Virtually Perfect

She turned the computer off, ruthlessly cutting the connection.

Collapsing on the soft cushions, she groaned in frustration—this night was just not going well. She had always looked forward to these times with Rider. Meeting him had made her typically quiet evenings exciting.

Though physically it was difficult to be so consistently aroused by someone who could never be there to actually help you release those passions, for her it had been wonderful just to be able to feel them—to walk around basking in the glow of it, to dream of it at night, and to be blissfully unafraid of the pain or disappointment that inevitably followed when you dared those things in real life.

Though she didn’t feel so great at the moment. It was distressing to realize that this wonderful interlude she had discovered and enjoyed was coming to an end. He wanted more, and she did not believe there could be more. She would not be meeting Rider the next evening, for talk or anything else. He would not stop pushing her, and she knew she would not hold out against him in the long run. And that would be an awful mistake.

She knew exactly what she had to do to get some distance on this situation, to grab control of it and put it behind her. First, she could never meet with him again, obviously. Next, she had to write about it. She had experienced Internet romance, right? She had faced the tough decision, and she had made it. Now it was time to share what she had learned with her readers. Only then could she move on and forget all this. Hauling herself upright, she grabbed her laptop again. She opened a blank word-processing page and went to work.

2

“WELL, THIS ISN’T a bad start, but we need more.”

Raine resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and stared at Duane, her managing editor, straight in the eye. She liked him, though grudgingly at times such as now.

“I need to add in the research, get some outside interviews. That should round it off. This is just the first draft, obviously.”

Duane nodded and set the draft of the article she had been up nearly all night writing on the desk between them. She could’ve had his job if she had wanted it, but she liked being a writer. Duane was a good manager, and oddly, he seemed to enjoy it.

He was twenty-eight, almost four years younger than her, fresh out of graduate school, and on the job for a year. He was cute in a frat-boy kind of way, with shaggy dark brown hair and bright-blue eyes. Half the women in the building were gaga for him. Raine just couldn’t work up that kind of enthusiasm, though she had come to respect him as an editor.

He had one of those low-key, soft-spoken, intensely focused personalities that could be deceptive at first. But when the chips were down, or when he wanted things to go his way, he would wield his will like a sword. So far, he’d kept the ship on course, and skillfully managed a diverse group of writers at the magazine. But at the moment, Raine wasn’t in the mood to be managed.

“C’mon, Raine. You know as well as I do what you have to do here to make this article pop. The real meat of it is in the move from online to real life. You need to meet him. This is too good to pass up. See it through.”

She just glared, and her voice was stiff and caustic when she spoke. “Is that an order? Just how far would you like me to take this, Duane?”

“I’m not saying you have to marry the guy, or do more than have a cup of coffee with him. But you have already invested all this time in establishing a connection with him, right? And how can you answer the questions that are facing readers if you haven’t really put yourself in their place?” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and she resisted the urge to squirm under his gaze.

“This isn’t a real romance, is it? You have chalked this up as research?”

She closed her eyes and thought of all she had left out of the draft—if only Duane knew the connections she had “established” with Rider. She’d left out most of the intimate material and had written up the experience as a light flirtation, a dalliance. She wasn’t about to expose the reality—or herself—like that for the sake of a column. But deep down, she knew that Duane was right, and just for the moment, she hated him for it.

She nodded. “More or less. But he is a nice person, as far as I know, and you can’t just play with people’s feelings, Duane. He’s not just a lab rat for the article.”

Nodding again, Duane quirked an eyebrow.

“If the safety aspect of it is worrying you, we can help with that. I don’t expect you to go out and meet some creep by yourself.”

“He’s not a creep.” She felt a headache fuzz her thoughts. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, but that’s what we need to know. And what you need to find out.” He picked up the draft and handed it back to her. “You pitched this, you make it work. Meet the guy, then take another stab at it. This could be a killer story, Raine, but you have to see it through.”

“I THINK HE LOOKS LIKE Superman.” Gwen sighed dreamily, watching a man who stared intently at a computer on a desk directly across from them.

Raine snorted and put sugar in her coffee. “That’s Jackson Harris. I think everyone calls him Jack, though. He is the ultimate in computer gurus, from what Duane says. Been here about six months.”

Raine didn’t add that the new guy seemed to have taken a dislike to her on sight, for reasons she couldn’t fathom. He seemed friendly enough with everyone else, but gave her the cold shoulder. The few times they’d crossed paths he hadn’t even returned her hallway acknowledgments. So she’d stopped offering them. She only knew his name because he had been introduced to everyone upon his hiring.

“He’s a computer geek—that would make him a lot more like Clark Kent, right?” Raine didn’t bother holding back on the sarcasm.

