Bad Boys Online

by Erin McCarthy

  That was why she had gotten the hell out of there. If she had pushed it, pulled out the breasts and a few other tricks, she probably could have convinced Evan to sleep with her.

  Which was comparable to throwing ten years of great friendship down the toilet.

  Geez, maybe she needed to go home and rent When Harry Met Sally to remind herself that sex between friends was a major no-no.

  Of course, Harry and Sally had gotten together in the end.

  Halley threw down her sprouts and avocado sandwich on her desk and grimaced. Brushing crumbs off her fingertips, she glanced at the pile of messages Nora had left on her desk. She didn't want to look at them, knowing they were nothing but bad news. In the two hours since she'd been back, the phone had been ringing constantly.

  Her sandwich churned in her stomach, and she was left with the horrible feeling that if the absolute worst happened, and she lost her business, she would be left with nothing. No business, no Evan.

  That thought had her flinging down her paper napkin and standing up. She had worked damn hard to make this business successful. Maybe she had screwed things up with Evan, but she couldn't just sit still and let Bite of Heaven crumble down around her. This was a minor setback, that's all. With a little damage control, everything would be fine.

  "Nora," she called as she stepped out of her office.

  The hum of a half-dozen employees talking ground to a halt as she entered the reception area. Eyes avoided hers. Horace, one of her younger drivers, boldly ogled her, running his gaze up and down.

  Anger raced through her. She was about to reprimand him when Horace shook his head in confusion.

  "That doesn't make any sense."

  Caught off guard, she asked, "What doesn't?"

  "That's not even you in the picture. I can tell by looking at your"

  So much for the thirty-dollar water bra she had bought. Halley cut him off. "Alright, I got it! And of course it's not me."

  Like she would ever pose for nude photos in the first place.

  The faces staring back at her were a mix of confusion and pity. It made her feel sick. Taking a slow, even breath, she said, "The problem is being dealt with. Let's all just go about our business, shall we?" And stop mulling over her breasts.

  There were nods, half smiles, and a reluctant pulling of various bodies off desks where they had been leaning. Talking about her. Probably about how boring she was, and how unlikely it was that her naked picture would ever be splashed on the Internet.

  Not that she cared. She didn't want her picture on the Internet. So what if she was boring and flat-chested and so starved for sexual attention that she had to throw herself at her best friend? Big deal. She was successful. She had scratched and clawed her way out of Hazen, West Virginia, and had made something out of herself. Something she could be proud of.

  A workaholic who hadn't had sex in two years.

  Argh. That wasn't helping.

  Nora left the others and approached Halley where she stood clenching her fists and glaring, feeling like a bull just itching to charge. At what, she didn't know. The Three Commandos would be the logical choice.

  Nora took her hand and pulled her aside. "Listen, Halley, did you read those messages I put on your desk?"

  Since Nora looked ready to pop a pacifier in her mouth and cuddle her in a blankie, Halley guessed they weren't filled with uplifting news.

  "No, I haven't gotten to them."

  Nora squeezed her hand. "Well, it's just as well that I tell you myself then."

  That was promising. "More cancellations?"

  Nora tucked her red hair behind her ear and shook her head, giving Halley another maternal look even though she was nearly five years younger than her. "No, actually, things have been quiet on that front, thank goodness. Just more requests for nude catering jobs."

  Great. Just great. "I hope you declined."

  "Of course!" Nora bit her lip. "But the part you're really not going to like is that your dad called."

  "My dad?" Ohmigod, her father never called her. Her dad worked twelve hours a day, but there was still barely enough money to put food on the table. Calling long distance to Halley was out of the question.

  "Did someone die?" Her heart dropped to her shoes, and she wondered if something was wrong with her mom or with one of her three younger sisters.

  Nora shook her head. "No! But he saw the picture on the web."

  "What? How is that possible?" Her parents didn't have a computer. As far as she knew, her dad had never even seen one. There wasn't a real pressing need for a town of coal miners to surf the web.

