Yours for the Night (19 page)

What most people didn’t understand in the miraculous age of the internet was that the most common method of hacking wasn’t done with computers, but by finding out the information you needed the old-fashioned way: talking to people who could tell you what you needed to know.

Most people were afraid of putting their credit card number online, but didn’t think twice about handing it over to a waiter who disappeared with it for five minutes. It never failed to amaze him, but those curious social and psychological traits made his work interesting. Computers, he knew, were all about the people sitting in front of them.

A few keystrokes, a few casual requests, and he could know who she was, where she lived and worked, and probably anything else he wanted to know, in just a few hours. But he wouldn’t do it, though he damned his sense of ethics to hell. His job was to enforce the rules, not break them himself. Though he was desperately tempted.

“Nilla, baby, I am in knots. That’s the problem. You tie me up.”

“We could certainly try that, if you want.”

Jack nearly broke into a sweat. She could do this to him just with the words. What would the reality be like? There was some kind of wild connection between them, though he didn’t know how it happened, or what to do about it.

He reached down, slid his hand over his crotch, felt the stiffness pushing at the seam of his jeans and dropped his head back, the sharp edge of need burning through him. But this time, it just wasn’t right. He was sitting on his sofa in the dark. Again. Alone.

No. No more of this.

This wasn’t what he wanted, how he operated. It just wasn’t enough anymore, not nearly enough. He sometimes felt as if he lived in front of the screen—it was where he worked, kept up on current events, had his morning coffee and sometimes his dinner—but he was damned if he was going to have his sex life there, too! He typed, impatiently this time.

“Nilla, I want to meet you. We need to meet. For real.”

“Not a good idea. I could be fat, bald and seventy-five years old, for all you know.”

He let out a heavy breath. She was trying to deflect him. Disappointment doused arousal as he realized she wasn’t as avid to make that connection as he was.

“Nilla, we’re two healthy adults who are driving each other crazy and then ending up in bed alone every night. I want to kiss you. I want to stop imagining and pretending. I want to see what color your eyes are. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know, Rider. We don’t know each other well enough. This is just a game. I like it this way.”

“It stopped being a game a while ago. For me, anyway. Think about what we could be missing.”

“Like I said, it could be all lies, Rider. How can we know? We are creating a kind of fiction here, right? That’s what this place is for, not truth. But at least here we know that outright. Why do you want to complicate this?”

“Have you lied to me, Nilla?”

He held his breath for the few long seconds the screen remained blank.

“No, but I haven’t told you the truth, either. You don’t really know anything about me. Not really. I don’t want you to know.”

“What I know is that there is something in you that speaks to something in me. I know you are smart, funny and passionate. I know your politics and your beliefs, but I don’t know the shape of your face, the scent of you, the sound of your voice. And I want to. I didn’t go looking for this, for you, but now I can’t settle for words on a screen.”

“Hold on. This is getting too intense, Rider. I need to think.”

Jack’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed his tired eyes, shoving the computer back on the table. He wandered into the kitchen to get another beer. He had pushed the issue, and he was going to lose her. Though he felt ridiculous getting all worked up over a name on a screen, that idea really hurt.

* * *

R
AINE
CLOSED
HER
EYES
and let out a frustrated sigh. Since they’d never even mentioned meeting in person, they’d openly shared their thoughts and feelings, developing a high level of intimacy fairly quickly, something she had never actually had happen in a so-called normal relationship. She wasn’t sure she believed it could happen in a normal, real relationship.

She had never known a man could share this way, communicate feelings and thoughts the way Rider did. It certainly had never happened to her. If he was like this in real life… She blew out a breath and dropped her head back, amazed at the possibilities. But that was unlikely—this was fantasy. In real life, everything would be exposed, all the faults and awkwardness, all the things that got in the way.

She wished she could meet a man who would not leave her hopes in shambles, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe he really existed. She steadied herself, and wrote carefully.

“Rider, you’re right, this has been special. And if we meet, it might all just evaporate in a big cloud of disappointment. Here we can say, do, be anything we want. We get to be larger than life, but in real life we would probably just bore each other senseless. Or worse.”

“I don’t think so, Nilla. And what if we didn’t? But so what if we did? What’s to lose?”

“I don’t know, Rider. I don’t want to lose this. I enjoy what I’ve had. You. Here.”

“Nilla, this is not real—we’re just two strangers sitting in front of a computer every night, having to face being alone when the screen clicks off. I want to know you. I want you to know me, for real.”

Raine felt a dark cloud of frustration descend around her as she read his next words.

“We have to meet, or I’m out. I’m done.”

