Virtually Perfect

by Samantha Hunter

  “Looks like you and Jack made up—or at least he wants to! Good for you—oh, aren’t they amazing—they must have cost a fortune!” She wiggled past Raine, who was still caught in the doorway staring. Gwen fussed over the roses and inhaled deeply.

  “Ohhhh. My allergies are going to act up for the rest of the day, but it’s worth it, they smell as good as they look. You know, that’s how you can tell the quality of flowers, especially roses, they smell so wonderful—some of the inexpensive ones, like the ones you see at the grocery store, they don’t smell at all, or they have some weird kind of chemical smell, probably from the preservatives, I mean, who knows where they came from, but these are certainly not like that. These are amazing!” She turned to Raine, eyes sparkling, out of breath. “Have you looked at the card yet?”

  Raine stepped forward, amazed that Gwen could make it through that entire speech on one breath. She set her coat down on the chair and took the little white card out of the holder. Opening it slowly, she inhaled sharply as she read the simple, male script.

  “You’re so beautiful.” She whispered the words written on the card. There was no other signature, no hint as to the sender, and her heart pounded as she looked at the flowers again, frozen.

  Gwen wrinkled her forehead, and took the card, shrugging as she looked at it. “That’s kinda weird. Same as that e-mail you got yesterday, huh?”

  Raine nodded. It was hard to believe that these were sent to the wrong person—her name was clearly written on the card’s envelope. She looked at Gwen. “I have no idea why anyone would be sending me these.”

  “Well, looks like maybe someone is trying to get on your good side. Maybe it is Jack, and he’s just trying to soften you up a little before he talks to you in person. I suppose it could be Jerry. Have you been seeing anyone else?”

  Raine shook her head. “No, not in months, not really—just that one date with Jerry, and I haven’t heard from him since. Nothing so serious that they would be sending me these.” She thought of Duane, and closed her eyes. He wouldn’t. Would he?

  “Except for Jack.”

  Raine nodded. She hadn’t told Gwen about Duane, and didn’t intend to. But this was not Jack’s style. Intuitively, she knew he would not try to get around her this way. But if not him, who? She had seen Duane daily since their talk in the park, and after he apologized profusely one more time, it was back to business as usual.

  She and Jack had seen each other last night—he had been too far away for her to make out his expression. Maybe he was trying to reconnect with her. Then why had he driven away? She shook her head and paced the office, no, that didn’t make sense. She didn’t know him very well, but she sensed that he would be more direct.

  But no one else had any reason to send her flowers. There simply was no one else. She looked at Gwen.

  “Well, I guess there is only one way to know for sure.”

  Gwen’s eyes widened. “You’re going down there? To see him?”

  “Yes. I need to get this settled. This doesn’t seem like Jack, but if it is, I want to know why. If not him, I want to know who.”

  Gwen nodded and smiled. “Well, you are going down to see him. Maybe that is the whole point. Very romantic.”

  Raine pursed her lips. “More like very creepy. I prefer to know who is sending me e-mails and flowers.”

  Gwen shook her head on her way to the door. “Raine, you are the only woman I can think of who would think that getting a dozen of these long-stemmed beauties was at all creepy.” She sighed dramatically. “Anyway, good luck! I want to know all about it later!”

  Raine summoned up the calm she needed to go deal with Jack and this problem. If the person responsible for sending the e-mails and flowers was him, though her instincts told her it wasn’t, she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about it.

  Still, she needed to know, for her peace of mind, one way or the other. Raine crossed to her desk, looking up his extension, and dialed the numbers, her fingers tightening on the receiver as his phone rang.

  “Jack Harris.”

  The sound of his voice on the phone threatened another avalanche of erotic memories of the last time she had spoken with him on the phone, and she squelched them ruthlessly, keeping her voice neutral.

  “Hi, Jack. It’s Raine, I’m in my office, upstairs, and need you to come up when you get a moment.” Of course he knew where her office was! God, just hearing his voice had turned her into a babbling idiot.

  “Are you having a computer problem again? If you can tell me what the trouble is, I can send someone up to fix it.”

  His voice was impersonal, as if he was talking to a stranger. She nearly hung up, there was no way Jack had sent these notes and flowers. But she had to make sure before checking out other possibilities.

  “Um, no, I just need to ask you about something. It won’t take long.”

  She heard him sigh, and he said he would be up in a few minutes. Foolishly, she nodded, and hated how breathless her voice sounded when she said goodbye. Trying to get a grip, she took a deep breath, and looked at the work stacked on her desk, trying for normalcy while she waited.

  JACK HEADED UP the stairs, hating the feeling that he was being “summoned.” He had been avoiding her for days, and now was going to have to be in close quarters with her in the office; he would just settle whatever problem she had, and get out as quickly as possible.

  Last night, seeing her standing there like a statue in the doorway, he had almost let go of his pride and gone to her. He found himself hungry to have her in his arms again in a way he had never experienced before, not with any other woman. He wanted to crush her to him, and make her want him, regardless of their differences. At this point he wasn’t sure he cared about her past or her attitude or what she thought about him; he wanted her body naked and hot underneath his.

