That thought made the French cruller she’d eaten on the way over feel like a lump in her stomach. How stupid was that? Jealous over a woman who may or may not exist. Exactly the reason she never wanted to feel so much for a man. It did nothing but muddy the water. Good sex, companionship when needed, and common interests—those were the things she was looking for in a relationship. Get too caught up and someone ended up compromising until they’d compromised so much, they became someone else. A mirror for the person they were with.
A vision of her brilliant mother smiling her way through another student’s painful performance of “Hot Cross Buns” flitted through her mind, and she shoved back the guilt that came with it.
Fuck. That.
“Can you see the script?” she asked Shane, shaking off the memories and melancholy to focus on the task at hand.
He leaned in to look at the iPad propped up near the camera and nodded. “Yup.”
“Okay, readyyy, action!”
“Hello, ladies, how you doing?” He stopped abruptly and held up a hand. “Jesus, Cat, seriously? I’m not saying that. It makes me sound like a tool. What’s next, my astrological sign?”
“No,” she said, her tone sharp. “It was supposed to be funny. Like Joey from that old show Friends. Like, ‘How you doin’?’ If you think it’s so bad, you come up with something better.” She grabbed the iPad and covertly deleted the section about him being a Taurus and “strrrong like bull,” which had seemed funny and kitschy when she’d written it, but less so now. “What do you want to open with, Casanova?”
“How about just, ‘My name is Shane Decker.’”
“No salutation? Seems rude, but whatever.” She adjusted the script and set the tablet back up so he could see it. “Okay, now just roll with it this time. If you don’t like something, we can deal with it after. You’re going to need a few retakes anyway, so let’s use this first one as a trial to get you comfortable in front of the camera, tweak the lighting, etc. Pretend you’re talking to really hot girl instead of a piece of equipment. Ready, aaand, action!”
Shane looked down at the table for so long, she was about to stop rolling and snap at him again, but then he lifted his head and pinned his stormy gaze on the camera. A wicked smile spread across his usually serious face. “Hi, my name is Shane Decker. I’m not much for chatter, so I’ll get right to the point. I have some cue cards here telling me to describe my ‘type,’ but that’s not me. I respect and love women. All types of women.”
His voice rang with sincerity and Cat found herself leaning forward, literally on the edge of her seat.
“So if you think you’re too tall and skinny but have a smile that makes people want to smile back? You’re my type. Curvy and always trying to lose that last ten pounds, with a loud, bawdy laugh? You’re my type. A little older than me, with some lifelines that look earned and the confidence that comes with age? My type. Life is short, and I want to spend it with someone who recognizes that, and takes happiness wherever they can find it. If you think I might be your type, send a message to Shane84, and we can meet for coffee.”
The room was silent but for the dishwasher running in the background until Shane spoke again. “Was that okay?”
“Uh, yeah. You went off the grid a little, but it was fine.” Fine? It was more than fine. What woman didn’t want to hear that a sexy guy like Shane would love them even if they weren’t perfect? The women at MeetMyMate.com were going to be salivating over him.
Which was great. Exactly what she’d been hoping for. Wasn’t it? So why did she want to claw their collective, imaginary eyes out?
Shane smacked his hands on the table and stood. “Let’s go get these pictures done and then we can eat.”
She needed to stick to the plan. It was only a matter of time before all this excitement and anticipation she felt around him faded and things would be back to normal. It was nothing more than infatuation. The same she’d felt a million times before, except now—just like with that fat slice of strawberry cheesecake she’d almost managed to say no to the night before, after her kiss with Shane—it seemed larger than life because she was depriving herself of it. As soon as he was settled with someone new, and she got some space, she’d be thanking her lucky stars she dodged this bullet.
Note to self: buy another cheesecake on the way home.
She forced a cheery smile. “Sounds good. Where’s your ax?”
“Probably in the shed. I forgot to ask, why do we need an ax again?” He led her toward the back door, tossing a glance over his shoulder.
“I don’t know, I was thinking the ladies would like seeing you do something manly, like chop wood or something.”
“Well, these aren’t exactly my wood-chopping clothes,” he said drily, glancing down. “Should I change?”
“Nah, just take the sports jacket off and go with the T-shirt and jeans.”
They just stepped into the mudroom and he’d reached for his coat but paused. “It’s like thirty degrees out.”
“You’re only going to be doing it for a few minutes,” she reasoned. “Come on, I promise, I’ll only take a couple shots, and we’ll go right back inside. I won’t put my coat on either.”
He sighed and stripped off the jacket, slinging it over her shoulders. “No sense in us both freezing. But you’ve got five minutes to get the shot. I’ve been away too long, and my blood needs a little time to get used to this New England weather again.”
She trailed out the back door behind him, swamped in his scent and oblivious to the cold as she tried to tear her gaze from his thick, broad shoulders. Instead she focused on the center of his back, but even that wasn’t safe. The T-shirt clung tight enough that she could see the straight, deep indent of his spine flanked by the muscles that made a perfect V to his trim waist. She swallowed hard and blew out a steamy sigh.
