You've Got Male (15 page)

He lifted one shoulder and let it drop, a gesture that vaguely resembled a shrug but not quite. Even more interesting than the unconvincing shrug, though, was the fact that his gaze, which had been fixed so intently on hers, suddenly skidded to the side. In fact, he turned his back on her again and began picking through the overstuffed fridge without seeming to look at anything it held.

“I did a little reading on the Net before I came to pick you up,” he said, his voice absent now of all the confident swagger it had held. Also very interesting.

“Why?” Avery asked.

He continued to avoid looking at her as he said, “I just didn’t want to get the shit kicked out of me again, that’s all.”

She felt her face grow warm at that, and her own gaze scuttled to the other side of the room, where she saw that Jensen had deposited Skittles’s cat carrier. The door was open, but Skittles was still inside, tucked into a tight ball, looking very frightened.

I’m right there with you, sweetie,
she thought as she rose and made her way over to the animal.

She plucked the cat’s food dish and water bowl from the bag beside the carrier and went about feeding and watering her, then cooed softly until Skittles emerged and warily sniffed at her food. Avery stroked her slowly as she ate, and eventually the cat began to purr softly. Would that she could acclimate herself as quickly, she thought.

“Look, I said I was sorry about what happened that night,” she told Dixon. But she said nothing more. What else was there to say?

“I’m not looking for an apology,” he said.

She looked up at him, but he still had his back to her, rifling through the contents of the fridge. “Then what are you looking for?”

“Something healthy to eat.”

“You know what I mean, Dixon.”

He expelled a restless sound. “Just that maybe you could…you know…feel better if you wanted to, that’s all.”

He couldn’t possibly be suggesting what he seemed to be suggesting. In spite of that, she asked incredulously, “Oh, so I
like
having panic attacks and being terrified to leave my own home?”

He began to pull some things out of the refrigerator and set them on the counter, but as he worked, he told her, “No, Avery, it’s not that.”

He was calling her by her given name more frequently, she noticed, and she couldn’t quite stop the little ripple of pleasure that wound through her every time he did. Like now. Immediately she tamped the sensation down and stuffed it into the very back of her brain. She did
not
want to feel pleasant around this unpleasant man.

“Then what are you trying to say?” she asked.

He pulled a few more things out of the fridge to join the others on the counter, then turned to look at her, setting his jaw hard and staring at her face. She wasn’t positive, but she was pretty sure he growled at her. Which went a long way toward illustrating why she didn’t want to feel pleasant around him.

“How about an omelet?” he asked. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Lots of protein. You’ve ingested enough sugar over the past few days to make Willy Wonka hurl.”

“Okay,” she said, obviously surprising him with her acquiescence. Not that he should be surprised. She’d say anything to drop the subject.

She watched him as he moved about the kitchen, marveling at how comfortable he seemed to be. Not just being a man in a room traditionally deemed feminine, but being a newcomer to an unfamiliar environment. He did what needed doing, with whatever tools he had at hand. She envied his ability to switch gears so effortlessly.

“Santiago Dixon isn’t your real name, is it?” she asked as he worked.

He hesitated before replying but didn’t look up. “No.”

She strode to where he stood, halting a good five feet away from him, but leaning her hip against the counter where he worked. “Will you tell me what your real name is?” she asked.

This time he hesitated not at all. “No.”

It was going to be a boring conversation if he kept up with the one-word answers. She tried a new tack.

“You know everything about me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

So much for the new tack. She tried again.

“I mean, you know how I grew up, where I went to school, everything about my family, what I do for a living, all of it.”

“Well, I know you’re self-employed and that you work from your home. And I know you run a computer security business called Invulnerable, Inc. Which is a name I find fascinating on several levels.” Before Avery could ask him what he meant by that, he continued, “But I’m still not sure I understand everything Invulnerable, Inc. does.” He paused in his work and turned halfway around to look at her, finally meeting her gaze. “Yet.”

Without awaiting a comment, he extended a hand upward and, barely having to reach, pulled down a sauté pan from the assortment of copper cookware hanging overhead. He set it atop the stove with a negligent clatter and lit the burner, tipped a bottle of olive oil briefly over the pan, and tossed in a little salt. He cracked a half dozen eggs one-handed into a crockery bowl, then deftly diced to pieces half an onion and two cloves of garlic.

Amazing,
Avery thought. He obviously took good care of himself and had been doing it for a while. For the first time she wondered about his marital status, but somehow decided immediately that he’d always been single. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did. What was weird was how happy the realization made her.

“The only reason you don’t know what my business does is because the OPUS guys rifling through my computer files weren’t able to access the best stuff,” she guessed.

“Yet,” he repeated as he chopped up a red pepper and snagged a green one for the same treatment.

“You could just ask me yourself,” she ventured. “You could ask me now and then you wouldn’t have to wait.”

He finished with the green pepper and reached for a yellow one, quickly slicing it, too, into little pieces. She wondered where he he’d learned such skill with a knife…then decided she was probably better off not knowing. A few sprigs of fresh rosemary joined everything else he’d hacked to bits, then he lowered the flame on the stove and dumped the mixture into the now sizzling pan.

He stirred as he spoke, and Avery watched the play of muscles against his sweater with every move he made.
Man, he’s built,
she thought. A strange ripple of pleasure wound through her as she watched him work, and it took a moment for her to recognize it as desire. Which was the last thing she needed—wanted—to be feeling for this man. She dropped her gaze to the floor.

