“Too braggy?” she asks before reaching for more cheese and fruit.

  “Eh.” I stand back, arms folded. “Is anybody who visits the site going to be able to read this?”

  “No, they don’t have to. You can mark your profile as Private, and only people you’ve reached out to will be able to see it.”

  “That’s nice to know.” I read her opening lines again. “Okay. Good start. I can live with that.”

  “Oh, thank you, Great One.” She laughs before turning back to the keyboard. “I’ll take that as high praise, coming from you.”

  “You should.”

  We both jump at the knock on my front door.

  “Expecting someone?” Hayley asks.

  “Does it look like I am?” I’m frozen in place. People don’t randomly knock on my front door. Funny, but in a city filled with millions of others, the idea of someone dropping by is completely foreign. I have to fight the impulse to pretend I’m not home.

  Another knock.

  “Well?” Hayley whispers. “Are you going to let them stand there forever?”

  I’m about to say yes, that’s exactly what I want to do, when a voice rings out. “Hello? There’s a lady's wallet lying in the hallway, and the ID says it belongs to somebody named Kathryn. I don’t know of any Kathryn living here …”

  “Jeez,” I mutter, jogging for the door in my bare feet. It’s only Matt.

  Matt is leaning against the doorframe, smirking his most Matt-like smirk, holding up my wallet for inspection. “You don’t pay much attention to pesky things like where your wallet ends up, do you?”

  “To think, I was about to thank you for picking this up for me,” I groan, reaching for it.

  “Not so fast.” He pulls it just out of my grasp. “What were you doing, leaving your wallet out here so I’d think you were kidnapped or something?”

  “I wasn’t exactly thinking about you when I dropped it, Matt. This might come as a surprise, but you don’t play a part in my every thought. Sorry about that.” I reach for it again, but he’s too stinking tall. And I’m at a disadvantage with my heels lying on the floor behind me.

  “Who is this?” Hayley shows up behind me, an arm on my shoulders.

  Stupid, predictable Matt. His hazel eyes travel over her, first head to toe and then back up again while he strokes the brown scruff covering his chin. It’s like this all the time, whenever a new man meets my painfully gorgeous best friend.

  Only I happen to know what a horndog he is and how successful he is with the ladies.

  Crap. Am I going to have to live through listening to Hayley getting pounded just on the other side of my office wall? Because I’ve heard enough female orgasms to last me the rest of my life—fake or real, they were loud as heck—and I could live without hearing hers.

  Especially if it’s Matt who happens to be giving it to her.

  Though that shouldn’t matter, should it? No way. He’s just … Matt. The guy who lives across the hall.

  “Hayley Craig.” She thrusts her hand toward him. “Best friend.”

  “Matt Ryder.” He grins before shaking her hand. “Neighbor and occasional beer buddy.”

  “Oh?” Her wide, questioning eyes turn my way.

  “Don’t look at me.” I shrug. “I didn’t know I had to clear new people by you.”

  “You should know by now. I can’t have you making random friends. That means I can’t run their name through every database at my firm’s disposal.” She turns back to Matt, still smiling.

  “That’s R-Y-D-E-R.”

  Honestly, I think Hayley’s met her match. He’s not the slightest bit ruffled. Most men with common sense would back away, hands raised, and disappear behind their door. And lock it. And put the chain in place.

  “I’ll make a note of that.” She looks at me and then at him again. “What are you up to? We were putting together a—”

  “No, no, no,” I call out over her. “Nope. No way. It’s a girls’ night.”

  “You want your wallet back?” Matt holds it up again. “Tell me what you’re doing that you don’t want me to know. If it’s something weird and female, I don’t need to be a part of it.”

  “Weird and female?” I snort. “What? Do you think we’re testing tampons to see which brand we like best?”

  “Or maybe we’re performing some weird, witchy ritual to punish our ex-boyfriends,” Hayley suggests. “It’s been a while since I summoned a demon, and I think it’s a full moon.”

