You've Got Male (12 page)

Avery was always forgiven. Until she did the unforgivable.

Nesbitts did not go to jail. That wasn’t to say they didn’t break the law. Nesbitts had a long history of taking advantage of people, not to mention cheating on their taxes. Such practices had contributed largely to their current social status. There had been other episodes of unlawfulness in the family history, too, but no one had ever been caught. It was even rumored that her great-great-uncle Milton Nesbitt, the railroad tycoon, had killed a man, then married the widow a week later. But that had never been proven, and the man’s death had been ruled an accident. Though how having one’s trachea crushed by a railroad tie in one’s study while one was enjoying a snifter of brandy and a good book could be accidental, no one had ever explained to Carly’s satisfaction. These days, no one talked about such things.

But they still talked about Avery.

Why was she coming here? Carly wondered. No matter what kind of trouble she was in or had caused, what reason could there possibly be for bringing her back to East Hampton?

Of course, Carly could have had that question answered immediately if she just opened the door and invited Agent Tanner Gillespie into the house. Oh, right now he might be thinking he couldn’t discuss the particulars of an ongoing investigation, but fifteen minutes alone with her and he’d be begging to tell her everything he knew about every case his little spy organization had ever undertaken. Carly just had that kind of effect on men—all modesty aside, since she didn’t have any modesty—and she’d had years to hone that skill to perfection. Mostly because none of the men she’d used it on had ever been man enough to handle her for longer than a few months.

It
wasn’t
because she was shrill and demanding, as one of those men had told her once. And it
wasn’t
because she had nothing to offer a man beyond her obvious physical appeal, as another had said. And it wasn’t because she was shrewish or exacting or mean or bitchy or any of those other things she’d overheard herself called in ladies’ rooms over the years while she’d sat undiscovered in a stall.

It was because of Avery. Avery was the reason Carly had never married. What man in his right mind would want to marry into a family that had spawned such a creature? Clearly the Nesbitt DNA was impaired in some way if it had generated the likes of Avery. Even if it was a rogue gene floating around somewhere, who wanted to take the chance that it might show up in one’s own offspring? Carly didn’t blame anyone for not wanting to get too close. She admired her brother’s wife for having had the courage to take a dip in the Nesbitt gene pool. Of course, Desi and Jessica had yet to procreate, so maybe the plan was for him to swim upstream for the rest of his life in an effort to spawn. But still, at least Desi had someone to swim with.

Not that Carly hadn’t been swimming plenty of times herself. Often with swimmers of Olympic caliber. But she’d never been able to find a man with a really good breaststroke. And none of them had been worthy of putting on a platform and hanging a medal on.

So who did Tanner Gillespie think he was to make her heart race wildly and blood rush to her head? He was a kid. An insolent kid, at that, she thought further, recalling the way he had pushed her jacket open to get a better look at her before announcing her bra size exactly, right down to the tight fit.

And just like that her heart was racing wildly again and blood was rushing to her head at a dizzying pace. Terrific. This was just terrific. Avery was coming home. And she was bringing someone like Tanner Gillespie with her. Carly sighed with something akin to longing and pushed herself away from the front door.

Ladies and gentlemen,
she thought as she made her way toward the sweeping staircase that led to the upper floors,
let the games begin.

A
FTER ZIPPING CLOSED THE
suitcase on her bed, Avery flattened both palms against it, closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Slow. Steady. Deep. And she did what she always did whenever she felt a panic attack threatening and had time to ward it off. She repeated over and over to herself,
I have nothing to fear in this moment. In this moment, there is nothing to fear.
But of course, it wasn’t this moment she was worried about. It was the next moment. And then the moment after that. And then the one after that.

Oh, God…

I have nothing to fear in this moment. In this moment, there is nothing to fear.

“How’s it coming in there? You about ready?”

Dixon’s question snapped her out of her mantra. And out of her panic, too, which was no small feat. Then again, she knew another way to battle her attacks was to focus on something that generated an emotion other than anxiety. And anger especially was a powerful antidote. So if nothing else, Dixon’s presence in her life could potentially be the cure-all for her panic attacks.

Gee. For some reason, being trapped in her home for the rest of her life with no contact with the outside world suddenly didn’t seem as bad as it used to.

“Avery?”

She expelled a disgruntled sigh. “What?”

“Are you ready to go?” he asked again.

It should have been an easy question. She looked at her overstuffed suitcase, then at Skittles’s plush cat carrier, packed for travel with every creature comfort the creature could want. Avery had changed from her mismatched pajamas and sweatshirt into worn blue jeans, a bulky, faded indigo sweater and hiking boots. She’d woven her hair into one fat braid that fell to nearly her waist, perched her glasses onto her nose and fastened three different sets of earrings into the six holes in her earlobes. She was as ready, she supposed, as she’d ever be. Except for one thing.

