Toshiko slanted a look at Charlie as if to say male mating behavior. Thank God most of the men Charlie dealt with regularly got more warlike about their SQL code than their sex drive. Still…if Philip was lonely, he needed to engage, not sit by himself and mope.
One of the cardinal rules of her algorithm was that she wasn’t allowed to manipulate data to influence any pairing, but… She shot a sideways glance at Daniel from under her lashes. Yeah, that ship sailed and sank the minute she’d faked her own status and ended up here, with Daniel’s zing-potential mere inches away.
Fine. Since she’d already consigned herself to data-chick hell, Philip might as well get some good out of it. She scanned the bar, inventorying the Stage Two women, and her glance snagged on Meredith, meandering through the room with her usual approachable half smile. Charlie had always thought Meredith appeared a little vacuous, but tonight, looking a little closer, and (if she wanted to admit it) with fewer preconceived notions, she realized the almost-cheerful expression contained more hope and less absence-of-mind than she’d thought.
Lord, she could be a judgmental jerk sometimes.
Maybe…maybe she could help two people. All it would take was a little proactive data manipulation. She pulled out her phone and sent Meredith a surreptitious text.
She turned to Daniel, who’d made another sortie into her personal space, his hip practically docked with her own. “Why don’t we ask Philip to join us? We’ve got room.” Especially since you refuse to occupy your own.
Daniel’s brows flexed, and his smile lost some of its deadly wattage. “He’ll be okay. He just needs a little cheering up.”
The thrill that hit her whenever she solved a coding conundrum fired at the base of her skull. Direct hit. Nobody did uncomplicated cheer better than Meredith.
She caught Philip’s attention and beckoned. He jerked upright and checked behind himself before mouthing Who me? Charlie nodded, and he wove his way through the tables to their booth.
“Hey, Charlie. Toshiko.” He lifted one sandy eyebrow. “Dan.”
“Phil.”
Charlie rolled her eyes at the buried threat in Daniel’s voice. She tapped his forearm. “This isn’t about to turn into another macho face-off, is it?” She leaned close enough to whisper in his ear. “Because you know how well the last one turned out.”
“Sorry.” Daniel grinned at her, not in the least repentant, judging from the wicked gleam in his eye. “I’ll behave.”
Philip hesitated, but when Toshiko scooted over to make room for him, her default neutral expression neither encouraging nor discouraging, he sat on the outside edge of the bench seat.
A flicker of annoyance chased across his face and he gestured toward Meredith with his bottle. “That woman’s scoping you out, Dan. Jesus, you’re sitting here with two of the hottest women in the joint, and still they hit on you.”
Daniel leaned forward, checking out Philip’s line of sight. “Look again, Phil. I’m not her target.” He chuckled and flicked the base of Philip’s beer with a fingernail. “You are.”
“Me?” He blinked and straightened his spine. “Really?”
“Yep. Go on. Buy her a drink. Chill.”
“Right. A drink.” Philip tugged at his collar, his gaze darting from Meredith to Daniel. “What do you think she wants?”
Daniel smirked at him. “You’ll have to ask her that.”
Charlie peered around Daniel to check Meredith’s outfit—a sundress that morphed from a magenta skirt into an apricot halter top. Given Meredith’s propensity to dress to match her drinks… “Tequila sunrise.”
Both the men stared at her. “Really? You sure?” Philip croaked.
“Positive.”
Philip rose and gave a decisive nod. “Right then.” He turned and strode to the bar where he collected two tequila sunrises.
Ah. Excellent move. Matching drinks would definitely ping Meredith’s compatibility circuits. Damn. I’m good at this. Or maybe she was succumbing to code bias. She liked Philip and she liked Meredith. She shouldn’t overlay actual data with her own wishes.
She bit her lip and laced her fingers together in her lap, tracking Philip’s progress as if she were monitoring a wonky download.