  Nora whispered, looking distinctly uncomfortable, "I guess your cousin Jake was bored, fooling around, and came across it. When he told your dad last night, your dad insisted Jake show him."

  Halley shook her head to clear it. All she did was flip hair in her mouth. "You got all that from my dad?" Her dad wasn't known for long, drawn-out conversations.

  "No, your mom got on and told me after your dad couldn't string anything together after 'Where the hell is Halley?' "

  Halley clutched her head in pain. "Oh, crap, this is awful. My parents think I have a nude catering business."

  They were sweet, hardworking, churchgoing folk. She was surprised her father hadn't already had a heart attack.

  "Well, I told them it was a mistake."

  But did they know that wasn't her body? Yuck, yuck, and triple yuck.

  "Thanks." Halley forced her head up and patted Nora on the arm. Hopefully with a phone call, she could assure her parents she wasn't running a prostitution ring or stripping online.

  Something Nora had said popped into her head. "Wait a minute? My dad saw this last night?"

  "That's what he said."

  "I wonder how long it's been up there like that, then?" She couldn't remember the last time she'd checked the site prior to that morning.

  "A week."

  Halley spun around. Horace was listening to them with no sign of embarrassment.

  "A week?" She was back in bull mode, clenching fists and leaning forward. All she needed was the nose ring and the red cloth target. "But we just started getting calls today."

  Horace shifted on the balls of his feet, and coughed into his hand. "It started a week ago with just the tray disappearing, then your top, then your skirt. Last night was when the angel showed up."

  She stared at him in horror. "Why didn't you say anything?" You total jackass.

  He shrugged. "I wanted to see what would happen next."

  Unemployment was what was happening next. "Horace, you're fired!"

  With the audacity to look startled, Horace said, "Hey! Whoa, don't overreact."

  That was not overreacting. Overreacting would be grabbing his nuts with her hand and squeezing the hell out of them.

  She had been doing a week-long striptease on her website and no one had bothered to mention it to her.

  That was it.

  Nobody turned her into an online stripper and got away with it. Time to take Evan up on his idea to get revenge on the Three Commandos.

  It was petty and juvenile and wouldn't solve her problems, but the Three Cs were just begging to get knocked down a peg or two.

  Besides, she needed to talk to Evan, and clear the air about her dog-in-heat imitation earlier. But first she was going to tell him to hack away, with her permission.

  It would be her pleasure.

  Chapter four

  Evan stared at Halley on the screen, restored to her previous state of conservative dress and tray holding.

  He should be feeling smug, pleased with himself. It had taken him only two hours and thirty-seven minutes to fix Halley's website.

  Naked was better, he concluded. Not that weird impostor body, but Halley's real body, soft and curvy and peach colored. That would be way more interesting than the goofy brown dress she was wearing in the original, now-restored, shot.

  It wasn't what he should be thinking about, but he couldn't stop the image f
rom assaulting him. Nor could he stop doing a mental instant replay of the kiss he and Halley had exchanged.

  A better apology was in order. But he didn't want to apologize. He wanted to lock her up in his bedroom and keep her so sexually satisfied she'd never think to leave him again.

  The idea had merit. But it was probably illegal.

  But if Halley were willing…

  Of course, that wasn't going to happen.

  Evan stood up and stretched his arms up over his head. While he had dragged on khaki shorts over his boxers at some point, he had never bothered with a shirt. It was sticky in his apartment since the AC had crashed and his landlord had yet to fix it.

  The heat was causing a thin sheen of sweat to roll across his chest and forehead, making him itch. He wandered toward the kitchen, realizing he had never eaten breakfast or lunch and he was now starving. But when Evan got into something like breaking through the hackers' trail, he lost sight of mundane tasks like eating.

  Now that he was done, his appetite returned with a vengeance. Despite the funny odor kicking up out of his garbage receptacle in the kitchen. Wrinkling his nose, he bagged it up and hustled it out to the dumpster, squinting as the bright sun hit him in the eyes.

