Mail Order Stepbrother (2 page)

Once alone in the doctor’s lounge, she thought about deleting it without reading it. But the subject line caught her attention: Congratulations! You have received five matches.

Five? She didn’t know what the average was, but five didn’t seem like that many.

In the end, Melanie opened the email and read through it. It didn’t tell much, just gave the first names, ages, and locations of the five matches:

Kyle, 40, Denver.

Tony, 38, Houston.

Sonny, 42, Austin.

Nash, 35, Dallas.

Ron, 30, Grand Prairie.

Only the last two were geographically close enough to make sense. They were also the two closest to her ideal age range. To be fair, she had told the system that she would be willing to date anyone between 30 and 45, but she really would prefer someone closer to her own age. And close to the Dallas area so that she wouldn’t have to travel long distances for dates. She would also like…

Was she really considering this?

She stared at those names, these potential lovers, and shook her head. What was she thinking? There was no way some algorithm could find her a lifelong mate. It was a joke, really, a desperate act by a desperate woman.

She turned off the phone and dropped it into the bottom of her bag. What she really needed was to go out once in a while and take a chance on a real connection instead of sitting around hoping that Mr. Right would fall in her lap. What she needed was to go to Willis’ party that night.

***

Melanie walked into the party through the open front door to find that it was already in full swing. People she had worked with for years were letting their hair down—quite literally in a few cases—drinking and laughing and dancing like they were reliving their college days. Such a difference from the stress of their daily lives. She couldn’t remember the last time she had relaxed that way. She wasn’t sure she was even capable of it anymore.

She made her way through the crowd, waving a vague hello to people who called out her name, and sidled up to the bar—or, more accurately, the space against the wall that had a board balanced on cinderblocks in front of it.

“A screwdriver, please.”

The bartender made it as deftly as Melanie had sewn that five year old’s new valve into place a few days before, setting it before her in half the time she might have taken with it, settling a napkin under it with a little bit of a flourish.

“There you go, pretty lady.”

Melanie looked up, focusing on his face for the first time. He was tall, broad shouldered, and blond, the kind of guy she tended to gravitate toward. And he had a beautiful smile. She picked up the glass and made a sort of saluting gesture. “Thanks.”

“You can’t possibly be here alone.”

“Unfortunately, I am.”

“That’s a crime.”

“Are you flirting with me?” She looked up again, a soft smile slipping over her lips. “It’s been so long…”

“I doubt that.”

“The last guy who flirted with me was a construction worker whose leg had been severed in an accident. And that was during the last week of my residency, too many years ago to say.”

He shook his head as he leaned toward her over the bar. “I don’t believe that. I think you’re just not paying attention.”

“Maybe.”

Melanie sipped at her drink as she surveyed the room. Tanya was dancing with her husband, an amazing looking lawyer that rumor said she met when he visited his niece on the pediatric floor. And Kylie, one of the pediatric interns, dancing with a doctor from orthopedics. She recognized a couple of the surgical techs and two phlebotomists who did great jobs with her patients. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

How does one do that again?

And then she saw the hunk from radiology on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall as he quietly observed what was going on around him. When his eyes met Melanie’s, he smiled. Was it stupid that that little gesture made her heart skip a beat? Was it even stupider for her to decide to go over there and see if that smile meant anything more than, “Hi, some doctor I work with…”?

She finished her drink and set the glass on the makeshift bar, smiling gratefully at the bartender. He winked and offered an encouraging nod. Well, if things went really bad, at least she had the bartender in her corner.

“Hey, Mel!” Tanya called.

Melanie smiled, making the nurse smile as well by moving her hips in a little shimmy as she made her way across the dance floor. Tanya whistled, and that made Melanie laugh. And then she was suddenly in the hunk’s arms, his warm palm pressed against the low edge of her backless dress.

“Hello, Dr. Spence,” he said in a voice like melted caramel.

“Hi,” she returned, a little breathlessly. “You’re Jack, right?”

“Right.”

