The Dating Experiment (Better With You #2) - Briar Prescott

Acknowledgments

I owe a huge thanks to the usual suspects: Layla, Jill and Mia. I’m starting to think I couldn’t do this without you, so it must mean the Stockholm syndrome is finally kicking in.

* * *

Thank you for the edits, Sandra. Breathe. See? I’m capable of learning. Please don’t ever leave me.

* * *

Thank you, Kate and Heather, for the proofreading. It was last minute on a tight deadline, and I didn’t even have the decency to learn how to use prepositions correctly. We should do it again soon, right?

* * *

And most of all, thank you to all my readers. This book has been cooking for a long time, so thank you for being patient.

1

Jamie

Most people I know watch crime shows for entertainment. Not me. My interest in murder mysteries is purely educational. I’m not saying that I’m obsessed with the perfect murder, but the FBI would probably have a field day with my search history.

Over the years, I’ve contemplated many a weapon. Ice bullets with poison in them. Wooden stakes to the heart. A shot of oxygen into the vein. Adopting a cheetah and making the attack look like an accident.

“Officer, I truly had no idea Fluffball had it in him! Would you just look at his sweet face?”

I may or may not have practiced saying that a few times. Authenticity is key, and I prefer to be prepared. Just in case.

Everything about my boss just makes him supremely murderable. His flaws are many.

Connor Quinn is arrogant, impossible to please, cold as ice, and prone to finding flaws in everything. But his greatest sin might be ruining my name. And I’m not talking in the Victorian sexual-experience-out-of-wedlock sense of ruining a name.

I’m talking about the fact that he uses my name so many times a day that I’ve developed an unfortunate habit of tensing up whenever anybody at all utters any word that resembles “James” or “Jamie”. The other day, one of the interns talked about visiting Jamestown, and my left eye wouldn’t stop twitching the whole afternoon. Thanks, Maisey. The woman in the coffee shop still thinks I was flirting with her. She gave me a free cup of coffee. I gave her false hope. So, all in all, there’s balance in the Universe.

“James!”

In an uncomfortable and unfortunate Pavlovian reaction, my back stiffens and my shoulders tense like somebody has shoved a poker into my spine.

Here we go again.

There used to be a time I considered myself lucky. As far as names go, James is a relatively safe choice for any parent to make. It’s a common, classical name, if a bit boring. Still, I prefer boring over some newfangled, impossible to pronounce, sure-to-get-you-wedgies weirdness, like Jar-El 52 Mnemo. The m is silent.

James, to my knowledge, doesn’t easily rhyme with any dirty words, so it’s hard to use it for teasing and bullying. One of the jocks tried to make Jamie-Lamey a thing in high school, but after a while, he seemed to realize that he was embarrassing himself more than me with that one.

Nor are there any terrible pop culture connections, which is something every Karen, Luke, or Bart would be envious of. I figure it gets tiring at some point when people keep saying stuff like “¡Ay Caramba!”, or “Luke, I am your father” all the time. I guess there’s James Bond, but nobody who looks at me would make that connection. I’m about as deadly as a cheese sandwich, in that I could choke you, but it would definitely happen by accident.

All in all, I used to really like my name.

Not anymore.

The sheer number of times I hear the name James every day is ridiculous. Plus, it’s usually accompanied by something like, “I hear adult spelling bee contests are a thing. Maybe you should consider signing up. God knows you could use some practice in that department. The element of possible public humiliation would urge you to practice.”

Or “Perhaps you could start making arrangements for my funeral, since there’s a very real possibility I’ll meet my demise while I wait for you to get back with the files I asked for. I prefer a simple, oak casket.”

Or one of my personal favorites, “You should contact Merriam-Webster and let them know of that creative spelling of the word ‘bankruptcy’ you’ve come up with. They might want to update their dictionaries.”

“James!”

People these days. So impatient.

I throw my jacket on my desk and remember, at the last moment, to pull off my hat, before plastering a smile on