Any Way You Want Me

by Jamie Sobrato

  He sighed. “Online dating service—and you know how all the previous matches have worked out.”

  “Maybe this one will be better,” Yasmine said without sounding very convincing.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You know, I’ve got a friend I think would be perfect for you. She broke up with her last boyfriend recently, and I think she’s past the rebound phase now….”

  “Is she hot?”

  “She’s very hot. But, more important, she’s a good person.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, so hook me up.”

  “I’ll work on it, but in the meantime, I’ll definitely scope out the dating service girl for you Friday night.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you there,” he said, then wandered off.

  Yasmine turned her attention back to the nightmare of a software patch she’d been working on all afternoon, but her brain had given up. This was nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week.

  At the thought of the long, empty Christmas holiday coming up, her chest developed a dull ache. Her traitorous parents would be taking off for their annual trip to Paris, right in the middle of the holidays, leaving her orphaned at the one and only time of year she’d prefer not to be. They’d been going to Paris for Christmas ever since she was a little girl, but lately, tagging along had lost its appeal, and just once she’d like them to be more interested in spending the holiday with her than with their favorite city in Europe.

  All her friends would be spending time with their families, and she’d be sitting home alone, watching Christmas specials on TV and feeling sorry for herself. Some friends had invited her to their holiday gatherings, but she’d politely refused, not wanting to crash their family traditions.

  So here she was, a few days before the Christmas weekend, with her only holiday plans being the annual office party, and her only sure companionship a guy she’d just met—a guy she was entertaining using for sexual inspiration.

  How sad was that? Yasmine hated how alone she’d felt lately. Alone and strangely vulnerable. She suspected the feelings had started with the odd phone calls she’d occasionally been getting late at night. Sometimes silence, sometimes heavy breathing, sometimes even moans that sounded disturbingly like a guy coming on the other end of the line.

  She’d reported the calls to the phone company, but they’d said there was nothing they could do unless she wanted to change her number. She’d opted for waiting to see if the calls stopped. So far, no luck.

  They did make her more worried about the sense she sometimes got that she was being watched. But really, that feeling had been with her ever since her teen years, after she’d learned she was the object of an FBI investigation. Probably she was just being paranoid for no good reason.

  Whatever the source of Yasmine’s discontent, she was pretty damn sure Kyle could be a fun distraction.

  SOON, IF HE WAS LUCKY, he’d find out the truth about Yasmine Talbot.

  Alex DiCarlo, otherwise known as Kyle Kramer for the extent of his employment at Virtual Active, watched Yasmine from across the room. She stood up from her desk and walked down the aisle between two rows of cubicles, then disappeared out of the office. She was even prettier up close than she was from afar, and so much more a woman now than she’d been the first time he’d laid eyes on her over ten years ago.

  Her long black hair hung nearly to her waist, glossy and straight. Her huge, baby-doll brown eyes belied the fact that she was a wild child, a woman who’d once spent a year in a youth correctional facility, while her skin, pale café au lait thanks to her Indian mother and her English father, was unbelievably flawless.

  And she had a way of wearing tight clothes that could plant dirty thoughts in the head of a priest. Today, her black pants and stretchy red sweater had nearly made Alex forget the real reason he was watching her—not purely for her aesthetic appeal.

  But there had always been that conflict inside him where Yasmine was concerned. The desire to see justice served versus the sexual desire she stirred in him. Years ago she’d been utterly forbidden, an underage teen and the subject of his investigation. He never would have acted on his attraction, never would have even admitted it existed—not even to himself. Now, though, she was a grown woman, and the temptation was much greater.

  She didn’t know he’d been watching her every move for the past two weeks—couldn’t know—or that he knew all the details of her criminal past.

  Most important, she couldn’t find out his real identity. So far Yasmine hadn’t shown any sign of recognizing him. Unless she’d illegally accessed employment files that showed his FBI photo, she hadn’t laid eyes on him in nine years. Not since he’d testified against her in the trial that had sent her away to juvenile prison.

  He’d gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get close to Yasmine now—using old contacts to obtain a fake ID, fake job references, and he’d brushed up his slightly creaky programming skills.

  He’d also changed his appearance to ensure she wouldn’t recognize him. Six months of growing his hair had left him looking less like the FBI agent he no longer was and more like the obsessed surfer he was fast becoming. The tan he’d acquired from countless days on his surfboard added to the look, and the many hours he’d spent at the gym working out his career frustrations on the weight machines had taken his body from thin but fit to admirably bulky.

  A pair of colored contact lenses had completed his transformation from clean-cut FBI agent Alex DiCarlo to California surfer Kyle Kramer.

  Now all he had to do was get close enough to Yasmine to answer once and for all the question of whether or not she was still a hacker. But if he got close enough to find that out, would he then be too close to resist asking for more from her? She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and the most intriguing.

  But he couldn’t let that temptation deter him. He had to know the truth.