Gwen stuck out her tongue. “Kent was Superman—and those dark glasses he always wore were so sexy. Anyway—that guy would look great in a tight blue bodysuit. How the heck did I miss him? This place is hiring one buff guy after another, first Duane, now Jack. I love working here.”

“Please. Spare me.”

Gwen just shrugged and continued to watch Jack work. “So what’s the news on Jerry?”

Raine rolled her eyes and leaned back against the kitchen counter in the employees’ lounge at the end of the hall. The staff often worked late hours, especially on a deadline. Having a full, stocked kitchen available was one of the luxuries that made the company worth working for.

“It was ridiculous. Terrible. He was like a dog in heat—it was crazy, I don’t think I did anything to lead him on. In fact, quite the opposite.”

“Yeah, the buzz is he wasn’t all too happy about it, either. Did you guys argue?”

Raine expelled a disgusted breath. Word traveled fast. Jerry must not have bought the stomachache defense. Oh well.

“No, no arguing. But I was barely able to eat because I had to keep stopping him from mauling me under the table at the restaurant. He couldn’t even hold a conversation. Everything—and I do mean everything, had to come back to sex. And it wasn’t just talk, he has hands like an octopus. So, when we got back to my place, I pretended I had to throw up to escape the good-night grope. Or worse, him wanting to come in.”

“Hey, that’s a new one! I don’t know if he bought your excuse though.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. I have a whole repertoire of techniques to get away from men at the end of dates. I’ll scratch that one off my list.”

“Maybe you should be thinking about things to do to get them into bed at the end of dates.”

Raine snorted. “All I would have to do to get Jerry into bed is breathe. There’s no point.”

Gwen’s jaw dropped in shock. “Wow, you really have forgotten, haven’t you? Jerry aside, orgasms are the point, girlie!”

Raine sipped her coffee and muttered over the top of her cup, “Really? I’ve never known a man who thought so.”

She turned and headed back to her office. Gwen followed, slipping into Raine’s office before she could close the door.

“Gwen, really, I have work…”

“Whoa—hold on. Are you trying to say you have never, you know—that you haven’t had…”

“An orgasm. Yes, I have. Plenty. Just not with a guy.” She sighed. “They haven’t got the faintest clue. I mean, I don’t want to have to tell someone what to do. Women shouldn’t have to come with an instruction booklet.”

“You should use that line in a column. Clever.” Gwen grinned.

“Yeah, right. Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian, maybe a woman would be better at it. That’s my curse—I’m stuck with men.”

Gwen sighed and dropped down in the cushy chair in the corner of the office, ignoring the impatient looks Raine was sending her way. When Gwen was intent on a visit, there just was no stopping her.

“Oh now, it’ll happen one of these days. But geez, I can’t believe you are what…thirty-two?” She ignored the glare Raine shot at her. “And you haven’t had one tiny tingle with a guy? I guess I can see why you don’t want to bother anymore, but you know you have to keep on trying. Sitting at home in front of your computer certainly isn’t going to help things any.”

“I never should have told you about that. Let’s just drop it. That whole thing is coming back to bite me in the butt now, big-time.”

“Why? Are things going downhill? Is the prince turning into a frog?”

Raine sighed and knew Gwen would not go away, and she would not be able to get any work done until she dealt with it.

“No. I don’t know. Rider’s getting too pushy, so I ended it. I wanted it over with.” She sat back, staring out the window at the dark gray clouds forming in the sky over the shops lining Pickering Wharf’s crescent-shaped streets. “But, Duane, in his ultimate wisdom, doesn’t want it over with. He says the article won’t fly unless I ‘see it through.’”

She screwed up her eyes and did a shabby Duane imitation on the last three words. “But I don’t want to see it through. I want to see it over.”

“Why? The computer guy sounds hot from everything you’ve said.”

“Yeah, well, he wants to meet, and I don’t want to—end of story.”

Gwen pursed her lips and considered that for a few seconds. “Maybe you should meet him.”

“Are you in cahoots with Duane? Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Maybe he would be the one to, you know…”

“Gwen, it can’t all be about that. And most likely, it wouldn’t happen. Hot online and hot in real life are two entirely different things. Besides, my luck isn’t exactly good lately.”

“How can you know that until you meet him? You two seem to have such chemistry. I talk to lots of people online, you know I have all my pagan discussion groups, and we have a good time, but it’s not like anything you have been describing.”

Raine sighed. “Well, yeah, I didn’t count on it, it just happened. If we meet, all of that chemistry could go up in smoke.”

“So then, what do you have to lose?”

“Now you sound just like him.”

