Page 2 of The Wanted One

My fingers curled inward at the memory of the woman I needed to shake free from my mind if I had any hope of surviving the evening.

But damn, I still wanted her. How in the hell did I let a woman I’d spent less than six hours with get inside my head so much?

The sound of a dramatic buzzer from somewhere behind me snapped my attention back to the moment, and I looked over to see women filtering into the room from a back door.

A brunette wordlessly slid into the seat across from me before I had a chance to stand and pull out her chair. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Hey, how’s it going? I’m, um . . .” No names, right. “Number nine.” I smiled, doing my best to give her one of my better ones.

“Give them your sexy lopsided smile. You know, crook the side of your lip and flash just a hint of teeth. It’ll drive them crazy,” Gwen Montgomery had suggested. She was my best friend’s twenty-four-year-old niece.

Like Mya, Gwen had also been pushing me to “get out there.” She even set up a few dating profiles for me (not that I had asked her to). In fact, I’d begged the opposite. To leave my dating life, or lack thereof, alone.

But she was as stubborn as Mya, and she’d had me matching up with people online before I could protest. I’d been too overwhelmed by all the swiping left, right, fucking horizontal, to ever actually meet anyone in person, though.

Hell, I’d almost given in and asked Gwen to put her hacking and coding skills to better use by helping me find my mystery woman instead.

“I’m number eleven.” The woman gave me a little nod, pulling my thoughts back to the present.

“Ah, nine-one-one.” Another corny joke, really? Exit stage left. I inwardly groaned.

She gave me a shy smile, her red lips parting a touch, and I couldn’t help but smile as well.

Okay, maybe you like corny? “So.” I drummed my fingers on the table, thankful there wasn’t any grease or dirt under my nails from cleaning my rifle earlier.

“The no-name thing is . . . probably to protect first impressions.” Her hesitant tone had me curious to ask why.

“So, if my name—”

“Began with a J, for instance, it might be problematic,” she cut me off, and she dropped her forearms onto the table and locked her hands together as if wringing out some tension.

I arched a brow. “J, huh?”

“Yeah, every guy I know with a J name is a heartbreaker.” She proceeded to list off every J name in the book—ironically pretty much every J name but mine.

“I feel slightly offended on behalf of those Js.” I chuckled. “Also, what if they’re not all heartbreakers. Maybe they’re more of the hold-your-heart kind of guys?” Hold? Shit. Now my palms were as sweaty as dude eight’s forehead.

“Why does holding my heart feel a little . . . cringe? Like something a stalker or serial killer might say. Silence of the Lambs, you know?” It was her turn to shrug. This was going great. “Oh, oh, or Dahmer.” She abruptly lifted her hand and snapped her fingers. “J name, too. Jeffrey Dahmer. See.” She smirked, proving her point.

“Right, right.” I nodded, going along with it, because damn, what else was I going to say now? So, I sat in silence waiting for her to go on, and she did. For a solid fourteen minutes. I kept track on my Apple watch. Her shyness had melted away as she began talking about her recent bad dates. None of which had a J name.

The relief that hit me when the buzzer went off was overwhelming. Three more not-so-great “dates” later, and I was finally sitting across from someone who gave off decent vibes.

“So, I’m here to make my mom happy. Why are you here?” she greeted in a direct, no-nonsense tone. Her number was six, and I opted not to make any sixty-nine jokes.

“Truth?” Why the hell not at this point? “I’ve been lonely. My teammates are all falling in love, and I’m getting a bit depressed at the fact I have no one. And I’m supposed to be the comedian on my team, so the blues just don’t work for me, you know?” I spat out. “Then I started to develop what I thought were feelings for a teammate, and that went sideways.” Nearly as sideways as that almost-plunging-to-my-death incident last week. “Mya friend-zoned me hard and fast. But she was right. And it took me meeting, and then losing, the woman of my dreams last month to realize Mya was never the right one for me.”

Woman of my dreams? Way to word vomit that out. Sure, the American I’d met at a bar in Cape Town had officially been occupying my thoughts for twenty-seven days now, but who was counting? She was probably even why I’d nearly gone man-over-building in Edinburgh. She’d been on my mind that day. That laugh of hers . . . God help me that laugh kept playing on repeat in my thoughts.

And how could she not be in my head after the most incredible night of my life? Apparently, it hadn’t been as memorable for her since she ditched me before sunrise.

“Are you okay?”

I blinked, remembering I was on a date with number—what was it again?—then looked up at the blonde who reminded me a little bit of the therapist from the show Lucifer Gwen had made me binge-watch with her this year. “Did I just say all that out loud?”

“You did, but my job is to get people to open up to me, so I—”

“Holy shit, you’re a shrink?” I hadn’t meant to interrupt. My mom had taught me better than to cut off a woman.

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