must miss her terribly.”

“More than I ever thought possible. She was everything to me.” He looked down at the table, and she wasn’t able to see the emotion in his dark eyes for the brim of his hat. “Sometimes the pain is so bad…” He paused for several heartbeats before he continued, “Sometimes it’s hard to breathe.”

Oh my God, Lucy thought. She should write this down for Clare. Clare wrote romance novels, and this was heartbreaking stuff. Lucy had to admit that it was even working on her-a hard-core romance cynic.

“She had soft red hair, and it used to fan out across her pillow while she slept. Sometimes I stayed awake just to watch her dream.”

Lucy pulled her brows together as Aerosmith played in her head. That was either the loveliest thing she’d ever heard, or he was poaching song lyrics. If the latter was the case, he was really cheesy. “What was her name?”

“Millie. We started dating our senior year in high school.”

“You were high school sweethearts?”

“Yeah, but we broke up briefly once because I was a dumb ass.” He shrugged his big shoulders, but he didn’t look up. “I was twenty-three and thought I needed to date other women. That lasted a month before I realized Millie was everything I would ever want in a woman.” He cleared his throat and said as if he were having a difficult time getting the words out, “She was the other half of my soul.”

Again, that was either really romantic or really cheesy. Lucy leaned toward cheesy because there had to be something wrong with a guy who was physical perfection yet trolled the chat rooms for a date. Some hidden personality disorder. “Perhaps it’s too soon for you to date?”

“No.” He looked up, and his brown eyes met hers. “I have to try and get on with my life. I’m not looking to replace my wife, but some nights I just need to get out of the house. Sometimes sitting at home watching Cold Case Files with just a dog for company gets old.”

He watched Cold Case Files? Cold Case Files was her favorite show, and if she was forced to miss an episode, she taped it. “Cold Case Files on CBS or A &E?”

“A &E. I like the real cases.”

“Me too! Did you see it last night?”

“Where they discovered the torso in a gym bag?” He sat back, and the shoulder seams in his jacket popped as he folded his arms across his chest. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“They caught some lucky breaks with that one.”

Quinn slid down a little in his chair and brought his gaze level with hers. “Science finally caught up with the criminal.”

“That’s true. Makes you wonder how anyone can get away with anything these days.” Lucy took a sip of her coffee and gave up on trying to pick him apart to discover his flaws. Since she would never see him again, it didn’t matter really. “But then people do get away with crime every day. They just have to be smart about it.”

His thick brows lowered in thought. “Do you think there’s such a thing as the perfect crime?”

Did she? In her books, the mystery was always solved by the last page; the perpetrators brought to justice. But was that true in life? “I think if you’re smart and do a little research, you could commit the perfect crime. And even if it’s not so perfect, you could still get away with it.”

He looked at her for several heartbeats, then asked, “How’s that?”

“Most criminals are caught because they have to talk about what they’ve done. Except serial killers. Serial killers get away with their crimes because they don’t usually talk about what they’ve done.”

“Why do you think?” he asked.

“Probably because they don’t have a conscience. Most people with a conscience tell someone about their crime. It’s like a sneeze. It’s got to come out to relieve the pressure.”

“You don’t think serial killers need to relieve the pressure?”

“Sure. But for them, the killing relieves the pressure.” Talking crime was one of her favorite pastimes. When she got together with her friends and they talked about writing, it was more about the process. Each wrote in a different genre, so they didn’t really get into specifics. Well, except for Maddie. She’d get into the gruesome specifics, usually over lunch, and they’d all have to tell her to stop. It was kinda nice talking murder with someone who didn’t look like he was going to get excited about liver temperature.

“Did you catch the show the other night about that woman who poisoned five husbands?” Quinn asked.

“Bonnie Sweet? Yeah, I saw it.” Bonnie had been the inspiration for Lucy’s fourth book, Tea By Proxy. Like Lucy’s murdering protagonist, Bonnie had boiled lilies of the valley into a toxic tea and served it in Wedgwood. “That woman just loved to garden.” The fact that Lucy was having this conversation on a coffee date might seem strange, but it beat the hell out of listening to him bitch about an ex, talk about his motorcycle, or relive his hunting trip to Alaska. She was never going to see Quinn after she left Starbucks, so what did it matter what they discussed? “You gotta give Bonnie points for style.”

Quinn gazed into her eyes as if he were trying to determine whether she was a psycho nutcase or spent too much time alone with her television. The truth was that she was a writer with page upon page of research in her head. Everything from lace to lividity.

He straightened and leaned forward to place his arms on the table. “It takes one coldhearted woman to slowly