Sticking to the Script: Cipher Office Book #2

by Romance, Smartypants

  I also wanted to stay.

  There was a protracted silence during my woolgathering, and Steven watched me with an amused glint.

  “See, this is the part where you say, ‘Oh, yes, Steven. I have grand plans to do such-and-such and so forth and make a difference in this terrible world we live in,’ and then I say, ‘Good for you, Dr. Ken Miles!’” He said this last part with such exaggerated happiness and an energetic fist thrust, that I couldn’t help but laugh again.

  “Good, relax. You need to relax,” he encouraged.

  “I am relaxed.”

  “No. No, you’re not,” he said with a small shake of his head. “You look perpetually uncomfortable. It couldn’t be me, I’m a delight.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “A real ‘delight.’” I made air quotes with my fingers, and, I swear to God, I never hated myself more than in that moment.

  His assertion pissed me off. Generally, I was a confident person. My ego was very healthy. But in those times when I felt unsure or off-kilter, I faked it. I knew how to disarm with a smile, speak with authority, and keep completely calm when chaos was happening around me. I took great pains to never let anyone see me falter or experience stress. If someone took me by surprise or I didn’t immediately know the best way to react, I had a mask. A set, blank expression that gave nothing away. It usually worked like a charm. At least I thought it did. No one ever accused me of being ‘perpetually uncomfortable’ until now.

  This only confirmed what I already suspected about Steven: He was too astute. I wanted to admit that it was him, that his propensity for examination was something I didn’t think was particularly delightful. But that admission felt like giving him power over me, so I choked down my irritation as well as I could, stood up slower than I wanted to—because I really just wanted to fly out the door and jog out my frustration all the way home—and made my excuse to leave.

  “I’m not high-strung, Mr. Thompson. Just busy.” I could hear the stiffness in my voice, and I hated it. “I need to leave, but I appreciate you letting me interrupt your breakfast.”

  I held my hand out for a shake.

  Steven opened his mouth and glanced from my face, to my hand. Then he closed his mouth and looked again, from my face to my hand. He made a small whimper in the back of his throat before muttering, “Oh, what the hell,” and giving me a firm shake.

  It was a bizarre moment, but I didn’t take the time to ponder his behavior. I released his hand, left the cafe, and headed back to the trail for another run.

  Chapter Three

  *Steven*

  I examined Janie’s face from across the table. She was seemingly oblivious to my scrutiny, so intent was she on glaring a hole through the wall her husband, Quinn, had just passed behind.

  I heard the front door of their penthouse close as he left. Janie fumed at the spot a full twenty seconds before she growled and brought her eyes back to me.

  “Let’s eat.” It sounded less like a suggestion and more like an order, so I dutifully mirrored her movements and lifted my fork. Their part-time housekeeper had presented us with a beautiful lunch of couscous salad with chicken and vegetables. It smelled divine. I was happy to eat it, but Janie was angry that when I’d arrived for our meeting, my contribution to lunch—Italian beef sandwiches with extra giardiniera and fries—had been confiscated by her husband.

  “Sodium,” had been his only explanation or greeting as he’d taken the bags from me.

  Janie was over seven months pregnant and had recently been put on bedrest by her doctor. Quinn, who’d already been grouchier than normal, had become insufferable.

  I tried to be generous with my thoughts and not take his attitude personally. I knew he was in a constant state of worry over his family and I knew him well enough to understand that he wasn’t going to allow himself to be out of control of the situation. Micromanaging Janie was his new full-time job, and probably the only thing that kept him from going crazy. But throughout the pregnancy, I felt like I couldn’t do anything well enough to please Quinn. It might not have been personal, but at times, it sure felt like it.

  I was determined to not let him ruin my good humor, so I dug into work with Janie, all the while trying to stay upbeat.

  It was not easy.

