Code Red

by Amy Noelle

  “I beg to differ,” Ashley said. “First he tried to find out if you were single, then he asked you out after you clarified who the males were in your life.” I could practically see her sneering. Ash was such an instigator. “Why in the hell you had to tell him about your crazy cats is beyond me.”

  “Please. The cat thing is the perfect test for a guy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Generally speaking, guys are dog people. Lots of them flat-out hate cats. If Josh hated cats, I could hate him without a problem and the attraction would be gone. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, he likes them. Or at least he doesn’t hate them, and he actually asked about them.” Stupid, perfect man.

  “Would you stop looking for reasons to hate the poor guy? He sounds pretty fabulous,” Kim said.

  “He is.”

  I’d managed to snap his picture earlier in the day when he’d been absorbed in a business call. I hadn’t sent it to them yet. I knew what would happen if I did.

  “Nic, you’re being insane, and I kind of want to smack you right now,” Jen said.

  “Same here,” all of the others echoed.

  “I didn’t call you to be ganged up on.”

  “Then why did you call us? So we’d tell you what you want to hear? Run far, far away and never look back? We couldn’t even if we wanted to. You have to work with the guy,” Kim said.

  “See, that’s exactly it! That’s why you need to discourage me. You know that office romances rarely work out. Even if he’s interested in me, which he isn’t, he’s only here for a couple of months. What’s the point?”

  “The point is to have a little fun with a guy who’s actually worth your time,” Mandy said. “You might find you enjoy letting someone in a little.”

  That did it. I picked up my laptop and fired off the picture. “Check your mail. Tell me if you could let that guy in ‘just a little.’ ”

  “Holy shit!” Jen was first. Big surprise. Like me, she always had her computer close at hand. We chatted most nights on our computers, on top of texting and talking on the phone. It was sort of like still being roommates without having to trip over one another. “Nic, he’s incredible.”

  “Well, no wonder you freaked the hell out,” Kim said. “What I wouldn’t do to that man if I weren’t a happily married woman.”

  “Okay, I see your point,” Ashley said. “If he’s as nice as he seems to be and looks like that, it could be a problem keeping things casual.” I couldn’t believe even Ashley saw my point. Usually she fought with me, just for the hell of fighting.

  “Who needs casual? Marry the man,” Mandy said. It sounded like she might be panting. “If you don’t want him, I’ll tell Kurt we’re moving to Utah and look into becoming a bigamist.”

  “I’ll kick your ass if you try it,” I said before I could stop myself. Hoots and laughter filled the line.

  “You know we’re actually telling you what you want to hear. Call off the Code Red and go for it. The light’s green, and there’s clear sailing all the way.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. Kim and her green light. What about yellow for caution? Or orange for potential danger ahead? “Just because he lives alone doesn’t mean he’s single. A guy who looks like that probably has women all over New York City.”

  “So? You have men all over Chicago,” Ash said. “Just don’t let him see any of them or he’ll wonder what’s wrong with you.” She was so mean. Accurate, maybe, but mean.

  “Are you calling me a slut? I do not have men all over Chicago.”

  “Should we start counting?” she said. “Because there was the podiatrist, the ugly bartender, the—”

  “Enough!” I yelled, trying to stop her before she recounted every one. “A lady doesn’t have a running count of the men she’s been with.”

  Jen laughed. “I love you, Nic, but you’re no lady.”

  “Whatever. Ladies are fucking boring,” I said, sulking. I nudged Winchester, and he rolled over, belly up. I stroked his soft orange and white fur and he purred.

  “I bet Josh would agree with you. Women in New York must line up for a chance at him,” Mandy said, and I sulked even harder. “I wonder if he’s ever acted or modeled. He looks like he could have.” Mandy having the same thoughts I’d had about him didn’t surprise me. We’d always had the same taste in men. Damian, after all, had brought us together.

  “Stop checking him out, or I’ll tell Kurt.”

