Faking It to Making It

He really was beautiful. But, even better to Saskia’s mind, beautifully anomalous.

It didn’t make sense, and to a mathematician there was no more satisfying moment than when the seemingly senseless finally added up. Lissy dated bad boys because she wanted to drive her rich parents crazy. Ernest liked Oreos because she’d shared hers with him the day Stu had left. But why would a man who looked like that need to go online to find a date to a wedding?

Saskia ran a hand over her hair which was—by feel at least—not doing anything overly crazy. He must have caught the movement as the next moment his eyes found hers.

Wow, she thought, her lungs tightening and her tummy tripping over itself in rhapsodic pleasure, those eyes should be classed a lethal weapon.

He lifted his hand in a wave. She did the same.

Thus unfrozen, Saskia shuffled her fork as if it was important she do so at that very moment, and told herself to get a grip. This was research, not a real date. And if a chat with NJM of the blue eyes, dark suit and sinfully sensuous mouth could help her nail the angle that would take her infographic from informative to viral, then she’d just have to suffer through a date with the guy.

As her research subject began to stride her way Saskia made to stand. In pressing her hand to the table, her palm landed on her fork, sending it flying across the room.

Saskia watched, mouth agape, as it spun towards the table of a young couple, where it landed with a series of less-than-musical crashes, causing the girl to scream at the top of her lungs.

A pair of waiters in black and white zipped out to clear the mess, calm the girl, and offer free desserts.

“Need this?”

Saskia dragged her eyes from the disaster zone in the direction of a rumbling deep voice. Her eyes hit jacket button, rich red tie, jaw carved by the gods, a mouth tilted at the corners, a nose like something freed from Italian marble and smiling blue eyes that made the straight lines and curlicues flittering through her head scatter like bowling pins.

And then her focus shifted and she noticed he was holding a clean fork.

“Right,” she said, shaking her head and laughing. “Thank you. Not one of my more elegant moments.”

NJM’s mouth curved into a deeper smile. It was a mouth made for smiling, she decided, amongst other things.

“Shall we?” he said, motioning to the table.

He waited for her to plonk into her chair before he eased his large frame into the seat opposite, popping his jacket button and running a hand down his perfect tie. His nails were as neat and tidy as the rest of him. His fingers were long and graceful, yet exquisitely masculine.

She lifted back out of her chair and held out a hand, “I’m Saskia. Saskia Bloom.”

“Nate Mackenzie,” he said, his nearly smile stretching out into the real thing, taking him from beautiful all the way to heartbreaking.

Maybe he had a third nipple. Or ate with his feet. But so far, Saskia saw no obvious reason a man like him couldn’t find love on any street corner in the free world.

“A friend and I had a bit of fun guessing what the NJM stood for,” Saskia said.

“Care to fill me in on your guesses for the J?”

Juicy, she thought. Jpeg. Junk. “Not so much.”

The smile was back, and so were the curly tingles in her belly. Charisma, she told herself. Something chemical—hormonal, perhaps, or to do with endorphins. Not her field.

“Jackson,” he proffered. “It was my father’s name.”

Her researcher’s ear pricked. “Was?”

A beat, then, “He passed away several years back.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Mine too. I mean, his name wasn’t Jackson, but my father passed away a few years ago.” When, Nate gave her nothing, just that face, and the promise of that smile, she blundered on. “I don’t have a middle name, though. My mum died having me and it was all my father could do to name me at all. Even then it was after the doctor who’d given him the bad news. Or so went the story he told me every day on my birthday—”

Apparently she was going to blunder on till the end of time, as her research subject sure wasn’t about to stop her. To stop herself, she reached for the massive jug of iced water, but Nate got there first. Perhaps it was gentlemanly behaviour. More likely, considering the fork incident, the guy was a quick learner. She sat on her hands as he poured her drink.

“So,” she said, after managing a drink without spilling any on herself, “is this how your blind date’s normally go? A slapstick show followed by the comparison of dead parents?”

“Not so much,” he said, his smile only going as far as his eyes, which somehow didn’t diminish the effect one jot. “Yours?”

“You’re my first.”

“Ah, a virgin.”

“Noooo. Not for a looong time.” Then, as it sank in, “An online dating first-timer? Yep.”

She wasn’t a natural blusher. Not by a long shot. But something about this guy had her blood in a spin.

“Ready to order, cara?” asked the owner, affectionately known as Mr Rita—a tall, skinny man in his sixties who sported a nifty little moustache.

Saskia shook herself upright. “Um, sorry! Haven’t even looked at the menu. Can you give us another five?”

She shoved a big plastic menu at Nate to distract him from Mr Rita’s not so subtle winking and thumbs up, then she set to studying the menu as if she didn’t know the thing off by heart.

As they put their orders in with Mr Rita a few minutes later Saskia’s phone rang. She didn’t need to glance at it to know it was Lissy, calling in case she needed a fake emergency. She quickly switched it to “Do not answer.”

“Your back-up plan?” Nate asked, motioning to a passing waiter for the wine list. “That was early.”

“My what?” she said, sliding her phone into the big bag at her feet.

His eyes slid back to her. Knowing. And blue. So very, very blue.

With a laugh, she admitted, “Spot-on, smart boy. Like you didn’t have me pick the restaurant so nobody you know would see us together.”

For the first time his eyes lost that permanent glint and he looked honestly surprised. And for the first time she felt as if she wasn’t on the back foot but leading from the front, where she much preferred to be.

“Am I wrong?” She leaned a little his way, her palms flat on the table.

“No,” he said, blinking. “And now I hear out loud how that sounds I feel like I ought to apologise.”

She shrugged, pointed out a bottle of red from the list in his hand. “If you’d taken one look at me and walked back out the door then you would have owed me an apology. It was only sensible of us both to take measures. I mean, you should see the lies the other guys on the site tell about themselves.”

“Lies?” he repeated, as if it had never occurred to him.

Saskia counted off her fingers. “Your photo might have been a fake. You might have been lying about your age, your weight, your occupation, your name, your reason for joining the site. You might have been a psycho killer.”

With each less-than-flattering “might have been” Nate’s surprise, if anything, seemed to wane. The glint was back, and he too leaned forward. She caught a hint of purely masculine spice curling above the saucy scents of herbs and garlic.

“So, if you met a man in a bar, on a train, or jogging in the park, you’d have more faith that he wasn’t a psycho killer?”