A Bed of Roses

Her best friend, Dana, asks, perhaps only half-jokingly, if Melinda is "barfing from nervousness" yet.

"It still doesn't feel real," Melinda insists.

If any third party can claim responsibility for bringing Joel and Melinda together, it's Dana Giammaria, who met Melinda through work a decade back. She's the one who, three years ago, first persuaded Melinda to try online dating, assuring her that, no, she wouldn't feel like a prostitute if she uploaded a photo of herself and waited for men to call.

At the time, Melinda was just easing gingerly back into the dating pool. Her 18-year-marriage to her high school sweetheart had unraveled in 2002, she says, when, on a shelf in her husband's closet, she discovered a boxful of love letters -- all written to, or from, one of his co-workers. When her husband returned home that evening, Melinda says, she announced that if he didn't end things with his girlfriend and agree to marriage counseling, she would take their daughters and file for divorce. "You can't [make it] on your own," she remembers him scoffing. "Watch me," was her reply. And, just like that, her marriage was over. (For his part: "It's one of those things where she's blaming me and I'm blaming her," her husband says. "There was just a lot of bad stuff between us.")

Afterward, working full time and raising her daughters consumed most of Melinda's time. Every day, she'd wake at 5 a.m. to shower and get the girls ready for school. A daily fix at Starbucks -- venti 2 percent latte with whipped cream, no sugar -- fortified Melinda for her PT Cruiser's 45-minute commute to her Burbank office. She wouldn't get back home until 7 p.m., so whatever remaining energy she had left was spent on Brooke and Lenelle, now 18, or doing coursework online, working toward a bachelor's degree in marketing.

"Melinda's like me -- she doesn't need anyone in her life," Dana says. "She was never like, 'Boo-hoo, poor me!' But I thought online dating would be fun for her. Like any of us, you always want that special person in your life."

On her Yahoo! Personals profile, Melinda posted coy photos of herself in a white tank top and low-riding pink sweat pants. She titled it, "Looking for Prince Charming" -- a tongue-in-cheek homage to the 10 years she'd spent in the marketing department at Walt Disney Co. (The characters that dot her cozy bedroom -- a high-end figurine of Tinkerbell, an animation cel of Pocahontas -- are other relics from that era.) She didn't actively search for men on the site, but plenty came to her on their own. Among her would-be suitors were a number of troops overseas.

"So many guys in Iraq, mostly in their twenties, would start off their e-mail with something dirty like, 'Can I F you?'" she says wryly. "I was, like, this is a pickup line? Okay, pig. Delete!"

The handful of her relationships that moved offline could have made a wacky montage in a romantic comedy -- the one who wanted a commitment, but nothing physical; the one who couldn't stop surfing other profiles. All quickly fizzled out.

One afternoon last April, as Melinda sat doing homework at the computer in her bedroom, an instant message flashed onscreen. Melinda quickly logged onto Yahoo! to scan the sender's profile. "Livin' The Dream!" it was titled.

Joel Buchannan, 34, of nearby West Hills, Calif., described himself as an "open-minded, goal-oriented . . . jeans and T-shirt kind of guy," who loved riding horses with his son, scuba diving and rock climbing. Some servicemen hesitate to reveal they're in the midst of a war zone -- most women, after all, want to date someone at least on the same continent -- but Joel made sure it was obvious: His photos included one of him shirtless, holding an M-16 rifle, and one of him broad-shouldered in desert camouflage and sunglasses, a row of Bradley Fighting Vehicles behind him. Melinda gamely responded with an instant message.

Joel was writing from a base in Balad -- "Ambush Alley," he called it -- after finishing a grueling, but not uncommon, 36-hour shift. A combat medic, he'd spent a combined two of the previous three years overseas and was seven months into his third tour of duty.