Which meant it was time to move on once and for all, no easy task in a town with a population under five thousand except when tourists and weekenders filled it during the spring and summer. Lunch by the Bay had been created not only to fill a gap in the Chesapeake Shores social scene, but also to save him from growing old alone.
He explained all of this to Jake and Mack, who stared at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted antlers.
“You’re starting a dating website?” Mack repeated, as if checking the accuracy of his hearing.
“Exactly,” Will said. “If you weren’t so busy not dating Susie, I’d encourage you to sign up. You’re one of the town’s most eligible bachelors.”
“You intend to use this site yourself?” Jake said, looking puzzled. “I thought you were seeing some psychologist who bought a summer house here.”
“I was,” Will said. “Two years ago. It didn’t work out, which you would know if you ever paid attention to a thing I tell you.”
“But you’ve been dating,” Jake persisted. “I’m not imagining that. You’ve blown us off to go on dates.”
“What can I say?” Will said with a shrug. “None of them have amounted to anything.”
“I suppose it makes sense,” Mack said eventually. “Susie is always grumbling about the dearth of available men in town.”
Jake barely managed to swallow a chuckle.
Mack scowled at him. “What?”
“I thought she had you,” Jake responded.
“We’re not dating,” Mack repeated for the umpteenth unbelievable time.
“And yet neither of you seems to be looking for anyone else,” Will pointed out. “If I’m wrong and you are open to other possibilities, I can sign you right up on the new website. You’re an ex-jock and a semi-famous sports columnist. I’ll have you matched up with someone new by the end of the week.”
Jake regarded him incredulously. “You already have clients?”
“About thirty so far,” Will confirmed.
“Anyone we know?” Mack asked, then frowned. “Susie, for instance?” There was a discernible hitch in his voice when he asked, proving that there was more to that relationship than he wanted to acknowledge.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Will told him.
“When did you start this company?” Jake asked.
“Three weeks ago officially, though I’d been working out the criteria for matching people for a while. I finally incorporated, then put out a few brochures around town. I had no idea what to expect, but when the clients started signing up, I figured I ought to tell you all about it before you heard about it from another source. Someone’s bound to figure out I’m the professional psychologist behind it. After all, there aren’t that many of us in the area.”
“So you’re doing this to make money?” Mack said, clearly still trying to grasp his motivation. Before Susie, Mack had had absolutely no difficulty attracting single women, so he didn’t understand Will’s frustration.
“It could be a gold mine, yes, but that wasn’t really my motivation,” Will insisted. “I think of it more as a community service.”
“Nice spin,” Jake commented wryly. “You’ve already admitted that you’re doing this so you can meet women. Couldn’t you just have hung out at Brady’s more often?”
Will shook his head. “That wasn’t really working for me.”
“What about church? I hear a lot of men meet women at church,” Mack said. “Come to think of it, if I’d known you were this desperate, I could have asked Susie to fix you up. She has a bunch of girlfriends.”
“I’m not desperate,” Will said, offended by the characterization. “I’m being proactive.”
Jake and Mack exchanged a glance. It was Jake who dared to ask, “What about Jess?”
Will stilled. “What about her?”
“You’ve always been crazy about her,” Jake said.
“But she’s not crazy about me,” Will said, not denying his feelings since he’d never been all that good at hiding them. “Leave her out of this. She has nothing to do with it.”
Neither of his friends looked convinced, but they backed off.
Mack regarded him with amusement. “So, are you going to hold mixers like they had in college? Have everyone wear cute little nametags? Or what about those sixty-second dating things? You know, the ones like musical chairs? I hear those can be lively.”
Will scowled at his flip tone. “Bite me.” He stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my office to play matchmaker.”
“You and Dolly Levi,” Mack said with an unrepentant grin.
Will stared at him blankly. “Who?”
“Hello, Dolly. It’s a musical. Susie and I saw the revival recently. She’s a matchmaker.”
Jake groaned. “Please do not tell a lot of people that you, once a Chesapeake Shores and college gridiron star, are going to girly musicals these days. It’ll destroy your fine reputation as one of the town’s all-time great bachelors. You’ll no longer be considered a player on the dating scene. In fact, it’s entirely likely you’ll never have another date.”
“He doesn’t need another date,” Will said. “He already has Susie.”
“Who is obviously a very bad influence,” Jake said.
Mack frowned at him. “Do I need to point out that your wife produces plays at her fancy new Chesapeake Shores Theater, including, I might add, the occasional musical? You planning to attend?”
Jake winced. “That’s spousal obligation, not choice. There’s a difference.”
“Will, do you buy that? Is it different?”
“I’m not mediating this one, guys,” Will declared emphatically. “You’re on your own.”
He was going back to his office to see if he could find the woman of his dreams. Maybe she was right around the corner, though if she was, he ought to have stumbled across her long before now.
For the first time since the previous Friday, Will opened his email Monday afternoon to check the new applications for membership in the Lunch by the Bay online dating service. There were a half dozen that had come in over the weekend. He’d input the data from three of them, when he spotted those submitted by Laila, Connie and Jess. His eyes widened. Laila and Connie were one thing, but Jess? What was he supposed to do about her?
Since she’d submitted her credit card payment with her application, professional integrity absolutely required that he put the data into the system and see if his criteria matched her with anyone. The churning in his gut, however, told him to delete the application as if he’d never seen it. He didn’t want to be the man who helped Jess walk off into the sunset with someone else. She might ultimately do that anyway, but he didn’t want to be the one who’d facilitated it.
He wrestled with his conscience for a full ten minutes before he reluctantly fed the data into his system. He deliberately left his own information out of the equation. When the computer came back with no immediate matches, he breathed a sigh of relief.
He told himself to send back her money and tell her to reapply at a later date, but when it came time to push the send key, he couldn’t do it. He knew it was because he was a little too eager to reject her for his own reasons. For anyone else, he’d take a fresh look at the data in a few days. Much as he might not like it, he owed that to Jess, too.
As for Laila