  Quinn hovered and Janie seemed to chafe at his behavior. Despite all of that, we worked quickly, reviewed expense reports and discussed projections for the Schmidt-Fischer Group proposal Dan and I would be presenting in Hamburg the week after next. When we broke for our Dr. Quinn, Medicine Meany-approved lunch, I was a little relieved Quinn decided to step out. But he took the offending take-out with him, and I bet my next year’s salary that he’d taken those sandwiches to eat with Alex down in the data center.

  Once we’d taken a few bites, I tried to draw Janie into conversation and into a brighter mood. “I haven’t given much thought to pregnancy since health class in junior high, but I wasn’t aware that the parasite could actually imbue the host with the personality of the father.”

  She frowned. It was an intentionally stupid statement, and a gamble. I wasn’t sure if she’d humor me, as she’d always done before her pregnancy, or if she’d go full Sullivan and tell me to get the hell out of her space.

  Luckily for me, it was the former. “A fetus is not a parasite. A parasite is defined as an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species—its host—and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense.” She rubbed her distended belly. “The baby and I are of the same species.”

  I smiled, probably my first genuine smile since having the beef torn from my hands. Janie was a gem. A rare and beautiful gem. From the moment I met her, I was captivated. She towered over me when she wore heels, which pre-pregnancy, was almost always, and she wasn’t afraid to accentuate her height. The clothes she wore, the shoes she chose, they all complemented and highlighted her statuesque physique. She looked stunning and didn’t seem to concern herself with the fragile egos of shorter, lesser men. Add to all of that a thick and lustrous mane of red curls and, I don’t care who you are or what your sexual orientation is, you can’t help but watch as she passes by.

  When she was hired on with Cipher Systems, I was relieved to have such competent help. At the time, our company was small, but beginning to expand rapidly. Being in charge of accounts management and accounting for Cipher’s private and public security branches, I knew the rate of our expansion meant I needed another set of eyes and hands. I wasn’t going to be able to do it on my own for long. We needed to find someone as soon as possible.

  And what a find Janie Morris had been.

  To my absolute delight, in addition to her brilliance with numbers, she had an insatiable curiosity about everything and, what I suspected to be, a photographic memory. What she learned, she remembered. Like her husband, I found her knowledge of factoids and data fascinating.

  “There is such a thing as a parasitic fetus, but that is referring to an incomplete minor fetus attached to a larger, more completely developed fetus, called an autosite,” she explained.

  “See.” I pointed to her with my fork. “Those fetuses are the same species and one is a parasite to the other. I stand by my opinion that they are all parasites.”

  She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, further strengthening my theory that the baby was making her more like Quinn each day. “Are you…well?”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Your moods have been off the last three times we’ve spoken,” she declared. “It’s unusual for you to have mood fluctuations.”

  Before I could respond, she took the conversation off on another tangent.

  “This morning I read an online article from the Tribune that said that using your hands meaningfully triggers healthy engagement and activity in about sixty percent of your brain, and the rhythmic, mathematical nature of knitting and crocheting keep the mind absorbed in a healthy way, providing escape from stressful thoughts, but allowing for internal reflection.”

&
nbsp; I didn’t know why she was talking about this, but I was glad to go on the ride—grateful she was abandoning talk of my moods.

  Or so I thought.

  “I think you are suited to such a pastime and could also benefit from its meditative and therapeutic qualities.”

  The image of myself perched on a tiny stool, furiously knitting baby booties flashed into my head, and I had to laugh.

  “I’ll email you a link to the article. Also, I could teach you how to crochet.”

  I took a bite of my salad and pondered what she said. Janie usually didn’t comment much on my life or offer opinions, rather she liked to listen, observe and ask relevant questions. But she never meddled. Not that I thought offering to teach me crochet was meddling, but for her, it was as close as she’d ever come to it.

  “Is this your way of luring me and my sparkling conversation into your knitting group, or are you saying I need therapy?”

  Janie was part of a knitting group that met every Tuesday evening. She crocheted rather than knitted—apparently, they were different things—and she seemed to really enjoy the craft.