“So,” he said. “What is it
exactly
that you do for a living at Invulnerable, Inc?”

“Lots of things, actually,” she said. “I design firewalls and virus-detecting software for both personal and business use. I maintain a couple of Web sites and networks where I post updates about viruses that may be making the rounds on the Net and what to do if one gets into your system. And I’m a viral bounty hunter.”

He arched his eyebrows at that. “You’re a what?”

She smiled. “A viral bounty hunter,” she repeated. “Sometimes when someone unleashes an especially nasty virus on the world, the software and PC manufacturers will put a bounty on that person’s head. If I can find out who and where they are and provide evidence that they’re the person or persons responsible for the outbreak, then I’m paid a bounty for the information.”

He smiled. “Nice irony there.”

She smiled back. “Among other things.”

“Yeah, I guess in this day and age, that could pay pretty well.”

“It’s not bad,” she admitted. “But it’s not the bulk of my income by any means.” Then another thought struck her. “How do you think this Adrian Padgett guy found me? I mean, it’s not just my job to keep people and businesses safe. It’s a way of life for me. I don’t even market some of the security programs I’ve developed, because I don’t want anyone to be able to study and decrypt them. That’s the stuff I keep for myself. And I stay pretty anonymous on the Web. How did Adrian put it all together and figure out who and where I am?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” Dixon said as he reached for the eggs and began to whisk them. “We think he first stumbled on your name while he was working for CompuPax. That software you designed for them when you were fourteen had to have piqued his interest, such a young computer whiz and all. When he looked for more information on you—hell, he could have just Googled you and found a lot of hits about your conviction—he discovered the near-global destruction you accomplished when you were nineteen.”

“But that was an accident,” Avery interjected. “I genuinely didn’t know my own strength.”

“Even so, he’s got to be looking at you like you could design anything. Some mass weapon of destruction, even if it’s just a computer virus or whatever it is he’s looking to do. You nearly shut down the planet ten years ago. Imagine what you could do now, with your smarts and today’s technology and the massive number of people online. You really could shut down the planet if you wanted to. And we think that’s why Adrian tapped into you.”

Tapped into you,
Avery echoed to herself. As though she was a resource instead of a human being. Then again, if what Dixon was saying was true, that was exactly what Adrian Padgett considered her to be.

“As for how he found you,” Dixon continued, “well, his code name wasn’t Sorcerer for nothing. He’s got smarts, too. The guy could do anything. He was the field agent on his team when he was with OPUS, but he still knew how to operate all the equipment and had access to all the networks. I imagine he still has some way to stay connected, even if it’s not a legal one. I just wish I knew how he’s stayed one step ahead of us. It’s scary how that guy seems to always know what’s going on before we do.”

That wasn’t the only thing that was scary about him, Avery thought, recalling that they wanted her to meet with him out in the great wide open. Though the great wide open scared her even more.

She decided not to think about it right now.

“On the flip side,” Dixon said, “how do you conduct business if everything is so secret with you?”

“Businesswise, I’m not a secret,” she said. “Invulnerable has a Web site, and anyone can access me through there via e-mail. I also have a toll-free number. I don’t have to advertise much because I get lots of word-of-mouth clients. But I keep my name out of it. As far as anyone is concerned, I have lots of employees and departments and the CEO is some computer-whiz recluse who keeps a low profile.”

He smiled. Again. “But it’s all you?”

She smiled back. Again. “It’s all me.”

“Busy woman,” he said, turning back to the omelet.

“Hey, I got nothing else to do,” she said. And although she meant it as a joke, for some reason it sure didn’t sound like one. So she hurried on, “Now that you know about my business, you know everything there is to know about me.” Not that that comment did anything to lighten her mood, either.

It wasn’t a question, which Dixon seemed to realize because he said nothing in reply. He only tended to his culinary creation on the stove, which smelled wonderful. Her stomach rumbled in spite of her assurances that she wasn’t hungry, and suddenly she was hungrier than she’d been in a long time. She also felt more comfortable than she had in a long time. Talking to Dixon had distracted her enough that she had been able to forget about her situation for a little while. And for that she was reluctantly grateful.

She was surprised at how little it bothered her that he knew so much about her. On the contrary, there was something kind of liberating about it. There was no point in trying to hide anything from him. Lying would be useless. She didn’t have to make an effort to impress him, nor did she have to worry about what he might think of her if he found out about the things she’d done.

“But I don’t know anything about you,” she told him.

And that did bother her. A lot. What bothered her more was how very much she did want to learn about him.

But he seemed to interpret that as a statement and not a question, too, and he didn’t reply to it, either. And, okay, so maybe it was a statement and not a question, thanks to that pesky punctuation, but her intimation was there, even if his intimacy wasn’t.

Why did she care anyway? she asked herself. It wasn’t as though the two of them were going to be friends. They weren’t even acquaintances, really. They were two people who, by sheer mischance, were forced to work together to catch someone they both knew from different times and places. Once OPUS had Adrian Padgett, bad guy extraordinaire, Avery and Dixon would never see each other again. She should be doing her best
not
to learn anything more about him than she had to.

“So where did you learn to cook?” she heard herself ask. And what she wouldn’t have given in that moment for a brick to smack herself upside the head.

But Dixon surprised her by actually responding to her question this time. “From Mrs. Fegenbush, who cooked for my family when I was growing up.”

“Your family has money then,” Avery guessed.

“Not like yours, Peaches,” he said, still cooking. “Not like yours.”