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Still, when the form for signing up appeared on the screen, she was the first one to fill it out. She considered the temptation to fake her replies just to see what might happen, but Connie and Laila forestalled her.
“You have to take this seriously,” Connie scolded.
“We’re expecting a computer and some so-called expert to do what we haven’t been able to do on our own,” Jess replied. “And you want me to take it seriously?”
“I do,” Connie said. “Because this could be my last chance.”
“It is not going to be your last chance,” Laila said fiercely. “If you’re going to look at it like that, Connie, then maybe you shouldn’t do it. Desperation is never smart when it comes to meeting men. We’re doing this for laughs and a few free lunches, that’s it. We need to keep our expectations low and just concentrate on having fun.”
Jess nodded. Connie didn’t look entirely convinced, but when Jess’s form was complete, Connie immediately nudged her aside and took her place in front of the computer. Laila followed.
When the last form had been sent in, they exchanged a look.
“I need a drink,” Jess said.
“I’m in,” Laila said.
Connie nodded agreement. “I think I’d better make mine a double.”
One of the few things that hadn’t changed since Jake had married Bree was that he, Mack Franklin and Will Lincoln continued to have lunch every day at Sally’s. The lunches had started when Jake needed support after he and Bree had split up a few years ago. Now that they were together again and happily married, the lunch tradition had become an occasion for the three men to keep their friendship grounded. Will counted on these two men more than either of them probably realized.
As a psychologist, Will spent his days listening to other people’s problems, but he didn’t really have anyone other than Jake and Mack to listen to his. Even though the three of them knew just about everything concerning each other’s lives, there was one thing Will had been keeping from them for a while now: his new business, Lunch by the Bay.
The dating service had been born out of frustration. He spent way too much of his time counseling singles on the relationships in their lives and way too little of his time nurturing any kind of relationship of his own. The name of the company, which had come to him in the middle of a lonely night, was meant to be ironic, if only to him. As much as he loved getting together with his buddies, he thought it was past time to start having lunch with people who wore dresses and perfume. Jake might occasionally smell like roses, but it was only after he’d spent a morning planting rose bushes for one of his many landscaping clients. It was hardly the same.
It was also, Will thought, way past time to stop carrying the torch for Jess O’Brien, youngest sister of his friends Kevin and Connor O’Brien. Over the years Jess had had ample opportunities to indicate even a whiff of interest in Will, but she mostly treated him like an especially annoying big brother.
Worse, since he’d become a psychologist, she regularly accused him of analyzing her because she had ADD. She didn’t trust his slightest bit of attention, fully expecting him to turn her into some professional case study. None of his denials had gotten her off that ridiculous tangent. Since they were thrown together a lot, her suspicion made most of their encounters awkward and testy.
Which meant it was time to move on once and for all, no easy task in a town with a population under five thousand except when tourists and weekenders filled it during the spring and summer. Lunch by the Bay had been created not only to fill a gap in the Chesapeake Shores social scene, but also to save him from growing old alone.
He explained all of this to Jake and Mack, who stared at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted antlers.
“You’re starting a dating website?” Mack repeated, as if checking the accuracy of his hearing.
“Exactly,” Will said. “If you weren’t so busy not dating Susie, I’d encourage you to sign up. You’re one of the town’s most eligible bachelors.”
“You intend to use this site yourself?” Jake said, looking puzzled. “I thought you were seeing some psychologist who bought a summer house here.”
“I was,” Will said. “Two years ago. It didn’t work out, which you would know if you ever paid attention to a thing I tell you.”
“But you’ve been dating,” Jake persisted. “I’m not imagining that. You’ve blown us off to go on dates.”
“What can I say?” Will said with a shrug. “None of them have amounted to anything.”
“I suppose it makes sense,” Mack said eventually. “Susie is always grumbling about the dearth of available men in town.”
Jake barely managed to swallow a chuckle.
Mack scowled at him. “What?”
“I thought she had you,” Jake responded.
“We’re not dating,” Mack repeated for the umpteenth unbelievable time.
“And yet neither of you seems to be looking for anyone else,” Will pointed out. “If I’m wrong and you are open to other possibilities, I can sign you right up on the new website. You’re an ex-jock and a semi-famous sports columnist. I’ll have you matched up with someone new by the end of the week.”
Jake regarded him incredulously. “You already have clients?”
“About thirty so far,” Will confirmed.