  She laughed. “He’s watching some action flick starring Angelina Jolie as we speak, and I’m quite positive it’s not for her acting skills. He can’t get mad at me for admiring a lovely male specimen who may or may not be dating one of my best friends.”

  “We’re not dating. We might go to a baseball game together, and we probably won’t because I may not be able to get tickets.” It was a popular series after all, and I might have waited too long.

  “It’s already done. You’ve got tickets for Saturday, two weeks from now,” Kim said, sounding thrilled with herself. “Brian didn’t think he could hook you up, but when you mentioned the possibility of bringing a date, I made it my duty to ensure he’d get them for you. I’m going to have to perform sexual favors that may be illegal in this state, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make so you go out with that beautiful man.”

  “You’re evil.”

  “And when you and Josh get married, just remember I was the one who enabled your very first date. Sorry, Jen, but I’m going to have to usurp you as Matron of Honor.”

  Jen giggled. “I’ll allow it in this case.”

  “None of you will be invited to my nonexistent wedding because I don’t like any of you anymore,” I said. “I’ll have plenty of time to find new friends before I deign to get married.”

  “They’ll just be poor imitations of us, and you’ll come running back where you belong. Since we’re so amazing, we’ll probably take you back with open arms, once you apologize profusely and shower us in gifts,” Kim said.

  “Ha! You’ll be the ones who’ll be sorry when I keel over from the way this man ties me up inside.”

  “Kinky!” Mandy shouted.

  “Pervert,” I said. “Seriously, how am I supposed to sit three feet away from that for hours on end every day, and not pull a Kim and attack him? I’d like to keep my job and my dignity, you guys. I know he’s hot. Believe me, I know. But what I don’t know is what to do about him.” My frustration was at an all-time high. I knew they were just having fun and I’d probably be doing the same were the situation reversed but, damn it, this really wasn’t funny. This was my life and my livelihood and my heart we were talking about. I could risk one of those things, sure, but all of them?

  “All right, Nic. If you really want to keep the Code Red active, we’ll support you even though we all think it’s the wrong call.” Finally, someone supported me. Of course it was Jen. She got me, even when she claimed she didn’t. “I’ll go out with you this weekend, and we’ll see if you can find a guy even a tenth as appealing as Josh is to you. If you can’t, then you’ll have to admit we’re right and see what happens with him, okay?”

  Well, I wasn’t going to agree to that. “He may not even want me, you know.” He’d mentioned a baseball game, not ring shopping, or even dinner, for crying out loud. He could just want a buddy to hang out with, other than his friend. I was the obvious choice, because he didn’t know anybody else.

  “We’re not even going to acknowledge that,” Kim said, sounding annoyed. “How did you two work together?”

  I remembered him patiently showing me how to turn on the stupid phone. We’d had to start there because I was techno-challenged, and we’d had to include every step in the manual for people like me. Why we couldn’t just throw them to the wolves the way TouchPhone did was beyond me, but then we wouldn’t have this huge contract with the potential of many more. And I wouldn’t have Josh from New York closeted in a tiny office all day. It was a blessing and curse.<
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  “Working with him wasn’t bad,” I said.

  “It wasn’t bad, or it was really, really good?” Mandy asked, managing to sound breathy.

  “First of all, turn off the porn voice when you’re talking to me,” I said, and she laughed. “Second, yeah, it was really good. He’s very patient, and we had to sit next to each other so he could show me what to do.”

  “And you somehow managed not to attack him,” Kim said. “I don’t know whether to be proud of you or disappointed.” Kim was fearless and would have gone for it if the situation were reversed. She was that type-A overachiever personality. I envied her that.

  I sighed and rested my head against Hunt’s silky fur. He put his paw on my shoulder in a sign of support and solidarity. “It wasn’t easy. He smells so good, and I really want to taste him,” I admitted miserably. “Every time we touched . . .”

  “You touched?” Ashley asked. “How? When? Why? You kind of buried the lead there, Miss Journalist.”