“Did you fix the Thermos?” she called through the door.

“And I cut the lemon peels into those little curls, yeah,” Dixon replied, a clear edge to his voice. “Even though there’s an open-container law in this state that could land us in trouble if we get pulled over on the way to East Hampton.”

“Especially when no self-respecting cop will buy a phony-baloney Cap’n Crunch ID like yours,” Avery muttered.

Dixon ignored her. “Now can we go? I told Gillespie we’d meet him at your folks’ house at four, which was five minutes ago. It doesn’t look good for the senior agent to fall down on the job, especially when the newbie is still technically in training.”

Avery strode slowly to her bedroom door and opened it to find Dixon looming on the other side, and instinctively took a step backward. Good God, the man was big. And he was no less intimidating—or handsome—now than he had been the first time she’d opened her door to him. Had that actually been less than forty-eight hours ago? she marveled. It felt as if weeks had passed since she’d met him. Today he was wearing more of those snug, formfitting blue jeans, paired with a slouchy heather gray sweatshirt that read, in big blue letters, GWU. George Washington University, she translated. So he’d spent time living in the nation’s capital. She wondered how long ago and where he lived now. Not that she cared. But she did wonder.

“Can I have one for the road?” she asked.

He lifted a hand and extended a drink toward her, having already anticipated the question.

“Gee, how can I ever thank you?” she asked as she gratefully accepted it.

“By not becoming an alcoholic,” he said tersely.

“Not to worry,” she said before enjoying a generous swallow. She closed her eyes as the liquor warmed her throat and spread heat through her chest and stomach. “I only consume more than one drink when I have to go out somewhere.”

“How many more than one?” he asked.

She opened her eyes. “Five more than one.” But she hurried on, “And since I don’t go out more than a couple of times a year—or at least I didn’t go out more than a couple of times a year before I met
you
—the only way I’ll overdo it is if you hang around in my life much longer.”

“No worries there, either,” he retorted. “The sooner we wrap this thing up, Peaches, the sooner I’ll scoot.”

She nodded disconsolately. Unfortunately, to achieve that, they would be returning to the environment that had spawned her. Talk about being driven to drink. Who knew what she would be forced to endure over the next few days? The next few weeks? The next few months? Oh, man, how long was this going to take anyway?

She inhaled another mouthful of scotch and looked at Dixon, this time for a full five seconds before having to look away. Hey, she was getting better at that. “How long will it take to wrap up?” she asked.

“Depends,” he told her.

“On what?”

“On how long it takes you to draw your boy Andrew out.”

Her boy Andrew, she echoed bitterly to herself. Would that he
had
been Andrew—and hers—she might have actually found someone with whom she could share her life. She’d stopped hoping for something like that years ago, had been resigned to spending her life in solitary confinement. Then, like magic, out of nowhere, Andrew had appeared, and she had let herself dream again. The first dreams she’d enjoyed for a very long time.

She should have known better than to let optimism overtake pragmatism. She’d suffered enough life lessons by now to know that hoping for something didn’t mean jack. Andrew didn’t exist. His appearance in her life hadn’t been magic. On the contrary, if what Dixon said was true, it had been part of some nefarious plan this Adrian Padgett guy was hatching to take over the world. He’d only wanted Avery for her knowledge of computers and viruses and her ability to wreak mayhem on the Net—and the global community. He hadn’t wanted her for herself. Now she was back where she’d been before, where she would always be. Alone.

But then why was she surprised? How could she have believed someone as dreamy and wonderful as the imaginary Andrew could have been interested in her as a woman? As a human being? As anything other than what she continued to be in most people’s minds—a criminal-mastermind dissident who could bring down the entire world with the click of a mouse? No way could a man just want to get to know her better because he liked her.

It was laughable, really, the reputation Avery had been saddled with in the aftermath of her college fiasco as a corrupt, antiestablishment, rabble-rousing zealot who wanted to stick it to the system. Even today, she was still the topic of conversation—nay, the
hero
—of corrupt, antiestablishment, rabble-rousing zealots everywhere. But she’d never been any of those things. She’d been a wounded teenage girl whose heart had been broken, and in her hurt and her anger she’d wanted to strike back at the boy responsible. It was the simplest, most basic thing in the world to understand. Instead, thanks to her own carelessness and stupidity, she’d become an icon of the counterculture, a hero to hackers and misfits everywhere, a criminal mastermind who wanted to bring the end of the world as we know it and still feel fine.

Now OPUS wanted her to exploit the reputation she’d never deserved in the first place, the rep she’d spent a decade trying to escape. She’d have to stay in touch with this Adrian guy—who really
was
a criminal mastermind—and pretend she still believed he was Andrew. She’d been told to continue with what she’d thought would be a love affair of epic proportions, but gradually to start talking to him about politics and society and American culture and to voice her distaste for them all. Which to some degree she already had, so that shouldn’t be too difficult to make convincing. But she was also supposed to make Adrian think she was the same kind of person he was, so that he would invite her more quickly into whatever he was plotting to do.

