Wasn't Supposed To Happen

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

Delaney Hall was pretty sure her friend and coworker, Camille Blake, was having a stroke.

Or maybe not a stroke, she thought, pushing back in her chair. No one smiled that dreamily when they were having a stroke.

At least, she didn’t think they did.

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed, tapping her pen against her desk’s edge. “You want me to apply to…what?”

“An Indecent Apposal!” Camille’s dark brown eyes went bright, and for a second, Delaney wondered if this wasn’t so much a stroke as Cams still being drunk after her sexy, secluded getaway with her boyfriend—and probably soon-to-be-fiancé.

Delaney tried to remember her last sexy getaway and…couldn’t. In fact, the last trip she’d taken was for work—and the one before that had been for work, and the one before that. Hmmm.

She cleared her throat. “They’re going to give you a drug test if you keep smiling at me like that,” she told her, casting a wary glance toward her open office door. It was only a little after 7 AM, but both women worked for Paramount Construction, and morning meetings started early when you had to be at a job site by eight.

Camille frowned—or tried to frown—it really wasn’t working so well for her. “I want you to apply to An Indecent Apposal. It’s the dating app Wyatt and I used.”

“I thought you two grew up together?”

“We did! And, also I thought he was a total manwhore, but the point is we would never have acknowledged how much we wanted each other without a little push. Now I’m here to give you that push!”

Delaney blinked, blinked again. True, she’d only known Camille for a few months, but the other woman was usually cool, calm, and prone to sarcasm. She’d never sounded so…cheerleader-like. “Who are you, and what did you do with my friend?” she asked.

Camille rolled her eyes, which honestly, only made the cheerleader image even more complete. “Look, I know how it sounds. I know. I can barely believe I’m saying this stuff either, but here’s the thing: We’re so happy and we want to share that happiness with you—”

“You sound like you’re inviting me to swing with you.”

“I’m inviting you to join the dating app that got us together. It’ll find your soulmate.”

Or maybe I’m the one having the stroke? Delaney wondered. It would be just her luck too. She worked too much, stressed too much, and though she tried to eat right, she also thought chocolate deserved its own food group.

“What a damn shame,” Tom, her boss, would say whenever he caught her occasionally indulging in M & M’s or something. “You have such a pretty face. If you just worked harder on the other stuff, you’d probably be hot.”

The ‘other stuff’ being her plus-sized figure. Delaney hated when people said that kind of s**t, like being a big girl was news to her.

When Tom had said it last week, she’d resisted the urge to slap one hand across her heart and exclaim: “Wait! I’m fat? I didn’t realize!”

The inevitable confusion on his face would’ve been amusing, but the fallout wouldn’t have been.

So she was bigger, so what? Bodies came in all sorts of shapes and sizes and this was hers and she liked it—even if it felt like the rest of the world wanted her to be something else entirely. Some people were born bigger and Delaney was one of them.

Some people also can’t pull off my lingerie, she thought. But, of course, that wasn’t something she could say to people like Tom either.

“Hello!” Camille snapped her fingers, bringing Delaney back to the moment. “I’m trying to find your soulmate here.”

She raised one brow. “Soulmate? That’s ridiculous.”

Except her heart double-thumped like it wasn’t.

Like it might be…possible.

Clearly, you haven’t learned a thing, she told herself, but before her brain could flash back to her ex, Harrison, she shoved the realization away, buried it under lock and key.

Along with everything else about him.

“If the guys hear us,” she continued, “we’ll never live it down.”

Camille nodded, playing with the hem of her full, pleated skirt. “So true. So very true. Shall we call him your One True Hot Dog?”

“That’s worse.”

“I know!” Camille leaned forward, propping her elbows on Delaney’s desk and squashing the receipts Tom had left there for Delaney to file. “I need you to trust me on this.”

“No.”

“Yes. I trusted you to help me with Tom when he was being a d**k to me. Now you have to trust me.”

I don’t do trust very well, Delaney thought. She rolled her chair back, but her office was so small she only managed to smash into the beige-painted wall behind her. She was trapped.

And Camille grinned like she knew it.

“Dealing with Tom was different,” Delaney told her, still keeping one eye on her door because as much as people loved to say women adored gossip, in her experience, her almost-entirely male coworkers adored it even more and they would love to find out she’d been behind Tom’s sushi incident. “He’s an asshole,” she added. “It was revenge for how he treated you.”

But more specifically it was most of Delaney’s sushi lunch stuffed under the back seat of Tom’s 4x4 truck. It had taken him days to figure out where the smell was coming from. Rumor had it, he’d vomited when he’d finally found what was left of her salmon rolls and still hadn’t managed to eradicate the rotten fish stench.

“He’s an asshole,” Delaney repeated. “You didn’t deserve his s**t. Plus, your Meme is awesome. I had to help.”

Camille grinned. “She is awesome—and by the way, she just bought two new pairs of hot pants to go with those heels she borrowed from you.”

Delaney winced at the mental image. Camille’s Meme had knees like doorknobs, a voracious appetite for men and mini-skirts, and absolutely no filter. “You’re welcome? I think?”

Now it was Camille’s turn to lift one brow.

“The point is,” Delaney continued, “I had to do something to help Awesome Meme’s bullied granddaughter and I did. That doesn’t mean you owe me.”

“But it does. I want to help you and I’m not leaving until you agree.” Camille’s expression was deadly serious. Then she smiled like something had just occurred to her. “If you don’t agree, I’ll tell Meme you’re refusing your destiny and she’ll decide she has to convince you.”