She gaped, the ultimatum slamming into her like a hard, cold wind.

“I have to think about it, Rider. Please, I have to think. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night and we can talk about it some more, okay?” I kiss you softly, press my lips to yours. “Goodbye.”

“Wait!… Don’t go…”

She turned the computer off, ruthlessly cutting the connection.

Collapsing on the soft cushions, she groaned in frustration—this night was just not going well. She had always looked forward to these times with Rider. Meeting him had made her typically quiet evenings exciting.

Though physically it
was
difficult to be so consistently aroused by someone who could never be there to actually help you release those passions, for her it had been wonderful just to be able to
feel
them—to walk around basking in the glow of it, to dream of it at night, and to be blissfully unafraid of the pain or disappointment that inevitably followed when you dared those things in real life.

Though she didn’t feel so great at the moment. It was distressing to realize that this wonderful interlude she had discovered and enjoyed was coming to an end. He wanted more, and she did not believe there could be more. She would not be meeting Rider the next evening, for talk or anything else. He would not stop pushing her, and she knew she would not hold out against him in the long run. And that would be an awful mistake.

She knew exactly what she had to do to get some distance on this situation, to grab control of it and put it behind her. First, she could never meet with him again, obviously. Next, she had to write about it. She had experienced internet romance, right? She had faced the tough decision, and she had made it. Now it was time to share what she had learned with her readers. Only then could she move on and forget all this. Hauling herself upright, she grabbed her laptop again. She opened a blank word-processing page and went to work.

2

“W
ELL
,
THIS
ISN
’
T
a bad start, but we need more.”

Raine resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and stared at Duane, her managing editor, straight in the eye. She liked him, though grudgingly at times such as now.

“I need to add in the research, get some outside interviews. That should round it off. This is just the first draft, obviously.”

Duane nodded and set the draft of the article she had been up nearly all night writing on the desk between them. She could’ve had his job if she had wanted it, but she liked being a writer. Duane was a good manager, and oddly, he seemed to enjoy it.

He was twenty-eight, almost four years younger than her, fresh out of graduate school, and on the job for a year. He was cute in a frat-boy kind of way, with shaggy, dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. Half the women in the building were gaga for him. Raine just couldn’t work up that kind of enthusiasm, though she had come to respect him as an editor.

He had one of those low-key, soft-spoken, intensely focused personalities that could be deceptive at first. But when the chips were down, or when he wanted things to go his way, he would wield his will like a sword. So far, he’d kept the ship on course, and skillfully managed a diverse group of writers at the magazine. But at the moment, Raine wasn’t in the mood to be managed.

“C’mon, Raine. You know as well as I do what you have to do here to make this article pop. The real meat of it is in the move from online to real life. You need to meet him. This is too good to pass up. See it through.”

She just glared, and her voice was stiff and caustic when she spoke. “Is that an order? Just how far would you like me to take this, Duane?”

“I’m not saying you have to marry the guy, or do more than have a cup of coffee with him. But you have already invested all this time in establishing a connection with him, right? And how can you answer the questions that are facing readers if you haven’t really put yourself in their place?” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and she resisted the urge to squirm under his gaze.

“This isn’t a real romance, is it? You have chalked this up as research?”

She closed her eyes and thought of all she had left out of the draft—if only Duane knew the connections she had “established” with Rider. She’d left out most of the intimate material and had written up the experience as a light flirtation, a dalliance. She wasn’t about to expose the reality—or herself—like that for the sake of a column. But deep down, she knew that Duane was right, and just for the moment, she hated him for it.

She nodded. “More or less. But he is a nice person, as far as I know, and you can’t just play with people’s feelings, Duane. He’s not just a lab rat for the article.”

Nodding again, Duane quirked an eyebrow.

“If the safety aspect of it is worrying you, we can help with that. I don’t expect you to go out and meet some creep by yourself.”

“He’s
not
a creep.” She felt a headache fuzz her thoughts. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, but that’s what we need to know. And what you need to find out.” He picked up the draft and handed it back to her. “You pitched this, you make it work. Meet the guy, then take another stab at it. This could be a killer story, Raine, but you have to see it through.”

* * *

“I
THINK
HE
LOOKS
LIKE
Superman.” Gwen sighed dreamily, watching a man who stared intently at a computer on a desk directly across from them.

Raine snorted and put sugar in her coffee. “That’s Jackson Harris. I think everyone calls him Jack, though. He is the ultimate in computer gurus, from what Duane says. Been here about six months.”

