Charlie stood. “I’ll walk you downstairs.”
She led him down the stairs to the front door. “Thanks for being willing to lose so Lin could have a chance to win.”
He tilted his head with the hint of a smile. “She knew the answer. I didn’t.”
“Still. You could have asked for me as a lifeline, but you picked her.”
“Maybe I’m just really bad at strategy.”
She smiled at him. “Maybe. But I doubt it.” He wasn’t just nice. He was kind. She’d never have imagined that. “You boosted her confidence. I may finally get her to take a chance at online gaming now.”
She intended to say good night to him inside the vestibule, but he opened the door and gestured her onto the porch. The evening was still warm, so the breeze didn’t account for the goose bumps prickling her arms.
“You know, I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. Thanks.”
“Why thank me? You’re the one who invited me out.”
He chuckled. “Check your memory banks, Doctor, and you’ll find it was your suggestion.”
“Oh.” Right. The stupid wager. “I guess it was.”
“Look, I am really sorry about the scene at the restaurant. You know I didn’t do that to embarrass you, right?”
“I know.”
“I was trying to play all the angles, and I got it wrong.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I…ah…have something else for you. But I didn’t want to spring it on you at dinner or in front of your friends.”
“Daniel, you don’t have to compensate for my neuroses.”
“I want to show you that I can be taught. See?” He gestured to the darkened porch, the empty street. “No audience. Just you and me.” He pulled a tiny box, a quarter of the size of her cell phone, out of his pocket. “The silver’s a little flashy, maybe, but otherwise, you can’t ask for lower profile.”
She put her hands behind her and stepped back. “I can’t. You’ve—”
“Hey. Have a heart. I’ll get a complex if you reject another one of my peace offerings.”
She sighed and took the little clamshell box off his open palm. She opened it and something tumbled out into her hand. Her breath caught and her glance flew to Daniel’s face. He half grinned and shrugged one shoulder.
“Where did you get it?” she whispered, stroking the tiny pewter Enterprise charm. “This is just like the one I had when we were kids until you suckered me out of it with that rigged bet about Babylon 5.”
“That’s where I got it.”
Charlie’s heart turned into a helium balloon about to float out of her chest. “You’ve kept it? And now you’re giving it to me?”
“I figured I owed you something significant as an apology if I expected you to see me again. What do you think?” He hooked his little finger with hers. “Will this do the trick?”
Lord, he looked so hopeful, so sincere. Neither a trace of that first night’s surly aggression nor any ghost of betrayals past. No. The only betrayal is yours. Charlie raised her chin. Now. Tell him now. He doesn’t deserve to be part of a faux relationship. Not even for the sake of AGS.
She took a deep breath. “Daniel, I—”
He stroked her cheek with one big square hand and she forgot what she was saying. She forgot the square root of pi. She forgot her name. “Yes?”
“Um…” His face was so close. She could count the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. She could smell his cologne, woodsy and wild. Closer. His breath a whisper against her skin. And then the soft press of his lips on hers. The balloon in her chest threatened to lift her right off the ground.
Zing. Lord, this was what Gideon was talking about.
He pulled back. “So. What are your plans tomorrow night?”
Not a zing. Couldn’t have been a zing. Think. Think. She tried to rouse herself from her pheromone-induced trance. She knew how to form words. Sentences even, but speaking seemed beyond her current operating specifications. Where was a keyboard when she needed one? “Um…I…shower, I guess. Have some sushi. Hit some porn sites.” Her fist clenched around the little box, and it crumpled in her hand. She darted a glance at Daniel, looming over her in the night. By the gleam in his eye, he’d heard her. Damndamndamn.
“You watch porn?” He didn’t laugh outright, but the mirth was there in the rumble of his voice.
She forced herself to lift her chin, trying to channel her tough-girl kickboxing mindset despite her desire to retreat into the shadows.
“Only for the statistics.” Her voice only squeaked on the last word. She’d count that as a win.