“Anyone we know?” Mack asked, then frowned. “Susie, for instance?” There was a discernible hitch in his voice when he asked, proving that there was more to that relationship than he wanted to acknowledge.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Will told him.
“When did you start this company?” Jake asked.
“Three weeks ago officially, though I’d been working out the criteria for matching people for a while. I finally incorporated, then put out a few brochures around town. I had no idea what to expect, but when the clients started signing up, I figured I ought to tell you all about it before you heard about it from another source. Someone’s bound to figure out I’m the professional psychologist behind it. After all, there aren’t that many of us in the area.”
“So you’re doing this to make money?” Mack said, clearly still trying to grasp his motivation. Before Susie, Mack had had absolutely no difficulty attracting single women, so he didn’t understand Will’s frustration.
“It could be a gold mine, yes, but that wasn’t really my motivation,” Will insisted. “I think of it more as a community service.”
“Nice spin,” Jake commented wryly. “You’ve already admitted that you’re doing this so you can meet women. Couldn’t you just have hung out at Brady’s more often?”
Will shook his head. “That wasn’t really working for me.”
“What about church? I hear a lot of men meet women at church,” Mack said. “Come to think of it, if I’d known you were this desperate, I could have asked Susie to fix you up. She has a bunch of girlfriends.”
“I’m not desperate,” Will said, offended by the characterization. “I’m being proactive.”
Jake and Mack exchanged a glance. It was Jake who dared to ask, “What about Jess?”
Will stilled. “What about her?”
“You’ve always been crazy about her,” Jake said.
“But she’s not crazy about me,” Will said, not denying his feelings since he’d never been all that good at hiding them. “Leave her out of this. She has nothing to do with it.”
Neither of his friends looked convinced, but they backed off.
Mack regarded him with amusement. “So, are you going to hold mixers like they had in college? Have everyone wear cute little nametags? Or what about those sixty-second dating things? You know, the ones like musical chairs? I hear those can be lively.”
Will scowled at his flip tone. “Bite me.” He stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my office to play matchmaker.”
“You and Dolly Levi,” Mack said with an unrepentant grin.
Will stared at him blankly. “Who?”
“Hello, Dolly. It’s a musical. Susie and I saw the revival recently. She’s a matchmaker.”
Jake groaned. “Please do not tell a lot of people that you, once a Chesapeake Shores and college gridiron star, are going to girly musicals these days. It’ll destroy your fine reputation as one of the town’s all-time great bachelors. You’ll no longer be considered a player on the dating scene. In fact, it’s entirely likely you’ll never have another date.”
“He doesn’t need another date,” Will said. “He already has Susie.”
“Who is obviously a very bad influence,” Jake said.
Mack frowned at him. “Do I need to point out that your wife produces plays at her fancy new Chesapeake Shores Theater, including, I might add, the occasional musical? You planning to attend?”
Jake winced. “That’s spousal obligation, not choice. There’s a difference.”
“Will, do you buy that? Is it different?”
“I’m not mediating this one, guys,” Will declared emphatically. “You’re on your own.”
He was going back to his office to see if he could find the woman of his dreams. Maybe she was right around the corner, though if she was, he ought to have stumbled across her long before now.
For the first time since the previous Friday, Will opened his email Monday afternoon to check the new applications for membership in the Lunch by the Bay online dating service. There were a half dozen that had come in over the weekend. He’d input the data from three of them, when he spotted those submitted by Laila, Connie and Jess. His eyes widened. Laila and Connie were one thing, but Jess? What was he supposed to do about her?
Since she’d submitted her credit card payment with her application, professional integrity absolutely required that he put the data into the system and see if his criteria matched her with anyone. The churning in his gut, however, told him to delete the application as if he’d never seen it. He didn’t want to be the man who helped Jess walk off into the sunset with someone else. She might ultimately do that anyway, but he didn’t want to be the one who’d facilitated it.
He wrestled with his conscience for a full ten minutes before he reluctantly fed the data into his system. He deliberately left his own information out of the equation. When the computer came back with no immediate matches, he breathed a sigh of relief.
He told himself to send back her money and tell her to reapply at a later date, but when it came time to push the send key, he couldn’t do it. He knew it was because he was a little too eager to reject her for his own reasons. For anyone else, he’d take a fresh look at the data in a few days. Much as he might not like it, he owed that to Jess, too.
