Going Under

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Who are you and why the hell are you on my property?” the woman snapped. Defensive. Not at all relaxed and neighborly. Who had a dog with this kind of training and reacted to the appearance of a stranger with such tension? Because she was on high alert, all right, practically vibrating with it.

  Fox held up his hands, plastering on a genial, go-lucky smile. “New neighbor! I was passing by and thought I’d say hello. Didn’t mean to set off the alarm system.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes, a very light color that showed even from this distance. “You’re that writer fellow.”

  “Guilty as charged.” He shrugged a little, working at looking harmless.

  “I guess trespassing isn’t a crime in Los Angeles?”

  “Only if you’re A-list. Otherwise, you’re pretty much on your own.” He resisted the urge to ask her to call off the dog. He’d taken a few classes in dealing with attack dogs—very handy skill to have if you poked around in places people didn’t want you to—and he knew full well she’d only asked the dog to pause. Writer guy might not know that though, so he went with that, pretending all was well. Besides, he had a curious sensation that this woman was testing him. Interesting.

  He liked interesting people.

  She hadn’t laughed at his joke, but she seemed to relax ever so slightly. “Stay there,” she told him and disappeared inside, the window cranking shut behind her.

  Reflexively, he mentally timed her, from the sealing of the window to her emergence through the sliding glass doors onto her deck. He greeted her with the same easy smile. “I’m Fox. Fox Mullins. Sorry I startled you.”

  Nodding slightly, she looked him over. “A bit cool for shorts.”

  “Took a run on the beach, but I guess I’ll need better gear for this weather.”

  Taking her alert level down another notch, she descended the stairs, put a hand on the dog’s back and held out the other. Cool, delicate hands with fingers long like her legs. “Emily Bartwell.”

  Fox shook her hand, resisting the urge to hold it a bit longer, to savor her personal intensity. She had an extraordinary face, finely boned with eyes such a light gray they seemed almost silver. A marked contrast to her dark brown hair and darker brows. She wore no makeup and a few glittering strands at her temples showed she didn’t dye her hair. Very usual coloring. Mostly Celt, he’d bet, with a dollop of Asian in there somewhere. He couldn’t get much of a feel for her figure with the shapeless sweats she wore—high end, no logos—but that restless sexual energy heated in him.

  Very interested in her.

  And it would be a long, boring winter.

  “Some guard dog you’ve got there.” Fox made himself look away from her to the pooch, which had sat at her touch and now beamed sheer doggie happiness, tongue lolling and tail sweeping through the bark bordering the walk. Interesting that she hadn’t had his ears or tail docked. Not in it for the show then.

  “Oh, Anansi is all bark and no bite. Good company, though.”

  And he was a horse’s ass if he believed that. “Anansi, huh? From the Neil Gaiman book?”

  He’d surprised her, but she smoothed it over nearly flawlessly. “I should have known a writer would pick that out.” She rubbed the dog’s ears with sincere affection, the mood erasing the last of her defensiveness. Fox wasn’t sure which he liked better, this soft and sweet version or the impassioned, fierce one.

  Both, really.

  “Good company for a woman living alone?” He added some flirtation to the question. No, she wasn’t some trophy wife. Everything about the place that he could see—note that she hadn’t invited him inside—spoke female, from the artsy birdhouses to the pots of violet flowers to the matching cushions on the deck’s Adirondack chairs.

  “Sure,” she replied, pretty gray eyes flicking over him, warming. “It gets lonely.”

  “Maybe some time when you’re feeling lonely you could show me around town, introduce me to the ins and outs of the island.”

  She smiled at that, close lipped, but in a way that went straight to his groin, the image of that full pink mouth working him over. Maybe the interest went both ways. If so, he’d struck gold before he’d even pinned down Phoenix. He had a knack for landing in clover, as his dad used to say. Though he never forgot that his dad had also ended up in a final shitstorm instead. The great cautionary tale. Never take the luck for granted.