He reached Meredith and held one of the drinks out to her. She looked up into his face and flipped her hair over her shoulder, displaying some strategic skin. But she didn’t take the glass immediately. Instead, she glanced at Charlie. For reassurance. A little glow kindled in Charlie’s middle. She trusts me. Charlie nodded, and Meredith returned her attention to Philip, beaming at him in full smile emoticon mode. She accepted the drink and clinked the rim of her glass against his. Philip’s face lost its last trace of anything but delight.
Ha. The zing. She could almost feel it from here, and it sent another zap to her own satisfaction receptors, pushing her grin into overdrive.
She settled against the back of the bench and caught sight of Daniel’s expression. If she’d thought his gaze was hot before, she clearly had no concept of scale. Incendiary. She was surprised her hair didn’t frizzle in its path. She cast a quick glance down at herself. No more cleavage on display than usual, and her skirt hadn’t ridden all the way up to her waist. She met Toshiko’s gaze and nearly fell over.
Toshiko’s left eyebrow canted halfway up her forehead, generating an actual wrinkle, and she’d drawn her lower lip between her teeth. What the heck? Charlie could count the number of times she’d seen Toshiko display anything other than mild disapproval on the fingers of one…finger.
She stole another peek at Daniel. He’d turned toward her, one elbow braced on the table, his other arm on the seat behind her back, boxing her in. He leaned forward until her curls brushed his forehead.
“Christ. That was so…you’re so…” He closed his eyes and his shoulders rose with an inhale. “How did you do that? How did you know they’d click?”
Charlie cast a panicked glance at Toshiko, who still looked as if a couple of her lab rats had climbed out of their maze and engaged in Cirque du Soleil acrobatics on the drapes. No help there.
“I just…guessed?”
“Tell me.” He leaned closer, and some trick of the halogen lights overhead made his blue eyes glow like sapphire neon. “How do you feel about PDA?”
Lord, he was so close. She swallowed, wishing for a glass of water, and tapped her purse. “I’ve got a smartphone. I don’t need one.”
“Not that kind of PDA.” His voice rumbled in his chest and vibrated against her arm. “Public displays of affection.”
Charlie felt as if all the blood had drained from her brain, leaving a buzzing white void in its place. “Why…why do you want to know?”
“Because I have got to kiss you right fucking now, and if you don’t want to do it in front of the whole bar, I’d suggest you come down the hall with me.”
Zingzingzing. “Okay,” she croaked, and allowed him to take her hand and pull her out of the booth.
…
Daniel drew Charlie down the hallway, past the lighted vestibule leading to the restrooms, and into a dark corner by the emergency exit. He braced his hands against the wall at her back, his wrists brushing her shoulders.
“Hey. I want you to test me.”
“Test you?” She still had the dazed look she’d worn since he’d announced his intention of making out with her in the booth.
“Yep.” He leaned forward until his lips grazed her cheekbone. “Try me. I can name all of Doctor Who’s companions from before and after the series reboot.”
Her shoulders shook, he hoped with laughter and not rage. He angled his head to check and got poleaxed by her killer smile.
“What did you do, spend all day memorizing factoids?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds lame, but yeah.”
“You did that? For me?”
He twined a curl around his thumb. “I don’t want to lose my pants in our next trivia smackdown.”
“Our next…? Oh.”
She lunged forward, tangling her hands in his hair, and kissed him. Her approach was a little off, they bumped noses and clashed teeth, but then he felt the brush of her tongue against his and it was the most perfect kiss ever.
Christ, the taste of her. He might never need a hit of alcohol again in his life as long as he had Charlie and her glorious mouth.
A scuffle of footsteps in the hall behind them, followed by a brief, whispered conversation and a burst of giggles, broke through Daniel’s Charlie-induced fog. He reluctantly backed off from their kiss, angling his body to block her from nosy onlookers.
His breath sawed in his lungs, and he leaned his forehead against the wall. “I can’t believe I pulled you in here. I never do this kind of shit.”
