Page 46 of Seizing Mack
“Lucky bastard,” Jay murmured. “What does he need a woman for?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“That’s all you got?”
“Nope, one more.” She tapped the tablet and brought up a clean-cut, nondescript guy with dirty blonde hair, medium brown eyes, and an awkward, forced, really-hate-having-my-picture-taken constipated smile.
“He doesn’t seem too bad,” Jay said charitably, tilting his head one way and then the other, as if that would make the image better.
“He kind of looks like a douche, don’t you think?”
“Maybe that’s just his resting douche face.”
“His what?”
“Resting douche face. It’s like a resting bitch face – you know, when a woman looks like a total bitch even when she’s completely chill? Except this is for guys who are actually really nice and just have the bad luck to look like a douche.”
Mack considered this briefly. “Or he really is a total douche.” She squinted at the accompanying bio. “He’s forty-two, a tax accountant, and still lives with his mother.”
“Jesus, why would you put something like that on your profile?” Jay shook his head in disbelief. “It makes you wonder what he’s not telling you. Seriously, Mack. Why are you even looking at this crap? You can do so much better than this.”
Mack closed down the site with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, they’re beating down the doors.”
He patted his leg in invitation. After only a moment’s hesitation, she set aside her laptop and crawled into his lap. His sculpted arms wrapped around and held her. Jay was the only one she allowed to see her weakness. The only one she trusted enough.
“What about the detective?”
She shrugged. “We went for coffee.”
“And?”
“It was nice. But then he said he’d call and didn’t.”
“Maybe he’s been busy.”
“I’m sure he has,” she agreed. “But before we went for coffee, we’d run into each other nearly every day, you know? I even had this crazy idea that he might be seeking me out.”
“And now?”
“Nothing. Nada. Zip.”
That heaviness in her chest intensified. Why couldn’t she find someone who liked her for who she was? She was a good person, or at least tried to be. She wasn’t Dee, but she wasn’t exactly hideous, either.
“Have you tried texting him? Maybe doing a little path-crossing of your own?”
She shook her head. This was one instance where she didn’t want to take the lead.
Her mind went back to their last heart-to-heart, when Jay had suggested she embrace her femininity more. She’d been thinking a lot about that over the last couple days, especially since being around Nick had made her feel more like a woman than she had in a long time.
Her conclusion? Maybe Jay had a point. Maybe she just needed to rewrap the package a little. Get someone interested enough to take a closer look and see something more than the cocky smartass she showed the world. To see that beneath the tough outer shell was a woman.
The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that if she wanted things to change, she had to be willing to change a little, too. She could do that, right? She was a United States Marine, goddammit. She could do anything she set her mind to.
It wouldn’t have to be anything too drastic. A few baby steps, just to see what happened. Inside, she would still be her. It wasn’t as if she was completely selling out.
“Jay?”
“Yeah, baby girl?”
“Can we call Marcus?”
Jay pulled away enough to look in her eyes for several long moments, then gave her a squeeze. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” she said with more conviction. “I’m sure.”
