Sex, Lies, and Online Dating Read Free

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