LITMIR.BIZ

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care about him even after all this time maybe she could go along with it, have a fling with her ex. She wouldn’t be the first woman ever to do so. But she’d worked long and hard to rebuild her self-esteem after it had been shattered by the man she’d loved and she wasn’t about to compromise her hard-won peace again. Not for some cheap sex and a few orgasms, intense though they might be.

      Gritting her teeth, she made a date with her laptop. She’d spend the evening going through all the listings at Plenty of Phillys. She had some messages to answer, some new profiles to check out.

      When she got home that night, after a punishing thirty minutes at Curves, she zapped a low-cal dinner in the microwave which tasted so uninteresting it felt like a complete waste of four hundred calories, then showered and decided that if she was going to do this online dating thing then she’d better put a little effort into it.

      Wrapping her towel around her she padded into her bedroom. She’d bought the town house after her marriage ended and she’d gone out of her way to make her bedroom as feminine as possible. Decorated in soft pinks and creams with a raw silk bedspread and white-and-gold French Provincial furniture, the room all but sported a No Boys Allowed sign on the door.

      She opened her closet and tried to work out what one wore to go trolling for men using the Internet. She finally decided on a black cashmere V-neck sweater and black stretch exercise pants that were the most comfortable slacks she’d ever owned.

      She let her hair dry naturally, curling down her back as it did when she didn’t ruthlessly straighten and style it, and then she poured herself a glass of wine and logged onto the dating site.

      There were a couple of men who’d sent her expressions of interest but she didn’t like the appearance of either of them. Then she decided she’d better look around and see if anyone in her general age range caught her interest. She was clicking listlessly through the offerings when her doorbell rang.

      Her video display showed her Dexter waiting at her front door with all the assurance of a man who knows he’s welcome.

      Wrong.

      She ignored him and padded back to her couch.

      Her cell phone rang.

      She picked it up. “Yes?”

      “I know you’re home,” said the all-too-familiar voice. “I checked. Your car’s in your spot.”

      “Hmm, could there be a reason why I might be home and not answering my door? Oh, wait, there is. I don’t want to see you.”

      “I came to say goodbye.”

      “Goodbye?” she blurted, much too fast for someone who didn’t want to see the man. She couldn’t believe he was leaving.

      “I have to go back to New York for a couple of weeks, but I’ll be back.”

      “Oh.” Fine. It was fine. She’d managed without him for years, she didn’t need him now.

      “Could I come in? I want to talk to you.”

      Reluctantly, she let him in. Was he going to try to seduce her? One for the road? She couldn’t believe he’d be that crass, and yet she must have a few crass bones in her body too for the idea didn’t repel her. Maybe he was bad for her in a whole bunch of ways, but the sex was still so good it wasn’t fair.

      However, he didn’t rush in and jump her. Instead, after he’d come in and removed his coat and shoes, he shoved his hands in the pocket of his jeans and seemed a little unsure of himself. In her feminine space, he seemed more than usually masculine and since she wasn’t wearing her heels he towered above her.

      “Would you like to sit down?”

      “Yeah. Sure.”

      “Can I get you something? Some wine?”

      “If it’s open.”

      She went into her kitchen and poured him a glass.

      Her body felt tingly and the scent of her body lotion rose as her skin heated from the pImages** flashing through her brain. Good thing she’d showered and freshened up, she thought even as she tried to remind herself of all the reasons why having sex with the hottie in her living room was a bad, bad idea.

      When she’d run out of lecture, she walked back in to find him sitting, not where she’d left him, but in her chair. And, horror of horrors, he was staring at her laptop screen with undisguised fascination.

      He glanced up. “Are you kidding me? Online dating?”

      “What’s wrong with online dating?”

      “Nothing, I guess. I thought…” He seemed to run out of steam and she didn’t press him to finish his sentence. Instead she handed him the wine.

      With a brief word of thanks, he took a sip and then put the glass down so he could devote his full attention to her computer. How could she have been so stupid as to have left the thing open for him to find?

      Of course, anyone with any integrity wouldn’t have snooped. But as she well knew, integrity wasn’t Dexter’s strong suit. If she made a big deal about it, he’d only laugh at her, so she decided to humor him. If he wanted to mock her and her efforts to find a nice guy, then that was his problem.

      She steeled herself while he continued reading. Until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why are you reading the profiles of single men in the city?”

      “I’m not. I’m reading yours.”

      She rose. Enough already. She’d get that computer out of his hands if she had to wrestle him to the ground for it.

      Finally he glanced up and shook his head. “I can’t believe your profile. You missed all the best things about yourself.”

      That wasn’t at all what she’d expected and he didn’t appear to be teasing. She faltered. Puzzled. “Why do you say that?”

      His expression was impossible to read. “Because no one knows you the way I do.”

       11

      “ARE YOU SUGGESTING I should get you to write my online dating profile?” she asked, wondering if she could have misunderstood him.

      “Why not?”

      “Because you’re my ex-husband. It seems a little unorthodox.”

      “Like I said, nobody knows you better, or knows all your good qualities better than I do.” He grinned at her. “Of course, I know all your not-so-good qualities, too, but I’ll keep those to myself.”

      “This seems like a really bad idea.”

      “Come on, let me take a crack at it. If you don’t like what I write, you can delete it.”

      Intrigued in spite of her better judgment, she said, “What would you say?”

      She had her legs curled under her, sitting in a corner of the couch. He picked up the laptop and brought it over, sitting beside her. His thighs brushed her toes and she felt a zing of connection from nothing more than the denim warmed by his body heat shifting against her foot.

      He didn’t move away.

      And she didn’t pull her foot out of the way.

      He typed. She was certain he was correcting her height, knocking her down to size, but when she couldn’t stand hearing the tap-tap-tap of keys, and watching the concentration on his face as he typed, she finally leaned over to check his progress.

      What he wrote was, To know Karen you have to be patient. She’s outgoing and funny, has a laugh that makes people join in and the minute you meet her you feel like you’ve known her forever. His fingers paused and she waited, silent, until they resumed. But to know the real Karen, the one behind the fun-loving social creature, takes work. She doesn’t show her true self to many people,

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