Amended note to self: make it two cheesecakes.
…
Shane stood before the wide log on the chopping stump and looked up. “I say we’ve got about twenty minutes of daylight left, so let’s get this done. Ready?”
Cat gave him the thumbs-up from her perch on the brick wall surrounding the patio. “Roger that.”
She looked so frigging cute, red curls flapping in the icy breeze. He turned away, focusing his attention on the task at hand. He gripped the smooth, wooden handle and was just about to take a swing when he thought about the longing on her face when she’d seen him shirtless. Why the fuck not?
“Well, shit, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right,” he said, leaning the ax against his shin and yanking the T-shirt over his head. His whole body tightened in protest at the cold, but the look on her face as the camera hung from her limp hand, forgotten, was worth every ounce of pain.
He pretended not to notice and took the ax in hand again. Lining up, he set his feet, then took a swing. With a crack, the log splintered apart, falling into halves on the frosty grass. “Did you get it?”
“Um, yeah.” She nodded vigorously. “Yup. I got it.”
“Are you sure? Because the camera’s aimed at the ground.”
She startled and peered down. “Well, it is now. It wasn’t before. I just clicked it right before that. But, you know, sure. Let’s do one more because this one’s blurry.”
Her nervous babble had him struggling not to grin. “Okay, ready?”
She nodded and pointed the lens in his direction. “Let ’er rip.”
He lined up another piece of wood, then swung. It split cleanly and fell off the stump. “Can we go in now?”
She climbed down from the wall and walked over to him. “What do you think?”
She held the screen to his face and he glanced at the picture. It looked fine to him, but what did he know?
“Yes?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes before starting toward the house. “Yes. You look great, which is so unfair. No tricks, no Photoshop, no makeup, stark natural light.” He grabbed his shirt, catching up to her just in time to hear her grumble, “One shot, no one should look that good.”
“So what next?”
“Next we get a couple more indoor stills, and put this and the video up on the site. I already wrote your bio, I’ve just got to cut and paste that into your profile. According to the guidelines, once everything is loaded, we wait for it to get reviewed and then it will go live. I’d say by the time we eat dinner and clean up, you’ll be all set.”
Forty-five minutes later, their bellies full of beef stew sopped up with thick slabs of buttered sourdough bread, they sat back in front of the computer with their coffee and Cat logged in.
“Okay, it looks like you’re in.” She clicked on his profile and the desktop dinged. “And you have a message. Probably them welcoming you to the site, maybe some tips about how t—”
Before she could finish, it dinged again. Then again.
“Maybe they have a welcoming committee,” Cat said, clicking into the message center. Eleven new messages stared back at them, one of which was indeed a welcome from the president of MeetMyMate.com. The rest had numbers next to the subject lines, along with tiny thumbnail pictures.
All of them of women, lining up for a piece of him. Nuts.
Ding.
“Well,” Cat said brightly, pushing away from the table to let him get in front of the screen. “Seems like there was a hole in the market for someone like you at this place. You’re a hot commodity already.”
“So what do I do now?”
“Click on their avatars, read their messages, and see if you like any of them.”
“How will I know that from one message?”
Ding.
“You won’t. But at least we can weed some out. The maybes we can put into a separate folder, and then the yeses you can set up short dates with.”
Ding.
“Jesus H., can you turn that thing off?” she snapped. “It’s very distracting.”
He didn’t care that she sounded like a shrew, because her reaction could only mean one thing. She was jealous. Satisfaction surged through him, and he vowed to redouble his efforts.
“Sure thing.” He lowered the speakers, then clicked on the first message in the list. “Deedee Coruthers.”
An image of a waifish blonde filled the screen. Cat looked at it for a long moment, lips pursed. “Hmm…don’t you think her right eye looks lazy? Like it’s not really up on what the left one’s doing, and doesn’t care much to find out?” She made her eyes go slightly crossed. “It’s off-putting in person, I bet, because you don’t know which one to look at.”
He looked at the photo more closely, and while Deedee wasn’t a stunner, she didn’t look cross-eyed. More like tired. “I guess a little…”
She didn’t pay him any mind, already moving along to the next one. “Let’s see, what about her? Sara Mitchell. She calls herself an artist. That probably means she doesn’t have a job. She’s also a vegan, which means you’d have to deal with her meat-shaming you.”
He’d never been meat-shamed before. It sounded bad.
“And she probably does macramé,” Cat continued. “So that crap will be hanging all over your house before you know it.” She x-ed out Sara and pointed to another photo a few messages down. “She looks nice.”
“Her?” he asked incredulously, sliding the cursor to blink under a masculine face.
“Yeppers. She’s got an honest smile. I like that.”
“Greta Doyle,” he recited, clicking to enlarge her photo, which only succeeded in making her look even more like a man. “She likes sailing, waterskiing, and backpacking. Her favorite show is Nancy Grace, and she works as an occupational therapist.”