“Think you can put the stats on hold long enough to go out with me tomorrow night?”
He kissed her eyebrow and ignited another zing, like electricity arcing down her spine. If that happened from his lips on her eyebrow, what would happen if he took advantage of some of the other skin she had on display?
She sucked in a breath. Don’t go there. “Yes. I mean no. I mean, I have a…a thing.”
“Another kickboxing class?”
“No. It’s kind of a group thing.” Meredith had talked her into one last meeting of the user group.
“I’m willing to tag along if I wouldn’t be intruding.” His thumb traced a line of fire along her jaw. “After all, I’ve survived my first trivia night. I can handle anything now.”
Despite what a hideous idea it was to allow him within ten parsecs of anyone in the user group, Charlie was surprised to realize she was sorry to disappoint him. “If I don’t show up at Hana K’s—”
His thumb stilled. “Hana K’s? Wait, is this that dating club of Philip’s?” His shoulders tensed and he dropped his hand. Instantly, her face cooled, the steady breeze lifting her hair until she probably looked like a Wookiee in a wind tunnel. “You’re in that?”
“I’m not. No. It’s not a… I mean, I know some of the people. I promised to be there.”
He relaxed into a smile, complete with double-barreled dimples. “I’d better go along, then. You’ll need the protection, because if you wear an outfit like that, you’re going to find yourself in the club whether you want to be or not.”
Charlie’s heart-balloon deflated, returning her to earth with a thump.
The shirt. The flirt. The bet. Boob-stupidity. Apparently, it didn’t wear off.
Even now, he didn’t see her. He was responding to the UI that Gideon and Lindsay had created for her. To VR-Charlie. None of this is real. Not the relationship and not you.
She had to remember that. Because in a month, she’d have to learn how to live without him all over again.
Chapter Twelve
Geekronym: ABEND
Translation: ABnormal END
Definition: An abnormal termination of software; a program crash. (Not to be confused with the more severe hardware system crash).
The next day at work, Daniel interspersed his mind-numbing archive duty with bouts of internet surfing to brush up on Doctor Who and all series with the word “star” in the title. He justified it by calling it research for a story he planned to pitch to Nelson on the translation of science fiction technology to current IT trends—human interest feel-good-fuzzy only, nothing sensational about it.
But he didn’t kid himself. He stuffed his brain with techno-minutiae for one reason only—Charlie. After last night, after seeing her in her natural geek habitat, after the kiss, he had no doubt. He was finally ready to pursue a relationship. He wished he had a better handle on whether she felt the same.
With Trisha, although she’d made it seem like the path of their affair was totally his idea, in reality, he’d never had to work for a thing. She’d handed it all to him on a silver platter with a French lingerie chaser.
At the mental vision of Charlie in one or two select pieces of that lingerie, Daniel’s dick made an effort to stand up and cheer. Unfort
unately, he wasn’t sure Charlie was ready to get with that particular program.
Well, it would be his pleasure and privilege to get her there, and if downloading SF trivia into his brain was the way to do it, he was on board, 110 percent.
As the afternoon wore on, he kept checking the internal clock on his computer, convinced it had stopped working, because no day had ever seemed so long. When the icon finally ticked over to six o’clock, his skin prickled as if he’d spent the day in a champagne sauna. He shut down the computer and shrugged into his sport coat, wondering how he’d manage to kill time between now and eight, when he was due to meet Charlie.
Maybe he’d head over early. Maybe he’d drop by her place and they’d walk over. Slowly. With frequent stops behind convenient bushes. Maybe—
His cell phone chimed with the double-blip of an urgent email. He checked the screen, half afraid that Charlie was about to cancel. But no. The sender was rosserx, his primary informant on the Argonne story.
Heart thumping in overdrive, he opened the message.
Breaking news. Online chatter points to an Argonne outbreak. More later. —r
His grin grew, creeping across his face until he probably resembled the Joker. Yes. He’d known all he had to do was wait it out and he’d find a way back into his old life. This could be it, a shot at redemption.