  “Aren’t you expected at Glory’s tonight? I’ve been reliably informed that she has dibs.”

  Fox mentally groaned. And there was the shit, right on schedule. Screw small towns and their gossip networks. Fleetingly he considered making out as if he’d thought that was just a friendly visit, but he had a feeling Miss Emily would see right through him. Nothing to do but fess up and hope the female politics would work out.

  “What can I say?” He allowed. “She invited me. I don’t know anyone here. Besides, I hadn’t met you yet.”

  She looked definitely amused, another layer of ice melting. “Are you a player, Fox Mullins, celebrity writer from L.A.?”

  “What answer will get me a date with you?”

  She gave him a stern glare, but that promising smile lingered on her lush lips. “None, actually. Go have dinner with Glory. I’ll check in with her tomorrow. She’ll let me know the answer.”

  Emily opened the gate and Anansi trotted through, for all the world as if he would never consider going over it like a freaking gazelle, and she went up the steps. Very nice, very tight ass. She paused, hand on the rail, and looked back at him, making sure he knew she’d caught the direction of his gaze

  Fox gave a little mea culpa shrug. She was some woman all right. Still testing him, only on the next level of the game. “Something tells me I’m not going to win this round, no matter how the chips fall.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Her voice purred a little, deliberately enticing. “Sometimes it’s all about how you play it.”

  Chapter Four

  Okay, Fox Mullins was hot.

  Hot enough, in fact, that Em even considered asking Glory how the dibs thing worked. Not that she really needed to—the rules there seemed clear. Em didn’t have so many female friends these days—or any friends, for that matter—that she’d be willing to violate the Girl Code that undoubtedly covered such things. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that. Dinner conversation might not go well. As if that mattered.

  Or, more likely, Glory might make her horrible creamed-chicken casserole and they’d be too ill to get it on.

  Ha. A woman would have to be on her deathbed to bypass that opportunity.

  Em would have to cross her fingers that Fox would opt out. Even if Glory had offered to share once she was done—and when would that happen?—it seemed...not right. Em might not have much of a moral compass, but this rule, at least, stood out in her own mind. As much as the guy appealed to her—witty, athletic, with a wicked sexy vibe that knocked her cuddly socks off and, best of all, transient—she wouldn’t do him if Glory did. Too weird.

  Besides, relationships of any kind had never worked out for her, even before Henry bailed. Somehow she always ended up with the low score. Amazing, really, that she’d found herself flirting with Fox. Maybe she’d finally cracked from too much time alone. It was for the best that Glory saw him first.

  Didn’t stop her from cooking up a little fantasy, though, inspired by the sight of those leanly muscled thighs dusted with wiry red hairs. His short hair had been sleekly dark against his skull from the rain, but she’d detected a bit of curl in it. And that bad-boy gleam in his copper-brown eyes when he’d checked her out—even if she hadn’t gone without sex for over four years, that alone would have gotten to her.

  A bolder, more impulsive her would have invited him in. Okay, a her who let people into her home without fretting over what clues she might have missed. But hell, this was he
r fantasy, which meant she could be anyone in it. Treating herself, she made an extra pot of coffee and mulled how it could have gone. They’d be standing here, while she made the coffee, only she’d have showered and would be wearing a clingy knit dress. He’d sip from his mug and comment on how hot it was.

  “You think that’s hot?” She’d reply with a smile, watching his speculative gaze go to her mouth. Then she’d slide those little jogging shorts down, freeing his cock. It would be very long with veins standing out and his hair would be bright as a copper penny and she wouldn’t care that he was sweaty. No, she’d love it, licking him like an ice cream cone and he’d lean back against the counter, groaning her name, those muscled thighs quivering under her hands.

  Shit. Maybe she should call Glory, after all. Maybe the Girl Code included some sort of emergency bat signal. Probably not, in cases of casual lust. Unless she could invoke some kind of long deprivation clause. Lord knows she’d qualify.