“Well, you know, I don’t think you should just dismiss it. You don’t have to get serious, but you can, you know, just take him for a test drive, so to speak. All in the name of research.” Gwen’s naughty grin almost had Raine’s own lips twitching.

“Not my style, Gwen, you know that. I’m tired of test drives. I think I am just going to take a break from men for a while.”

“You have been on a break from men for about ten years, by the sound of it. You need a man—a real one—who can flip your lid, so…”

“…to speak, yeah, I got it, Gwen. Stop.”

The warning tone made Gwen sigh and shake her head at Raine. Raine watched her pop up from the chair and felt a twinge of envy. Gwen was intelligent, quirky and an annoyingly eternal optimist.

As the main health and fitness writer for the magazine, Gwen had a body that wouldn’t quit and a lively attitude that drew everyone to her. She and Raine should not have been compatible at all, but they’d become very close over the past few years. Gwen changed her hair color weekly; right now it was platinum-blond with some red and green streaks for the holidays. Thanksgiving had just passed and Christmas was only a month away. Gwen was all sparkly. Raine supposed Gwen made everyone who came into contact with her feel a little sparkly, too.

Today she was slinking around in snug black leggings and a fitted black sweater. She wore at least a dozen silver pentacle earrings and little jingle bells on the toes of her short, stylish boots. It didn’t surprise Raine one bit that Gwen mixed her Wiccan jewelry with her Christmas decorations—Gwen celebrated everything—and at least the jingle let you know when she was coming.

Men tripped over each other when Gwen walked by, not that she noticed. Love ’em and if it’s good, love ’em some more and see what happens was Gwen’s philosophy. She just tripped through life and “trusted the universe”—as she was always advising Raine to do. And she was a good friend. Suddenly Raine felt like queen bitch. Expelling a heavy breath, she tried to make nice.

“Gwen, I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated with Duane and this whole article thing and I want to get it over with and—”

“No problem, sweetie. I have to get back to work, too. Oh crikey—he’s coming this way!”

“Who?”

“Clark!”

Raine puzzled for a moment and then saw Jack Harris appear in the doorway. He would make a lousy Clark Kent was her first thought. His hair was not black, but more of a chest-nutty auburn, and his eyes were not blue, but brown. He had a good build: tall, lanky, muscular and thin. Like a cowboy.

She frowned; he wasn’t dressed for the office. True, the magazine had a fairly relaxed dress code, but Raine valued a professional appearance. Jack did not look very professional in tight jeans and a black cotton, button-up shirt. His hair was a little too long, curling around the collar a bit; he needed a haircut, she thought. No, he did not resemble Superman one single bit. He said something but she missed it, and blinked at him, returning to the moment.

“Hmm?”

“I need to look at your computer. It will only take a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“Routine. We’ve set up a new security system and need to make sure everything is working.”

“Well, okay.” She rolled her eyes at Gwen, who was unabashedly checking out his butt as he walked into the office. As Raine passed by him to get to the other side of the desk, she couldn’t help but notice that he smelled great, like sand and sea.

She looked up, and locked glances with him, then tilted her head a bit, narrowing her eyes and studying him intently. She froze on the spot. Something itched at the back of her mind but she couldn’t reach it. Something familiar. His eyes cooled and took on an unfriendly edge that made him look decidedly un–Clark Kent like. He cleared his throat.

“Excuse me.”

She raised a dismissive eyebrow and slid past, following Gwen out the door.

“God, isn’t he hot?” Gwen gave a dramatic little demonstration of being weak in the knees as she walked down the hallway.

Raine blinked. “Jack? I guess. Though there was something about him… I think I have seen him somewhere, but I’m not sure.”

“Well, it’s a small town. You may have seen him around before and just not thought about it.”

“Yeah, maybe. There was something about his eyes. I just can’t figure out why he seemed vaguely familiar.”

“Oh well, you’ll remember. Anyway, okay, back to Rider— I think you should meet him, just for kicks.”

Raine rubbed her temples. “Gwen, I think I am getting too old to do things just for kicks.”

“You’re thirty-two, not eighty. Not that being eighty should stop you, you know, if you were. Just imagine, if he is even half of how you described him online in the flesh—so to speak.”

Raine could imagine. Imagination wasn’t the problem; reality was the problem. It never lived up. But still, what if it did? How could she ever know if it was worth the risk? She heaved a sigh and looked back down the hall toward Duane’s office. Even if she didn’t want to meet Rider, she felt outvoted by people who wanted her to do it. But what did she want?

“I need to get back to work. I guess I have some major revisions to do on this article.”

“Okay, well, but think more about meeting him, anyway—it could be the chance of a lifetime.”