  Rather than leave it there, she blurts out, “Dating profile. We’re making a dating profile for her.” By the time she finishes, I’m swatting at her like I’d swat at any pest. “I’m sorry!” She ducks away from me, giggling, and runs back to the laptop.

  “Dang it!” I growl as my heart sinks.

  Matt’s smiling from ear to ear in that insufferable way of his. Of course.

  “A dating profile? What, the whole dating-for-a-book thing isn’t working? This is big news.”

  “It isn’t. And it’s in service of the dating-for-a-book thing, which, by the way, I don’t appreciate being called a thing. And what are you doing?” I demand when he slides past me to get into the apartment. I mean, okay, I could’ve tried a little harder to stop him, but he’s bigger than me, and he’s holding my wallet.

  “You can’t tell me you’re making up a profile and not expect me to be interested in it.” He’s too quick and is already reading over Hayley’s shoulder before I can stop him.

  “Come on. This is ridiculous. Give me the wallet, please.”

  He hands it over without looking, too busy reading. “So, you’re trying to pick up your next boyfriend this way?” he asks, a grin spreading his generous mouth.

  I used to want to kiss that mouth—I mean, I have eyes and I’m a girl who likes men and he’s definitely a man and whatnot—but now?

  Now, I sorta want to smack him a little.

  “You know how this goes. I’m looking for a very specific type of person.”

  “What type?” He quirks an eyebrow, folding his arms.

  He can’t wait to hear this, I can tell. Which, of course, makes me want to hold my breath until I pass out because I’d rather do that than hear him laugh at me.

  Hayley, as always, can be relied upon. “A doctor.”

  “Thanks,” I mutter as Matt starts laughing especially hard.

  “What’s so wrong with me dating a doctor?” I demand.

  Darned if he doesn’t have to wipe tears from his eyes. “Sorry. That struck me as funny.”

  “No kidding. Answer my question.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it.” He shrugs. “It’s more the idea of having to go on a dating site to find the next poor sucker.”

  There’s something about having known someone for so long and as well as Hayley and I know each other. You start to share part of your brain—which is why it’s convenient Hayley’s practically a certifiable genius. She has brain to spare.

  “Poor sucker?” we both shout loud enough and perfectly in sync enough that we practically knock him backward onto the sofa. As it is, he nudges it a little with the backs of his legs, and his jaw is practically on the floor.

  “I give! I give! I should know better than to try to handle two women at once!”

  “Do my poor ears and imagination a favor and keep that in mind when you’re trying to pick up your next girl for the night, okay?”

  His eyes twinkle in an instant before he smirks. “I never have a problem with that.”

  Hayley looks him up and down. “I think I like you.”

  “Oh?”

  Her brow lowers. “Not that way.”

  “Oh.” He shrugs at me. “You gotta try, right?”

  “No, you don’t gotta try.” I twirl one finger in the air. “About-face, please, and let us get back to work. This is important. You don’t see me coming around and … I don’t know, making fun of the reports you ran this morning.”

  “Please,” Hayley begs. “It took me long enough to get her to agree to do this in the first place. Don’t distract her now.”

  “Since you put it that way, I’ll see myself out.” He whistles softly as he walks to the door. “If you need any inspiration for a particularly filthy scene, let me know. I’m always available.”

  “That reminds me.” I wink at Hayley, remembering the night I interrupted his hook-up. “I have to show you the playlist I made up. It’s all marching band music.”

  “I still have to get you back for that,” Matt says, closing the door behind him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hayley promised, once my profile went live, that there would be plenty of men to choose from when I saw fit to start looking.

  Here’s the thing: she lied.

  All right, maybe she didn’t lie per se, but she wasn’t exactly on the money.

  Sure, there’s plenty of men. Tons of men. More men than I could shake a stick at, if I felt like shaking a stick. Which I don’t.

