Thad Heart. Easy enough to find a cute omega with a name like Thad Heart, right? Uh, no.

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

I assumed he meant Omega Match because that’s what all my friends were using for hookups. But there wasn’t any Thad Heart or Tad Heart or Thad Hart or any other variation I could come up with. So, I tried OmMatch and AlphaMe and GrindIt and Knotted and about twelve other recommendations from the iTunes store before finally giving up the search.

If he was on any of those apps, I would have found him. And that was a big if. Chances were good that he’d immediately deleted his profile and decided to take a break from drunk alphas altogether.

I wouldn’t blame him after what he went through with John.

But why would he tell me his name if he didn’t want me to contact him?

I texted Jason, calling in a favor I’d been saving since the Halloween party when he pissed all over my bathroom because he saw the rubber rat I’d hidden behind the toilet. I was hiding in the shower with my phone and swore I’d delete the video if he did something for me… And now it was time to pay for my silence.

Can you do a name search for me? I set my phone on the sofa and picked up the remote to find a show. When he was on duty, he wasn’t always quick to respond to random texts.

Who? Lover boy from the other night?

Shit. Of course he’d go there. And he’d be right. Maybe. I need to find Thad Heart or Hart. From Mapleville.

Yeah, OK. I’ll see what I can find.

Thanks, man. I’ll even buy you a beer if you can make it happen. Shit, I’d buy him a keg if he could get me a good number for Thad.

Yeah, you will.

With that taken care of, I propped my feet up on the coffee table and settled in for an episode of Ink Masters. I didn’t have any ink on my skin personally, but I’d always been fascinated with the art people used to adorn their body.

Maybe one day I’d have something or someone in my life special enough to warrant a permanent reminder, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up. Even if Jason did find that contact information, using a cop to hunt Thad down was more than a little creepy.

But creepy or not, I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew if those full lips were as soft as they looked, and if those emerald-green eyes saw in me the same potential I saw when I looked into them.

* * *

It was two full days before Jason called me with the information I wanted. Well, with information that could have been what I wanted.

“There were two hits in Mapleville.” Jason chuckled to himself over the phone. “But I’m not sure either of them are your guy.”

“Why do you say that?” I dug a pen out of the junk drawer in my kitchen to take notes.

“Well, the first guy is Thaddeus Andrew Hartman, age 45, an unmarried podiatrist from Maplesville.”

“Forty-five?” I held the pen over the paper, hovering in place. “That’s not my Thad.”

“Your Thad?” Jason laughed out loud. “I knew it. And yeah, probably not him, but do you want his number anyway?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I blew a deep breath out between my teeth. “What about the other guy?”

“A seven-year-old with a promising little league future and missing teeth.”

Dammit! I took down the number of the old guy who definitely wasn’t my Thad, but maybe it was his grandpa or an uncle he was named after. I had to at least try to find him.

And maybe my Thad just looked amazing for his age. I didn’t mind going out with an older guy. Seventeen years is a bit much but it’s not like it’s never happened before.

And if he is my omega, I’m going to find him.

* * *

He wasn’t my omega.

In fact, he wasn’t even an omega at all.

I know this because I made an appointment with the man to make stalking him seem less weird. Unfortunately, lying about plantars fasciitis just for an excuse to see a guy from a bar again isn’t less weird at all. It’s much, much weirder...and borderline illegal if you consider the insurance fraud aspect. Which I tried not to do.

It wasn’t until I was sitting in the waiting room with a couple old people who were there to get their toenails trimmed that the gravity of my situation hit me. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

And creepy.

When I was finally introduced to the doctor after sitting in an exam room for ten minutes, the nerdy alpha in front of me practically drooled. Like, literally, he wiped the corners of his mouth three times in the first five minutes of our talk.

As soon as I saw that he wasn’t my Thad, I tried to make an excuse to get out of there, but this guy wanted to get his money out of me so he guilted me into the full foot exam. I’ve never been with a man who had a foot fetish before, but this guy practically licked my toes during his fake exam and his knot was ready to burst out of his scrubs. I lucked out when my phone rang.

It was an automated caller asking if I wanted to talk about solar energy, but I pretended it was a work emergency and yanked my feet out of Dr. Hartman’s hands. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, but I’m sure he appreciated the few extra minutes he had to take care of that knot in his pants.

I walked around the town of Mapleville for about an hour, hoping my Thad might just show up on the street corner at exactly the same time I was there. But, of course, that didn’t happen. As much as I wanted to make this work, I wasn’t any closer to finding that sweet ginger omega who came back to give me a ride after I fought for his honor.

Some things just aren’t meant to be, I guess.