Tomorrow sounds great, Lincoln.
See you then.
Chapter Seventeen
Two nights later I wasn’t on the worst date I’d ever had.
But it was pretty close.
Lincoln McNamara smelled like bug spray, and he spit when he talked. Unfortunately, these were his finer points. He had seemed like such a safe bet on the dating app. His photos had shown an attractive thirty-two-year-old man who liked to fish, frequent concerts, and play the doting uncle.
All of that might have been accurate, but his personality was so obnoxious and overbearing it needed its own dating profile.
I’d met him at the Sugar Creek Inn restaurant, where he’d already informed me I’d be paying for half, but he might pick up dessert if I was, and I quote, “a good girl.” A phrase that insulting could only be punctuated with an oily wink, of course.
“Are you two ready to order yet?” the teenage waitress asked us for the third time. The previous two attempts had been rebuffed by Lincoln, who’d claimed he could hardly focus on the menu because he was drowning in my blue eyes.
My eyes were hazel.
“Yes,” Lincoln said. “I think I’ve finally shaken off this spell my lovely date has cast over me.” He laughed in a way that was meant to alert the surrounding diners he’d said something humorous. “I’ll have the seared tuna and Hadley here will have the chef’s salad.”
Oh no, he didn’t. “It’s Hattie,” I corrected. “And I’ll have the double cheeseburger with fries. Lots of ketchup.” I was going to need carbs and extra protein to get through this date.
“My ex always preferred I order for her,” Lincoln said when the waitress left.
“How unusual and…archaic.” He’d talked about his ex the entire twenty minutes we’d been seated. He’d disparaged her every characteristic, and my hope was that she was somewhere on a beach holding a fruity drink next to her new five-star boyfriend.
Lincoln’s beady eyes narrowed in scrutinizing thought. “Your profile says you’re an equine therapist.” He laughed again, a high-pitched nasal sound that instantly grated. “Does that mean you counsel horses?”
I rewarded his lack of wit with an indulgent smile. “I use horses to work with trauma victims, mainly with military veterans.”
“What a noble profession. I couldn’t work with animals. Not my thing. They’re not very clean, are they?”
“I’ve loved horses since I was a child. I—”
“My work is important as well,” Lincoln interrupted. “I teach forensic science at the University of Arkansas.”
“How fascinating. Do you teach your students how to examine evidence in crime scenes?”
“Yes.” He leaned in conspiratorially, and his voice went whisper-soft. “And how to snuff someone out without getting caught.”
Was it too soon to ask for a to-go box? To make things worse, we had tickets for the symphony after this. Why had I agreed to that?
The next half hour was filled with conversations equally terrible, taking us to the summit of awkward and the pinnacle of uncomfortable. Lincoln seemed obsessed with his ex-girlfriends, railed about politics, tried to convince me of three different conspiracy theories, including the actual existence of unicorns, and knew way too much about autopsies.
“The police call me all the time to help.” My date flaked a piece of fish with his fork, oblivious that he wore bread crumbs on his upper lip. “They say, ‘Lincoln, we are so stumped. This case will never be solved without you.’ I don’t like to play the hero, but Hadley, that’s just what I often am.”
“Fascinating,” I said for the hundredth time, picking up my small leather clutch. “Will you excuse me?”
“Sure.” His eyebrows rose suggestively. “Don’t be long. I’ll start to miss you.”
I uttered a prayer to God above to deliver me from this horrible date.
In the bathroom, I washed my hands four times, straightened up a stack of towels, and swabbed some water droplets from the granite counter.
Ten minutes later, I knew I had to get back out there to Lincoln.
Why couldn’t I be a normal woman and have the backbone to simply tell him I wasn’t feeling it, and I’d like to end the evening? I taught people about boundaries, for heaven’s sake.
