Rachel Gibson: Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

The front door swung open, and a man with thinning red hair stepped inside. Lucy recognized him immediately. His name was Mike, aka klondikemike. He’d been her first coffee date, and the first murder victim. He moved toward a blonde woman standing next to a display of mugs, and together they walked to the counter. Mike did the up-and-down thing with his eyes and paid for the two cups of coffee and a bag of chocolate-covered coffee beans. As the two made their way to a table a few feet from Lucy, Mike’s gaze met hers, then slid guiltily away. He hadn’t e-mailed her again after their date, but she could have told him not to worry. She had no interest in a guy who talked nonstop while popping coffee beans like they were cross tops, and whom she’d left with a plastic bag over his head in Chapter One.

She brushed the red lipstick on the lip of her cup and glanced about at the other tables. She was surprised the recent murders in Boise hadn’t slowed down the dating scene. Surprised but relieved, as it suited her own purposes.

In the past few months, three men had been suffocated in their own homes. She’d actually met one of the victims, Lawrence Craig, aka luvstick, at Moxie Java and was still a little freaked out about it.

The police weren’t releasing much information, other than saying that all three deaths had been due to suffocation. They weren’t saying what form of suffocation, only that the perpetrator was believed to be a woman. The newspaper hadn’t stated how or where the killer met her victims; Maddie had speculated that the woman probably met them in bars. Lucy figured she was probably right. The fact that Lucy was writing about erotic asphyxiation and men were being suffocated was a huge coincidence, but there were a lot of different ways to die of suffocation. As many as the human brain could conjure, and the chances of life imitating art were too huge to ponder. And besides, she refused to confuse real life with fiction and become as crazy as Maddie.

By the number of couples in Starbucks, men didn’t seem worried about meeting women in coffee bars. Probably because like Lucy, they’d met these women via dating sites and had been exchanging e-mails. And out of all the places to meet, Starbucks was safe.

Before Lucy had decided to online date in the name of research, she’d always thought online dating was…well, desperate somehow and more than a little lazy. While Lucy could certainly understand why women sought men online, she could not understand the reverse. Why would any reasonably attractive man, who had a job, his own neatly brushed teeth, and did not live with his mother have to search for a date online? Wasn’t picking up women in bars and restaurants or even in the vegetable aisle at Albertson’s in a man’s job description?

A month after her first online date, what she discovered was that the men online-like bigdaddy182 and klondikemike-expected her to pursue them. They also seemed to fall into two categories: those in want of killing, and those so boring she’d wanted to kill herself.

Oh, she was sure that out there somewhere were some great online guys. Nice men who just wanted to meet nice women and didn’t meet a lot in their everyday lives, great guys who didn’t hang out in bars or veggie aisles. She just hadn’t met any of them. In fact, she hadn’t met any great guys, online or otherwise, in a very long time. Her last boyfriend had been a charming alcoholic who’d been off the wagon more than he’d been on. The last time she’d had to bail him out of jail, she’d finally had to admit that her friends were right. She was an issues junkie with rescue fantasies. But not anymore. She was tired of trying to rescue assorted lame asses who didn’t appreciate her.

Lucy pushed back the sleeve of her jacket and looked at her watch. Ten after seven. Ten minutes late. She’d give hardluvnman another five, and then she was leaving.

She’d learned her lessons about dysfunctional men. She wanted a nice, normal guy who didn’t drink too much, wasn’t into extremes of any kind, and didn’t have mommy/ daddy issues. A man who wasn’t a compulsive liar or serial cheater. Who wasn’t emotionally retarded or physically repugnant. She didn’t think it was too much to ask that he have sufficient verbal skills, either. A mature man who knew that grunting an answer did not pass for conversation.

Lucy took a drink of her coffee as the door to Starbucks swung open. She glanced up from the bottom of her cup to the man filling up the doorway as if he’d been blown in from a “mad, bad and dangerous to know” convention. The bill of his red ball cap was pulled low on his forehead and cast a shadow over his eyes and nose. His tanned cheeks were flushed from the cold, and the ends of his black hair curled up like fish hooks around the edge of the hat. Rain soaked the wide shoulders of his black leather bomber’s jacket. The jacket’s zipper lay open, and Lucy’s gaze slid down a bright strip of white T-shirt to the worn waistband of faded Levi’s. As he stood there, his gaze moving from table to table, he shoved his fingers into the front pockets of the worn denim, his thumbs pointing to his button fly.

Mr. hardluvnman had finally arrived.

Like his photo on the Internet site, Lucy could not see him clearly, but she knew the second his gaze focused on her. She could feel it pinning her to her chair. She slowly lowered her cup as he pulled his hands from his pockets and moved toward her. He walked from his hips, all long and lean, with a purpose to each step. He navigated his way through chairs and coffee drinkers but kept his gaze on her until he stood across the small table.

The shadow of his cap rested just above the deep bow of his top lip. He raised a hand and slowly pushed up the brim of his cap with one finger. By degrees, the shadow slid up the bridge of his nose and past thick black brows. He looked down through eyes the color of a smoldering Colombian blend.

Lucy was a writer. She worked with words. She filled each of her books with a hundred thousand of them. But only two words came to mind. Holy crap! Not eloquent, but fitting.

“Are you Lucy?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. His voice was deep, testosterone rough. “My dog got into the garbage just as I was leaving, and I had to clean up after her.”

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.”