You've Got Male (24 page)

Maybe we can pick up where we left off, Adrian wrote.

Oh, great, she thought. No way. Not again. Can’t, she told him. Woke up feeling like crap this morning. I think I’m coming down with something. I’m sorry, Andrew—I’m just not in the mood.

“He won’t go for it,” Dixon said. “You’re going to have to give him a better excuse than that.”

“It’ll be fine,” she assured him. “There have been times in the past when he wanted sex and I didn’t, and it didn’t bother him at all.”

There was a lengthy pause, wherein she assumed Adrian was typing something very long. But when his text finally appeared, all it said was, Poor Coochie. And she couldn’t help wondering if maybe Dixon was right. Maybe he really didn’t believe her. Maybe he was suspicious.

She waited to see if more would be forthcoming, but there was nothing. So she took her cue from what Dixon had told her during her initial briefing for the job and what Tanner Gillespie had told her that afternoon. Knowing she was supposed to draw Adrian into a discussion of politics and her unrest with the way the government did things, she added, Besides, after reading the paper today, I don’t feel like doing much of anything. Except maybe blowing up the entire planet.

Dixon made a sound behind her as he read what she’d written, and she didn’t think it was one of approval. Well, tough, she thought. She didn’t care if she was hurrying things along too quickly. She was sick of sitting here night after night in a hostile environment that was becoming more hostile with each passing day. Even after nearly a week here her family still abhorred her and were still barely speaking to her. And now things with Dixon, which had begun to feel kind of nice, had taken a hit from which they would probably never recover. She wanted this thing over. She wanted to go home.
Home
home. To her Central Park condo. And then she wanted everyone in the world to leave her the hell alone.

There was another lengthy pause from Adrian, where she thought he must be typing something of biblical proportions. But once again his reply was brief: How so?

She hesitated, too, before replying, choosing her words carefully. What? You don’t read the paper? You don’t see it all around us?

See what? he typed back, quickly enough this time that she knew he hadn’t hesitated at all.

It’s everywhere you look, she wrote. The economy here, the war over there, the xenophobia and intolerance everywhere. It sucks, Andrew. The world really is going to hell in a handbasket. And I, for one, am just about ready to help it on its way.

Avery, you’re exaggerating, he wrote back.

No, I’m not, she told him. And then she went off on a riff that covered every crooked world leader and every pocket of political unrest and every economic scandal and every global disaster she’d read about in the past month.

“Too much too soon, Avery,” Dixon said from behind her. “You’re going to spook him. He’s going to wonder where the hell all this is coming from all of a sudden.”

“I won’t spook him,” she said. “He’ll totally buy it. And he’ll totally come around. Watch this.”

She concluded her diatribe with the coup de grâce: Sorry, Andrew. Didn’t mean to go off. Must be PMSing.

“You’re not PMSing,” Dixon said. And he’d know, wouldn’t he?

“Yeah, but that’s the beautiful thing about PMS,” she told him. “We women can do whatever the hell we want, say whatever the hell we want, be as bitchy and nasty as we want to be and then blow it off by telling you guys we’re PMSing. And you buy it every time, hook, line and sinker. Suckers. Just wait.”

Sure enough, although Adrian started off by pooh-poohing her assertions, with a little cajoling he began to concede that maybe Avery had a point and maybe they should talk more about it.

They were off, she thought as she settled into her chair for the long haul. Once she and Andrew had started talking in the past, their conversations could last for hours. Before, she’d never noticed the passage of time. Tonight, though, she would mark every second.

Because Dixon had leaned forward behind her again to get a better look at the monitor. Close enough that she could feel his heat and hear his breathing and smell the clean, masculine scent of him. Close enough that she would be profoundly aware of him for the remainder of the night. But where before she had told herself he was off-limits, never quite believing it, now she knew for sure that he was.

“See?” she said as her dialogue with Adrian began to pick up speed. “I told you he’d believe me about everything. Including my not wanting to have sex,” she couldn’t quite keep herself from adding. “Maybe most men think sex is more important than anything, but Andrew—I mean, Adrian—never minded putting it off for another time. Now he and I can spend the rest of the evening bad-mouthing the government,” she added dryly. “It’ll be great.”

Dixon said nothing for a moment, long enough that she began to think he wouldn’t reply. Then, “Yeah, well, maybe it’s not Sorcerer you’re talking to after all then,” he finally muttered. “Because that guy’s libido is legendary.”

Would that it wasn’t Adrian Padgett at the other end of the exchange, Avery would be a happier woman. OPUS had given her a look at some of the data on him, if only enough to aid her in her efforts to draw him out. Had she not been convinced of the organization’s findings fairly early into the game, she never would have gone along with the assignment. Maybe her reasons for wanting to catch the son of a bitch were different from Dixon’s, but her determination was just as strong. Now even more so. Because the sooner they caught Adrian Padgett, international bad guy, the sooner she could go home.

And the sooner she could start forgetting about Santiago Dixon.

F
OR THE THREE NIGHTS THAT
followed, Avery and Adrian talked politics. Only on one occasion did the dialogue turn toward the sexual, and on that occasion, when Dixon told her she’d better go through with it because otherwise Adrian would get suspicious, she’d made him leave the room, telling him he could read the transcript later. And although he balked at first, ultimately he capitulated. Probably, Avery thought, because he didn’t want a repeat of that first time any more than she did.

Still, the only way she’d been able to get through the session was to pretend it was Dixon at the other end of the line and to remember what it had been like with him. To imagine that it was him she was stroking and tonguing and loving. After it was over, she’d wondered if there would ever be a time in her life again when she could enjoy anything remotely sexual without thinking of him. She’d even gone so far as to worry he might have ruined her for other men. But then she’d told herself she was being silly. She knew full well there wouldn’t be other men. Not for a woman who was as whack as she.

