Dear Maggie. Brenda Novak

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СКАЧАТЬ grimaced and ran her nails through her long blond hair. “Well, don’t feel obligated to share the details with me once you discover them. I, for one, have heard enough about the poor woman in that Dumpster. Everything about that crime is sickening and proves my point that nothing good happens after midnight.”

      Nick Sorenson walked by, and Darla’s gaze followed him.

      “That is, nothing good happens after midnight unless you’re spending the night with him,” she mouthed after he’d passed.

      Maggie noted Nick’s long, confident strides, and fought her own appreciation. “Looks do not make a man,” she said to remind herself as much as Darla. “Jeez, you really have a thing for him, don’t you? Too bad he doesn’t ask you out.”

      Her friend gave her a wicked smile. “Too bad is right. There’s that dangerous glitter in his eyes, you know? And there’s the scar on his temple and the way his hair falls across his forehead, like he doesn’t care how he looks. And yet he still manages to look better than chocolate.” The audible breath she took did even more to express her admiration. “What a package. And he’s intense. I can tell.”

      Maggie raised a doubtful brow. “‘Heartbreaker’ is written all over him, along with ‘catch me if you can.’ I’m not up to the challenge.” She’d spent too much time and energy carefully building her self-esteem to risk losing it on a man like Nick.

      “You only think that because you’re a single mom. Single moms can’t be too careful.”

      “True.”

      “Should I ask him why he’s been staring at you?”

      Maggie raised a hand. “No, don’t embarrass me.”

      “All right. He probably just thinks you’re attractive, anyway. What man doesn’t?”

      “Sometimes it’s very apparent that you haven’t known me long,” Maggie said. “But just for starters, what about Tim?”

      “He married you, didn’t he? And let’s face it, in the end, you left him.”

      A call blared across one of Maggie’s radios. Instinctively she tensed, listening to the dispatcher’s gravelly voice, then relaxed when she realized it was only a 5150—the call for a crazy person doing something stupid but certainly not news-worthy.

      “I had to leave Tim,” she responded to Darla. “If it weren’t for Zach, I probably would’ve hung on, forever grateful that he’d deigned to marry me in the first place. But my son deserves a father who wants him.” She sighed heavily. “Provided I can ever find him one.”

      “So that’s what’s happening.” Darla’s expression softened. “The singles scene has finally gotten you down. Is that it?”

      Unexpected emotion clogged Maggie’s throat and stung her eyes. What a baby, she thought. Millions of people were lonely, and they didn’t cry about it. But here she was with her nose starting to run, at work, of all places. “There’s just no time to meet anyone. I’m here almost every night and taking care of Zach all day, and let’s face it, spending my afternoons hanging out at McDonald’s Playland isn’t exactly the best way to meet a single guy, you know?”

      “You’re working today, so you’re going to have Friday night off, aren’t you? Why don’t you let me watch Zach so you can go dancing?”

      Dancing? Dancing was Darla’s idea of fun. Maggie didn’t have much experience with nightclubs.

      “I’m not sure a nightclub is the right place to go,” she said, knowing Darla would never understand her phobia about such places. Typical reporters were like Darla, confident and bold and, professionally, Maggie fit the image. For the most part she’d buried the awkward, self-conscious person she’d been as a young girl. But all too often, when it came to her personal life, the old Maggie reasserted herself. “I don’t have a single tattoo or body piercing,” she joked. “I’d probably be a wallflower.”

      “No, you wouldn’t,” Darla argued.

      An unruly, copper-colored curl tickled Maggie’s cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear. “Anyway, you can’t baby-sit for me. You need to get out, too. You told me you wanted to get married this year.”

      “I did until I decided to swear off men for good.”

      “You swear off men every Monday. This is only Wednesday. By Friday you’ll be ready to dress up and go out again.”

      Ray, from sports, grinned as he strutted past them on the way to Frank Buckley’s office. “Ladies.”

      They murmured a quick hello, then rolled their eyes because Ray considered himself such a lady’s man.

      “This time I mean it,” Darla went on. “That last loser I hooked up with stuck me with over five hundred dollars in long-distance bills.”

      “Ouch.” Maggie grimaced. “You’re as unlucky in love as I am. Maybe we’d be smarter not to hang out together.”

      Darla waved her teasing away. “Enough already. We’ll each find someone eventually.” Sitting down, she swiveled to face her computer.

      “Wait a second before you go back to that,” Maggie said. “I received something in the mail I want to show you.” Crossing to her desk, she opened the top drawer, retrieved the white envelope with the red heart on the front and returned to Darla’s cubicle. “What do you think of this?”

      “What is it?”

      “An advertisement for a dating service.”

      Darla cocked an eyebrow at her, looking far from impressed. “What do I think? I think you’re nuts. Anyone as attractive as you shouldn’t have to pay to get a date.”

      If only Darla understood how painful that whole process was for her—getting out and meeting someone, all the little rituals and deceptions…“I kind of like the idea of the questionnaire. You get to skip the first part of dating, where everyone’s kind of checking other people out.” She flattened the paper against the partition. “Look, it’s right here. You answer these questions so the service can match you up with someone who’s compatible.”

      “And they use a crystal ball to decide this? Or do they simply include a ‘no weirdos allowed’ clause in their contract?”

      “Come on, Darla. They obviously can’t protect their clients from every possibility, but if Tim and I had filled out one of these we would have known right from the start that we weren’t meant for each other. He didn’t tell me until after we were married that he didn’t want any kids.”

      Maggie didn’t add that she’d been so happy to find a man to love her that she hadn’t pressed him on anything, and he simply assumed she’d accommodate his plan for their lives. In the end, her inability to go along with his refusal to have children had come as a big surprise to both of them. “It took me several years to change his mind, and the result was disastrous. He resented Zach from day one,” she said.

      “But you could meet someone pretty scary through an outfit like this,” Darla complained. “You could wind up dating a rapist or a murderer.”

      “We’d СКАЧАТЬ