The music changed in that moment, from the pulsing rock that had been vibrating the walls to a more subtle, romantic tune that gave Jack the incentive to pull her tighter against his rock hard muscles. He smelled like warm sugar cookies, his soft t-shirt like the icing on an erotically tight cake. Melanie felt her nerves come to life as he ran his hand slowly up the length of her bare back as she rested her hands on the warm spot above the waist of his slacks.

“How long have you been a radiology tech?” she asked, feeling like she should say something before her fevered thoughts went too far to the wrong side of the professional/social line.

“Three years.”

“Did you always want to work in a medical setting?”

“No.”

Her eyebrows rose as she waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. She moved back just slightly so that she could see his eyes—a warm brown that reminded her of big, puppy eyes.

“What did you do before?”

A slow smile made his bottom lips swell a little right in the center, in that place she found herself imagining pulling between her teeth and nibbling on like it was the best tasting piece of toast she’d ever had.

“Do you want my resume?” he asked softly. “Or do you want to have a night of mind-numbing fun?”

Fun!

That should have been her first clue that something was wrong. But when a Roman god lookalike comes on that strong to a woman who hasn’t had a man in longer than she cared to admit, it would take a hammer to the head for her to realize she shouldn’t fall for his pretty smiles and hot, vodka flavored kisses.

He didn’t wait for her to answer his question. He just assumed. Granted, he assumed correctly, but Melanie didn’t even have a chance to think his question through before his lips were stealing hers, his hand slipping downward until he was tugging her close enough to him that they could hardly move in rhythm to the music any longer.

She didn’t object. She opened up to him, her own hand sliding up the length of his back and then down again, sliding over that perfect ass in a way she had imagined doing since the moment she first laid eyes on him.

She should have been more careful.

Somehow, they ended up out in front of Willis’ suburban house, falling into the back seat of his Ford Mustang, laughing at the tumbled way in which they fell. And then his hands were in her hair and he was tugging her up to his mouth, returning to the breath-stealing kisses that made her nerves tingle from her toes to her tender scalp. Her skirt was around her upper thighs, her hands tugging at the belt holding his heavy slacks in place. Another minute and she would have discovered whether the rumors about him were really true—whether or not he really was hung like a…

And then his cellphone began to ring.

She thought for a brief, fevered moment, that it was hers. She had several patients still on the floor, one of whom she half expected to have an emergency at some point. But then he shifted and tugged the offending device out of his hip pocket and made a sound kind of like the noise a sleeping intern makes when they realize they’ve missed rounds.

“I have to take this,” he said, brushing Melanie’s hands from his pants.

“Yeah, baby,” he said a second later into the phone, “I didn’t forget. Yes, I’ll bring home milk and diapers…anything else?”

It was worse than a bucket of cold water poured over the head. It was more like the shock of an electrocution.

Melanie had never moved quite as quickly as she did in that moment. She grabbed her shoes—which she’d kicked off as they climbed into the car—and climbed most unladylike over the side of the vehicle without bothering to look for some sort of mechanism to open a door, smoothing her skirt down over her thighs as she marched toward her own car.

“Hey!”

She just kept walking, hoping he’d get the message and let her go.

He didn’t.

Jack grabbed her arm and spun her around. “What are you doing? Are you some sort of cock tease, or something?”

“You’re seriously asking me that? Do you think I’m deaf?”

“What does that mean?”

She laughed, a sound that was more like a very unladylike snort. “I heard you on the phone. Are you married?”

“Yeah.”

He said it like he assumed she had known or didn’t see why it would be an issue. Melanie just shook her head and turned away, again headed toward her car.

“Fine,” he called after her. “Your loss.”

She laughed again, but this time there was a little more humor in it. If she couldn’t laugh at herself and her own screwed-up life, she’d go absolutely insane.

