Love Hacked

by Penny Reid

  Love Hacked

  A reluctant romance

  By Penny Reid

  Caped Publishing

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living, dead, or undead), events, or locales is entirely coincidental, if not somewhat disturbing and/or concerning.

  Copyright © 2014 by Penny Reid; All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

  Caped Publishing

  Made in the United States of America

  March 4, 2014

  1st eBook EDITION

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9892810-3-4

  DEDICATION

  To my husband. Thank you for loving me, weird/random facts, and disturbing advances in technology (in that order).

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Acknowledgements

  Other books by Penny Reid

  Tattooed Dots

  Geoducks are for Lovers

  With This Heart

  CHAPTER 1

  HE WAS BALD in a way that made me think of both melons and sex. Tan suit, green tie, white shirt—Chuck was a honeydew.

  I met Chuck standing in the concession line at a Cubs game. I saw him and just knew that this was the guy. He was the one mentioned in my Sunday horoscope. As all very important and highly intelligent females do, I read my horoscope every morning—right after finishing the obituaries, and just before I peruse the comics.

  That morning my horoscope read, Be watchful; today you will meet the catalyst of your future life.

  When I basically accosted him in line and forced him to talk to me, he was wearing a baseball hat. I’d liked his face and his friendly smile. Though I sensed he was bewildered and a bit overwhelmed by my attention, he readily agreed to the date.

  But now, without his hat, and illuminated mostly by a single candle on the table, his jaw appeared to mirror the top of his head, which had become a rounded, shiny, nondescript curve of yellow, melon-colored flesh.

  “The Bella Costa is an excellent vintage. Light on the nose, but a spicy palate with notes of blackberry and cracked pepper.” He smiled at me. He was looking for approval.

  My left eyebrow arched all on its own. “Cracked pepper? In wine?”

  “Yes.” He chuckled. “Forgive me. I’m a bit of a connoisseur, really a student of the grape. Last summer I spent a week at the Louis Martini sommelier workshop in Napa.”

  “Is that so, Chuck?”

  He chuckled again, nodding his big round head.

  Chuck, the chuckling honeydew.

  “You’re very funny, Sandra.”

  “Am I? I wasn’t aware that I’d said anything humorous.” I laughed with him, scrunched my nose, but didn’t know why we were laughing. This often happened to me, people finding me funny for no reason I could discern. Therefore, I’d learned long ago to just smile and nod, yet continue to speak with sincerity. That usually made them laugh even more.

  Most people strike me as disappointingly predictable in their normalcy.

  However, I wasn’t about to let Chuck’s potential predictability derail my optimism. I’d bought a new dress for the date—crime scene red, strapless, indecently tight, lifting my modest bust up and out to well, hello there, how are ya?—and dolled myself up in expectation. Perhaps the zebra print stilettos I’d borrowed from my friend Janie were a bit much, but I had high hopes for Chuck.

  The horoscope had said he would be a catalyst for my future life, and I was beyond ready for my future life to begin.

  I tried not to daydream about it, but I couldn’t help myself. Even as I was getting ready for the date, my mind provided Instagram-style status updates of our future together: Cubs season tickets, screaming profanities at Cardinal fans, sharing a hot dog at Portillo’s, watching horror movies every Friday night while naked on the couch, reading the paper together on Sunday mornings, and a cornucopia of impressive bedroom acrobatics.

  But first I had to get past the fact that, so far, he appeared to be very, very normal.

  His laughter tapered but his smile remained as he said, “No one calls me Chuck anymore. I usually prefer Charles.”

  “Oh.” I stopped laughing. “I’m sorry, Charles. I didn’t….”

  “No, no. It’s okay.” He placed his hand on the table between us. “Somehow, with you, I don’t mind at all.”

  Oh. Well. Crap.

  His words made my stomach tighten with a flare of despair.

  I returned his warm, melony smile with as much effort as I could muster; my spirits deflated, but I refused to take it to frown town. I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Well, you don’t know me very well. I could be a complete freak show.”

  He chuckled. “You’re adorable.”

  I perked up a bit at the compliment. “Is that why you agreed to meet me so late? My adorableness? Sorry about that, by the way. My shift ended at nine. It’s not every guy who will agree to a ten p.m. first date.”

  He waved his hand through the air as though it were nothing. “It’s not a problem. It’s not every day that I meet a gorgeous redhead with green eyes who’s so easy to talk to.”

  So easy to talk to.

  I smiled in return, endeavored to mask my impending forlornness, and then I turned my attention to the menu in my lap. I tried not to sigh.

  Our first date had just started, and I was trying to rally against the fact that it might as well already be over.

  Unless Chuck said something astonishing in the next five minutes, he was most certainly not a catalyst for anything except perhaps another evening of me being abandoned for the twenty-ninth time in a restaurant.

  I could see the events of the evening as though they’d already occurred, because they had. This was just like every single one of my first dates.