He could resurrect his career, be worthy of someone like Charlie, with her four degrees, giant brain, and determination to make the world a better place through geek power.
He could make the world better, too, damn it. By ensuring that no man ever got victimized by Argonne or his ilk again.
But that was for later. Tonight he had a different—and much more pleasurable—goal, although the potential for vindication definitely contributed to the width of his smile later as he hit the doors of Hana K’s.
The frigid air of the bar barely registered as he scanned the room. No sign of Charlie yet, and although that dimmed his mood a bit, it didn’t completely extinguish his anticipatory buzz. He made his way through the crowd to the bar where Philip sat, staring vacantly at his bottle of Corona. Daniel slapped him on the shoulder.
“Why so glum? Tough day at work?”
Philip glanced up and scowled. “Jesus, Dan. Could you dial down the cheesy grin? You look like a used car salesman.”
Daniel laughed. “That bad, eh? No wonder everyone on the street gave me the hairy eyeball.”
Philip grunted and chugged his beer.
“Going solo tonight?” Daniel signaled the bartender, pointing at Philip’s bottle. “Or have you got a potential date in the pipeline?”
“You know what? Lindsay offered to introduce me to her roommate once, and I bailed for some lame reason. If I hadn’t, I’d have had a chance with Charlie before Daniel the Destroyer muscled in.”
The bartender delivered Daniel’s beer, distracting him before his inner Hemingway could overpower his civilized F. Scott Fitzgerald veneer and urge him to beat his chest in victory. He air-toasted Philip and took a swig of his beer. “There’s always next time.”
“Except there won’t be a next time. I got a message that tonight’s the last meet-up. Dude who runs the thing is closing up shop.”
“You could always do what men have done since the dawn of newsprint and place a personal ad.”
“Are you nuts? Too much work. That was the beauty of this setup. We didn’t have to make an effort. Just show up.”
Gooseflesh rose on Daniel’s arms, and he set his beer on the bar napkin with a thump.
“What did you say?”
Philip aimed a befuddled stare at him. “About which?”
“The group. Your dating club. Would you call it passive dating?”
“I wouldn’t call it anything since it’s over and done with.”
“But you’ve met the guy, right? The showrunner?”
“Nope. But someone has. I heard one of the women mention him once. I think most of them are friends with him.”
“Listen, I want to talk to you about—”
The door opened, and Daniel’s focus shifted from Philip’s morose profile. He straightened, gut tightening in anticipation. Damn. Not Charlie, just a bunch of random women…wait. Toshiko lurked at the back of the brightly dressed pack like rain following an Easter parade. Surely Charlie couldn’t be far behind.
Yes. There. Charlie appeared in the doorway and the rest of the room might as well have been empty. Christ, she was wearing a skirt. A freaking mini-skirt, showcasing mile-long legs that served as a five-star endorsement for kickboxing workouts. He stood away from the bar and fumbled his beer, nearly spilling it down the front of his pants. He set the bottle down before he embarrassed himself.
Beside him, Philip muttered, “I’m going to kill you, you bastard.”
Charlie saw him at the bar and nodded at a booth in the far corner of the room. Every fricking male head in the place swiveled to track her as she passed, watching her butt in that skirt and her legs, and he was going to kill each and every one of them.
“Dude. Did you just growl?”
“Never mind. See you later.”
…
Charlie counted the days until the end of the month. She had fewer than thirty days now to achieve a fully engaged Stage Two relationship with Daniel, which was enough to send panic sparking through her veins. However, the offset to Not enough time for results was How much longer do I have to wear these outfits?
The denim of this so-called skirt was tight enough to inhibit her stride even though it reached barely to mid-thigh, but if she took steps of her usual length, the stupid thing rode up, and Lindsay had smacked her hands whenever she tugged on the hem. Now, with the air-conditioning in the bar turned up to its usual Ice Planet Hoth levels, she displayed about five acres of goose bumps below the denim tourniquet.