“Really?” A sound halfway between a chuckle and gasp escaped Charlie. “I do it all the time.”
He laughed and pulled back so he could see her face. In the wan yellow light from the restroom alcove, her cheeks were visibly flushed, her pupils wide. “You don’t say. In that case—”
“Daniel. Charlie.”
Toshiko’s matter-of-fact voice derailed his plan for another round, and he cursed softly.
Charlie released her hold on him as if she’d discovered she was cuddling a tarantula. “Um…hi, Tosh. Sorry about ditching you and well…um…yeah.”
She stepped to one side and tugged at the hem of her shirt. She might have imagined she was straightening it, but she only managed to further reveal the tantalizing slope of her breasts. Daniel’s mouth went dry with the need to follow that path with his lips.
“You ought to relocate should you wish to continue your mutual bodily investigations.” Toshiko’s tone held no judgment, and he’d swear she was fighting a smile. “A number of patrons have complained about limited access to the toilet facilities.”
“Right.” A setback. Fine. He’d deal. He didn’t want to screw this up. Not this woman. Not this time.
He raised one of her hands to his lips and kissed it. She inhaled sharply and curled her fingers into her palm. “Let me take you out on the Fourth.”
She shook her head, curls bouncing, and dropped her hands to her sides. “Maybe it would be better if we took this a little slower. I don’t think—”
“She will,” Toshiko said.
“Tosh!” Charlie glared at her and tried to pull her hands away, but Daniel held on.
“You will.” Toshiko stared Charlie down. Under that unwavering dark gaze, Charlie wilted.
“I will.” She fixed Daniel with an earnest stare. “But no surprises, okay? Promise you’ll call and tell me what we’ll be doing.”
Shit. I’m an idiot. Hadn’t he learned by now that she preferred the low-key and inconspicuous? Practically humping her in the hallway didn’t meet either of those standards.
But she’d kissed him. Surely that meant progress, even if she looked as if she was ready to bolt again.
Make a recovery, Shawn. Move this into to her geek comfort zone.
“I’ll do better than that. We’ll decide together at tomorrow’s trivia game.”
“You think you’re ready for a rematch?” Her voice regained the old Charlie attitude and her lips curved in a half smile. Score.
“Absolutely. But if not, think of your satisfaction when you kick my ass.”
She chuckled and led the way down the hall.
So he’d lost a little ground. He’d make it up again. All he had to do was concoct the perfect date in three days.
No pressure whatsoever.
Chapter Thirteen
Geekronym: FUD
Translation: Fear, uncertainty, and doubt
Definition: Any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
For once, Daniel was grateful for the archive project. Given how consumed his brain was with Charlie and their hot hallway session last night, he couldn’t have written a decent sentence to save his soul. The last of the archive statistics compiled, he emailed the report to Nelson, with a fervent prayer that his boss wasn’t a graduate of the shoot-the-messenger school of management.
His phone double-pinged, and he grabbed it off the desk. Another terse message from rosserx.
On the track of a doc re: the Argonne reboot. More later. —r
Funny how he didn’t care as much about taking down Argonne. Protecting other men from his schemes? Yeah. But not the kingpin or his minions. Not anymore.
He punched in Phil’s number to pin the guy down for a discussion about his defunct dating club, but the call went straight to voicemail.
Fine. He’d catch up later. In the meantime, he had an immediate critical task—building the perfect date. Since Charlie turned skittish again last night, he clearly needed to step up his game. Another trivia night tonight should get them back on the right track, but this weekend had to be perfect.
He had plans, damn it.
He’d learned enough about Charlie by now to know she didn’t like to be overly conspicuous, although he didn’t think she realized what an eye-magnet she was, even when she tried to turn invisible.
