Express Male (9 page)

I
T WAS DARK
by the time Daniel Beck climbed the fourth flight of stairs in his apartment building at the end of another long day. But then, it was almost always dark outside by the time he called it a day. Even in the summer, when darkness didn’t come until very late, he was often holed up in his lab working on some project till after hours.

Unless, of course, it was the weekend. Weekends he was doing something else till after hours. Weekends were when he made damned sure he enjoyed the things he earned as a hardworking man in contemporary American society. Which, interestingly, were the same things he’d been denied as a geeky teenager and even geekier college student in not-too-long-ago American society: a social life and smokin’ sex. On account of he hadn’t had anything remotely resembling a social life—or sex of
any
kind—until he’d been out of college for more than a year. Therefore, he had a lot of making up—and making out—to do. Frankly, so deprived had Daniel been as a young man, there were times when he thought he’d never get caught up. Which actually suited him fine, because it meant he had a lifetime ahead of him that was full of smokin’ sex.

The jingling of his keys as he fumbled for the one to his front door were a fitting accompaniment to the clinking of the biker jacket he was entitled to wear because, unlike many wearers of such garments, he actually
owned
a motorcycle. It was a welcome change from the fifteen-year-old, four-door Chevette he’d had to drive throughout high school and college, something that had contributed significantly to his social-life-and-sex-lacking geekdom during that time.

But he wasn’t that geek anymore, and he would never be that geek again. He had a bitchin’ Harley now, not a Chevette. He had his own cool bachelor digs, not his parents’ basement. He’d gone through a most excellent second puberty in college that had cleared up his skin, pushed him past six-two in height and enabled him to bench-press his own body weight. And he had made the most of all three developments. Now, he dated the most luscious babes, and not nobody, who had been his constant female companion in youth.

As if conjured by the thought, just as Daniel was inserting his key into his front door lock, the front door to the apartment next to his flew open to reveal Ellie Chandler standing on the other side. He grinned when he saw her.

“Hey, Ellie to the rescue,” he said, withdrawing his key again. “You can take me to dinner.”

Instead of the smile he’d been expecting, her eyes widened in what looked very much like panic. Immediately, Daniel glanced back over his shoulder, to see if someone was about to jump him, but the hallway was empty. When he turned to look at Ellie again, the panic on her face has morphed into something else, but she still didn’t look like her usual self.

“You okay?” he asked. “You look like you don’t feel too good.”

“Uh…” she replied eloquently.

“Ellie?” he tried again. “Is something wrong?”

“Um…” she said.

Alarm bells began to rattle inside Daniel’s brain. Ellie at a loss for words? Something pretty horrible must have happened to cause that. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Ah…rough day,” she finally said. But the words came out rushed and breathy, as if she were just pulling them off the top of her head. “Really, really rough day.”

He regarded her curiously. Something was going on, and she didn’t want to tell him what it was. Which was weird, because the two of them talked about everything. It was one of the things Daniel liked so much about Ellie. He could talk to her as easily as he could one of the guys. So he asked, “You want to talk about it?”

“No,”
she said adamantly, her eyes going wide.

“Might help.”

She shook her head quickly. “No. Trust me. It wouldn’t.”

“Then let me take you to dinner,” he offered. “We haven’t had Indian for a while, and I’ve been craving some lamb vindaloo. But you have to buy. I’m busted till my next paycheck.”

She hesitated before replying, as if she were giving serious thought to her answer. Then she smiled. Not her usual Ellie smile, the one that lit up her whole face, but she at least seemed to relax a bit. As if to reinforce that, she took a couple of steps toward him and came to a halt.

“How can you always be so broke?” she asked. “I thought research chemists made pretty decent money.”

“Not this one,” he said. “I’m too low on the food chain at ChemiTech right now.”

She nodded slowly and studied him with the same kind of consideration she might give to an upholstery selection. “All right,” she finally agreed. “I’ll buy you dinner tonight. I was just headed out to get something myself. But
you’re
buying dinner next time.”

He smiled. “As long as you eat light.”

She smiled back. “You already know I eat like a horse.”

“Perfect. You’ll be happy to make do with oatmeal.”

They kidded each other all the way to a diner near their apartment building, and Daniel’s concern for Ellie gradually ebbed. Whatever had happened today, she seemed to be less bothered by it now. And if she did want to talk about it at some point, he’d be there to listen.

The diner was virtually deserted when they entered, thanks to it being well past the usual dinner hour. Two men seated at the counter looked like they were on their way to a bowling tournament, and a young couple in a back booth looked like they were all ready for bed—though not necessarily to sleep. Either the place had gone totally retro in recent years, or it hadn’t changed one iota from the time it opened in the early 1950s. Judging by the cracks in the plastic seating and the scars on the Formica tabletops and the patched linoleum, Daniel had always suspected it was the latter.

“I did get some good news today,” Ellie said as she slid across the cracked plastic seating of the booth.

“Yeah? What?” Daniel asked.

She plucked a laminated menu from the napkin holder and began to inspect it very carefully, even though the two of them had eaten here often enough that she should have had the thing memorized by now. Hell, Daniel already knew he wanted the tuna melt and a Heineken.

“I’m going to be working at ChemiTech for a couple of weeks,” she said, finally looking up to eye him in a way that made him feel a little edgy for no reason he could name. “Auditing the books on a couple of projects you guys are doing for Uncle Sam. So you better not be funneling off any cash or selling government secrets.”

He grinned at that. “Excellent. You can buy me lunch for the next few days, too. That ought to reassure you I’m not funneling off any cash.”

“Maybe you could sell some government secrets and earn a few extra dollars,” she suggested.