***

Melanie went home and showered for a long time, scrubbing every inch of flesh that man had touched and every inch he might have touched if his poor, oblivious wife—she preferred to think the wife was oblivious, but for all she knew, they both screwed around like it was some sort of game or something—hadn’t called. When she finally felt clean enough to climb out, she indulged in her favorite lotion and curled up in her favorite cashmere bathrobe. She looked through the shows recorded on her DVR, but couldn’t find anything that seemed to fit her mood. Maybe she’d be better off just crawling into bed with a good book.

She was about to get up when her cellphone chirped. A new email had just arrived. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened the application. When she saw the name of the dating service on the sender line, she considered deleting the email without reading it. But really, how could reading a short note from some guy a dating service set her up with be any worse than what had happened to her tonight?

She opened the email and glanced at the name of the sender. Nash. He was one of the two who were local to her area, one of only two of the five that she had considered even a possibility. An interesting coincidence, right?

And then she read the body of the email:

Dear Melanie:

I have no idea what to say. I know absolutely nothing about you except for the fact that some algorithm that was probably designed by a fifteen year old kid says that we would be a good romantic match. I don’t even know why I joined this service, other than the fact that my luck with women in the real world has been less than satisfactory lately. It’s not that I can’t get dates, it’s just that I have a hard time meeting women who want to get to know me…the real me. Does that make sense? So, anyway, I joined this service and I’m paying them to find me a woman who’s willing to talk a little before we meet in the real world, so the least I figured I could do was email one who caught my attention. And, guess what? You’re that lucky one. So, if you’re interested, I’d likely respond to your response.

It was signed simply: Nash.

Melanie read it a second time, not really ready to admit that he seemed…great. He felt the same way she did about the service. And he seemed as weary about the idea that it would work as she. Yet, he was reaching out to her. So, who was she to ignore that attempt?

Melanie pulled out her laptop and composed a response. She ended up editing it to death and having to rewrite it more than once. But she finally settled on a short note that she hoped didn’t sound completely snobby and self-absorbed.

Dear Nash,

Your email made complete sense to me. I am a super-busy professional woman who’s had a lot of difficulty finding a man who either, 1) understands my commitment to my work, or 2) is after more than just a physical relationship. I joined this service as a sort of cry for help, I think, but I don’t really expect anything earth shattering to come out of it. But like you, I paid for it, so I figure I should give it a try. I just got my list of matches today and have yet to look closely at them. I guess the next thing I should do is look at your profile. Will I be surprised by anything I find there? I certainly hope not…You aren’t married, are you?

Melanie.

She hesitated before she pressed the send button, but he wasn’t sure what caused the reluctance. It wasn’t like there was anything embarrassing in the note. But reaching out to someone she didn’t know seemed dangerous somehow.

Then again, it couldn’t be more dangerous than making out with a married man in front of a large group of her co-workers.

She pulled up the dating services’ webpage and logged in. Her matches were displayed on her dashboard with a hyperlink to each of their profiles. Melanie clicked on Nash’s profile and was surprised to discover that he didn’t have a picture displayed. That was something of a concern. Why wouldn’t he put up a picture? Everyone knew how to take a selfie. It wasn’t like it was that hard to come across something flattering he could put up. Instead, he uploaded a picture of a beach—she thought it might be somewhere off the coast of California—with the sun going down in a big, bright ball of orange and red in the background.

The rest was pretty straightforward. He listed his profession as CEO of the family business, which suggested he was close to his parents and/or siblings, a plus in Melanie’s mind, and his romantic situation as single, never married. Melanie had suggested in her profile that she would be open to dating a divorced man, but the idea no longer seemed like a good one after what had happened tonight. He listed a half dozen of his favorite books, and Melanie was pleased to see that four out of six also appeared on her list. He didn’t write things like long walks in the rain under his favorite romantic dates. Instead, he had been more practical, listing a preference for a home cooked meal and a good movie. She just hoped he didn’t expect the woman to do all the cooking…that was one thing Melanie had never really mastered. She could repair a child’s heart valve, remove an appendix in seconds, or carve cancerous tumors out of the liver, but she couldn’t follow a recipe to save her life.