  Then he’d be able to get the hell away from this tedious programming job and get on with what was left of his normal life. He may not have his career in the FBI to go back to, but he did have a fledgling information security business that he would never be able to get off the ground until he put this obsession with Yasmine’s case behind him.

  In the past two weeks he’d cultivated his programmer persona while settling into the new office, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, and so far he’d been a success. With the technical skills he’d acquired while working to stop cybercriminals at the FBI’s San Francisco field office, he blended right into the offices of Virtual Active, Inc.

  But he wasn’t sure how much more of this charade he could take. He hated lying to people, hated pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be in this place deceiving an office full of basically decent people, even if it was for a good cause. He needed to get an in with Yasmine sooner rather than later.

  Alex had to know the real reason he’d lost his FBI career, had to know if Yasmine had been involved, had to know if he’d caused his own downfall or if someone else had helped him out of his job.

  His former partner, Ty Connelly, had been insistent that Yasmine was a major suspect in their investigation, and it only occurred to Alex recently to wonder about Ty’s motives. Why had he been so adamant in the face of so little evidence?

  Alex made a mental note to give Ty a call and meet him for drinks, where he could maybe pry some details about the investigation out of him. But he doubted it would uncover anything new. Ty was a good agent, a man Alex could trust.

  Probably more so than he could trust his own judgment where Yasmine was concerned. That was his most compelling reason for pursuing the investigation on his own—he had to prove to himself that he could get to the truth. If he didn’t, he would live with the doubts about his own competence for the rest of his life. He’d have to live with his own failure, and that was not acceptable.

  Forcing his thoughts back to the task at hand, he skimmed the new e-mail messages in his in-box and was about
to call it quits for the day when he heard someone clearing his throat behind him. He turned to see Drew Everton, still wearing the goofy Santa hat he’d been wearing all day, pulling his rolling desk chair across the aisle to park in Alex’s cubicle.

  “Hey man, congrats.”

  “About what?”

  “Bagging a date with Yasmine. It’s about time somebody besides Larry Harris got the nerve to ask her out.”

  Alex shrugged. “Thanks,” he said, playing along.

  And also hoping he could use this opportunity to acquire a bit of information. He’d gotten kind of buddy-buddy with Drew during the short time he’d been at Virtual Active, but he’d yet to broach the subject of Yasmine because there’d never been an unobtrusive time to do so.

  “So what can you tell me about her?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  “What’s to tell? She’s hot, she’s intelligent, she’s a programming genius.”

  “Is she that girl I remember seeing on the news way back when? The convicted hacker?”

  Drew nodded. “One and the same.”

  “You think she’s still into that stuff?”

  “No way. I talked to her once about her trial and everything. She said she was finished with hacking, that she was afraid she was being watched all the time and couldn’t imagine breaking the law again.”

  “You believe her?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? She’d be crazy to risk going back to jail,” Drew said.

  “Some hackers just can’t give it up.”

  “I’d be surprised if she was that type. I think she was just a kid who got in way over her head, and she learned her lesson.”

  Maybe Drew was right. There was a part of Alex that wanted to believe that of her, wanted to stop the investigation now. But the bigger part of him wouldn’t. If he could gain Yasmine’s trust, he’d be able to work the truth out of her…or her computer hard drive.

  Sure, he might have been able to gain the same information by breaking into her apartment, but he’d never have gotten access to Yasmine herself that way.

  “Well,” Alex said, fairly sure Drew didn’t know anything. “I think I’m heading out of here. See you tomorrow, man.”

  “Sure, see you.” Drew started humming jingle bells as he wheeled his chair back to his own cubicle.

  Alex straightened the papers on his desk, powered down his computer, then stood and pushed in his chair. This damn cubicle was a reminder of everything he’d lost, and how he had nothing left to lose.

  If he had nothing left to lose, then screw it. He’d do whatever it took to find out the truth about Yasmine.

  2

  “WHAT THE HELL is the matter with me?” Yasmine asked.

  Cassandra Holbrook looked at Yasmine as though she’d lost her mind, then turned her attention back to sorting through the sale table in the Nordstrom accessories department. She unearthed a pink leather handbag and held it up to admire. “You’re insane?”

  “Possibly.”

  Only a day had passed since Kyle had asked Yasmine to the office party, and in the ensuing twenty-four hours she’d become obsessed with the idea. She’d done her usual ogling during work hours, but the staring had been accompanied by fantasies that had a very real possibility of happening. For the first time in a long while, she felt truly excited, exhilarated and jittery like a teenager looking forward to her first date. Now she wanted to find a gift for him, something to give him just for the sake of propriety, and then maybe something a little sexier to give him if all went the way she hoped it would.

  Cass found a vanity mirror inside the pink handbag and checked her flawless makeup in it, then fluffed her wavy chestnut-brown hair before continuing to explore the bag’s inner compartments.

  Holiday shoppers milled about the downtown store, and a man wearing a lavender sweater edged Yasmine out of the way to grab a pair of discounted earmuffs. She elbowed herself back to her spot across from Cass and kept scanning the pile of merchandise for the perfect gift.