Raine didn’t add that the new guy seemed to have taken a dislike to her on sight, for reasons she couldn’t fathom. He seemed friendly enough with everyone else, but gave her the cold shoulder. The few times they’d crossed paths he hadn’t even returned her hallway acknowledgments. So she’d stopped offering them. She only knew his name because he had been introduced to everyone upon his hiring.

“He’s a computer geek—that would make him a lot more like Clark Kent, right?” Raine didn’t bother holding back on the sarcasm.

Gwen stuck out her tongue. “Kent
was
Superman—and those dark glasses he always wore were so sexy. Anyway—that guy would look great in a tight blue bodysuit. How the heck did I miss him? This place is hiring one buff guy after another, first Duane, now Jack. I love working here.”

“Please. Spare me.”

Gwen just shrugged and continued to watch Jack work. “So what’s the news on Jerry?”

Raine rolled her eyes and leaned back against the kitchen counter in the employees’ lounge at the end of the hall. The staff often worked late hours, especially on a deadline. Having a full, stocked kitchen available was one of the luxuries that made the company worth working for.

“It was ridiculous. Terrible. He was like a dog in heat—it was crazy, I don’t think I did anything to lead him on. In fact, quite the opposite.”

“Yeah, the buzz is he wasn’t all too happy about it, either. Did you guys argue?”

Raine expelled a disgusted breath. Word traveled fast. Jerry must not have bought the stomachache defense. Oh well.

“No, no arguing. But I was barely able to eat because I had to keep stopping him from mauling me under the table at the restaurant. He couldn’t even hold a conversation. Everything—and I do mean
everything
—had to come back to sex. And it wasn’t just talk, he has hands like an octopus. So, when we got back to my place, I pretended I had to throw up to escape the good-night grope. Or worse, him wanting to come in.”

“Hey, that’s a new one! I don’t know if he bought your excuse though.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. I have a whole repertoire of techniques to get away from men at the end of dates. I’ll scratch that one off my list.”

“Maybe you should be thinking about things to do to get them into bed at the end of dates.”

Raine snorted. “All I would have to do to get Jerry into bed is breathe. There’s no point.”

Gwen’s jaw dropped in shock. “Wow, you really have forgotten, haven’t you? Jerry aside, orgasms are the point, girlie!”

Raine sipped her coffee and muttered over the top of her cup, “Really? I’ve never known a man who thought so.”

She turned and headed back to her office. Gwen followed, slipping into Raine’s office before she could close the door.

“Gwen, really, I have work…”

“Whoa—hold on. Are you trying to say you have
never,
you know—that you haven’t had…”

“An orgasm. Yes, I have. Plenty. Just not with a guy.” She sighed. “They haven’t got the faintest clue. I mean, I don’t want to have to tell someone what to do. Women shouldn’t have to come with an instruction booklet.”

“You should use that line in a column. Clever.” Gwen grinned.

“Yeah, right. Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian, maybe a woman would be better at it. That’s my curse—I’m stuck with men.”

Gwen sighed and dropped down in the cushy chair in the corner of the office, ignoring the impatient looks Raine was sending her way. When Gwen was intent on a visit, there just was no stopping her.

“Oh, now, it’ll happen one of these days. But, geez, I can’t believe you are, what…thirty-two?” She ignored the glare Raine shot at her. “And you haven’t had one tiny tingle with a guy? I guess I can see why you don’t want to bother anymore, but you know you have to keep on trying. Sitting at home in front of your computer certainly isn’t going to help things any.”

“I never should have told you about that. Let’s just drop it. That whole thing is coming back to bite me in the butt now, big-time.”

“Why? Are things going downhill? Is the prince turning into a frog?”

Raine sighed and knew Gwen would not go away, and she would not be able to get any work done until she dealt with it.

“No. I don’t know. Rider’s getting too pushy, so I ended it. I wanted it over with.” She sat back, staring out the window at the dark gray clouds forming in the sky over the shops lining Pickering Wharf’s crescent-shaped streets. “But Duane, in his ultimate wisdom, doesn’t want it over with. He says the article won’t fly unless I ‘see it through.’”

She screwed up her eyes and did a shabby Duane imitation on the last three words. “But I don’t want to see it through. I want to see it over.”

“Why? The computer guy sounds hot from everything you’ve said.”

“Yeah, well, he wants to meet, and I don’t want to—end of story.”

Gwen pursed her lips and considered that for a few seconds. “Maybe you should meet him.”

“Are you in cahoots with Duane? Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Maybe he would be the one to, you know…”

“Gwen, it can’t all be about that. And most likely, it wouldn’t happen. Hot online and hot in real life are two entirely different things. Besides, my luck isn’t exactly good lately.”

