How To Bring Your Love Life Back From The Dead (3 page)

Maybe this was the surest sign that
her dating life was dead beyond revival; she’d broken off a date
with the only guy of the three who hadn’t been a freak. Well, of
the four…if you counted Jerry.

“
We’ve got to stop meeting like
this,” Daniel said behind her.

Lauren spun to face him and smiled.
Her heart picked up its pace, and she was nearly as out of breath
as she had been that morning when they’d run into each
other.

Daniel was there with two boys who
looked the same age as her ten year old nieces, give or take a
couple years. The boys immediately began shoving each other. Her
nieces started giggling.

Daniel looked good all cleaned up.
He looked as yummy as the apple pies they’d just passed at the
pumpkin patch.

Her niece cleared her
throat…loudly.

“Oh, yeah. These are my nieces,
Amanda and Jillian. Girls, this is Daniel. He lives near me.” She
sounded so flustered. She tuck a strand of hair behind her ear
before willing her hands back to her sides.
Don’t act nervous.
Act confident.
Men liked confidence…or something.

He pointed down at the boys. “These
are my nephews, Xavier and Tony. This is Lauren. Say
hello.”

The boys muttered something under
their breaths and resumed shoving each other.

“Did you find your dog?” she
asked.

He sighed and shook his head
slightly while running a hand through his short hair. “He was
sitting on my front porch, chewing on someone’s shoe. I don’t know
where he got it.”

“Oh.” A moment of silence stretched
between them.
Think of something. Think of anything. Don’t let
him walk away again.
“We were about to go through the corn
maze.” She gestured behind her.

“We were too.” One of the boys,
tugged on Daniel’s sleeve, and he leaned down for the boy to
whisper something in his ear. He added, “Only we were going to do
it faster because we’re boys.” His eyebrows raised in a dare. He
wasn’t walking away again. Yet.

One of his nephews muttered, “Boys
rule. Girls drool.”

Her niece Amanda sniffed and said,
“You wish.”

Lauren shook her head at Daniel.
“That was the most worthless trash talk I’ve ever heard. Besides,
everyone knows girls are better at maneuvering in small areas like
in this maze.”

Daniel tsked. “It sounds like we’ve
been challenged, boys.”

“Don’t worry, girls, they won’t be
much of a challenge.”

Motioning toward the maze, he said,
“Ladies first.”

Lauren grinned. “Go right
ahead.”

“You’re much better at
trash-talking.”

“I’m a coach at the community
college. I majored in phys-ed and minored in trash
talk.”

“That explains it. I’m a medieval
history scholar,” he said. “I’d be much better at trash talk if it
included thee and hence.” Medieval history scholar? Her twenty-one
year old self would have been giddy. It was nearly off-putting, but
she’d never backed down from a challenge.

“Well, then, get thee hence, fair
fools, and prepare to be trounced in yonder maze,” she
said.

“Well done.”

She bowed. Her nieces grabbed her
hands and pulled her into the tall corn maze, and she looked over
her shoulder and caught Daniel watching her with a
smile.

The maze was styled in the shape of
a ghost according to a taunting aerial photo on the outside, but
the paths weaved and ended. They ran up and down paths only to end
up back at markers where they started. After twenty minutes of
running, she stopped at marker eight…out of thirty. “We need to
think this through,” she said.

Her nieces grabbed both her hands
and hauled her around a corner and straight into Daniel.

He managed to catch her around the
waist and slow their momentum before they toppled over.

“We really should stop bumping into
each other like this,” Daniel said.

Lauren laughed and pulled out of his
arms much more slowly than she had earlier that day in the fog. Her
cheeks felt pink with heat—and it wasn’t only embarrassment. She
was starting to like him—a lot. He sent tingles through her stomach
that felt like soda fizz.

“We’re lost,” Lauren admitted.
“We’ve seen this same marker four times now. I think we’re running
in circles.” They were still standing really close for just having
that morning. She didn’t step back.

He didn’t step back either. “I’m not
sure that we’re doing much better. How about an alliance so we
don’t die here in the maze?”

Lauren looked at her nieces who were
smiling and giggling at his nephews. “I think we’ll
accept.”

His nephews rolled their eyes and
shrugged. They shoved each other for the chance to walk beside her
nieces, bragging about how they’d been doing fine on their own, and
they didn’t really need help.

Their pace was much less frantic as
they wandered this time.

“So, tell me what you do,” Lauren
said. “Something with medieval history?”

“
No, that qualifies me to flip
burgers. I was young and idealistic when I got that.”

“And now?”

“I’m jaded. Two weeks ago, a girl
cancelled a date with me, and I didn’t even try to get her to
reschedule.” He glanced over at her. His gaze warmed her up even
more—as did the half-smile that accompanied it. “I should
have.”