  Back inside, he sprayed a little disinfectant and felt better about the whole thing. The kitchen was almost clean now. Halley would be proud of him.

  He was eating a bowl of corn flakes with a spotty banana when someone pounded on his door. Furiously.

  Could it be? No, she wouldn't come back. Would she? Evan ditched the corn flakes after one last big bite and nearly tripped over his bare feet to get to the door. If this was Halley, if this was his second chance, he was going to pull out all the stops and charm her right out of her tank top.

  No, no, he was going to apologize and keep his damn hands to himself. Scout's honor.

  He pulled the door open.

  Only Evan had never been a Boy Scout.

  Halley looked like a hot fudge sundae on a spoon. And he wanted to lick every inch of her.

  "Back so soon?"

  Halley's hands were on her hips, causing her tank top to shift and bunch in various delicious places. Her lipstick had been bitten off, and her foot tapped up and down restlessly. A desperate passionate sort of gleam radiated from her green eyes, and Evan wasn't idiot enough to think that passion was for him.

  Halley looked pissed off and ready to take names.

  "Okay, here's the deal." Halley placed her hand on his chest and gave him a healthy shove to push him out of her way as she charged into the apartment like Xena, Warrior Caterer.

  He had no idea what she was going to say, but he knew, just knew, it wasn't going to be what he wanted her to say. Which was, Rip my clothes off me, sport.

  Halley's lip quivered. "That picture of me has been there a week, Evan. A week! A client canceled on me, my employees are printing pictures of me, and my dad saw it. My dad!"

  Her glassy eyes were huge.

  No, not what he wanted to hear. And shit, she was having a breakdown in front of him. For Halley to lose control was more than a little alarming, it was damn scary.

  Evan put his hands on her arms and rubbed in a gentle and hopefully soothing manner. "Shh, sweet stuff, it's alright. I fixed the site. Everything is normal again."

  "Thank you." She sniffled, then gave him a ferocious stare, clamping down on her lips to stop the trembling. "But now I want revenge. Just like you said. I want the Three Commandos to hang."

  Evan was stunned into momentary silence. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe releasing all that anxiety would be a great relief for Halley. Or it might send her over the edge into a place that required antidepressants.

  A little unsure, he said, "I thought you said that you were busy."

  She shrugged, and he released her arms. The tears and trembling had stopped, and she looked in control of herself again. "My inventory spreadsheets can wait."

  Evan studied her carefully, wishing she wouldn't use words like spread. She seemed to have forgotten that a few hours earlier he had tried to do just that to her.

  Aside from the hysterical reaction to her website, she was acting normally toward him. Did that mean he was forgiven for trying to jump her bones?

  "Listen, are we okay? You and me."

  Halley's cheeks went pink and she blew her hair out of her eyes. "Why wouldn't we be? Oh, you mean because of earlier. That."

  Yes, that. Her embarrassment was obvious, and he couldn't stand that. The thing he loved about his friendship with Halley was how comfortable they were with each other. That was exactly what he didn't want to lose, and why he had never confessed his feelings for her.

  He said, "Look, maybe we should just forget it, forget that anything ever happened."

  He brushed the uncooperative hair out of her eye in a very platonic fashion and gave her a slow smile, meant to reassure her that he would stick to business. "We'll just get straight to the hacking."

  Halley swore to God, if he only knew what he was doing to her. Now that she'd put a twisted perverted spin on the word hack, every time he said it, she shivered right down to her toes in orgasmic anticipation.

  But at least he was letting her off the hook. They were going to forget her overenthusiastic response to his kiss and go on like normal. "Okay, good, great, yeah, definitely. We'll forget all about it."

  Since when had his eyes turned that exact shade of hot chocolate before you added the marshmallows? Forcing herself to focus on the more important thing hereher career she said, "So let's get hacking. I want to do something really bad."

  It wouldn't bring back the clients or restore her dignity, but it might make her feel less like she'd swallowed a peach pit.

