Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

by Rachel Gibson

  She gave him a look filled with contempt and scooted across the bed. It had taken her a month to find this guy. It would probably take her a month to find the next one too. But there would be others. There were always others. It was so easy. Some men would do anything if they thought it led to sex.

  She grabbed her panties off the floor. Men were so pathetic.

  Quinn straightened, and everything within him got real still. He stared at the screen and the blinking cursor. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  “Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room.

  Chapter 8

  Hugsnkisses: Seeks Hotlips…

  Lucy stood behind the pulpit in the community room of Barnes and Noble and turned to the next page of notes she’d prepared for the Women of Mystery meeting. Cynthia Pool, Barnes and Noble employee and Women of Mystery member, handed Lucy the iced coffee she’d ordered earlier.

  “Thank you,” Lucy said and took a sip.

  “I hope it isn’t too strong. I told them a triple shot, but I think they might have gotten it too strong.”

  Lucy looked into Cynthia’s light green eyes and smiled. She didn’t know Cynthia well, only that the woman was kind of fussy. “It’s perfect.”

  For the meeting, Lucy had decided to wear something bright and fun. She’d dressed in a cable-knit sweater the color of a tangerine, a black leather skirt, black hose, and spiky calf boots. She’d curled her hair, then pulled it up into a loose ponytail. The afternoon sunlight sliced through the windows to her left and created long rectangles on the carpet.

  With the exception of a few new faces, she’d met all these ladies before. She was well acquainted with them, and she knew they were a real mix of serious writers and dabblers. Their personalities ranged from down-to-earth normal to truly bizarre, but they all had one thing in common: They loved mystery novels. They knew the genre inside and out and had great fun talking about every aspect of it.

  For an hour, Lucy spoke about the importance of weaving a good, believable plot, then she opened the rest of the time up for questions. In the front row, a woman she didn’t recognize raised her hand. Lucy took a drink of her coffee and pointed to the lady.

  She stood, consulted her notes, then asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”

  Lucy groaned silently and lowered her cup. It was the question she was asked most often, and the one she could never truly answer. “I don’t know,” she answered as best she could. “A snippet of conversation enters my head, or I’ll get a flash of a scene, and I know that’s the next book. I have to figure out what it means, but I never know where it comes from. I just thank God it keeps coming. The day it doesn’t, I’m in trouble.”

  Next she pointed to an older woman whom she recognized from past meetings. “Yes,” the older woman began as she stood. “Do you have an agent? And do you recommend getting one?”

  Okay. That one is easy. “Yes I do, and yes I would.”

  A third woman stood. “In your talk, you mentioned the use of red herrings or false clues as important in order to keep the reader guessing. In the book I’m writing, I have one of the townspeople kill a dog. Everyone in town then thinks he must be the killer, and that’s what readers are led to believe also. But he isn’t. Would you say that’s a good red herring?”

  Lucy swallowed. The woman was serious and expected a serious answer. “Well, without reading your story and knowing the context in which the dog was killed, nor the mind-set of the townspeople, I’m not sure I can answer that for you. But I would say that you’re the writer, and if you feel it works, then I’m sure it does.” That answer seemed to satisfy the woman, and she sat down.

  The next woman to stand was Jan Bright, president of the Women of Mystery and also a Barnes and Noble employee. “When you talked to us last year, you mentioned that the next idea you had for a book involved erotic asphyxiation and Internet dating. Is that what you’re working on now?”

  Lucy hadn’t recalled talking about the book at a writers meeting, but she obviously had at some point. “Yes, that’s the book I’m working on right now.”

  “Can you tell us how it’s going?”

  Hmm. How did one describe bouts of muse-induced euphoria sandwiched between thoughts of ramming your head through the wall? “Great.” She smiled and raised her coffee. “I’ve killed off three men, and I’m about to kill a fourth.”