“How can you know that until you meet him? You two seem to have such chemistry. I talk to lots of people online, you know I have all my pagan discussion groups, and we have a good time, but it’s not like anything you have been describing.”

Raine sighed. “Well, yeah, I didn’t count on it, it just happened. If we meet, all of that chemistry could go up in smoke.”

“So then, what do you have to lose?”

“Now you sound just like him.”

“Well, you know, I don’t think you should just dismiss it. You don’t have to get serious, but you can, you know, just take him for a test drive, so to speak. All in the name of research.” Gwen’s naughty grin almost had Raine’s own lips twitching.

“Not my style, Gwen, you know that. I’m tired of test drives. I think I am just going to take a break from men for a while.”

“You have been on a break from men for about ten years, by the sound of it. You need a man—a real one—who can flip your lid, so…”

“…to speak, yeah, I got it, Gwen. Stop.”

The warning tone made Gwen sigh and shake her head at Raine. Raine watched her pop up from the chair and felt a twinge of envy. Gwen was intelligent, quirky and an annoyingly eternal optimist.

As the main health and fitness writer for the magazine, Gwen had a body that wouldn’t quit and a lively attitude that drew everyone to her. She and Raine should not have been compatible at all, but they’d become very close over the past few years. Gwen changed her hair color weekly; right now it was platinum-blond with some red and green streaks for the holidays. Thanksgiving had just passed and Christmas was only a month away. Gwen was all sparkly. Raine supposed Gwen made everyone who came into contact with her feel a little sparkly, too.

Today she was slinking around in snug black leggings and a fitted black sweater. She wore at least a dozen silver pentacle earrings and little jingle bells on the toes of her short, stylish boots. It didn’t surprise Raine one bit that Gwen mixed her Wiccan jewelry with her Christmas decorations—Gwen celebrated everything—and at least the jingle let you know when she was coming.

Men tripped over each other when Gwen walked by, not that she noticed. “Love ’em and if it’s good, love ’em some more and see what happens” was Gwen’s philosophy. She just tripped through life and “trusted the universe”—as she was always advising Raine to do. And she was a good friend. Suddenly Raine felt like queen bitch. Expelling a heavy breath, she tried to make nice.

“Gwen, I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated with Duane and this whole article thing and I want to get it over with and—”

“No problem, sweetie. I have to get back to work, too. Oh, crikey—he’s coming this way!”

“Who?”

“Clark!”

Raine puzzled for a moment and then saw Jack Harris appear in the doorway. He would make a lousy Clark Kent, was her first thought. His hair was not black, but more of a chestnutty auburn, and his eyes were not blue, but brown. He had a good build: tall, lanky, muscular and thin. Like a cowboy.

She frowned; he wasn’t dressed for the office. True, the magazine had a fairly relaxed dress code, but Raine valued a professional appearance. Jack did not look very professional in tight jeans and a black cotton, button-up shirt. His hair was a little too long, curling around the collar a bit; he needed a haircut, she thought. No, he did not resemble Superman one single bit. He said something but she missed it, and blinked at him, returning to the moment.

“Hmm?”

“I need to look at your computer. It will only take a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“Routine. We’ve set up a new security system and need to make sure everything is working.”

“Well, okay.” She rolled her eyes at Gwen, who was unabashedly checking out his butt as he walked into the office. As Raine passed by him to get to the other side of the desk, she couldn’t help but notice that he smelled great, like sand and sea.

She looked up, and locked glances with him, then tilted her head a bit, narrowing her eyes and studying him intently. She froze on the spot. Something itched at the back of her mind but she couldn’t reach it. Something familiar. His eyes cooled and took on an unfriendly edge that made him look decidedly un-Clark Kent like. He cleared his throat.

“Excuse me.”

She raised a dismissive eyebrow and slid past, following Gwen out the door.

“God, isn’t he
hot?
” Gwen gave a dramatic little demonstration of being weak in the knees as she walked down the hallway.

Raine blinked. “Jack? I guess. Though there
was
something about him… I think I have seen him somewhere, but I’m not sure.”

“Well, it’s a small town. You may have seen him around before and just not thought about it.”

“Yeah, maybe. There was something about his eyes. I just can’t figure out why he seemed vaguely familiar.”

“Oh well, you’ll remember. Anyway, okay, back to Rider—I think you should meet him, just for kicks.”

Raine rubbed her temples. “Gwen, I think I am getting too old to do things just for kicks.”

“You’re thirty-two, not eighty. Not that being eighty should stop you, you know, if you were. Just imagine, if he is even
half
of how you described him online in the flesh—so to speak.”