  “Ex-journalist, and it was innocent. We had to pass the phone back and forth, that’s all. Occasionally our fingers would brush. And maybe once more when I nearly fell over myself walking into the office.”

  “And?” Jen asked. “Every time you touched, what?”

  “I wanted to lean over and kiss him and push him down on the desk and do all the dirty, possibly illegal things Kim’s going to be doing later for my baseball tickets. You guys, even Damian didn’t make me feel this crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy. You’re insanely attracted to a man for the first time in your life. And it’s about time,” Kim said. “You owe it to yourself—and us—to see if he’s feeling the same way.”

  “I owe it to you? Exactly how is that possible?”

  “Simple. We’ve had to sit through years of watching you hook up with guys with no potential and bitch about them after the fact. Not to mention the great guys we’ve set you up with who you found reason to blow off. You owe it to us to give Josh a shot so we can live vicariously through you, for once. Do you know what it’s like to be a happily married woman with single friends who have no good man stories to share? And no, your random stories about a guy’s mom walking in on the two of you doing it don’t count. They’re funny, but sad, because the dude lives with his mom. We need hot stories, so if you do want to give in and throw him down on the desk, you have our support.”

  Everybody murmured their agreement.

  “Sorry to be such a disappointment to you all,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll try to center my conversations around games of bridge and day care.”

  “Hey!” Mandy said. “I don’t only talk about Tyler, thank you very much. And I haven’t played bridge a day in my life.”

  “How in the hell do you play bridge?” Jen asked.

  Ashley launched into some convoluted explanation I had zero interest in. The whole conversation had gotten away from me from the instant I’d said his name. A huge part of me wanted them to talk me down from this attraction, and another even bigger part wanted them to do just what they’d done. Make perfect sense and be supportive, but challenge me to do what I really wanted and see if this was all one-sided.

  And if it was? I’d live with it. I’d had my heart crushed years ago, and I was still standing. I wasn’t going to give Josh power over me, that was for sure. I’d sit back and observe. Meanwhile, I would keep on living the way I’d always been. Jen and I were going out on Saturday night. Maybe I’d hook up with someone, and maybe I wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t let Josh factor into that. He was nothing to me, yet. Nothing but a nice, handsome guy I happened to work with. I could keep it that way if I wanted to.

  “That sounds like a seriously boring game,” Jen said when Ash wound down her explanation.

  “True. I say we get our men, Nic’s guy, and some hot guy for you, and play strip poker instead,” Mandy said.

  “You just want to see Josh naked. I can see right through you. Poor Tyler. His mom already has a wandering eye.”

  “As long as it’s only the eyes that wander, lady. And really, I’m just thinking of you. If he gets an eyeful of that lingerie of yours, there’s no way he won’t want you right back.”

  I had a thing for underwear. It was my one girly vice.

  “There’s a plan, Nic,” Kim said. “Maybe you could strategically have a button pop off while you’re passing that phone back and forth.”

  “Oh! You could drop your contact lens and crawl around on the floor wearing a really short skirt!” Ashley sounded all sorts of excited.

  “Are you all watching bad porn?” I asked. “And if you are, why in the hell didn’t you hook me up with it, too?”

  “We’ll hook you up when you officially call off the Code Red. You know you want to,” Jen said.

  “Not yet. I can’t until I know he’s into me.”

  “Ugh, you’re a stubborn bitch,” Kim said.

  “And you love that about me.”

  “Only sometimes. Certainly not now.”

  A baby cried in the background. “That’s my cue,” Mandy said. “Gotta go feed my little guy. Call me when you decide to feed your big one. Yum.” She clicked off before I could point out just how wrong that was, though the image of Josh sucking on my breast wasn’t a bad one. The very idea made gave me a pull low in my belly.

  “I should go, too,” Ashley said. “Save us all a lot of time and frustration and just attack the guy tomorrow.”

  Like she would? Ash was a tough talker, but she had run from Rick when they’d met. How easily she forgot. “Right. Talk to you later.”