  The ladies laughed, and Lucy glanced up from the group seated in front of her to the store beyond. Like a magnet, her gaze was immediately drawn to a tall man leaning one hip into the “local interest” book rack a few feet beyond the last row of chairs. He had dark hair, and, like the first time she’d met him, he pinned her with his intense brown eyes. He wore a black long-sleeved Moosejaw T-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. One corner of his mouth slid up, and her heart pinched and swelled at the same time. Quinn was the last person she’d expected to see at the Women of Mystery meeting-although technically he wasn’t standing close enough to be considered in the meeting.

  Lucy bit her lip to keep from smiling and answered the next question.

  “How much money do you make?” someone she didn’t recognize asked.

  “Enough to live on, but not as much as I deserve.” She didn’t want to read anything into Quinn’s appearance. The night before last, when she’d told him she wasn’t a nurse, he’d seemed to take the news really well, but during pizza he’d become distant. It hadn’t been anything tangible. Nothing that he’d said or done, but she’d felt him withdraw. She’d wondered if bringing up his dead wife had been a mistake. She’d wondered if, while he’d been in the bathroom, he’d rethought his involvement with her.

  “When’s your murder-on-the-Internet book going to be out?”

  “May of next year.”

  Next question. “Can you give us four examples of books in which red herrings or false clues kept readers guessing right until the very last page?”

  What? Was she back in college? Get real. Even if she hadn’t been distracted by a mad, bad, and handsome-as-hell man staring at her, she’d have had a hard time with that question. She shrugged and named four of her books.

  “We have time for one more question,” Jan announced.

  A woman with white hair and big brown glasses stood, and Lucy groaned inwardly. The woman’s name was Betty, and, seeing her stand, the group as a whole gave a collective moan of agony.

  “I’m writing a book that takes place in a nursing home,” Betty began, although Lucy knew all about Betty’s book. Betty had been writing and talking about the same scene in the same book for years. “If I wanted to kill off an old man, like my ninety-year-old father, how best should I go about doing that? I called Ask A Nurse, but they were no help at all.”

  She’d called Ask A Nurse for research help? Like they had nothing better to do? “I’m not sure. Perhaps if he’s on heart medication, you could overdose him.” Lucy straightened her papers, then shoved them into the collapsible folder in which Maddie had returned Lucy’s six chapters when they’d met for lunch earlier. She was looking forward to reading Maddie’s notes. Lucy placed the folder beside her briefcase and hoped Betty would get the hint.

  She didn’t. “I thought smothering him with a pillow might work better.”

  “Suffocation would be good if you want to use something that is hard to detect. There’s no specific autopsy findings that can prove suffocation,” she explained. “There might be bruising or abrasions if the victim struggles, but with airway constriction deaths, a coroner has to rely on physical evidence from the scene to support a diagnosis.”

  “Huh?”

  “If you want the killer to get caught, have him or her leave something behind at the scene.” She smiled. “Thank you, ladies, for inviting me here today. As always, it was my pleasure to speak to you again.”

  She grabbed her briefcase and shook a few hands. As she slowly made her way toward Quinn, she chatted briefly with some of the ladies who were always kind enough to attend her signings.<
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  After Quinn had left her house the other night, a part of her had wondered if she’d see him again. When he’d left, instead of grabbing her and locking lips as he had the few times they’d been together, he’d kissed her forehead. Something had been wrong, but he’d called yesterday afternoon and asked her over to his house for dinner. She was embarrassed to admit, even to herself, how happy she’d been to hear his voice. Of course she’d agreed, but the dinner wasn’t for several more hours.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as she came to stand in front of him.

  He pushed away from the book rack. “You told me you were talking to these ladies today, and I wanted to hear you.”

  She looked down at her briefcase so he wouldn’t see her smile. “That’s sweet.”

  He chuckled, and she looked back up. “No one’s ever called me sweet.”

  “What have they called you?”

  He gazed beyond her for several seconds, then put his arm around her shoulder. “Things I can’t repeat in public.” Together they walked past a group of The Peacock Society lined up at the checkout. “I thought you might come over early.”