  Evan's jaw clenched. Halley became aware that he was only a foot in front of her and that he still wasn't wearing a shirt. Her fingers jerked in eagerness to touch.

  "Really bad?" His voice sounded funny, as if she had stepped on his foot in heels.

  Somehow that sounded faintly suggestive. Of course, she suspected he could be talking about sewage and somehow she would find a way to be turned on. It was pathetic.

  "Yes. Bad. Really bad." Halley wanted to kick herself. She sounded like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rainman.

  "Okay." He shrugged, giving her a wicked grin. "So, like what? Doctor their website so they're wearing dresses?"

  That was appropriately horrible. She liked it. "Do you know who they are?"

  "Yeah. My friend Kirk knows one of them. They're three twenty-something computer geeks who do web design. One of them was fired from Microsoft, and they're all college drop-outs." Evan shrugged. "You know the kind. Almost too smart to be normal. A couple of people told me the same thing, that they're hackers on the side, mostly for fun, for the challenge of besting security."

  Evan frowned as he spoke, and started down the hall.

  "You're mad because they hacked your site, aren't you?" she asked, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants and following Evan into his bedroom.

  "Hell, yeah, I'm mad. Besides, they got you naked. If anyone's going to get you naked, it should be me."

  Halley froze. What the heck was that supposed to mean? Evan wasn't facing her, but his voice sounded light, as if he was joking, but still. She thought about his behavior that morning, and his… tongue sliding into her. Maybe she wasn't the only one with a sudden case of lust.

  He had been a long time without a date, longer than anytime since she'd known him. Maybe she had been a convenient sexual release.

  She didn't bother to answer him, since she had no clue what to say.

  His bed still wasn't made. She was tempted to do it herself, just to get the view of those wrinkled sheets out of her sight, but that would mean leaning over the bed. Smelling his masculine scent on the sheets and being far too close to a vertical position were dangerous.

  Evan had the website up in a minute. Halley studied the three men over Evan's shoulder. They looked a little on the geeky side, one wear
ing glasses and all three in need of a wardrobe consultant, given the overabundance of plaid. But they also looked a little brazen, as if they knew the world would dismiss them on appearances, but they had gotten the last laugh.

  "I've never seen any of them in my life, so I don't why they did this to me. And why do three men have a personal web page together? That freaks me out."

  "Who knows?" Evan shrugged, his hand moving the mouse around. "So what do you think? Floral dresses for them?"

  "Just for the one with glasses." Halley narrowed her eyes as she took in the cocky stance of the taller one on the left with dark hair, as they posed in front of a brick building. "For him, I think you should make him naked. Skinny, hairy, and naked."

  Evan laughed in surprise. "Are you serious?"

  "Very." Let them see how it felt.

  He turned and gave her a searching look, before breaking out into a grin that made her forget all about revenge. "Then I have a better idea."

  "What?"

  "Let's give them breasts."

  Halley felt her jaw drop open. Oh, Evan was much better at this than she was. "Can you do that?" The bizarre image of naked men with breasts popped into her head, and she quickly banished it again. Funny, yes, but definitely freaky.

  "Sure." Now Evan was the one looking a touch arrogant as he shrugged. "We just need to find the breasts. I'll download Pamela Anderson or something."

  Halley hesitated. "No, her breasts get too much airtime as it is." Not that she was jealous or anything. "Someone else."

  "I know who." Evan leaned back in his chair.

  Now she was jealous. She didn't want Evan to make suggestions on other women's breasts. She didn't want to know that some movie star or pinup could inspire that lusty gleam in his eye.

  She opened her mouth to tell him to forget it, that she had changed her mind.

  He spoke first. "How about you, Halley?"

  "Me?" She took a step back in horror. Did he mean with her clothes on or off?

  "Yes, you." He looked up and grinned. "You've got perfect breasts, sweet stuff, and think of the irony of putting your chest on those guys. It's hilarious."