Sweat broke out on my forehead when I looked up and saw the receptionist, Joyce, in the doorway of my office. Quickly, I hung up the phone and cut off the recording of a male voice advertising himself as the Adonis of the century. I’ve been on enough of those dates to know that that was a ruse and I didn’t want Joyce to know I’d been calling date lines.

Joyce was a pretty, petite woman with shoulder-length auburn hair. Almond eyes accented her caramel complexion. She was holding a beautiful bouquet of pink Asiatic Lilies highlighted with purple Statice for fillers.

“Kate, these were delivered for you, but there’s no card.”

“Thank you. They’re beautiful,” I said as I took the vase from her and inhaled the sweet fragrance.

“Someone must have had a great date over the weekend.”

Joyce was hinting for me to give her the details, but I ignored her comment and asked, “Has the computer tech shown up yet?”

“No. Steve is late as usual,” Joyce said on her way out the door.

I wanted to tell her that I had the best date of my life, but if I had, it would’ve been a lie since there was never a date to begin with. And there was no mystery as to who sent the flowers. In an effort to brighten my day, I sent them to myself. I was tired of all the busy bodies in the office asking a million questions about why I wasn’t seeing anyone. So I feigned that some hot love was sending me flowers so they would get off my back.

If they really wanted to know why I was single, they should’ve been on my last few dates and they would understand. Either the guy was too self-absorbent, a pig or arrogant. My last date was a complete disappointment. Being a gentleman was not in his vocabulary. He certainly wasn’t the type to bring flowers. He didn’t open doors or pull out chairs. Heck, he didn’t even walk beside me like we were on an actual date. And then he had the nerve to ask was I paying for dinner after we gobbled down seventy-five dollars worth of food and wine.

There’s got to be some decent men out there, but for some reason I always seemed to wind up with the duds when my co-workers were dating or married to nothing but studs.

“Kate, the computer tech is on his way back,” I heard Joyce call over the intercom.

When the tech walked in, I was busy going over some manual reports for my meeting at 3:00. “I’ll be out of your way in a minute Steve,” I said without looking up.

“Steve couldn’t make it. I’m David Harrigan.”

I picked my eyes up from my report and saw a delicious six-foot-one, chestnut complexion man with sparkling white teeth. I sat there with my mouth hanging open until I realized I was staring and got a hold of myself.

“Kate Morris,” I finally said and extended my hand.

He set down his oversized case and shook my hand. “Nice to meet you. What problems are you having with your PC?”

“I can log on, but after a few minutes the screen gets fuzzy and then goes black.”

“It could be a bad motherboard. Do you need anything from your desk before I get started?”

Now I didn’t have to stay. I could’ve grabbed my reports and went to work in the conference room, but stay is exactly what I did. “I’m just going to work over here,” I pointed to a little table in my office. “Let me know if I’m in the way.”

He smiled at me and my heart jumped. “I don’t think you could ever be in the way.”

During the course of the next hour, we carried on a decent conversation while we worked. Actually, I think we did more conversing than working. And I know my co-workers did more spying than working themselves. Every time I looked up, someone was either slowly walking by my door or coming in my office to tell me they needed something. It seemed everyone wanted to get a peek at the new IT guy.

“I think they’re checking you out,” I told him. “They’ve never come by my office this much before.”

“They’re probably just curious.”

“Curious about what?”

“As to how long it’s going to take for me to ask you out on a date. That’s if you’re not already seeing someone,” he wondered, staring at the bouquet sitting atop my desk.

“You want to go out with me?” I asked skeptically.

“You say that like you’ve never been asked out on a date before.”

“It’s just kind of hard to imagine that you would want to ask me out when you passed by my pretty and available co-workers when you came in.”

“Who says you’re not just as pretty?”

I smiled. “That’s sweet, but I’m not blind. Most of them are a voluptuous size seven/eight and wear the clothes to prove it. When we go out, men are automatically drawn to them, not me.” I had a complex about my size. I wasn’t obese, but when I stood my size twelve body next to them, it sure seemed that way.

“Well I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror, but I see a very beautiful woman, whom I’d like to get to know better. So what do you say? Dinner tomorrow?” he asked as he packed up his things.

“O-Okay.” I stuttered. We exchanged numbers and he politely pulled out my chair behind my desk so I could go back to work.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Bye.” I was grinning so hard I thought my lips had cracked. I couldn’t believe he wanted to date me over my co-workers, but he asked me out and not them and I couldn’t be happier.

I stared at the bouquet I bought for myself. An urge hit me and I took them out of the vase and tossed them in the trash. I’ll wait for the vase to be filled with flowers sent from a real man, a man like David, instead of the one I led my co-workers to believe existed.