  They always start the same: the guy tells me he feels comfortable with me even though we don’t know each other. He searches his brain for the reason why, then tells me that I remind him of someone else—his first girlfriend, the girl next door, or the girl who got away. I probe deeper, and he admits it was an older woman, a kind teacher or an aunt or, worse, his mother. He tells me how much that relationship meant to him, then he unloads more than I will ever want to know about his life, his dreams, his expectations, how he failed his parents or siblings or friends, or how they failed him.

  In the end, he cries.

  If I’m lucky, it won’t be in the restaurant.

  Eventually, he thanks me. He tells me how lovely I am, and then shakes my hand. He asks if he can call me again to talk. I give him my friend Thomas’s card, a board certified psychiatrist with a focus on fa
mily counseling. We part as friends, and I have another guy in my friend arsenal; another guy to hang pictures in my apartment or help me move.

  And he has a female just friend to introduce to the girl he eventually marries.

  Trying not to be resigned to my fate, I perused the menu without reading it. I already knew what I was going to order. This was one of the two reasons I always picked Taj’s Indian Restaurant for my plethora of first dates. Their butter chicken is amazageddon (amazing plus Armageddon) good. If I could have one final meal on the face of the earth, it would be Taj’s butter chicken.

  The other reason, I noted with somewhat buoyed spirits, would arrive at my doomed table any minute.

  “You know, you remind me of someone.” Chuck’s words meet my ears right on schedule. I almost mouthed along as he continued, chuckling, “You look a lot like this girl I used to know.”

  I didn’t meet his gaze because I wasn’t listening to him anymore. Instead, I braced myself for what came next.

  Or, rather, who came next.

  Like clockwork, I sensed my waiter approach. I didn’t need to look up to know he was carrying two water glasses. Mine had no ice and no lemon.

  “Good evening.” He said, his velvety voice sending ripples of delicious awareness from my nose to my toes. “I’m Alex, and I’ll be serving you tonight.”

  Be cool. Be cool and act cool. Be chill, act chill, be ice. You’re an ice cube. Just be cool.

  Heat suffused my neck and cheeks; but, as I was expecting him, I was able to temper the warmth before it became a telling stain. I paused a moment, gathered a deep breath, and lifted my chin and eyes to meet his gaze.

  Ahh, Alex the waiter.

  Alex the waiter was on my Spank Naughty list in third place, right after Henry Cavill the actor, then Henry Cavill as Superman. He was proof that God existed, and that God loved straight women.

  As usual, he was looking at me with thoughtful, deep-set indigo eyes behind black horned-rimmed glasses. As usual, his mouth was curved in a small fleeting smile. As usual, he stood at the edge of the booth, a six foot three hovering, angular, lissome specimen of pure manhood.

  His strong jaw, dusted with black stubble, was marred by a deep, irregular scar that ran from the center of his bottom lip at a jagged slant to one side of his chin; he had a slightly crooked nose, likely broken on more than one occasion; close-cut black hair, a little longer on the top as though it had mohawk aspirations; and a mouth just a bit too wide and soft for the rest of his rugged face.

  As usual, he was dressed in all black.

  If you went for rough edges, chip on the shoulder, effortlessly sensual, young, dangerous, and the build of an Olympic swimmer, which I usually did not, he fit the bill and caught the fish—hook, line, sinker, sexy.

  I usually gravitated toward nice men—meaning, men who looked like they were nice men: men who smiled a lot, liked to golf, paid their parking tickets, owned sensible suits and shoes, and considered sweater vests appropriate Sunday attire; men who knew a Mallard from a Muscovy and had all their ducks in a row; men who would and theoretically should make good husbands and fathers— men with no outward sign of emotional baggage.

  Alex didn’t fit the typical nice man mold; he had a flashing, Las Vegas Strip-style neon warning marquee of emotional baggage. Yet, I couldn’t help myself. The first time I heard him speak, I was sunk; his voice made my stomach do a skydive to my toes without a parachute. His voice reminded me of jazz and the bedroom and a strip tease: melodic, deep, soothing, slightly sandpapery, but with an irreverent, careless quality.

  I daydreamed about him reading me a book, the newspaper, a greeting card, an eviction notice—anything. As much as it was possible, I was infatuated with his voice. I often asked him questions about the menu—even though I already knew what I was going to order—just so I could hear him speak. When he spoke, life was good.

  It did things to me.

  Alex the waiter and his bedroom voice almost made all my failed first dates worth the bother, because Alex saying “I’ll be serving you tonight” was typically the highlight of the evening. It was all downhill from there.

  I gave him a polite nod and, as usual, Alex’s smile flattened into a straight line.

  Alex the waiter, it seemed, didn’t like me much.

  “Hi. Can you tell me about…?”

  “Let me order for you.” Chuck startled me by reaching across the table and tugging on my menu.

  My gaze turned from Alex to melon face. “Oh, that’s not necessary—I know what I….”

  “I insist. Then I can pair the wine seamlessly.” Chuck winked at me, then turned to Alex and said, “We’ll start with a bottle of your Parducci, chilled at forty degrees for ten minutes then aerated. I’ll have the chicken tandoori, and the lady will have saag paneer.”

