Chapter 12

Dakota

“Was that him?” I asked, barely able to control my excitement.

“It was Merrick. We are going out on a double date tomorrow with him and his friend.”

The rumble in my stomach from excitement was hard to control. We were so lucky that Bruce had known who Merrick was and how to get in touch with him. And that Merrick had called Emma back so quickly.

I did feel a bit like a stalker because we had gone to so much trouble to track this guy down, but I couldn’t just forget about him. I knew that dating app was trying to find me a match, and I was totally up for playing that game. But I couldn’t just give up on the idea that I would be able to find my own match. Life was confusing and messy, and I finally felt like there was a man out there that I could have a decent couple of dates with; I couldn’t let that just pass me by.

I knew that Emma wasn’t all that interested in going out with Merrick again. They seemed to have a smoldering attraction that could possibly end in one of them hurting the other. I had never actually seen Emma get so worked up by a guy before. Typically, she would just ignore him and give up on him. But this guy was getting under her skin, and it was very amusing to watch.

“You sound so excited about this date,” I said sarcastically as I laughed.

“Hey, anything for my friend. I will suffer through it if it means you find a hunky man to bang in your office,” she joked.

It was a little running joke that someday she would come into work, and I would be the one with a man in my office. I really didn’t think that would ever actually happen since I had never found myself so inclined to bring a man to my office like that. I usually preferred just to go to their house or have them pick me up for my date from the studio. They didn’t need to know where I lived, and I didn’t need to invite them into the studio for sex.

“I appreciate you being willing to go on a date with an extremely handsome, rich man. I mean, you are really taking one for the team here.”

“I know. I know. It’s a rough life I have, but I love you, so I’ll suffer through it.”

I did appreciate what she was doing, though. If Emma had protested about trying to find the guy I wanted to find, I would have backed off. Her willingness to make a fool out of herself by getting in touch with Merrick had been a life saver to me. I was way too shy to have gone after this guy all on my own. I needed Emma there as my sidekick.

“So what time is this date tomorrow?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“Oh, my gosh; I’m so excited. What should we wear?” I laughed.

“Just pretend like you’re confident and lie to yourself about it. I sometimes tell myself I’m the most beautiful woman in the room.” Emma laughed.

“You are beautiful.”

“I know. But you get what I mean. Trick yourself into believing it. Lie about it in your head. Seduction is about lying to yourself more than it is about lying to the person you are with. When you believe you’re seductive, it will come through in how you act.”

“I’ll try it if I can manage to keep a straight face,” I said with a smile.

“Go do your dating app thing, and we will talk about what to wear tomorrow. I’ve got a class to teach soon,” Emma said.

“Alright, but we are going to have to shop tomorrow. I need a cute dress for our date. I should get a cute set of panties and bra too just in case I feel like getting lucky.” I laughed.

“You go, girl. You definitely need to get a little lucky with this guy.”

When I arrived at FAO Schwartz, I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I had been for my visit to the coffee place. This time, I already knew I had an awesome date planned for the next day with a very handsome guy. So there was no need for me to worry if this guy didn’t turn out to be all that great.

FAO Schwartz was a huge toy store and not really the kind of place you wanted to be if you were trying to meet someone for the first time. My eyes got wide as I took in the tall ceiling and enormous stuffed animals. The sound of kids music played in the background and I could feel my heart pounding in pure excitement. I waited by the front door for a while and then decided to walk around the store and see if I noticed any single guys lurking around. Normally, I would think it was relatively weird if there was a single guy walking around a toy store looking to meet a woman. Toys stores were for parents, and from what I could remember on his profile, this guy wasn’t a parent.

It dawned on me that I might not have been paying that close of attention to Wyatt’s profile, though. He must come to FAO Schwartz if the meeting was set up there because I certainly never came to the place on any sort of regular time frame. I clicked back into the app to see if I could look at his profile again, but it was still not available. I was really not a fan of the online dating thing at all. It baffled me that the Date Tonight app had such wildly positive reviews. There was no way people dealt with this sort of secrecy and didn’t give bad reviews, but I had read through tons of them online, and they all raved about meeting their perfect match; it was one of the main reasons I kept going with the game.

“Oh, no,” I heard a little boy say in a sweet voice as I heard a bunch of boxes tumble from the shelf.

I rushed over to help him. There were about a dozen Lego boxes on the ground, but no pieces had spilled out. The noise from the fall had scared him, and I saw tears welling up in his eyes as I leaned down to help him. His big blue eyes looked up at me and I saw a small tear in the corner of each of them. I wanted to reach out and brush his dark brown hair out of his eyes, but held back as not to scare him.