  “I have faith in you, Nic. You want this guy? Go for it. And call me before you call Mandy,” Kim said. “Night, sweets. Love you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, love you, too.” I waited until she clicked off. “Jen?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “We’re still going out on Saturday night.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Come on. You’d probably react the same way in my situation.”

  “Maybe,” she said softly. “But I’d damn well like to be in it.”

  I felt bad now. Here I was freaking out about a fine guy who may or may not be into me, and she was lonely. “We’ll find you someone amazing on Saturday, I promise.”

  “Okay. And if we don’t, you have to go for it with Josh. Let me live vicariously through you. Forget about them. They’ve got their men. I’m the one who needs the thrill, however I can get it.”

  “You’ll get it on your own, Jen.”

  “Sure I will.” She laughed. “Saturday.”

  “Saturday, you’ll see.” She’d find her man and I’d find someone simple who didn’t set me on fire with the brush of his fingers or a smile. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it?

  Chapter 7

  “Bueller? Bueller, anyone? Bueller?”

  I looked up, and there was Josh with his blinding smile as he slid into the seat next to me.

  “Where were you? Usually you jump when I come in.”

  That was because he was as quiet and stealthy as Hunt when he entered a room. And since I’d been lost in thoughts about how to stop being into him, I couldn’t tell him what I’d been thinking.

  “Just thinking about the project,” I lied with a little shrug. “I really think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

  “I don’t,” he said quickly, and I thought his cheeks got a little pink. “We’ve jumped over the hurdle of actually turning on the phone. The rest will be a piece of cake.”

  “Smartass. And did you just Ferris Bueller me?”

  He grinned. “We are in Chicago. Wanna play hooky like he did?”

  So badly it almost hurt. “We could have a John Hughes movie marathon.”

  Josh drummed his fingers on the table. “Only if we start with The Breakfast Club. That’s more guy-friendly. Then I might be willing to watch Sixteen Candles, but only if I can negotiate some non-Hughes eighties fare, like Heathers. I draw the line at Pretty In Pink, though.”

  He w
as too good to be real. “Are you a Heather?”’

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I do have decent leadership skills, but I like to think I use them for good. So I’m probably more of a Veronica. At least I’m not J. D., right? ”

  Had I called him only dangerous before? He was far, far worse than that. He was deadly.

  “I don’t know. J. D. was pretty sexy, even though he was a murderer.”

  “You girls, always going for the bad boys. I bet you had a thing for Bender in The Breakfast Club, too.” He shook his head ruefully.

  “Of course. Him and Andrew. I went through a blond phase. It got worse after I saw Young Guns. Emilio Estevez was amazing as Billy the Kid.”

  “A-ha! Here I thought you might like jocks, but you liked him better as a cowboy killer. It seems you have a type, Miss Magette.”

  If he only knew what my type was. “Every girl goes through a bad-boy phase. They usually get over it after they date one. Though . . . I bet you were more of an Andrew,” I said before we could get into murky territory. He was more like Jake from Sixteen Candles, but if I said that, then he’d know I had a huge crush on him. What girl didn’t fall for Jake Ryan?

  “Well, I didn’t wrestle like he did, but I played basketball and ran track. I was a bookworm like Brian, but I’m happy I didn’t have the same pressure. My parents were pretty cool.”

  Of course they were. “Stay-at-home mom? Supportive dad?”

  He was looking at me intently. “Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? Mom worked part-time once we were all in school. They made it a point to be at our activities, I guess.” He shrugged. “I was lucky. Weren’t you?”

  How to explain my mom and dad? “My parents were kind of free spirits, I guess you’d say. I didn’t really have to check in and could do what I wanted. It wasn’t a big deal, since we lived in a tiny town. Dinner wasn’t at a set time, and it was mostly fend-for-yourself. They did come to graduations and things like that. I love my parents, but they aren’t typical by any means. I bet your mom had a home-cooked meal on the table at six every night.”