Sex, Lies, and Online Dating by Rachel Gibson Page A

Adele would find one or two of the things she’d left at his house sitting on her front porch. No note. No Dwayne. Just random stuff.
    “Sheesh. He just doesn’t give up.”
    “It’s like he’s holding your stuff hostage,” Lucy commented. “Doling it out like body parts or something.”
    “It’s creepy.”
    “How much more does he have?”
    Adele shrugged. “I don’t know. We were together for two years, and I stayed at his house a lot. I’m sure there’s more.”
    “If I hadn’t already killed Dwayne off in Shot of Love, ” Lucy said, referring to her third book, “I’d kill him for you.”
    “Thank you.”
    The subject changed from men to writing, and by the time Lucy paid her portion of the check, they’d given Adele advice on what to do about her problem with Dwayne and helped Clare plot the next three chapters of her book.
    Earlier, Lucy had printed out the first six chapters of her current manuscript for Maddie to look over for inconsistencies and mistakes. Maddie might be a little freaky and inappropriate sometimes, but she was brilliant and gave excellent critiques. In turn, Lucy helped Maddie out when she needed it.
    Maddie followed Lucy to her car. “Promise you’ll be careful about this Quinn guy.”
    Lucy handed over the manuscript pages and looked into Maddie’s brown eyes. Sometimes Lucy got the feeling that her friend was hiding from something. Something that she hid behind her brash personality. Something she never shared with anyone. Lucy wasn’t the sort of person to dig and pry, but if Maddie ever wanted to share, Lucy would be there to listen. “I promise,” she said. “And you promise not to be such a hard ass.”
    Maddie said but didn’t promise a thing.
    Lucy jumped in her car. On the drive home, her thoughts returned to Quinn. Maybe Adele and Clare were right. Maybe he was just a normal man pursuing her. Maybe she was looking for trouble.
    She wove in and out of traffic and blew through a yellow light on Thirteenth and Fort, telling herself that it was safer to go through a yellow than to slam on her brakes. As she drove past the junior high she’d attended as a teenager, the rational part of her brain took the opportunity to ask her if normal men trolled for women in chat rooms. No, they didn’t. Not unless there was something wrong with them. Or…they were in it for sex.
    After a few more turns, she pulled into the alley behind her house. When she was with Quinn, she didn’t get the perv or creep vibe. On the contrary. More like he had a smooth sexual energy vibe. One that she had to admit was a little mesmerizing.
    She hit the garage door opener pinned to the visor and waited for the old wooden door to lift. A lot of the houses in Boise’s North End had been built around the turn of the twentieth century and still had carriage blocks by the curbs. But once Packards started rolling into town, Boiseans abandoned their carriages and built small detached garages in their backyards. Many of the single-car structures like Lucy’s were still in use because there wasn’t room for anything larger.
    Lucy pulled the Beemer inside and shut the garage door. She entered the back of her house through the kitchen and tossed her purse on the tile counter. She looked out the window over the sink and into the neighbor’s backyard. Mrs. Riley was out back, pulling up plastic poinsettias and replacing them with bright tulips. Plastic, of course. She would repeat the process this coming summer and fall. Lucy had asked her once why she planted plastic flowers each season, and she had answered as if it had been the most logical thing in the world, “Why, because I like pretty things.” Which also explained why she’d painted her house bright yellow, blue, and green.
    As Lucy watched Mrs. Riley work in the yard, her thoughts returned to Quinn and her date with him that evening. She was looking forward to seeing him more than she wanted to admit. More than was wise, since she didn’t