“It’s alright. I’ll help.”

I grabbed a few boxes of Lego and started to put them back on the shelf while I looked around for his parents. There didn’t seem to be a mother or father in the direct vicinity, and that made me a little nervous.

“Thank you,” the little boy said. He was now also looking around for his parent.

“Did you come here with your mom?”

“Yes, but she’s not here. I think she is lost.”

We finished putting the boxes on the shelf, and I grabbed his hand, and we turned to stand up. I was more than happy to help him find his mother or get him to a staff person so we could find her together, but as we turned around, I came face to face with the man from the club.

He was standing right there only inches away from me, and I had almost rammed right into him. Our eyes locked on each other and then his eyes went down to my hand, which was still holding onto the little boy.

“Hi,” I said with a nervous smile.

“Hey, how are you?”

He looked damn good. His light brown hair and green eyes sparkled in the lights of the store. He was dressed in a custom made suit that clearly fit every inch of his body like perfection. I was mystified. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think of what I should say as I stood there nervously smiling at him and not talking for what seemed like an eternity.

“Um, I’m good … I um … I hear we are supposed to go on a date tomorrow,” I managed to say without sounding too excited.

The excitement that was building up inside of me was hard to contain. He was there, right there in front of me. His navy blue suit fit him perfectly, and I wanted to reach out and touch it to see how soft it was. I also wanted to stay there talking to him, but I had a lot going on at the moment. I had a little boy I needed to help find his mother and a blind date that I had to search the store for.

“Yes, I’ll see you then,” he said and then walked away.

“Um, okay, see you tomorrow,” I said as I tried to hide my disappointment.

That had not gone well at all. Not only did I look like a maniac as I held the hand of some stranger’s kid, but I hadn’t been able to get anything to come out of my mouth to explain why I was holding the hand of a child. He likely thought I was this child’s mother. But more horrible than that, he probably thought I was a babbling idiot who couldn’t even form sentences without assistance. I felt mortified.

“Ryan, where have you been,” a woman said frantically as she came and grabbed the little boy from me.

“We were just looking for you,” I replied with a smile.

“Are you okay darling? I was so worried about you,” the woman said to her son as she shot me a nasty look.

She looked at me as if I had done something wrong and certainly didn’t offer me any appreciation for keeping her son safe from kidnappers. I was left standing there feeling like a total ass. I had fumbled running into the guy from the club; I had looked more like a child kidnapper than a helper as I stood holding the boy’s hand and not moving. Nothing was going my way.

My heart pounded hard as I tried to hold back the emotions that were welling up inside of me. I didn’t feel up to meeting a total stranger from the dating app, even if I happened to be able to figure out who he was.

After I walked around the store one complete time, I called it a night and made my way home. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to Emma; I wasn’t in the mood for anything. I had gone from being totally excited to being barely able to think straight.

Life had been cruising along relatively normally until the last few weeks. Recently, I felt like my whole life was out of control. I had clients trying to throw themselves at me. Online dating guys who I matched up with but couldn’t actually meet. Mysterious club guys who I felt connected to but couldn’t talk to when I needed to. Nothing was going my way.

I decided it was time to delete the Date Tonight app. It wasn’t helping me at all, and chasing after some guy that I had never met was just stressing me out. I had a date coming up with a very handsome man, and if I hadn’t just ruined it by not being able to talk to him at the store, then I hoped I would be able to fix things on our date.

But as I pulled the app up to delete it, I noticed there was a window available to send a message to Wyatt. That definitely had not been there before, so I took advantage of it. I wasn’t sure if the app had been sending him different locations to go to like it had for me, so I started the conversations slow.

---Hi, Wyatt, how’s the game treating you so far? It’s been frustrating for me.---

I sent the message and then waited as if Wyatt was sitting on the other end just waiting for me to message him so he could respond. It was silly, but I felt like he was there. The whole app game had been a frustrating mess for me, and I desperately needed a sign that I should continue working with it or just delete the thing.

Sure enough, a message popped up in return.

---Yes, very frustrating.---

---How was your day today? What do you do for work?---

---My day was good. I’m in the financial services. It was a very good day today. Should we just schedule a meet up?---

---Sure. How about …---

Then the entire app went blank again, and I wasn’t able to type anymore. I felt my level of frustration peak as I almost threw my entire phone across the room. Why the hell would the stupid app give me just the opportunity I needed to talk to this guy and then take it away before we could schedule an actual meeting?

I climbed into bed and closed my eyes and wished for a do-over for my day. The next day just had to go better than this one had.