Lauren put her hands in her pockets
and tried not to grin like an idiot. She was too old and jaded for
that. Though, the fact that he fit so many of her younger version’s
qualifications was starting to freak her out. He liked animals and
kids. He was smart, funny, and, wow, he had a great body. He
definitely kept in shape. She liked his shape.

“I run a bookstore,” he said. “It’s
small and, I’m sure, eventually we’ll be swallowed up by the big
chains. Hopefully, by then, I’ll have a book published.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Yes, I do some freelance pieces
right now, but I want to eventually get a novel out. That’s the
goal. Right now, the freelancing is enough, I suppose. It’s good
practice, and someone has to write all that stuff online,
right?”

She nodded. “What are your freelance
pieces about?”

“I write whatever they tell me to.
Sometimes it’s just a mish-mash of information they want written
out into a cohesive article they can post all over the internet. I
cover a lot of environmental impact issues for an online journal,
but it’s not always that intellectual or even helpful. Sometimes I
get a byline, but mostly not, and sometimes they use a vague
reference like a concerned citizen. It’s not very
interesting—mostly filler for in-between other articles. I think it
would probably put you to sleep. I’ve written a few health pieces
lately. It’s really varied.”

“You’re interested in health and the
environment?” Twenty-one year old Lauren would have loved Daniel—he
was everything she’d wanted.

He grinned. “I’m fanatical about
recycling, and I go on a few benefit runs, but I’ve never made
anything by recycling human hair if that’s what you’re
asking.”

“Actually, that’s something I never
thought I’d have to ask.”

“Perhaps that’s where you went
wrong.”

“Eleven!” one of the boys shouted,
pointing out a marker.

“Yes! Progress!” Daniel said. He
turned back to her. “So, coaching?”

“Yes. Mostly track and
soccer.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“I do. It’s fun to still be on
campus. I liked college, and I get to sit in classes sometimes
still. It’s like being a professional student without any of the
homework.”

They were silent for a few turns of
the maze before he asked, “What would you say about trying
again?”

“Trying what again?”

“This. Us. A date. I swear I have no
fascination with human hair, and I don’t even know anyone named
Jerry.”

She stopped and pretended to think
it over while biting her lower lip. “Are you crazy?”

“Yes. Most definitely.”

“Okay, we should date.”

A few minutes later, while they were
talking, he slipped his hand into hers. It froze her brain so
completely that she stopped talking and looked down at their linked
hands.

“It’s so you don’t get lost,” he
said. “I’d hate for you to wander off and get lost now that we’re
finally to marker twenty.”

She didn’t believe him for a second.
He was one of those old-fashioned guys who liked to hold hands, and
she liked it—she liked it a lot. Maybe twenty-one year old Lauren
wasn’t completely crazy in what was important to her. Maybe she did
understand.

They emerged from the corn maze ten
minutes later, and he slipped his hand from hers just as the kids
turned to them in excitement.

“There’s cider and hot chocolate
over in that haunted barn,” Daniel said, pointing at a big red barn
on the property. “We were going to collect some pumpkins from the
pumpkin patch.”

“We were too.” Okay, so maybe it
wasn’t karma back-handing her earlier. She wasn’t quite ready to
crouch down and kiss his dog for smacking them together, but she
was close to it.

“Okay then.”

An hour later, she shepherded her
nieces back to her car.

“So, I’ll call you?” Daniel
asked.

“Sure.”

“I swear I’m as crazy as they
come.”

“That’s just how I like them,” she
said.

The one thing they’d exchanged
besides first names and headshots on the website was phone numbers.
So, she had his phone number, and she kept staring at it. She went
back to the dating website but, true to his word, he’d gotten out.
She then did a few internet searches on him before she decided she
was acting like a crazy person.

At seven p.m., she called him. “Hey,
let’s go to a haunted house tonight.”

“Lauren?” he answered.

“Yes.” Oh. Nice. She hadn’t even
waited for him to answer properly. She’d just blurted it out. Her
cheeks flamed hot, and she was regretting this mad
impulse.

“Like an actual haunted
house?”

“No, I mean one of the ones that are
set-up with actors in them. Not an actual haunted house like on a
dare or something. That only happens in the movies. I
think.”

She could hear the smile in his
voice. “You sound nervous.”

“I don’t usually call guys. I wait
for them to call.”

“I was going to call
you.”

“I was going to wait for you to
call.”

“I like this better,” he
said.

“Of course you do. It’s me putting
myself out here—just waiting to be rejected.”

“I have a history of not rejecting
you.” She didn’t like the amused implication in the
words.

“It was the one time. I only
cancelled the one time.” And now she was feeling stupid. He hadn’t
exactly jumped on her offer.

“So, a haunted house? I can pick you
up or we can meet there.”