Wired (10 page)

“I need you to come upstairs and look at something.”

He took the steps two at a time and followed me into the office, where I showed him what I'd found. “This was all gone,” I said, gesturing to the equipment. “And now it's back exactly as it was before.”

He nodded. “If the computer is back and they didn't find the code, what they will come for next is the person with the code. Here is where it starts getting interesting. I was getting tired of waiting.”

“Are you . . . enjoying this?” I asked.

He looked a little guilty. “I like puzzles. I like the puzzle part.”

I thought again about Leo calling Mason a liar, and my thoughts must have shown.

“Roxanne?” Mason said, moving the flat of his hand up and down in front of my apparently glassy eyes. “Stay with me here.”

I expected him to follow up with some rant. He just muttered something I couldn't hear, then said, “Leonardo surely told you that I'm full of shit.” He took me by the shoulders. “But you know me.”

“Sort of,” I agreed. I searched his eyes, but I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to be looking for. He'd spoken with an almost religious fervor. The sort of fervor that meant he was either totally convinced
of his righteousness . . . or I was about to make a terrible mistake.

“We have context,” he said.

“In the sense that you had sex with my old roommate.” I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess we have context.”

His right hand moved up and touched my cheek. “You
know
me,” he repeated softly.

He kept saying that. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't concentrate on anything but the feel of his skin against mine, and that scared me to death—this impossible connection.

Take your hand off my face. Take your hand off my face. Take your hand off my face
. I didn't want him to see inside me. I desperately didn't want him to see how I felt. I didn't want to know how
he
felt.

He took his hand off my face, and I know I must have been blushing bright red.

“I want you to move in,” I blurted. “I don't feel safe.” Then I made myself busy reorienting my equipment on my desk because I didn't want him to see the confusion on my face.

“My suitcase is in the car. I'll be right back.”

When Mason decided to move in somewhere, he wasted no time making himself comfortable. It was positively vintage the way he sprawled himself all over the chaise longue in my office the same way he'd once commandeered the living room couch while dating Louise. It was maddening.

I spent one whole day investigating my computer for clues. Both then and today, he just walked into my office without knocking, complete with a Big Gulp and a book, and flopped right down. Like a husband or something.

Today, I complained. “You don't get to do that,” I said. “You absolutely do not get to waltz into my place of work and commandeer my chaise like some . . . like some beer-swilling hog.”

“I don't waltz,” he replied. He didn't wait for me to answer before he pointed to the tiny refrigerator in the corner. “Say, do you have any beer?”

“No!”

“Too bad. I think you could use one.”

I sat there, my hands frozen over the keyboard.
The office wasn't that big, what with all the boxes, and when I was on my computer it was strange to sense him behind me. Even more claustrophobic.

I would have liked to be able to tell myself that the small stick-on mirror protruding from the side of my monitor had always been there, that it was the product of my fear of someone looking over my shoulder while I was working, but it was clear there'd been no one in the house but me for some time—and the truth of the matter was that the newly appeared mirror pointed directly at the chaise where Mason was sitting. He seemed to realize that, because he would alternately try to be as annoying and effortlessly sexy as possible. There were a lot of yawn-and-stretch moves, which showed off a nice swath of six-pack, and if it got particularly stuffy in the office, there was no doubt in my mind that he'd actually take off his shirt.

I felt crowded by his presence. I felt . . . unreasonably aware of his presence. And yet, I didn't ask him to leave. The fact was, I wanted him there. I'd begun to accept him.

“Rox?”

I jumped.

He motioned to the computer with a tilt of his head. “Anything weird yet? Files missing, stuff moved around?”

“I'm almost ready to pack it in. If Leonardo took something, put something in, or altered something, then it's been totally masked. His engineers must be good.” At first glance, everything was there. At second glance, everything was still there. I couldn't find any evidence that files had been moved or even read.
The only bread crumb I could find was that the last date and time of access had been reset to 00/00/00, 00:00:00.
That
was weird.

“So Leonardo didn't find anything he could use.”

“Like some code, perhaps?” Mason hadn't revealed any more details of his mission.

He grimaced. “Like some code. But like I said, we'd have known about it by now if he had much to work with.”

“How so?”

He looked at me over his book, cagey. “Oh. I just meant that he'd be kicking things into high gear if he could.” And with that, he closed his eyes and stretched out, both legs propped up on the arm of the chaise.

Well, that had cleared up absolutely nothing.

“Mason?”

“Mmm?”

“You are so transparent. I don't think it's humanly possible to be more vague.”

He didn't answer. Annoyed, I pulled up a search engine and typed the name I'd heard a million times but hadn't gotten an adequate explanation for:

Your search—“Leonardo Kaysar”—did not match any documents
.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly
.

Try different keywords
.

Try more general keywords
.

No documents.
No
documents? There was not one reference on the Internet to the man?

Most people were there somewhere. Okay, not necessarily most people. But a man like Leonardo? How could he possibly fly below the radar on the Web? That just wasn't a good sign.

Mason opened one eye and yawned.

“You're still here,” I noted dryly. “Shouldn't you be out there somewhere trying to stop Leonardo from world domination or whatever he wants?”

“I'm waiting for some info from my office,” he said absently, shaking the ice in his cup.

“Oh.” I knew I wouldn't get any more from him.

Mason apparently had drunk all the way down to the really loud slurpy point of his Big Gulp. It was nearly impossible to concentrate, and why I didn't just throw him out would be fodder for thought for yet another sleepless night. So I couldn't work and I couldn't let on that all of my old feelings for him were seeping back into my system like . . . like . . . rusty water dripping from a faucet, constant and irritating.

