in her profile pic) or ass (which he hoped was lush, also based on the curves in her photo), so he figured it was a step up from hey.
A moment later, she replied.
You have nice eyes.
He grinned, the compliment flowing over him like warm water. Maybe this online dating thing wasn’t so hard.
Except . . . what did he say now? Another compliment, but would that be trying too hard? Should he ask her about work? Or would that come off as creepy, trying to get too much information when they’d just matched on an app and didn’t know each other?
Hobbies!
He should ask her about her hobbies.
Quickly, he navigated to her profile, saw a line in the description that said, Science geek. Golden Retriever lover. Wars over Trek.
The first and the last made him smile—the last especially—but he didn’t know if it was one of those things that women just said, trying to be all nerdy cute. Her picture certainly didn’t scream nerd in any way. But paired with the first, he felt a sliver of heat slide through him.
Damn. He needed to search up some science facts to impress her.
Except, what kind of science?
It was kind of a vast area of study, and . . . now he was overthinking this.
He’d stick with the dog. They at least had that in common, although he wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was a Sweetheart Lover.
Okay. Dogs.
You like Golden Retrievers?
He sent after navigating back to their chat.
Barely a few seconds before she responded. With a picture.
My Fred.
A hairy face. Friendly eyes. A tongue hanging out that would probably drool all over Ben’s expensive shoes. And the fucker was adorable. Not the evil and potential violence of Sweetheart, the I’m-gonna-cut-you-bitch gleaming black eyes.
He’s cute. I wrote. Why Fred?
Another message came through.
Why not Fred?
There was that.
You make a good point.
Her reply came in just a few heartbeats.
Wow. A man who can admit that. Have I stumbled upon a Unicorn?
His brows were drawn together.
A unicorn?
A buzz.
No. Not a unicorn, but rather a Unicorn. Capital U.
Um. Okay . . .
Her next reply came, thankfully, before he’d been required to come up with a reply for that.
You like dogs.
Well, now, that wasn’t phrased as a question, so he just let it lie there, not touching it, not revealing too much. He hadn’t let himself think too much about the things he liked or didn’t like, and he didn’t think the red-lipped, curved beauty would think much of him if he admitted that his dog-liking capabilities fell more into the realm of dog-tolerating.
Instead, he sent,
What kind of science are you a geek about?
This pause was a bit longer.
Physics.
His brows lifted.
Physics? That’s impressive. I nearly failed that class in college.
It was the single science class he’d been required to take for his business degree, and no joke, it had nearly killed him. He’d been thrilled to just pass with a C—the only C he’d received in all his advanced studies.
A bachelor’s. Two master’s.
School had been important to his parents and to him.
But thank fuck business administration and management hadn’t required a second round of physics.
Too bad I wasn’t around to tutor you. I wouldn’t have let you fail, nearly or otherwise.
He knew he would have studied until he passed out if Stef had been his tutor and then probably died for another reason—if one could die of blue balls. Because if he found himself taciturn and withdrawn now, he’d been cripplingly shy in his younger years.
Nose in a book.
Gangly as fuck.
All the way up until his dad had died, and then the fury had taken over. He’d been pissed to lose him, pissed that his mom was devastated, pissed that the world had lost the one person he thought deserved to live over everyone else.
Ben’s dad had been good.
So fucking good.
And he’d died for absolutely no reason. Same as his mom. Fucking cancer. Fucking people who just wanted something that didn’t belong to him. Fucking . . .
World.
He’d hit the gym after his dad died. Hadn’t stopped through his mom’s illness, the cancer having been found just months after they had put his dad in the ground. And it had crept through her, taking her strength, her hair, her eyelashes, and finally, her life.
So, sometimes he wanted to go punish something, and he did that to a punching bag. Sometimes he wanted to punish himself, which he did running and lifting until he could barely move the next day.
Now, at least, he wasn’t scrawny.
But he