So. Troy glanced toward his laptop, sitting tantalizingly close on his coffee table. Too soon to recheck email? Probably. He sent the bone out again. And again. And again, until even Dylan’s fervor seemed to be waning. He let the dog keep his now-sodden toy, got himself a beer and crossed once more to his laptop. Many more times and he’d wear a path in the carpet.
Still nothing. Jeez, she could take days to answer or not answer at all. Troy needed to put it and her out of his mind.
But before he did that, he wanted one more peek at her profile picture, wearing that slinky blue dress, poised and confident, eyes snapping brilliantly. He’d gotten hard just looking at her, remembering that same flush on her face right before she surrendered to the orgasm tearing through her.
He clicked on her profile link, his body responding already to the memory. Why was he torturing himself like this?
The link didn’t go through. Profile not found.
He tried it again. Nothing.
On the Search page of Milwaukeedates.com, he typed in her handle, Foodie101.
Nothing. He hadn’t misspelled it, he was sure.
He tried the general search, the way he’d found her the first time. Man seeking women, twenty-three to thirty-three, within fifty miles of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. No smoking, pictures only. Go.
The list came up. He sorted it to put the most recent profiles first.
Nothing.
She was gone.
What the hell? If he didn’t still have his email to her Milwaukeedates nickname in his Sent folder, Troy would be wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing.
But there it was. And there she suddenly wasn’t, suspiciously soon after he contacted her. So she’d rather get off the site entirely than reply, saying she wasn’t interested? Cowardly. Contemptuous. If that was how she operated, Troy was lucky to have escaped.
His heart didn’t seem to want to join in the outrage. Instead, it was acting as if he’d suffered a wrenching loss.
Would he ever stop being such an incurable romantic? Falling for women based on attraction and the fantasy promise of something really special, then staying consumed by them until the relationship blew up in his face? How long before he got a sensible Pavlovian response to women: pain, instead of fascination and arousal?
The chime of his email made him jump to check, cursing his eagerness. No, not from Foodie101. From Marie Hewitt. He opened the note, read it quickly. Then again more slowly while his brain struggled to catch all the implications.
Dear Troy,
I know this will seem a bizarre note. No, a really bizarre note. Maybe you know I already had a hand in setting up Justin and Candy, as well as our friend Kim and her fiancé, Nathan. My next project is to match up another member of Women in Power, Darcy Clark, owner of Gladiolas Restaurant. I just spoke with Darcy, and your name came up—I put two and two together and realized you’d met at Esmee last Wednesday.
This is way beyond the bounds of anything I should be doing in my professional capacity so take this communication as information shared between friends, and forget I’m the owner of Milwaukeedates.com.
Darcy is a wonderful woman, and will make the right man very happy someday. But she needs a little push in the romance direction in order to get past some fears. After speaking with her this evening, I’m convinced you’re the man to do that pushing, and that she will eventually respond. It may take some patience in the meantime, but if you are really interested, I think you’ll find she’s worth the work it takes to win her.
Let me know if you want to talk further about this. Otherwise, put me down in the busybody column and hit Delete.
All the best,
Marie
Troy read the email a third time, adrenaline rising. Foodie101, his one-night lover, was Darcy Clark, the friend Candy and Kim talked about once in a while as strong, beautiful and talented, a woman who’d traded men for life in the kitchen. Even Justin had referred to her as a remarkable person, not particularly warmly, but then if she was a man-avoider, she probably hadn’t fallen at his feet. Darcy Clark. Darcy. He tried the name out a few more times.
All this time, Troy and his mystery woman had been connected through friends. Now that he thought about it, they’d missed meeting a few times already. If Darcy had been able to make Justin’s sick-of-winter party back in February or if Troy had been able to make Kim’s thirtieth birthday party in April, they would have met. If Justin had stayed even fifteen minutes longer at Esmee the other night, he would have recognized Darcy when she walked in.