And then she was supposed to meet him.

That part of the assignment, more than any other, scared the hell out of her. Not because she would be coming face-to-face with a man who could be dangerous, but because she would have to leave the safety of her home, her life, to do it.

It had been horrible to be dragged from her apartment to a small white room. It would be worse returning to the rambling estate where she grew up. But those experiences were nothing compared to the unmitigated terror Avery felt at the thought of being in the open, where anything could happen. In a small white room she could still feel some measure of safety, still entertain the illusion, at least, that she could see what was coming and be prepared for it. At her parents’ house she would at least be in familiar surroundings, and the house would be enclosed. But out in the open, in the city, where there was so much beyond her control, where there were so many strangers and so many things that could go wrong…

She lifted her drink again, her heart rate doubling just at the idea of being outside in the open. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. Not even with a case of Scotland’s finest sloshing around inside her. There was no way. She’d tried to explain that to them, but they’d pooh-poohed her concern, assuring her that when the time came for her to meet Adrian, she
would
meet Adrian. Because if she didn’t, then she’d be reneging on her part of the deal. And if she reneged on her part of the deal, then OPUS would have no alternative but to renege on their part, as well. They’d report her for building the virus, however ineffective it had been. And that would send Avery right back to prison.

I have nothing to fear in this moment,
she told herself rapidly.
In this moment, there is nothing to fear.

“Avery?”

I have nothing to fear in this moment. In this moment, there is nothing to fear.

“Avery.”

I have nothing to fear in this moment. In this moment, there is nothing to—

“Avery!”

“What?”

Dixon set his jaw hard. “It’s time to go.”

She slugged back what was left of her drink and closed her eyes tight. There was everything to fear in this moment. In this moment, there was everything to fear.

She nodded once and swallowed hard, and made herself focus on the matter at hand. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

D
IXON’S BREATH HITCHED
in his diaphragm as they rounded the final curve of the long, winding drive that led to the Nesbitt estate and he caught his first glimpse of Avery’s childhood home. He came from a moneyed background himself, but he’d never seen anything like this. Not up close, anyway. Not in person.

“It’s called Cobble Court,” she said as if she’d read his mind.

Sparing a glance at the passenger side of the car, Dixon saw Avery in profile, her gaze riveted to the looming mansion on the horizon. Her posture was as stiff as…well, a stiff, just as it had been since they’d left her apartment, and her fingers were wrapped white-knuckle around the now-empty thermos in her lap. In spite of her drinking throughout the trip, she seemed stone-cold sober. Fear must be a potent remedy for in-sobriety. Because there was something in her expression that made Dixon think she was even more frightened now than she’d been the night he’d carried her out of her apartment.
Going home
for Avery obviously wasn’t the fuzzy, heartwarming condition it was for all those people on the Hallmark Channel. Without questioning why he did it, he eased his foot off the accelerator and the car slowed.

Her expression was the only thing about her that resembled the woman he’d met two nights ago. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been a skirmish of color in ugly pajama bottoms and torn sweatshirt, her hair caught in two lopsided braids. A rebel with a really weird cause. Today she was more subdued in varying shades of blue that enhanced the vivid azure of her eyes, her hair plaited into one neat braid. She still smelled like peaches, though, and the source of the fragrance was driving Dixon nuts. She didn’t seem the type for perfumes or self-pampering, but the scent of her was nearly intoxicating.

“Yes, my parents live in a house that has a name,” she continued in a flat voice. “Only they’re not the ones who named it. My great-grandfather named it that when he built it more than a hundred years ago. Not that he built it himself, mind you,” she hastened to add. “He paid nonunion workers as little as possible to erect his holy shrine to the almighty dollar. One of those workers even died building this place. Slipped on the roof and fell to his death. And my great-grandfather honored the man’s sacrifice by giving his wife and children five whole dollars. One dollar for each child. Wasn’t that generous of him?”

Dixon said nothing. As lousy as her great-grandfather sounded, the man probably hadn’t been any worse than any other greedy carpetbagger of the day. And it was easy for someone like Avery to spout the cause of the downtrodden and exploited, coming from billions of dollars as she did. He’d been brought up in the rarefied air of the privileged, too—though not the über-privileged, as she had—and he’d had his share of friends who’d shown contempt for their wealth. But had any of them ever offered to give it up? Had any of them delved into their trust funds to ease the burden of the common man? Not likely.

Not that Dixon should be pointing any fingers. He hadn’t delved into his trust fund for that, either. Of course, he hadn’t dipped into his trust fund at all. He’d worked for OPUS since his graduation from college, in one capacity or another. But it was nice to know the money was there. Still, his family’s wealth paled in comparison to the Nesbitts’.