  No, she needed to suck it up and move on, though her vibrator would feel like a very cold companion now. Finishing out the fantasy with it didn’t sound all that fun, even if she didn’t need to call into work and get busy. She’d thought she hadn’t missed sex with a human all that much, but that little flirtation with Fox had flipped a trigger in her. If she couldn’t ease the itch, she might have to consider going off island. To Seattle or Portland. Wear a disguise, use a fake identity and troll the bars. A few one-night stands could take the edge off. A different sort of fantasy to play out.

  Not that the idea sounded even remotely appealing at the moment, with Fox’s very sexual presence still in the air, like the scent of coffee on a cold morning. The man must have some serious pheromones or something. No wonder Glory had been so gleeful. Abtastic, indeed. Em hadn’t even glimpsed that bit—though she’d briefly considered asking him to lift his T-shirt—but she had no doubt it was true, judging by the rest of him.

  Shaking off the distraction, she poured the contents of the pot into her thermal carafe, returned to her sleeping computer center and reentered all her passwords. How could it only be 10:15? The interlude had felt much longer, from the heart-stopping moment when Anansi bayed his intruder alert to seriously contemplating taking the new guy to bed right then and there. Maybe that explained her reaction—attraction on top of adrenaline release.

  Oh yeah, nothing at all to do with that Tom Hiddleston smile. Damn Glory for putting that in her head.

  Resolutely, she flipped on the voice coder and called Jared. Playing the taciturn Phoenix for a while would cool her jets considerably.

  “Oh, look.” Jared’s face popped up on her side screen, unsexily stubbled and with deep circles. “His high and mightiness finally deigns to make contact.”

  “Don’t give me shit, J,” she replied, hitting the keys to change her avatar image for him. Jurassic Park’s Dennis Nedry would work nicely. None of her screens had camera function, but she kept a little arsenal of appropriate faces for virtual meetings. She liked to see her team, read their faces when they spoke, even though they couldn’t see hers. It wasn’t fair, but neither was life. She’d had a harsh lesson in that reality. “What’s the update?”

  “The update is we’re fucked. The new console won’t be ready for Christmas.”

  “Is this when I say I told you so?”

  “Don’t be a bitch.”

  She flinched a little at that, but that was only the ultimate guy insult at play, insinuating femininity. Fortunately Jared just plowed onward, not noticing she hadn’t replied.

  “This is when you tell me you got the prototype.”

  “Got it this morning.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I sent that a week ago. There has to be a faster way to get this shit to you.”

  “Not and meet my conditions for privacy.”

  “The team has a betting pool going, you know, on why you’re so obsessed with privacy. Top vote at this time is disfiguring disease.”

  “Leprosy is a curse. Not very PC of them to joke about it.”

  “Nobody’s laughing here. You cripple the team by not being on site. They resent that.”

  “I’m happy to resign anytime. I think I could find someone else to hire me.”

  Jared gave the screen the bird, face full of frustration. Em had worked with him in person, back in the day at Gametronix, when she’d been fresh out of school and full of ideals. Jared had been her team leader and her first real introduction to the knee-jerk misogyny in the world of gamers and game programming.

  He’d been there the day they fired her.

  When they called her to the meeting, she’d thought it would be another session to strategize how to deal with the trolls. They’d hacked Amazonia again overnight, though she, Jared and the rest of the team had spent the past eight hours—since 3 a.m.—getting it back up and installing the new firewall she’d designed. That she’d spent every waking hour and a bunch she should have been sleeping working on. She’d been determined to keep them from destroying her game.

  She’d also thought Gametronix was on her side.

  Stoned with lack of sleep and stressed to the gills from the death threats, not to mention the new “game” making the rounds where players could beat and rape an avatar with her face, it took a few minutes to realize that sleek conference room held only her, Jared, the CEO, the head of HR and a guy in a sharp suit whose face remained a blur in her memory.