  “How early?”

  “Now.”

  She really needed to work, since she doubted she’d get much work done later tonight. “I have to go home and change.”

  Quinn opened the doors for her. “Don’t change. I like your skirt.”

  “Well, I still have to go home. I made dessert.”

  “Really?” Together they moved across the sidewalk to the curb. “What did you make?”

  A chocolate torte that she worried might be too much this early in the relationship. It never paid to cook so soon. It set a bad precedent. “Something decadent.”

  “You wrapped up in that skirt is decadent.” He slid his hand beneath her ponytail and lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her for several heartbeats, then lifted his head. “See ya in a few.”

  “Yeah, see ya.” She watched him move across the parking lot to his Jeep, and her gaze slid down his back to his tight behind in his jeans. He’d driven all the way across town just to hear her talk to a group of women mystery writers. It was such an incredibly sweet thing to do. She felt a scary little pinch in her heart.

  She reached inside her briefcase and pulled out her sunglasses. She slipped them on the bridge of her nose, then turned to glance inside Barnes and Noble. Jan Bright and a few of the other ladies stood just inside, watching her and Quinn. Lucy waved good-bye before stepping off the curb and heading toward her car. Toward dinner and decadence with a man who seemed too good to be true. A man who made her heart pinch in her chest.

  A man who, if she wasn’t very careful, could make her fall in love with him.

  Quinn watched Lucy raise the fork to her lips and slide the piece of chocolate torte into her mouth. She licked frosting from the corner of her lips and gave him a smooth smile. The kind of smile a woman gave a man after he’d satisfied her in bed. “Mmm,” she said, her voice as deep and decadent as the cake. Her deep blue eyes shone with pure pleasure. “It’s wonderful.” With her hair up in soft curls, she was sexy as hell. Too bad she was a serial killer.

  “Take a bite,” she urged.

  Breathless had never poisoned her victims. Not yet, anyway. Quinn didn’t want to be the first. He waited until she took another bite before he picked up his fork and dug in. It was better than wonderful. So damn good that he leaned across the table and kissed her on the mouth, killer or not. He meant to pull back, but her lips clung to his, tasting like fine chocolate and warm woman. In spite of everything he now knew about her, the dull throb of desire tugged at his groin. He didn’t want to feel anything for her. Nothing. Anger mixed with lust as he raised his mouth from hers.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  He gave her an easy smile. “No.” He knew how to play the game. To make people think he was someone he wasn’t. He’d always had fun catching the bad guys. This time, he wasn’t having any fun. “Nothing other than you taste good,” he said and leaned back in his chair.

  She took another bite, and he watched her closely. He watched her lips close over the fork tines and her eyes get dreamy like she was in the throes of afterglow. If he hadn’t seen with his own eyes the book she was working on, he wouldn’t have thought the woman in front of him, who was eating cake like she was having an orgasm, was capable of killing anyone. It wasn’t until he’d seen the proof that he’d realized he hadn’t really believed she was Breathless. Now, there was no denying it. She’d written things that only Breathless would know. The flexi-cuffs. The polyethylene bag over the victim’s head. The position of the bodies. There was no longer room for denial, and everything she’d talked about at that mystery meeting earlier took on new meaning.

  Before she’d arrived tonight, he’d placed two framed photos of Anita next to the clock in the living room because she had red hair like his “dead wife Millie.” The props made his house seem more like the home of a widower. The real Millie was at his mother’s house.

  That morning a few tech guys had shown up with their equipment. They’d placed motion detecting audio and video surveillance in an air purifier in the kitchen, in a fake clock on the mantel in the living room, and in a clock radio beside his bed. The whole house was bugged for motion and sound. The only places the cameras couldn’t see or hear were down the hall and in the bathrooms. Across the street from Quinn’s house, Kurt and Anita sat in the Econoline, watching, listening, waiting for Lucy to cuff him to his bed and try to kill him.