“Why can’t men appreciate comfortable clothing?” she muttered.
Toshiko, standing in for Lindsay and Gideon again, which included doing the hem-tug hand slapping, said, “Why do you imagine our comfort is relevant to them?”
“Good point.” She reached for the hem of her skirt, but Toshiko’s admonitory stare stopped her. “I should never have agreed to this outfit.”
“Why? The results support the hypothesis. I estimate 79 percent of the men in the room have spent a minimum of forty-three seconds looking at your legs, with an another 68 percent adding a minimum seventeen-second stare at your chest.”
Charlie’s hands jerked in a simultaneous north-south bid for coverage. But aside from the fact it would draw more attention to the areas in question, her hands were full with her tablet and the silly clutch purse Lindsay had foisted on her in place of her usual slouchy shoulder bag. “Do you have any idea how I’m supposed to sit down in this thing without mooning the entire bar?”
Toshiko studied the skirt with unshakable aplomb. “Physics would suggest that when you sit, the skirt will get effectively shorter as it accommodates your—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Perhaps you should remain standing.” Toshiko glanced at Charlie’s rear view. To someone who didn’t understand Toshiko’s clinical detachment, it might have looked as if she were checking out Charlie’s butt. “Also, I suggest you refrain from bending over.”
“Thanks for the suggestion.” She laid her tablet and purse on the table.
“You should have let me pick you up.” Daniel’s voice rumbling in her ear sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with her sparse clothing.
She lowered herself gingerly onto the bench seat, keeping her back straight to avoid unintentional underwear flashing. “You didn’t need to. It’s not that far.”
Daniel crowded onto the seat next to her. With every brush of his trousers against the bare skin of her thigh, she braced herself for a repeat of last night’s traitorous zing. Was he touchin
g her on purpose? Should she move over to give him room? She turned her head to avoid his gaze and her TARDIS earrings tapped her neck. Right. VR-Charlie. She could do this. She skootched a token inch away from Daniel’s unsettling heat. The zing had been an anomaly, surely, but no point in pushing her nonexistent luck.
“Have I told you how great your hair is?” Daniel said, twining one of her curls around his finger.
To distract herself from the shivers that trickled down her spine, she borrowed from Gideon’s vast library of attitudes. “No. In fact you spent a large part of our teen years making fun of it.”
“I did?” Daniel looked honestly surprised. “Then I was an idiot.”
The hair on Charlie’s arms prickled. She woke her tablet to distract herself from the sensation. Stop it, stop it. Don’t be nice. Don’t make this harder than it is. “You weren’t the only one, if it makes you feel any better. It was pretty much a global event.”
He leaned in, his lips close enough to touch her hair. “You know,” he murmured, “I’ve been thinking about kissing you all day.”
Zing. Her heart gave an odd sideways thump, and her hands stilled on the tablet’s surface. “Oh.”
“And you look incredibly hot in that skirt. I think every guy in this place watched you walk across the room. Really pissed me off.”
Zang. She tucked in her chin and pretended to be interested in her web browser’s splash screen. Right. The clothes. The aggression. None of this was personal. It all had to do with the triggers. The ones she’d set up so carefully so she could win the stupid bet and earn the right to an AGS interview.
Charlie squeezed herself into the corner of the booth, as far as she could get from Daniel before he hypnotized her with his grin and his gaze and his scent and his stupid zing. Lord, he smelled like the ocean and the forest, the signature Oregon combination. She gulped and searched the room, desperate for a neutral topic of conversation. She noticed Philip hunkered down at the bar.
“What’s wrong with Philip? He doesn’t look very happy.”
“He’s depressed. He wishes he were sitting where I am.” Daniel inched closer and tugged on her curls. “If he wasn’t such a nice guy, I think he’d punch me out.”
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