Push Me (To The Edge series, #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

for the night.”
    “ Gee, how’d you guess?”
    “Because you’re always in your hotel room by 8:00.”
    “Not always.” I reclined on the bed, put the TV on mute, and waited to see if they showed Sam again. There was something I thought I’d noticed, but I needed to see him again to be sure.
    “Right, not always ,” Rachel said. “There was that time you worked in the store until 9:00. I almost forgot. Forgive me?”
    “I love you, so you’re always forgiven.”
    We had a few minutes of small talk, during which she told me she had met a guy in a Duane Reade supermarket earlier that afternoon, and that he could be “The One.”
    I’d known Rachel for almost ten years and in that time she had identified dozens of guys—maybe more than a hundred—as “The One.” She hadn’t dated, let alone slept with, very many of them. The vast majority were guys she met in random situations. Sometimes on the bus, sometimes in line at the grocery store, other times when she was working. Sometimes she’d strike up the conversation, other times she would give off flirt-ready signals like a beacon until the guy she was interested in received the signal and bounced it back to her.
    She never had trouble attracting the attention of a guy. She was tall, with thick natural blonde hair that she wore in a cute bob with long bangs. She had what I always thought of as the body of a professional dancer, even though she never worked out and ate whatever she wanted. I always thought she was a dead-ringer for the actress Elisha Cuthbert, without even realizing at first the phonetic similarity of the names. Anyway, her physical appearance wasn’t the problem.
    Rachel ’s problem, in my view, was that she was too eager. And I was convinced that guys picked up on that very quickly.
    She’d never see most of the guys again, but that didn’t stop her from dreaming about them. And the few dates that did arise from those situations ended like all the others had for her lately—not great.
    It was actually a running joke between us, but there was always something underlying the conversation that told me she was getting more and mo re impatient about actually finding “The One.”
    “Congratulations,” I said, referring to the guy she’d met in the supermarket. “What does this one do?”
    “Me, if he’s lucky. ”
    “That’s a new one.”
    “It just popped into my head,” Rachel said. “I actually have no idea what he does. He was cute and smelled nice. Flirted a little, but I didn’t get his name.”
    “Sounds promising.”
    “Tell me about it.” There was a hint of disappointment in her tone. “Remember me telling you about that guy I talked to on JDate?” she asked.
    Rachel had gotten into online dating a couple of years ago. She’d signed up for all of the popular ones, including JDate, a site for Jewish singles. It’s worth noting that Rachel is Catholic.
    “The cop?” I asked, my eyes locked on the image of Sam on the TV.
    “Yeah. So he seems pretty cool and I decided to see him last night.”
    “It’s only been a week.”
    Rachel had gone into the online dating scene with the policy of exchanging emails for at least a week, followed by another week of phone calls, just to scope out the guy and not meet someone too quickly. This was as much a safety thing as it was an attempt not to show her over-eagerness.
    “I know,” she said . “I broke my own rule.”
    “How’d that work out ?”
    “Really, really well.”
    I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and my response came out in a flat tone. “Seriously...”
    “Yeah. Why? You sound like you don’t believe me.”
    “I believe that it went well. But, Rachel, this guy’s a detective . He detects things for a living. He’s going to find out you’re not Jewish. You don’t think he’s going to detect that?”
    “ Oh, come on,” she said. “What does it matter? He’ll get to know me, fall in love with me, and he won’t care what my