He needed a crowd. Not a small one, like in a restaurant or bar, but a huge one. If a crowd was big enough, it was almost like being alone, so much activity occurring at once that nobody stood out. A rock concert at the Moda Center? No. Too restrictive. Besides, he didn’t want to sit in the dark with hundreds of other people, most of them half drunk and all of them noisy, his eardrums in danger of permanent damage.
He wanted to talk with her. Walk with her. Discover all the ways—and he knew they existed—where they still meshed the way they had as kids. Uncover all the new subplots in the Charlie Forrester story, the ones he’d missed by walking away from her all those years ago.
His antiquated intercom buzzed, and Nelson squawked, “Shawn. Get in here.”
“On my way.”
Nelson didn’t usually summon him last thing in the afternoon unless Daniel had done something to enrage him. Had he found out about Daniel’s Charlie-focused, extra-curricular web surfing? Or maybe he’d gotten a load of the reader statistics that looked like a water slide at an extreme sports park.
He stood up, straightening his tie, and walked through the nearly empty bullpen to Nelson’s half-open door. “You wanted to see me?”
Nelson’s face sagged as if gravity had failed around his jowls, making him resemble a clinically depressed basset hound more than usual. “Come in, Dan, come in.”
“Any questions about those statistics? Don’t tell me there’s another server full of articles to catalog.”
“No, no. The stats are fine. Well. Not fine. But that’s not…” Nelson fiddled with a paperclip, mangling it into a lopsided corkscrew. “So. Do you have one of those stories to pitch to me?”
Daniel’s stomach tightened. At last. Nelson was ready to liberate him from cyber purgatory and let him write again. He shoved his hands into his pockets in an attempt to appear unconcerned. “What stories?”
“You know. The sensationalist shit.”
“I thought I was barred from anything controversial on pain of termination.”
Nelson swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing under his salt-and-pepper stubble. “The backers saw your report, and they’re ready to pull our funding.”
His fists clenched in his pockets. “Have they decided to shut us down?” He wouldn’t blame them. That clickstream data had been damning.
“Not yet.” Nelson twisted his paperclip into a tighter loop. “But if we don’t turn our negative readership around by next month, we’ll have to fold. I’ve already let the copy editor go, as well as the fact-checker.”
Hell, was that why the office was as lively as an empty locker this morning? “Who’ll edit o
ur copy?”
“I will.”
“Nelson, you’re not a copy editor, you’re a content editor.”
“I can do it. I don’t have much choice. Besides, you and Jerry turn in virtually clean copy. You’ll need to do your own fact checking.”
“I do that anyway.”
Nelson yanked his tortured paperclip into another half hitch and it snapped, dropping onto his desk blotter with a tiny clatter. “Are you sure you don’t have a story idea? You churned out this shit by the truckload before.”
Daniel shook his head. “Most of my sources cut me off after the Argonne story imploded.” He didn’t blame them. He’d have disappeared, too, if he’d had the chance.
“Haven’t you got something else? Anything?” Desperation edged Nelson’s normally blasé voice. He picked up one of the paperclip limbs and jabbed his desk blotter.
Daniel paced between the desk and the windows. If he’d spent half as much time developing new leads as he had cyber-stalking Charlie, maybe he’d have something that could save his job. Still, he had a few possibilities. The old fire sang in his veins at the idea of busting another scam.
“I might have something. What’s our deadline?”
“Yesterday. But next week’s issue will do.”
“Might be tight.”
“Work fast. I need a killer story by the issue after next, or we’re done, and I won’t be the only one out of a job.”
…
By Independence Day morning, Charlie still hadn’t decided whether she was relieved or disappointed by Toshiko’s interruption at Hana K’s. Sure, she’d been mortified when she’d realized she’d essentially jumped Daniel in public, hence the relief. But at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder what she’d missed. What other methods might he have in his arsenal to overload her senses?
But Tosh brought her crashing back to the real world. Anything they shared was a sham, based on a lie. Daniel had only showed up as her match because she’d faked her own profile. She was pretending to be interested in a relationship because of the bet.
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