  But there aren’t many who make me sit up and pay attention. Even several hours after finishing the profile, with a decent night’s sleep between then and now, I’m not super into this crazy idea of hers. Not when I look at my pool of possibilities.

  Don’t get me wrong. They’re all cute enough—for the most part. They all seem interesting.

  None of them do it for me, is all.

  “You’re not doing this for anything long-term. Don’t forget that,” she reminded me before leaving the apartment last night—or rather, this morning. We stayed up pretty late, polishing the profile while finishing off a bottle of wine. “Have fun. Experiment. You could even create an amalgam, you know? One main character in your new book who shares traits with a handful of men.”

  A handful of men. I’m pretty sure she’s conducting a social experiment on the side, seeing how many men I can date without picking up a disease. Or a stalker.

  I’d rather stick to one man, if at all possible, even if I know darn well my editor would be on Hayley’s side in this. There are certain lines I don’t want to cross, and that’s one of them. Besides, I can barely handle dating one man at a time while working on a book.

  There are filters I can click on to narrow down my selection of potential dates, so I figure it’s a good idea to do that first.

  “Age range,” I mutter, leaning in to look at my choices.

  There are a bunch of ranges with clicky buttons next to them. Eighteen to twenty-five, twenty-six to thirty-five, and so on.

  The first age group seems too young for a doctor, so I leave that one unchecked. It seems to me that twenty-six to thirty-five is a reasonable age range. I don’t want to mix in too many tropes and go for a man much older than me.

  “Body type,” I continue, and now, I’m paying attention.

  Granted, the guy doesn’t have to be a fitness model on the side. I can write him just as jacked up as my readers expect him to be. But I want to be attracted to him too. I decide to settle on somebody who’s fit and healthy. I would think that a young doctor would be fairly fit anyway. Wouldn’t he know better than to let himself go?

  After I fix my filters, the search results come back at roughly half of the several hundred I was looking at when I first logged in to my account. This is more doable but still overwhelming. I need somebody exciting, somebody interesting, somebody who’ll inspire me to write something readers won’t want to put down.

  It would help if he wasn’t a total jerk or, even worse, one of those alpha meatheads some readers are nuts about. I can write him as an alpha male, no problem. I just don’t particularly feel like dealing with a my way or the highway type in real life.

  Only there’s no way to tell whether a guy is or isn’t that sort just by looking through his dating profile. It’s a shame there’s no filter to help weed those types out.

  It takes a lot of scrolling and the help of a solid breakfast and several cups of coffee, but before long, I’ve clicked several promising profiles. All the men are cute, all of them either posed with dogs or doing something active. There’s a cardiologist on a cliff overlooking a gorge. There’s a pediatric specialist on the beach, standing next to a surfboard.

  They’re not going to expect me to do these things with them, are they? I mean, I can hurt myself just by getting out of bed in the morning. I don’t need any help.

  First things first, I guess. Reach out to them. What am I supposed to say?

  “You’re a writer,” I growl at myself. “Think of something.”

  What would my heroine, who right now doesn’t have a name or even a physical description—really, I need to get moving on this project—say to attract her ideal partner?

  Why do I have to go and make things harder for myself? It’s like I have a talent for it. What a shame that I can’t make a living from it.

  Hi there, I type before deleting it. I don’t want to look too eager or corny. Hi, I settle on. I found your profile and knew right away that I wanted to reach out to you.

  Okay, that’s a good opener. Should I include something original to each guy? Like surfer boy, for instance. Should I say something about surfing? No, since I don’t know the first thing about it. Maybe that’s what I should say—that I’ve never surfed before but always found it interesting.

  No. Even though it’s true I do find surfing to be really interesting, I just know that if I ever tried it, I would end up drowning. Maybe that’s a little too negative, but what can I say? I know myself.

  Plus, what happens if he asks me to go surfing with him? I can’t help but cringe at the very thought of trying to balance on a board with the ocean rushing under me. No, that wouldn’t work at all.