  Yasmine had dialed her best friend’s number on her way out of the office this afternoon and begged for some help picking out a gift for the hot guy she barely knew. Cass, as always, hadn’t failed her. Never in her life had she missed an opportunity to shop.

  “Why are you all of a sudden worried about your insanity?” asked Cassandra.

  “This guy I’m buying the gift for? I think I’ve got a thing for him. And I’m pretty sure he won’t want a pink handbag.”

  “Having the hots for him is a problem because…?”

  “For one, he works with me, but more important, he’s a total pretty boy.”

  “I’ll never understand your aversion to beautiful men.”

  “I don’t want a guy who’s obsessed with appearances. And this guy has actual highlights. Like, the kind from the salon.”

  “So? Lots of men are getting color these days. I think it’s sexy.”

  “Pretty soon men are going to be getting bikini waxes. That is not sexy.”

  “What planet have you been living on?”

  Yasmine gaped at Cass. “Don’t tell me men are becoming that obsessed with their appearances.”

  Lavender-sweater guy gave her a withering look, and she rolled her eyes at him.

  “Honey, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but my last boyfriend recommended the woman who does my waxes now.”

  “Then why didn’t he get the hair on his ass waxed off?” One of the many unwelcome tidbits of her love life Cass had foisted on Yasmine.

  Cass shuddered. “Beats me. He brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘love handles.’”

  Yasmine grabbed a high-tech-looking no-spill coffee mug and decided it was possibly the most boring gift on earth. Clearly, she wasn’t going to find the ideal present for Kyle here at the clearance table.

  “I want a guy I won’t have to compete with for time in front of the bathroom mirror.”

  “Maybe this new guy is just naturally beautiful. Then you’ve got the best of both worlds.”

  Yasmine bit her lip. “He does look kind of like a surfer. I guess it’s possible he achieved natural highlights and a perfect tan in the great outdoors.”

  “See, you’ve just spent so many years around all those computer geeks in your office, you don’t recognize a genuinely outdoorsy guy when you see one.”

  “Speaking of guys I work with, there’s one I think you should go out with,” Yasmine said, knowing there’d never be a perfect time to broach the subject of a blind date with Cass.

  She stared across the sale table at Yasmine in abject horror. “You. Did not. Just suggest. A blind date.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Forget it!”

  Admittedly, Cass had experienced some of the worst blind-date luck on the planet, and she seemed much happier without a guy in her life than she did with one. “This guy is different. He’s smart, funny, nice, cute—”

  “I don’t do computer geeks, nerds or any other sort of New Economy professionals.”

  “So, what? You’re eliminating ninety percent of the men in the Bay Area? Restricting yourself to impoverished teachers, janitors and the homeless?”

  “I’m just being efficient, that’s all. I know what I want, and I’m not going to waste my time on the losers who don’t meet my criteria.”

  “You’ve been getting awfully picky lately,” Yasmine blurted before she could catch herself. She’d danced around the subject of Cass’s recent rejection of the dating scene, afraid of entering territory her friend didn’t want to broach.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve learned by now what I like and don’t like. I know I’ve been telling people for the past decade or so that I’m twenty-nine, but—”

  “You’re not twenty-nine?” Yasmine tried her best to look genuinely shocked, but judging by Cass’s expression, she’d failed.

  “I’m actually thirty-nine, smart-ass.”

  “Well, you look amazingly young for your a
ge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean, in college, you really did blend in. You looked just as young as the rest of us.”

  Cass shrugged. “I worked at it. Dressed young, talked young, dated younger men. I guess it’s become kind of a habit by now.”

  Yasmine resisted asking what seemed an obvious question—why bother to hide her age all this time? She knew Cass had her insecurities, but overall, she was one of the most confident women Yasmine knew.

  “Do you think your friends will like you less if they think you’re over thirty?”

  “Well, sure. If I tell everyone now, they’ll know I’ve been lying all this time.”

  “You don’t have to lie to the next guy you date.”

  “Of course I do. That’s the thing about lying—once you start, you’ve got to keep doing it.”

  Yasmine sighed. “If a guy is really worth your time, he won’t care about your age.”

  “I care about my age. And that’s what ultimately matters. I don’t want to be over the hill.”

  “You’re not even at the top of the hill yet. Besides, my work buddy wouldn’t care at all about your age. He’s probably in his mid to late thirties.”

  Cass liked to talk a good game about how she wasn’t embarrassed of her past as a stripper, but it never quite rang true to Yasmine. She had a feeling this age thing was connected somehow.

  “I’m going to pretend you never mentioned this whole blind-date idea to me. Let’s get back to the far more interesting subject of you hooking up with the office hottie.”

  Yasmine decided the best approach wasn’t to push any further. Drew’s only hope with Cass would be if Yasmine could arrange for them to “accidentally” meet, but she’d have to bide her time now, wait for the right opportunity.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Yes, he’s a hottie, But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s an office mate. What happens if we do hook up?”

  “I dated the mailroom guy once for a few months.”