Apparently today his choice between annoying and annoyingly sexy was the former. He slurped loudly again, knowing that I'd look. Which, of course, I did. I glanced behind me, ready to give him a piece of my mind, when my glance caught the cover of the book he was reading. The cover was . . . pink. Mason Merrick was reading a book with a pink cover?
Heh
.

I spun around in my chair and looked at him. “You're reading a chick book?”

He didn't look up. “I feel confident enough in my masculinity to answer in the affirmative without even the slightest hint of embarrassment.”

I got up and walked over to him, twisting the paperback
so I could see the cover. “You
are
reading a chick book,” I repeated, snorting with laughter. It was just so incongruous.

He finally looked up at me over it. “Yes, he said. “I am.” A beat passed, and he squinted at me. “Roxy, is that a smile? Are you smiling?”

I tamped whatever was happening with the corner of my mouth back into a straight line. “Does this happen often?” I pressed.

“No, you never smile. I'm beginning to wonder if you're coming down with something.”

“Ha, ha. I was talking about the book,” I said.

“Oh, this?” He gestured grandly with the paperback. “Absolutely. I feel it gives me the sort of insight into women you just can't get from personal experience.”

I snorted again, imagining. “Mmm. That makes sense. Having wine constantly thrown in one's face can teach one only so much.”

“You scoff, but consider this: Boil it down to its most simplistic components: Chick books are about relationships. What could be more beautiful, more”—he gripped at his chest, again entirely serious—“more meaningful than reading about two people destined to be together after a series of struggles?”

I leaned a little closer and set my internal calibration to double-plus sarcastic. “Hot damn, Merrick! That's not a tear welling in your eye, is it? Oh, my
God
, I'm getting so turned on!”

He dropped the book, leaped to his feet, and began backing me toward the desk in a feral sort of way. “Really?” he asked.

“I was kidding,” I said hastily. And I had been.
Mason's reading a chick book had made me curious about the chick book, not about Mason. That's what I told myself. Except, this stalking business of his really was turning me on, which scared the hell out of me. I ducked under one of his grabby paws and beat a hasty retreat down the stairs, calling out, “Better read on, Merrick. Read on. 'Cause the grubby pages of that book are as close as you're going to get to a sex scene in this house.”

“Relationships,” he called out. “Feelings! Emotions! You should try them sometime, Roxy!”

I paused on the stairs, annoyed. I retorted, “I do have feelings, Merrick. I just don't like to waste resources.” Then I tripped down the rest of the steps to the living room, wondering why I was giving him such a hard time.

Slumping on the couch, I found myself unsure what to do now that I'd made such a dramatic exit from my office. I heard a loud bang: Mason using the banister like a set of parallel bars to swing himself from the top of the stairs to the bottom. And then there he was suddenly in front of me, blocking me, moving in on me.

“Roxy.” He leaned down and gave me that wide, All-American grin. “Are you flustered?”

I planted my palm in the middle of his chest and pushed him away, back out of my personal-space box, which would have been glowing red at the corners if it had been visible. There was no way I was going to wipe off the sweat on the back of my neck in front of him.

“I'm . . . don't . . . flustered,” I babbled.
You moron, Roxanne
.

“Try forming a complete sentence.”

I collected my wits. “Look, we might as well just say it. We've beaten around the bush before. We're experiencing physical attraction, commonly called a crush, but without the requisite hopes for an emotional attachment—at least on my part—that most often goes with such a condition. Not with your past and this present. And what that means . . .”

His grin got wider and wider.

“What that means,” I repeated loudly, “is that in approximately two days I will be unable to stand the sight or smell or . . . or—”

“Taste?” he inserted hopefully.

“Unable to stand,” I barreled on, “the . . . the mere existence of your presence, and in fact I will be
racking
my brain”—my voice just kept getting louder, and I couldn't help myself—“just
racking
it, trying to figure out how I could have ever felt
any
sort of attraction for you!”

“Well, at least you admit you're attracted to me now.”

Shit
. But I was up to it. Admitting it would end the unspoken—now spoken—nonsense between us.

“Okay, yes. And I was once before, what seems like decades ago. But if anything, that was just some kind of twisted puppy love. If I was as attracted to you as you seem to want to believe—erroneously attracted, I want to stress—then it was merely in the way that people are attracted to those hairless, scalpy dogs.” I exhaled loudly, then unfortunately had to inhale a huge breath immediately because I seemed to be hyperventilating and knew he'd just scored on me . . . okay, more than just once. My resistance to
his charms was ebbing. I actually felt light-headed and confused. Hell, I was emotional. I'd even go so far as to say aroused. Needy.

But Merrick wasn't showing any mercy. He went for the extra point. He marched right back into my personal space and stuck his index finger on my lips; I was breathing so hard I practically sucked it in. For God's sake, I could taste the salt. He leaned down, way too close, and said all low and rough, “Roxy, baby, if this is puppy love, then why do I feel like a wild dawg?”

And then he disappeared up the stairs, left me hanging, a bundle of mindless, senseless, tormented, and frustrated boneless limbs.

“Give it time,” I warbled feebly, even though he was probably out of hearing. “You'll feel better soon.”

I don't know if I was talking to me or him.

After waiting downstairs, reading magazines I'd already read many times, trying to let enough time pass that I could reasonably go back into my office, I squared my shoulders and marched up the stairs. A noise struck me before I was even halfway up: Mason snoring. I pushed open the office door and had a look.

His arms were tangled above his head, and God help me, but his T-shirt and sweater had sort of crept up so that a slice of toned skin sat there peering at me maliciously. I think I could have spent some significant time watching that swath were it not for a light on his cell phone that started blinking. He'd set it to mute, I guess. And it sat on the side table next to his keys.