  I crack my knuckles and shake my hands out, wishing Hayley were here with me. She would know what to say. How could she leave me alone with this Herculean task before me? She should know better.

  “Blame her all you want,” I whisper, my fingers poised over the keys before I start typing again.

  I like going to the beach, too, when my schedule grants me enough time for it—though I’m way too clumsy to be much of a surfer. I’m much more comfortable in front of the laptop, where the only drowning I’ll do is metaphorically drowning under the weight of a deadline.

  No, no. That’s dumb. I’m overthinking this. It’s probably for the best that Hayley isn’t here because she would roll her eyes hard enough that they might fall out of her head.

  I take out everything after the word surfer and write this instead: Please, when you have a chance, check out my profile. I have it set to private, but you should be able to access it now. I look forward to hearing from you.

  Yes, that will have to do. I’m not going to sit here and craft a message for each of these guys since who knows if they’ll ever get back to me? It might end up being a waste of time.

  Besides, simple is always the best. Isn’t that what Maggie tells me time and again—right before she tears a chapter to shreds and removes some of my favorite lines for the sake of tightening up the story? Maybe I tend to lean too far toward wordiness.

  I copy and paste what I just typed out into the message form for each individual profile. All that’s left is to wait and see whether I get any bites.

  After a few minutes of constantly refreshing my browser, it’s clear I need something else to distract myself. If these men are doctors, I’m sure they are super busy, and don’t have the time to check their dating profile constantly. They’re probably, you know, riding into the ER on a wheeled gurney, doing chest compressions on a dying patient while shouting orders to the doctors and nurses around them.

  I may watch slightly too much TV.

  I have to get up. Does my fridge need cleaning? Could I stand to do a load of laundry? Sure, why bother writing character profiles when I could spend my time dealing with busywork like chores?

  I’m halfway to the kitchen when a pair of voices out in the hall catches my attention.

  It’s Saturday, so I wouldn’t expect Matt to spend the entire morning working, but this is different for him. Normally, he doesn’t keep his overnight visitors around until midmorning—at least, if he ever does, I don’t hear them leaving. They’re usually more discreet, I guess.

  But not this particular girl.

  “You’re gonna call me, right?” she asks. It sounds like she’s standing right in front of my door.

  Ooh, ooh, this could be interesting. I’ve never witnessed a one-night stand interrogation like this.

  I know I shouldn’t take glee from this situation.

  But that doesn’t stop me from tiptoeing to the door, holding my breath, listening hard for anything Matt might have to say in reply. I can practically feel his discomfort.

  “I mean, I had a good time with you. But like I said, I’m usually pretty busy.”

  Lame.

  “Who isn’t usually busy?” she challenges. She still sounds like she’s kidding around, being playful, but it’s a fair question. “I’m not asking you for an engagement ring. Just a phone call. I had fun too—and we could have fun again.”

  The ball’s in your court, buddy. I look out into the hall through the peephole in the door.

  Matt scored a very pretty girl last night after leaving me and Hayley to our work. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would say he chose a girl who looks a lot like my best friend.

  Why does my stomach clench a little at the thought? Maybe because it seems pretty creepy, picking up a girl who looks like a girl who just turned him down last night. Not that I think he was seriously interested in Hayley … was he? I guess I can’t put anything past him.

  “I’m sure we could, but I’d rather be up-front with you. Instead of leading you on, wouldn’t you rather I be honest? It’s nothing personal.”

  Ouch. That’s the worst thing he could’ve said. I don’t even know this girl, and I feel sorry for her. For a split second, I have half a mind to fling the door open and give him a piece of my mind. But that would probably be the most awkward thing ever, and since I probably will have to see him again at some point in my life, I keep my mouth shut.

  “Nothing personal? Cute. Maybe grow up a little and let go of your commitment phobia, okay?” she scoffs, looking him up and down before tossing her head and turning away. Her heels click against the floor and then against the stairs as she stomps her way down.