He laughed outright at that. “Yeah, right. Good one, Ellie. I don’t even like to share my findings with my co-workers most of the time. No way would I let an enemy of the people in on what I’m doing. We research chemists are a competitive bunch, ya know.”

She studied him in silence for a moment more, then went back to studying the menu.

“So, almost finished with the master’s,” he said, knowing Ellie’s classwork for that was winding down.

“That means you can kiss your junior accountant job goodbye and go for the big money. Be Madame CEO of Big Money Ellie, Incorporated, someday. Then maybe you won’t have any more rough days at work like today. And then you can buy me dinner and lunch every day. So do I get an invitation to the graduation ceremony?”

“I’m not going through the ceremony,” she replied, still looking at the menu instead of him. “I mean, I’m almost thirty years old, so it’s not like it’s some major rite of passage. And my parents aren’t all that keen to schlep back to the States for something like that.”

“I guess Hong Kong is a pretty fair haul,” he agreed.

“Though I still don’t see why they had to retire on the other side of the world, when their only kid lives here.”

“My mom always wanted to live someplace exotic,” she said by way of an explanation. “I still see them a couple times a year.”

“Well,
I’d
come to the ceremony to see you get your degree,” he told her. “I think it’s great you’re moving up in the world. You’ve worked hard enough for it. And I know you’ll do a great job at whatever you put your mind to.”

When she glanced up at him this time, she looked a little more like her usual self. She smiled tentatively and closed the menu, slipping it back behind the napkin holder. “That’s nice of you to say all that, Daniel. I appreciate it.”

He smiled back. “Hey, what are friends for?”

She nodded, and her smile brightened some more, until she definitely looked like her old self. “Yeah. If you can’t count on your friends, then you have no business being friends with them, right?”

“Right.”

“And friends wouldn’t tell each other stuff that isn’t true, would they?”

Not sure where that one came from—and not especially wanting to answer it—Daniel hedged. “Well, not about anything important, that’s for sure.”

The sudden turn of conversation put him on edge. Okay, so he hadn’t always been honest with Ellie about everything. He’d always spoken the truth when it came to stuff that mattered. And it wasn’t only Ellie he hadn’t been honest with when it came to certain aspects of his life. There were some things that happened to a guy—and some things a guy had done—that he didn’t much feel like sharing. None of those things had anything to do with his friendship with Ellie. They were just things he wasn’t especially proud of and would rather others didn’t know. So he changed the subject again.

“When do you start at ChemiTech?”

She hesitated before answering, as if she wasn’t ready to change the subject. Then, “Thursday morning,” she told him. “How far away from the records room are you? That’s where I’ll be working most of the time.”

“A few floors and corridors. Maybe a five-minute walk.”

“You get down that way often?”

He shook his head. “Only when I’m returning files for Sebastian that he’s checked out. I don’t really need to reference stuff myself.” He pointed to his head. “I keep it all up here.”

“Lucky you’ve got such a big head,” she said with a grin.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Takes one to know one.”

“Ooh, what a comeback. However will I top that? Wait, I know. I’ll say, ‘Nanner nanner boo-boo.’ Your turn.”

He was about to respond with an eloquent
I know you are, but what am I?
when a waitress approached their table to take their orders, and after she left, Ellie began speaking again.

“So what’s Sebastian working on now? Is it something you’re working on, too?”

“There’s one project the two of us are on together, and I’m filing regular reports to him on a couple that I’m doing myself. One or two others where we’re both part of a larger team. Why?”

She shrugged. “Just curious. You never really talk too much about what you do at ChemiTech. And I know you and Sebastian are pretty tight.”

“It’s pretty boring stuff to anyone who isn’t a chemist.”

“Maybe.”

“You never talk much about your job, either,” he pointed out.

She smiled. “That’s because it’s pretty boring stuff to anyone who isn’t an accountant. Hey, will you give me the grand tour after I start work Thursday? Show me where you work and what kind of stuff you do?”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. He and Ellie hardly ever talked about their jobs. There were too many other interesting things to talk about instead. And his job
would
seem boring to anyone else. Just like her job sounded boring to him.

“I’m suddenly curious,” she told him. “I think it would be fun to see where you work and what you do.”

“Okay,” he said. “But just a quick one. And only surface stuff. A lot of what we work on is government contracts we’re not allowed to talk about. But you already know that if you’re coming to audit the place. Security’s pretty tight on any given day. That’s why no visitors are allowed. They won’t even let school kids come through on field trips.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “Like I’d even know a government secret if it bit me on the ass. And even if I did, who would I tell?”

“I never said you’d tell anyone,” he said, finding the remark odd. “I’m just telling you why the tour has to be short.”

That look was back on her face again, Daniel noticed. The one that just didn’t seem quite…right. Like maybe she knew something he didn’t know. Though whether it was about herself, or about him, or about them, he couldn’t imagine.

Something had for sure happened to her today, though, that much was certain. And she wasn’t telling him about it. Which was a definite first. Ellie was the only woman on the planet Daniel liked talking to, the only woman he really
could
talk to. With other women, it was all just fluff and flirting. He and Ellie could and did talk about everything. Openly. Freely. Without fear of reprisal or criticism or ridicule.

Until now. There was something going on with her that she wasn’t telling him. And he didn’t like to think about that. Because it could only mean one of two things: One, whatever had happened was so terrible, she couldn’t talk about it to anyone. Or, two, she was afraid he might respond to whatever it was with reprisal or criticism or ridicule. Either way, it boiled down to a lack of trust on her part. And Daniel didn’t want to lose that. Losing Ellie’s trust meant losing Ellie’s friendship. And that was the last thing in the world he could afford to lose.