“That’s a low blow.”

Camille shrugged in a ‘What can you do?’ way. “She’s bored and she will make this her life mission. If that doesn’t scare you…”

“Oh it does.” The last time Meme had decided someone wasn’t living up to his destiny, she’d colonized a bunch of feral cats under his window—the victim being her grandson, Camille’s brother. The cats had yowled all through the night, and by Day 4, Jamie was ready to agree to whatever she wanted—which in this case meant going to art school for costume design and theater.

“Fine,” Delaney grated. “Sign me up.”

“Seriously? It’s going to be that easy?”

“Sure. I’m new to town. I could stand to meet a few more people.”

“You’re going to meet your soulmate. This isn’t Grindr, for God’s sake.”

Delaney patted Camille’s arm and went back to sorting Tom’s expenses. Was that really a receipt for a strip club? She studied the header. Goldrush. Yep, it totally was a receipt for a strip club. “Okay,” she said.

“I’m not kidding here. This is happening. I’ll send the invite tonight so you can get started.”

Delaney looked up. “ Get started?’ You make it sound like there’s a research paper involved.”

“Not quite.” Camille wrinkled her nose a little, a mix of amusement and distaste. “More like a very thorough…questionnaire.”

***

No kidding, Delaney thought hours and hours later. She thumbed her cell’s screen, scrolling through the questionnaire. Camille was right: it was definitely thorough.

And intense.

And erotic.

And perhaps more than a little…disconcerting. It wasn’t just the sexy questions that threw her, it was the way all the questions seemed to pry into all her locked away places.

Sure, it was disconcerting to be asked where she liked to be licked and what were her favorite fantasies, but the questions about what she wanted outside the bedroom were somehow worse.

What kind of life are you ready to build?

Are you happy?

Are you ready to rest?

Delaney scowled, glancing around her empty, sparse apartment, half-wishing Camille were here so she could complain to her and half-grateful she wasn’t. Was she ready to rest? What the hell did that even mean?

Of course, she wasn’t ready to rest. In spite of her boss’s best efforts, her career was on the rise, and while she didn’t love her coworkers—with the exception of Camille and a few of the receptionists—she loved her work. Why on earth would she want to back off for a rest?

“Moving on,” she muttered, leaving that question blank. Would it fail her questionnaire? Could you fail a questionnaire? She wasn’t sure.

“And I don’t care,” she announced to her deserted kitchen. “I really don’t.”

Except it felt like she might…maybe…slightly care a bit.

Or maybe slightly care more than a bit.

As she stared at the Submit button, her cell’s screen transformed, Camille’s ID appearing. For about half a second, Delaney considered ignoring it and then swiped her thumb across the pad to answer. “Hey,” she said, sounding remarkably casual for someone who “Are you ready to rest?” was twirling through her brain.

“Did you finish the questionnaire?” Camille asked. There was a low droning coming from her end, a muted murmur like she was at a restaurant.

“You mean every single creepy question?”

Camille laughed, and even though Delaney had heard her laugh dozens of times before, this one felt fresh. Unaffected.

Wyatt is there, she realized, and as much as this An Indecent Apposal stuff sounded like a scam…part of her wanted it to be real so she could laugh like that too.

So she could be loved like Camille was loved.

This isn’t real, she reminded herself, pressing herself so straight and tense she could feel the kitchen counter cut into her spine. There’s no way an app like this could be real.

But for the first time today, she wanted to hit that Submit button.

“Yeah, the questions are a little…specific,” Camille said. Delaney couldn’t see her friend, but she could picture her embarrassed smirk. “But they definitely itemize what you’re looking for.”

“True.” She paused, pulse thumping. “What did you put down on the life questions?”

“Life questions?”

“The ones where it asked you what kind of life you wanted to build.”

There was a pause. Delaney could hear the faint drone of other diners, the sharp clink of their silverware, but she couldn’t hear a thing from Camille.

“I didn’t get any questions about life building,” her friend said at last.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Delaney’s stomach tipped over uneasily. That seemed suspicious. Then again, maybe it wasn’t? It would stand to reason the app creator—whoever the hell that was—would’ve loaded hundreds if not thousands of questions into the program’s data base. Camille and Delaney probably just had different sets.

But it feels personal, she thought, staring at the curtains that hid her kitchen window, and not for the first time, worrying someone was trying to peek around them to watch her. It felt personal.

But it also felt like something she needed and had never voiced until now: She was tired. She wanted to rest—but resting also felt like giving up and that wasn’t happening.

Period.

“So did you send your answers in?” Camille asked, making Delaney start.

“Not yet.”

“And why is that?”

She groaned. “Ugh, have I told you you’re annoying? Hold on.” Keeping Camille on the line, Delaney minimized the call, pulled up the app, and submitted her answers. “There,” she said, returning to Camille. “The questionnaire’s in. Are you happy?”

“OhmyGod, you have no idea!”

She wanted to roll her eyes, but couldn’t seem to do it. Camille did sound happy.

Actually, she sounded overjoyed. Giddy, even.

“This is going to be the best,” she gushed.

Is it? Delaney wondered, studying the how the streetlights still managed to worm yellow light under her closed curtains. If she were being honest, sending in the questionnaire did feel…good.

Which was ridiculous because she had zero hope for an actual match.

Well, you’ll get a match, she realized. It just won’t be a very good one.

Although maybe she wouldn’t notice?

True love. Soulmates. Whatever. It wasn’t like she would know the difference. You couldn’t miss something you’d never had…

Right?