  He wanted to make her beg for him and for what he could do to her. He had replayed making her come over and over in his mind, and wanted to do it again. He sighed in disgust at the direction of his thoughts. It had been like this ever since he left her, and he didn’t like it. Most times he got past bad experiences with women easily.

  Opening the door to the main floor, he walked down the hall to her office, his stride more controlled than usual. Rapping a knuckle on her door, he pushed it open a bit, and felt his mouth go dry.

  How was a mortal man supposed to deal with this? She was so damn hot, her blond hair spilling over the shoulders of a royal-blue sweater that hugged her breasts in a way that made him ache. She looked a little pale, and there were smudgy shadows under her eyes, which, perversely, only made him want to touch her more. She brought out his protective instincts; he wanted to comfort her. Maybe because doing so brought comfort to him, as well, among other things. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he spoke first.

  “Okay, I’m here. What’s the problem?” His voice was gruff and unfriendly, he knew. Good.

  She shifted in her seat a little, and motioned him to a chair, which he rejected. “I only have a minute.”

  She nodded vaguely. “Um, okay. Well, I feel foolish even asking this, but I needed to make sure. Are these from you?”

  He stared at her blankly and she pointed to the flowers; he saw them and his eyebrows lifted. Then he felt something twist in his gut—someone had sent her these? Although he had no right to feel one way or the other about the situation, it angered him.

  “You think I sent these to you?”

  She felt a slight color tinge her cheeks. Was she destined to be humiliated by this man?

  “Um, well, I figured it wasn’t you, but there was no name on the card, and I couldn’t think of anyone else…I haven’t seen anyone for a long time. Except you.”

  He was at a momentary loss for words, and walked to the roses, which must have cost a mint. They would have put him back a good percentage of his paycheck if he had bought them. He looked at the card, and read it aloud, making her color even more deeply, hearing the words in his voice. He dropped
the card carelessly back on the shelf.

  “No, it wasn’t me. Is that it? Is this all you needed me for?” He raised his eyebrows as she nodded. “Looks like you have a secret admirer, Raine. But it’s not me.” How ironic, he thought.

  Her forehead wrinkled and she nodded again. “I didn’t really think it was you, but the message on the card matched the one on the e-mail, so—”

  “What e-mail?”

  “I got a bunch of messages yesterday from the same person, and one of them had the same message as the card. Seeing as you and I met online, I thought, maybe…”

  “But you know my e-mail address—we didn’t use work addresses, but you would have known what was from me.”

  “Yes…I know. I didn’t think it really was you who sent the notes, but, well, I don’t know! This is all so confusing. The last few days all kinds of things have been going crazy. I didn’t know what to think of it. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “Do you still have those e-mails?” She nodded, and he crossed to her desk. “May I see them?”

  “Sure…they’re all right here.” She shifted in her chair, trying to ignore how close he was to her, leaning over her shoulder. She could feel the heat of his skin, and moistened her lips unconsciously, remembering his taste. Hoping her hands didn’t tremble, she opened her inbox, the list of messages displayed. And one more. A new one.

  She clicked on it, and caught her breath. This message did not seem harmless. It was not overtly threatening, but starkly sexual. The comments about admiring her beauty were still there, but this time the sender was describing, in great detail, what he would like to do with her—what he liked to do for himself while he watched her.

  “Watching me?” Her voice had tightened to a harsh whisper, as fear made it hard to breathe. Jack was leaning over her, focused on the screen, his eyes intense.

  “Let me sit.” She did, rising to pace the office, rubbing her arms with her hands as he took her chair and tapped away madly at the keyboard. She stopped and stared at the roses, unable to tear her eyes away, and startled when Jack’s curse cut across the room.

  “Bastard! He’s using a dummy e-mail account, but it’s been bounced around so many locations it will take forever to dig through to the source, and even then, we might not be sure it’s real.”

  He looked up to see Raine standing in the middle of the office, pale and shaken, and was consumed with anger for the jerk who was messing with her. He was still angry with her, but he didn’t want to see her harassed and afraid. He tried to reassure her as best he could.

  “I won’t say you shouldn’t worry about this, but chances are that this is just a lot of empty words. This could be international, or whoever is doing it could be far away from here. You are a published personality, after all—anyone could contact you and send things here.”

  Raine just nodded. He stood, and crossed to where she stood, trying to keep his tone and behavior professional and not take her in his arms, as every voice in his head was screaming at him to do.

  “I’ll grab those messages and work on trying to trace them downstairs. If I can track down the sender and find the source, we can have his accounts closed, and that should solve the problem.” Raine nodded again. He moved to the door, thinking back for a moment, reconsidering. “Raine, what did you mean, things have been crazy all week?”

  She took a steadying breath, and told him about the bills, the refunded checks, and felt a knot form in her gut as his eyes darkened, and he came back into the room.

  “Sit down before you fall over. You need to calm down and think clearly here—make sure you have given me all the details. Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake in your checkbook and double pay your accounts? It happens.”