  Janie blinked, giving my question thoughtful consideration. “Neither. Though Nico might like another man to commiserate with.” Elizabeth was a part of the knitting group and Nico had learned to crochet in order to infiltrate the weekly meeting and spend more time with her. It was sweet, really. Bizarre, but sweet.

  “Ha! One.” I held up my index finger. “Nico doesn’t need to commiserate at all. He’s living the dream. And two.” I extended my second finger, frowned and shook my head in mock sadness. “I doubt he would like my testosterone invading his sacred space. I’m magnetic and I would be a usurper of all of the adoration you ladies bestow on him every week.”

  Janie smiled and shook her head like I was ridiculous. It was funny, the idea that I could out-shine Nico. I was friendly, and knew I had a fair amount of my own charisma, but he was a force of nature. Everyone liked Nico. Everyone.

  Nico was currently the only male yarn-crafter in the group. Aside from Elizabeth and Janie, there were five other women. Two of them—Marie and Ashley—I didn’t know very well. I’d only been in Marie’s presence a handful of times. Ashley, I had only ever seen on the screen of a laptop once, since she attended the meetings via Skype from her home in Tennessee. Fiona, the eldest of the group, now worked for Cipher Systems and Sandra, a psychologist who worked with Elizabeth at Chicago General, was part of the CS family too, as she was married to Alex Greene, our Chief Information Security Officer. Alex and Sandra happened to also be my neighbors across the hall.

  Lastly, that left Kat. One might think that with Kat’s shy demeanor and lack of affiliation with Cipher Systems, she would have slipped past my radar. But, oh no. She was my favorite.

  There was something about Kat Tanner that drew me in. We had become fast friends, and since she worked in the Fairbanks building, too, we met up often for lunch. Though recently, not often enough.

  Thinking of Kat, I asked, “Has Kat been making it to knit-night? She’s so busy lately, we can’t make our schedules mesh for anything.”

  “She’s been there,” she replied. “But she had finals, work and…” She averted her eyes. “Boston. You know.”

  Janie mentioned Boston hesitantly, probably unsure of how much I really knew about Kat’s family situation. It was a closely guarded secret that she was Kathleen Caravel-Tyson, heiress to the Caravel Pharmaceutical fortune.

  Kat had been living life here as Kat Tanner. Working full-time as the executive assistant to the CEO of an architectural firm and going to school part-time at the University of Chicago. Her destiny as a woman who’d inherit controlling shares of her family’s empire, meant that sooner or later, she’d have a monstrous amount of responsibility on her shoulders. She was working very hard to be prepared for this eventuality, even though it hadn’t always been what she’d wanted. So, in addition to getting an education, she was also flying to Boston two weekends a month to learn all she could about Caravel Pharmaceuticals. I admired the hell out of her for it.

  “Well, I think sweet, stinky German cheese is in order,” I announced. “I’ll pick some up on the trip. I’m positive a few wheels will help lessen her burdens.”

  Kat’s favorite thing in life was cheese. She adored it, craved it, fantasized about it. If I had to go abroad for a business trip, the least I could do was bring back her drug of choice.

  “I also like cheese,” Janie stated, rather pointedly.

  I gave her an indulgent smile. “And cheese you shall have, darling. I’ll bring you back a suitcase full.”

  “Thank you. But we’ve gone off topic. Back to my point,” she said, and I sighed. I didn’t want to get back to the subject of me.

  “The thought occurred to me that you might be stressed. You’re taking on more work because I’m on bedrest and you’ve stopped talking about your weekend escapades altogether.”

  “No!” I said quickly—and probably too forcefully. I lowered my voice to assure her, “It’s not the work. Work is fine.”

  Her concern that the bedrest was causing me stress was off base. She did quite a bit of work remotely from the comfort of her bed, though Quinn did limit her. We lived in the same building, so it wasn’t hard to meet if we needed to do so. For me, the worst and most inconvenient part of the pregnancy was her husband’s cranky ass. The last thing I wanted was for her or Quinn to think I couldn’t handle the workload. Things were already stressful enough for them without worrying I wasn’t giving the accounts the attention they needed.

