mating habits—or lack thereof—of the man beside me. “So you’re looking for your dream guy—”
“I’m not looking. I’m waiting. Big difference. Very big. Just forget it, okay?” He made a slashing gesture with his hand. “We’re here for plovers. Look closely, just by that tall tuft of grass.” He jabbed the binoculars at me and pointed.
“Yes, fine.” I sniffed, holding them obediently.
I lifted the binoculars and aimed them where he pointed, and… “Oh! Oh, hey!” I turned to Beale with a shocked smile. “There’s a bird there.” I looked again. “Definitely a plover looking for action.” I drew a line across my forehead where the plover’s markings were. “And I think there’s a couple eggs under her. Or him. How can you tell?”
“It’s usually females during the day.” Beale’s voice was a low rumble by my ear that made my stomach flip. “Can you see how many eggs?”
I looked closer. “Two… no, three. Definitely three. Ha! Mark that down, Goodman. Who’s a fucking eggs-pert plover hunter?” I grinned at him again, triumphantly this time.
“It’s you, Toby,” he deadpanned.
“Damn straight.” I handed him back his binoculars and wiggled my hips. “I’m not just a pretty face.”
“No, you’re not,” he said with a hungry look in his eyes that made me want to kiss him again.
I looked away and rubbed my palms against my hips.
This was dangerous. Really, really dangerous. If any other guy on the planet had given me that look, I’d already have him backed against the nearest flat surface and gotten on my knees, but Beale was kind of a special case. A virgin-shaped special case.
And yet…
“Why is it that you have to wait to have sex until you meet your soul mate?” I held up both hands innocently when he opened his mouth to protest. “Genuine, honest question.”
“Because sex is a waste of time otherwise.”
“Mmmm. Maybe in a cosmic sense? But it’s a really fun and useful waste of time. Like, in the hierarchy of time-wasters, it’s more like counting plovers than crushing candy on your phone.”
He rolled his eyes. “Toby—”
“No, no, hear me out, okay? What if the Universe wants to see that you’re putting in an effort to find your soul mate? If you were destined to win the lottery, Beale, it would only happen if you played. You can’t be destined to have a sandwich for dinner if you don’t buy bread. There has to be some way that humans make shit happen. You said that all living and nonliving things have energy, right? So where’s your energy going?”
“You sound like Rafe.”
I winced. “Great. Well, in this case maybe he’s right. I mean, I’m looking out for your future soul mate here, Beale. Don’t you think it would be good if you learned a little bit about having sex? What you like and don’t like, what he might like and not like?”
“It’s not something you have to learn!”
“You’re just going to, what? Know how to find his prostate instantly and psychically, because your soul-matey-ness will make it so?”
His face turned red, and his nostrils flared.
“Oh, my poor Beale. I assure you, precious, that is not how it works. If you think it’s all jump, jab, and jiggle… well, you’re not too far different from most of the men I had sex with in my twenties.” I shuddered delicately. “Aspire for better.”
He frowned.
“Besides which, you have this idea that your soul mate is fated, right? Like, every step you take is another step on the path to finding him? So why isn’t this a step?” I motioned between us. “Unless I have gone utterly blind and insensate, you are attracted to me. You kissed me. Quite thoroughly. So maybe that was fate. Maybe I’m the final stepping-stone before you meet your one true person.”
“That’s not how it works!”
I threw my hands up in the air. “How do you know how it works when you haven’t experienced it? Half an hour ago, you thought Hagatha was a middle-aged woman from Lebanon, Kansas, who likes Shasta daisies and romance novels, just like it says in her bio, and right now I’m telling you, I picked Lebanon off a map because it’s the geographical center of the lower 48 United States and the concept amused me, so recognize that there are mysteries in the Universe that you haven’t solved.”
“Are you yelling at me because I don’t want to have sex with you?” he demanded.
“No!” Or was I? Shit.
I cleared my throat and moderated my volume. “No. I’m just recognizing