  She looked at him, snapping out of her fugue for the first time since he had come into the office. “Of course I checked. I didn’t double pay anything. There was just an accounting error, and I have to get someone to pay attention and fix it, but I don’t see how—”

  “Raine, you said it was credit cards, student loans, and what, a parking ticket?”

  She nodded.

  “How do you suppose the same error happened with all those different creditors? How could the same thing happen at the same time with all of them?”

  Raine hadn’t considered that—she had been so caught up in trying to straighten out the mess that that simple fact had not occurred to her. Now that he’d pointed it out, she felt so stupid. She looked at him. “What are you thinking, Jack?”

  His mouth was set in a grim line. “It means someone probably messed with your accounts.” His eyes flashed to the roses and back to her again. “I guess you do have a secret admirer. Someone who knows how to hack into banks, too, by the looks of it. I guess he thought that might have been a nice gesture. And those flowers. He’s really trying to impress you, whoever he is.”

  A chill ran over her skin, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “Someone is doing these things on purpose? Why? What do I do? How do we find him?”

  “Well, we should tell the police, and since he has found you at the magazine, you should let Duane know.”

  She paled, and he gave in. Closing the distance between them, he pulled her a little roughly into his arms and held her close. She smelled so good, felt so right. He knew there were other things they should be doing right now, but the minute she relaxed into his arms, his body went on full-scale alert.

  He released her gently, moving back just a bit before she could detect the evidence of his arousal. Focus, Jack, focus. But she looked up at him with those passionate green eyes, and he was lost. She wanted him, too, he could see it. She trembled under his hands, and he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her hungrily. There was no gentleness in it. He wrapped her tightly against him again, releasing all of the pent-up desire he had been holding back.

  Then, in a flash of sanity, he pushed away from her, angry with himself that he would take advantage of her at such a time. She was afraid, confused, and he had pounced on her like a wild man. He walked to the other side of the office, his chest heaving as he fought for control. When he had his voice back, he spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Raine. I know this isn’t exactly the time.”

  “Let’s not talk about it, okay?” Her voice was not much more than a whisper, and he felt even worse.

  It wasn’t okay, but he nodded. “I’ll tell you now, the police probably aren’t going to do much about it—this is small stuff to them, and the New England chapter of the hi-tech crime investigation unit is in Boston. They might be interested because he got into your bank accounts. Has anything happened at your home? Any phone calls or strange people hanging around?”

  A chill settled at the base of his spine; he knew she could be in real danger.

  Raine shook her head. “No. Not since the bills. And he didn’t send them, technically.”

  “So, we’ll tell Duane first, and get his take, then let the authorities know.”

  “We?”

  Jack nodded, feeling a little something inside twist as she looked up at him, a slight edge of fear, and then—something else—gratitude?—shining in her eyes. “Yeah, since I’m the security administrator, he’ll want my take on the situation.”

  She nodded, and the light dimmed a little. “Okay.”

  THE CONVERSATION WITH Duane was tense, and by the end of it, she had a raging headache. He ordered Jack to make sure all the magazine’s systems were secure, and while he was concerned about Raine, he was obviously more concerned about a security breach bringing down the magazine’s computers. It appeared he was over his little crush.

  Raine took the thought back as soon as she thought it— Duane was just doing his job. By protecting the magazine’s computers, he was protecting her, too. And it wasn’t as though he wasn’t concerned about her, there just wasn’t much he could do.

  They called the police from his office, on conference call, and the detective responded just as Jack said the police would—unless things g
ot more serious, their hands were tied. She could go down to the station and file a report to formally document the incident, just for the sake of having it on record. They could send it on to Boston. She didn’t even know whom she was complaining about—she had an e-mail address and that was about it.

  Jack insisted on driving her to the police station, though she didn’t know why. He just seemed unwilling to leave her alone, which she thought was odd. He was brusque and businesslike, but she admitted to herself that his presence did help. She didn’t allow herself to think about the kiss in the office, and what it could have meant. But for one lovely moment she hadn’t been cold and afraid.

  8

  JACK RETURNED to Raine’s office after clearing up some matters before they could leave for the police station, and stood in the door for a second watching her, fighting off the coil of protective feelings that he’d been struggling with all morning. She was sitting at her desk, her head in her hands. She didn’t move, she didn’t even look as if she was breathing. Her skin was porcelain, and he remembered its taste. He shook himself and tapped on the open door. She didn’t jump, but just looked at him, expressionless.

  “Okay, I’m ready.” Her voice was quiet, smooth and calm. He wanted to hold her. But he didn’t.

  “Let’s get some food first, you look like you could use something.”

  “I’m fine, I just want to get this over with.”

  “You’re white as a sheet, and you need to eat. We’ll just stop for something quick.” His tone of voice told her he had already decided for them both. She grabbed her coat and realized she wasn’t going to win this one, and besides, she was a little hungry.

  When she picked up the flowers as she left the office, she got a curious look from him.

  “I don’t want them,” she said, “so we can stop by the hospital on the way and leave them at the desk. They can keep them or give them to someone who will enjoy them.”