By the end of that third night, Adrian seemed convinced of her antiestablishment tendencies. Because just as Avery was about to start winding the conversation down, he wrote something very significant.

Avery’s eyes widened as she read the announcement, and she flexed her fingers to halt their trembling before replying, No way! Where?

A club called Duke’s, he told her.

Never heard of it, she wrote. But, hey, I don’t get out much, right? she added. Andrew knew, of course, that she suffered from agoraphobia and that she never went anywhere.

I was hoping you might get out for this, he told her. It would be great if you came to hear us play.

Andrew, I can’t, she immediately replied. You know that. I’d love to hear you play, but it’s impossible. I’m sorry.

Not even my being in New York could change your mind?

No, she told him without hesitation.

“Tell him you’ll be there,” Dixon said from behind her. “Ask him what day and what time.”

“He’d know I was lying,” she said without looking back. “He knows how bad I get. He knows about the panic attacks. He knows I can’t go anywhere.” Then she put voice to something that was worrying her, but something Dixon ought to know. “I think he’s testing me.”

There was a small hesitation, then he said, “What do you mean?”

“I think maybe he’s kind of suspicious and that this is his way of finding out if I’m trying to trick him. If I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll be there,’ then he’d know I was agreeing too quickly and he wouldn’t contact me again. I have to be true to form here, Dixon. I can’t agree to meet him in a public place. At least not right off the bat. He knows I can get out for emergencies and really big stuff if I have enough time—and scotch—to prepare myself. But if I just jump right up and say I’ll meet him somewhere, it won’t ring true.”

Come on, Avery, Adrian had typed by now. You can come for me, can’t you? I might never be in New York again. We’ll finally be able to meet face-to-face.

She purposely waited a moment to reply, then said, Maybe. Let me think about it. Next week is awfully close. But I don’t want to come to a club. It’s too crowded. There are too many people. If we meet, and I do mean if, it would have to be somewhere else.

Don’t you want to hear me play?

I’d love to, Andrew. But not in a club.

Then where?

I don’t know. I have to think about it. You know me. You know I have trouble with this stuff.

You have to face your fears someday, Avery.

And why did that sound so ominous? she thought as she read the words. It was very like something Andrew would have said to her. In fact, Andrew probably had said it to her before. Suddenly, though, the suggestion seemed so sinister.

Maybe, she typed back. Though she deliberately kept it vague as to whether she was referring to facing her fears or meeting him.

Thankfully he didn’t push any further. They chatted for a little while longer, then parted amiably, and Avery signed off.

“What if he tries to call you on the phone?” Dixon asked, as if he were just now considering the possibility.

“He can’t,” she said. “He doesn’t have my phone number.”

“You didn’t give him your phone number?”

“Of course not. Or my address, either. There’s no way he can find out where I am.”

Dixon said nothing for a moment, as if thinking carefully about what she said. Then very quietly he told her, “He’s awfully good at what he does, Avery. How can you be sure?”

She sat up a little straighter in her chair, confident of what she said next. “Because I’m better at what I do, that’s how.”

He nodded slowly, but she didn’t think he was as strong in her conviction as she. “Why didn’t you give him your phone number or address?” he asked.

“Oh, please. I might have been stupid enough to fall in love with him, but I’m not so stupid that I’m going to give my phone number or address to a man I met on the Internet and have only known a month.”

Dixon narrowed his eyes at her, then shook his head slowly, as if he just couldn’t figure her out. Yeah, well, that made two of them, Avery thought. Because she couldn’t get a handle on him, either.

Especially after he said quietly, “You’re not stupid at all, Avery.”

Yeah, right, she thought. Whatever. But the big icy chip on her shoulder melted just a little at the way he said it.

As was always the case, neither of them seemed to know what to say to the other after she’d signed off for the night. They’d spent their days avoiding each other since the night they made love, something that had been easy after spending their nights awake, working. Avery slept during much of the day and spent the rest of her time reading or playing computer games, just as she did at home. Skittles usually kept her company—though somehow the cat’s company wasn’t quite as pacifying as it used to be—purring from her place on the bed or following on those few occasions when Avery left her room. Occasionally, when she felt certain no one was around, she ventured down to the kitchen for something to eat or out to explore parts of the house that had once been havens to her but which now felt intimidating. She visited with Jensen and spoke with a handful of other servants who had been in residence when she was a girl.

Sometimes she stood at the big windows gazing out at the grounds and at the pond and the ocean beyond, wondering if maybe she had the nerve to go outside and look around. Stroll through the garden and down the boardwalk to the beach, as she had done so many times when she was a kid. Walk along the beach so she could feel the cold wind on her face, taste the salt that limned her lips, listen to the forsaken cries of the spiraling gulls, watch the little sandpipers as they hurried, hurried, hurried over the sand to God knew where. But panic would begin to seize her just thinking about it, and she’d have to step away from the windows and hurry back to her room. Mostly during the day Avery just kept to herself. The same as she did when she was at home.

Now Dixon mumbled something about reviewing the transcripts, and she said something about being tired and wanting to go to bed. She was lying, though. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning, but the last thing she wanted to do was sleep. She was too keyed up from her conversation with Adrian, too terrified at the prospect of having to meet him. Never mind that she’d be surrounded by OPUS agents when she did. She’d be outside somewhere. In the great wide open. Where anything could happen. Where anyone could hurt her. Where she had no idea how to manage her fears.