As for Laila and Connie, he had an easier time with their applications. Three potential matches turned up almost immediately for Connie. He sent all of them mutual contact information. There were four possibilities for Laila. Astonishingly, one of the best matches, the man with whom she had the most in common, seemed to be him.
“No way,” he muttered. He’d never once thought of dating Trace’s younger sister…and yet, why not? Maybe this would be the best possible test of the criteria he was using. It was the first match that had come back for him with so many connections.
He’d almost convinced himself to call Laila, when it occurred to him that it was no coincidence that the applications from her, Connie and Jess had come in within minutes of each other on Saturday night. Had they sent them in as some kind of dare? And how would Jess react if he went out with Laila? Would she be offended that her friends had gotten dates and she hadn’t? Would it bother her in the slightest if Laila’s first date was him? And why should he care, anyway, if he was truly moving on as he’d sworn to himself he was doing?
Before he could change his mind, he picked up the phone and called Laila at the bank.
“Hey, Will, what’s up?” she said, her tone friendly.
“You’re probably not going to believe this, but we’ve been matched up by an online dating service,” he told her, not explaining that it was his business. She’d learn that soon enough.
“Lunch by the Bay?” she said. “You’re kidding! I didn’t expect anything to happen this quickly.”
“I’m as surprised as you are, but I thought maybe we should give it a try. Would you like to have lunch tomorrow?”
“Why not?” she said, then hesitated. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked. “Obviously we’re both looking for new ways to meet people, and if a computer says we’re compatible, I think we should at least check it out.”
“At least we’ll have a few laughs, right?”
“Exactly. What do you say?”
“What time and where?” she asked.
“Panini Bistro at noon? Or is there somewhere else you’d rather go?”
“I thought you always ate with Mack and Jake at noon,” she said, proving that his rut had been widely noted.
“I decided it was past time to shake up my routine,” he told her.
“Then count me in, and Panini Bistro is fine. I’ll see you there. Should I wear a red carnation behind my ear so you can spot me?” she asked with a laugh.
“Unless you’ve changed dramatically since dinner at the O’Briens a couple of Sundays ago, I think I’ll recognize you,” he said. He hesitated, then added, “Maybe we should keep this just between us for now. What do you think?”
“Are you ashamed to be seen in public with me, Will Lincoln?” she asked, a teasing note in her voice.
“If I were, we wouldn’t be going to lunch on Shore Road,” he assured her. “I just thought maybe low-key might be best till we see how this goes. Our friends might have quite a lot to say if they hear about it.”
“You wouldn’t be thinking about one friend in particular, would you?” Laila asked knowingly. “Is it Jess you’d prefer to keep in the dark?”
“Of course not!” Will said emphatically. “Why would she care one way or the other?”
“I’m glad you feel that way, because I’m not all that great at keeping secrets, especially not from friends.”
“Okay, then,” Will said, resigned to the possibility that his lunch with Laila could stir up a commotion. “See you tomorrow.”
“Looking forward to it,” Laila said.
Will wished he could say the same. Instead, a feeling of dread had settled in his stomach. Any shrink worth his salt could have told him it was because he was playing with fire.
2
A few days after signing up for Lunch by the Bay, Jess checked her inbox online. “I don’t get this,” she muttered in frustration to Laila, who’d just dropped by the inn. “You and Connie both had responses almost immediately. I’ve had nothing, not even an acknowledgment that I’m signed up.”
“I’m sure that’s just an oversight,” Laila said, though Jess thought she looked oddly guilty when she said it.
“Do you know something I don’t?” Jess asked, studying her friend with a narrowed gaze.
“Of course not,” Laila responded a little too quickly. “Maybe the interests you wrote down were too narrow. The company promises someone with similar interests. It may be taking a little longer to find the right match. I’m sure not everyone hears right away. The important thing is that the person you’re eventually matched with is the right one.”
Jess shrugged it off. “It doesn’t really matter. I wasn’t counting on this anyway. How about running over to Sally’s and grabbing a bite to eat?”
Laila winced. “Sorry, I can’t. I have my first date.”
Jess stared at her, trying to judge the odd expression on her friend’s face. Laila looked more worried than excited. It wasn’t the reaction Jess had expected.
“Why didn’t you say something when you first walked in here?” she asked. “Who is he? Do you have a name? Where are you meeting him?”
“We’re meeting at Panini Bistro,” Laila said.
Again, Jess studied her intently. “It still feels as if you’re hiding something. Who is this man? Do I know him?”