  But she hit close with the ‘weekend escapades’ comment, though she might not have realized it. Too close for my liking. I didn’t want to do it, but sharing a bit about it would at least, hopefully, assuage any concern she had about my problems being work-related.

  I widened my eyes in feigned surprise and excitement. “You mean I haven’t told you about King?”

  She shook her head. “No, who or what is King?”

  I rolled my eyes dramatically, trying to convey that this story didn’t end well. “King is the name—first, last or nick, I have no idea—of this guy I met last month. Red hair and gorgeous eyes. He sent me a picture of himself in a kilt and boots. Shirtless, of course. We’d been texting back and forth, and I asked him what he liked to do, what his hobbies were because, you know how I am, I like people who are offbeat and interesting.”

  Janie nodded. She knew this about me. I collected an interesting bevy of friends and dates because people and all their oddities fascinated me. I always imagined when I found someone to be my perfect match, he wouldn’t be the sexiest guy or the handsomest man, but he’d be captivating and fun and there would never be a dull moment in our relationship.

  But now I knew Unicorn Level: Eccentric Meets Lovable didn’t exist. It was a deluded fantasy I held on to for too long. I was sick and tired of wading through assholes and freaks. If someday in the future I decided to pick up the dating gauntlet again, I’d battle with someone who didn’t qualify for the circus. Or prison. Or a mental hospital. For now, Steven Thompson was off the horse.

  Instead of voicing those thoughts, I continued with my story, pretending it was just another funny, wacky Steven anecdote.

  “He told me he was into bagpiping and I thought, ‘That’s different, that’s fun.’ So, when we were making plans to meet up, I floated the idea of going to the Scottish Festival and Highland Games that was happening at the time. I thought it would be something he’d like to do, but he said he’d rather meet up for drinks in a pub. At eleven.”

  “Oh,” she said knowingly.

  “Yeah, it looked like he only wanted a hook-up.” I shrugged. “But that was fine, I knew I could weave a charm spell over drinks. I didn’t need a whole afternoon date for that. So, I met up with him, we talked and flirted. I tried asking him about his kilt and bagpipes, but he made everything into a dirty, double entendre.”

  That had been Strike Two against King.

  “He w
as wearing his kilt?” Janie asked around a bite of the salad.

  “No, he was dressed in regular clothes. Unfortunately. I thought I might get a little William Wallace cosplay entertainment,” I fibbed. “But anyway, I was buzzed enough that taking him home seemed like a good idea.” Another fib. I had been stone-cold sober when I invited him home. He’d been angling hard for the invitation and I stubbornly held out hope for a connection even though he wasn’t giving me much that seemed authentic. That should have been Strike Three, but I was an idiot.

  I leaned forward, indicating that ‘the good part’ was about to happen. I exaggerated my expression and said, “As soon as we were in the apartment, King tore my shirt from my body.” I mimed a tearing motion with my hands and continued. “He ripped the damn thing, pushed me against the wall, pinned my wrists above my head and…and…” I paused for effect, enjoying Janie’s rapt attention. “Licked my armpit.”

  She barked out a laugh and sighed, clearly relieved that it was something funny and not frightening. Little did she know…

  I usually enjoyed dramatizing my dating misadventures—as long as the impression I left my audience with was one of amused astonishment. I turned the tragedy into humor, flipped the bland into colorful and most importantly, diverted any possible pity the listener might have felt for me into a sense that I was living my fullest, best life. Today, I wasn’t embellishing or dramatizing to simply deflect from work concerns, I was downplaying to make sure that the story—if it got back to Quinn—wouldn’t send up any red flags or cause my boss to lose his shit on me. I didn’t need him knowing what really happened in my apartment that night.

  “It’s a fetish called maschalagnia,” she said. “I confess, I haven’t read much about it.”

  “Janie, he licked it,” I emphasized. “I’m the last person to kink-shame or yuck someone else’s yum, but I am extremely ticklish and I. Couldn’t. Get. Away! He was strong and I was wiggling like a worm, laughing even though I was being tortured.”