  Chuck handed Alex our menus, then grinned at me, so pleased with himself. I didn’t grin back. I don’t believe in rewarding poor behavior.

  Other than accepting the menus, Alex didn’t move.

  “So, Sandra—I was about to tell you about this—well, this girl you remind me of.” Chuck leaned forward and pushed his knife a few millimeters closer to his spoon.

  “A girl?” I cleared my throat, keenly aware that Alex still hadn’t left.

  “Yes. You remind me of her.” He glanced at his silverware and muttered, mostly to himself, “It’s really uncanny.”

  I stared at Chuck, horrified. Alex cleared his throat, drawing my attention back to him. He must’ve liked my horrified expression because, uncharacteristically, he was smiling again, and wider this time.

  “Butter chicken?” Alex asked.

  I nodded once, then released a sigh. “Yeah. This won’t take long.”

  Alex returned my single nod, his black eyebrows ticking upward a half-centimeter. “Then shall I cancel the other?”

  “Yes, please, thank you.”

  Alex’s smile was wry as his nebulous eyes moved over my face. I was surprised to see his gaze linger on my mouth for a short second before he turned and sauntered back to the kitchen. I watched his backside and broad shoulders as he walked away. He had an irreverent, careless walk—not quite a swagger; it was a bedroom walk, just like his voice.

  I sighed again, thinking how nice it was watching Alex walk away, and found myself wondering about Alex’s age.

  I guessed twenty-two or twenty-three, a late bloomer. His body didn’t seem fully-grown yet; his hands were just a bit too big, and he had that gait of a careless teenager.

  But his eyes were unfathomable and steeled. When I looked into his eyes, the rest of his physicality seemed to age; he had the eyes of man.

  A wicked, wicked man.

  “Sandra?”

  I yanked my gaze away from Alex’s backside and found the honeydew watching me, his expression muddled confusion.

  “What was all that about?” Chuck indicated with his head in the direction of Alex’s departing form. Apparently, he wanted an explanation for our strange conversation.

  “Oh, nothing. Why don’t you tell me more about your mother?” I rested my hands on my lap and prepared myself to listen to whatever Chuck was ready to tell me.

  “Uh, I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t talking about my mother.”

  “Your father raised you, right?” I kept my voice gentle, my face carefully blank of expression.

  He nodded, appearing both mystified and awestruck. “Yes, but how did you know…?”

  “But he didn’t raise you, did he? Did he travel a lot, or did he work a lot?”

  Chuck leaned forward, his elbows practically hitting the table in front of him, and his story gushed forth like blood from an untended arterial wound. “He didn’t travel. My parents divorced when I was only seven, and my mom took my sister. I stayed with my dad. He worked…he worked all the time.”

  And so it began.

  I listened to Chuck’s tale of upper middle class childhood abandonment and neglect. I felt for him, I did, just like I felt for all th
e others. It seemed our society was raising a generation of fractured children, more an accessory to their parents than living, breathing, feeling beings. They plugged him into the wall via television and video games; then took him out when convenient, mostly around the holidays.

  When Alex came back with the bottle of wine, Chuck didn’t seem to notice, as he was knee deep in relating a story about his father’s new wife. I noted that Chuck still called the woman “Dad’s new wife” even though they’d now been married over fifteen years.

  Darting glances between Chuck and Alex to keep the attention of both, I completed the cursory wine tasting and nodded once at Alex that I was pleased with the bottle.

  When Alex came back with the garlic naan, Chuck was banging on the table with his fist. He was elbow deep in a story about winning a cross-country race in high school; it was a success about which—even to this day—his father had no idea.

  When Alex came back with my butter chicken, Chuck was holding his face in his hands and sobbing quietly; Alex had just set the plate on the table in front of me when Chuck struggled to stand from our booth, not even noticing that Alex hadn’t brought his entree. I stood and gave Chuck my support, helped him to his feet and pressed Thomas’s card into his hand.

  “God, Sandra, I can’t thank you enough. I—I just feel….” Chuck choked as a small sob escaped his lips.

  I rubbed his arm with an open palm. “It gets better. Talking about it will make a difference.”

  He nodded, either unable or unwilling to speak, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.

  “You’re not alone, Charles.”

  Chuck reached out and grabbed my hand.

  “Oh, God. Dinner. I am so sorry.” Chuck’s lost eyes scanned the table, and I gave his hand a calming squeeze. He seemed completely blind to the patrons at the only other table occupied in the restaurant. They were casting curious glances our way, but trying not to be obvious about it.

  “It’s okay, Chuck. Just go home and take care of you.” I gently pulled on Chuck’s hand and led him to the door. “Go get some sleep, and call Thomas’s office in the morning.” When Chuck’s shell-shocked eyes found mine, new tears threatened to spill over, so I gave him a small smile. “Tell him that Dr. Fielding sent you and you’ll get a discount on your first two sessions.”