  “We’re pulling the plug on Amazonia,” Hurston, the CEO informed her without preamble. “Our parent company made the call, but the board agrees. The hacking attempts have put all of our servers at risk. The bad PR has our corporate partners uneasy.”

  The HR woman nodded, fiddling with her folder. “In addition, we believe you—and all our staff—will be safer with the product off the market.”

  “Safer, yes.” The CEO frowned. “We promised our customers entertainment, not the sorts of unsavory images and stories that have been broadcast about you. It’s time to restore what goodwill we can. The customers have spoken.”

  “Our customers—99.5 of them—love Amazonia,” Em protested. “You can’t let a few vicious bullies affect what we put out there. Jared, show them the numbers. We have support on every forum and the majority of gamers, male and female, are...” She trailed off because even Jared wouldn’t look at her.

  “This isn’t a discussion,” the suit said. The corporate attorney from the parent company, it turned out. He slid a folder of papers over to her. “You’ll find we’ve given you a decent severance package. I’ve included the noncompete agreement you originally signed, along with a letter of resignation for you to sign.”

  Stunned, she fingered the letter. “You’re firing me?”

  “We’re setting you free.” Hurston pasted a fake smile on his face. “Once you’re away from this, you will no longer be a target. You can move on. There’s a letter of reference for you in the package.”

  She’d laughed, a hysterical caw fit for the banshee they’d painted her as. “Reference? Where can I go with a noncompete? No one will hire me.” Especially after this, the unsaid words echoed in the room.

  Jared’s phone flashed and he glanced at the screen, then turned it over.

  Nobody said anything. The lawyer handed her a pen. “It’s better for you if you resign,” he told her, not unkindly. “Voluntarily leaving always looks better than the alternative.”

  Because they will fire you. It went without saying. She could maybe get a lawyer, fight it. But, in truth, she’d lost her fight. Even her husband, Henry, who shared her bed and the next cubicle, had had no more advice to give. “Jared?”

  Jared shrugged, a lift of the shoulders. “Nothing I can do,” he muttered. “It’s a good deal. Take it and get your life back.”

  So she signed. And the security guards waiting outside the door, not there to protect her after a
ll, escorted her back to her cube. A cardboard box sat on her desk, the office weirdly empty.

  “I sent everyone out,” Jared explained, ducking his head. “They didn’t want you talking to anyone and I thought it might be better to, you know, pack up without everyone...”

  “Shunning me?” she filled in, her voice cracking. “Did they know?”

  “No.” Jared finally looked her in the eye. “Not even Henry. I’ll call a meeting, break the news—and I’ll give Henry the rest of the day off, to be with you.”

  “Don’t bother,” she snapped. Henry felt as helpless to fix the whole situation as she did. Her getting fired would be just one more thing he couldn’t deal with. She picked up a few framed photos, which one guard took from her, examined, and then let her put in the box while the other watched, as if she might have rigged the place to blow.

  Jared said nothing more, just waited until she’d gotten everything material. They wouldn’t let her so much as touch her keyboard. Then he walked her out, both of them pretending the guards didn’t follow behind. He gave a miserable wave when they shoved her out the glass doors and stood in front, barring her from returning.

  As if she would. If she even could.

  When Jared left Gametronix to head up his own game division in Pete Alexander’s start-up, she knew why. He hadn’t protected her, but he’d at least stood by her side for those last horrible moments. So, after she’d become Phoenix—fuck their noncompete agreement—and a year and a half later, she’d offered him the prototype first. No idiot, he’d snapped up the offer and agreed to Phoenix’s anonymity and outrageous terms.

  They worked fine together, but she didn’t mind making him a little miserable here and there.

  No one ever accused her of being too forgiving.

  Jared didn’t dignify her offer to resign with a verbal response. They both knew he needed her. The moment he didn’t, she’d be gone. They both also knew that day would never come. Unless someone discovered her identity. Then the shit would well and truly hit the fan, ranging from lawsuits to devastating financial penalties to very real death threats. Though Jared obviously didn’t know that.