  “I think the Women of Mystery thought you were cute,” she said through a teasing smile. “When you left they were looking out the windows at you.”

  Quinn doubted they thought he was cute. More likely a few of them were wondering what Lucy was doing with a cop. He’d recognized two of them, and before they’d been able to make their way toward him, he’d hustled Lucy out of the store.

  She licked the back of her fork with the tip of her tongue and he felt it between his legs. “Sometimes, chocolate is better than sex,” she said.

  “Sunshine, nothing is better than sex.”

  She set the fork on her plate and pushed it aside. “I guess that would depend on your basis of comparison.”

  Lucy Rothschild was Breathless. What angered him most was the fact that she could make him want her. He rose from his chair and reached for her. “Come here,” he said and wrapped his arms around her. It was time to turn up the heat. Add some pressure. Trigger her stress button. It had been several weeks since the last murder. She had to be feeling the compulsion to kill again. It had to be riding her like his compulsion to bury himself deep inside her was riding him. Neither would get release.

  “Let’s give you something good to compare.” He lowered his mouth to hers and gave her a kiss filled with need and frustrated desire. He wished it were a lie. He’d give anything if he could tell himself that it was all just an act, but the ache in his crotch called him a liar. He swept his tongue into her mouth, and his hand slid down her back to her behind. Through the cool leather of her skirt, he filled his palms and pulled her up onto the balls of her feet. Against her pelvis, he let her feel his full-blown hard-on. He fed her hot, wild kisses as he rocked his hips and slowly thrust against her. Pushing her to react.

  He was in hell.

  She pulled her head back and sucked in a deep breath. “I need to use your restroom,” she said, her eyes wide. It wasn’t quite the reaction he’d wanted.

  He let go and pointed behind her. “Down the hall. Second door on your right.” The heels of her boots tapped across the hardwood floor as she disappeared around the corner and down the hall. As soon as Quinn heard the bathroom door close behind her, he moved into the living room and reached for her purse, which was sitting on the couch. He turned it upside down, and a big collection of crap fell out. On top was a scarf and a set of keys, three tubes of lipstick, a business card case, an address book, and Autographed by Author stickers. He pawed through the pile,
pushing aside a red leather wallet, a can of pepper spray, a personal alarm, a stun pen, and a pair of brass knuckles. If he found the flexi-cuffs and a dry-cleaning bag in her purse, he could arrest her right now. Along with everything, it would be enough circumstantial evidence to take to the prosecutor. But it seemed like she’d brought everything she owned-except those two items.

  He looked at the other stuff and frowned. What? Was she planning on shocking him with a stun pen? It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like hell. Or did she plan to hose him with her pepper spray, then coldcock him with brass knuckles?

  Down the hall, the toilet flushed, and Quinn shoved everything back into her purse. She could have the cuffs on her. Probably in her bra. It was possible. He was going to have to search her underwear.

  It was his job. Shit.

  Lucy washed her hands, then dried them on the dark blue towel hanging by the sink. There was something different about Quinn tonight. A few days ago, he’d said he wanted to take things slow. That he wanted more than sex. Earlier, as he’d cooked steaks on his grill and as they’d eaten dinner, he’d kept the conversation light. He’d seemed relaxed and comfortable in his white dress shirt and blue jeans. He’d entertained her with funny stories about all his nieces, and they’d talked about the latest Cold Case Files episode-then wham. He’d hit her with that kiss, and she’d felt as if she’d been knocked in the head. In zero to fifty, he’d gone from Mr. Friendly to Mr. Man-on-a-Mission. A mission to get her naked.

  She pressed a cool palm to her hot cheek and looked at herself in the mirror. She cared about him. Even more than she wanted to admit to herself, but it was too early in the relationship for a naked mission with Quinn. No matter how tempting. And she was tempted. She dropped her hand and opened the door. No doubt about it.