JACK SWORE PROFUSELY at the computer as he tapped keys and compared what he was seeing on Raine Covington’s computer to what he was checking on his laptop. Something just wouldn’t take and he couldn’t figure out why. He changed the setting on the firewall—the device that kept the network safe—for this particular computer, and it would click off again the minute it rebooted. That just shouldn’t be happening.

He was going to have to take a deeper look to find out what the bug was. It would take some time and digging. Usually this was the part of his job as Network Security Administrator that he liked best—prying open the mysteries of the wires, swimming down into the information flows, right into the nervous system of the machine, and figuring it out. He could get lost in there for hours, forget to eat, and not care.

But now he felt the pressure of time. The last thing he wanted was to spend more time in Raine Covington’s office, so he would have to come in during the evening or on the weekend. It galled him how she had looked at him as if he were a bug on a microscope slide, and then dismissed him like one, too. It even bothered him that it galled him—everything about her was annoying.

He’d remembered her right away when he had seen her name on the employee list. She, apparently, did not recognize him. That was really not a surprise, but it was what rankled most, in spite of himself. Some things you carried with you, whether you liked it or not.

She’d barely noticed he was alive when they were in high school together, though he shouldn’t take that too personally—that was how she was with everyone. He’d thought she was the most beautiful girl in school, but her personality was far from attractive.

Living in a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood in the Connecticut countryside outside Essex, she rarely socialized with anyone at the school, and in fact, looked miserable most of the time. She obviously detested coming to school with the common folk. It hadn’t been a slum, for God’s sake—Eaton Marsh was a well-respected private school.

He had first noticed her in their sophomore year. He had watched her, considered talking to her, practiced what he would say—had a mad crush on her. She was beautiful then; she was drop-dead gorgeous now. But she had the same imperious attitude—that had not changed.

His parents weren’t anywhere near as wealthy as hers. They worked hard maintaining a small bed-and-breakfast in Essex, and it was a life they enjoyed. He had been raised in a home that was open to visitors nine months out of every year, and he’d loved it. His parents were warm, friendly people who’d encouraged him to interact with the visitors at the inn, who were often treated more like family than guests. Through those experiences, he had developed confidence and social skills that many young people lacked. None of it was enough to deal with the likes of Raine Covington, though.

But it was a small world, and now here they were again, and still, when she looked at him, she just saw through him as if he wasn’t even there. At least he didn’t have a crush on her anymore. Though he did feel a little rush of heat when she brushed past him—she was incredibly soft, and smelled like heaven. Flowers and citrus. He closed his eyes and shook his head. She may be a snob, but she was a gorgeous one.

“Is there a problem?”

He snapped his head up, eyes wide-open at her voice. She stood directly in front of the desk, watching him closely.

“A small one. I’ll look into it later.”

“From the way you were sitting there shaking your head, it looked like a lost cause.”

He stared at her then, and he felt something pull deep down inside his stomach. Emotions crowded in, confusing him. How could he still want her after all these years? Because he wasn’t blind, that’s why. God, she was hot.

Idiot. He didn’t want her—he didn’t even know her. It was Nilla, his phantom online lover who had his head, and his hormones, all worked up. Raine just happened to be there, a warm body for him to focus all his frustration on. Nothing more.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“So it is serious? I have a lot of work on that computer—I can’t afford for it to die on me. It’s been acting up lately, so if you could see that whatever is wrong is fixed, that would help.”

“It won’t die on you,” he said. “Just a minor security problem that has nothing to do with everyday functioning. We’ll figure it out another time, but I will have to get back into your computer.”

Her lips pursed, and he realized how much those delicate, arching eyebrows contributed to her expressions. At the moment telling him she was inconvenienced and displeased.

“I have an article due soon, I can’t afford to have these problems keep coming up, and I will be working long hours in here—”

He cut her off, his voice cold. “Don’t worry, I won’t interrupt your very important work, Ms. Covington.”

She couldn’t miss the sarcasm, and she felt heat stain her cheeks. He was angry, and she had no idea why he should be. Maybe he was just having a bad day, or was generally rude. Maybe that’s why they kept him in the basement, she thought with a little sneer. She wasn’t sure she cared, but right now she wanted him out of her office.

“Fine. Thank you. That’s all then.” She dismissed him curtly with those few words and went to move around her desk, when she ran into him again, directly on the spot she had bumped into him the first time. She made a mental note to move her desk over so she could widen that space.

Now he narrowed his eyes, pinning her with a glare. “If you want to be formal, Mr. Harris is acceptable, and if you want to be friendly—although I can’t imagine it—then it’s Jack. Jack Harris. But don’t talk to me like I’m one of the servants of the manor, Ms. Covington.”

He was taken aback to see those cool green eyes flare, and for a moment he was curious to see what would follow. Had he finally gotten a rise out of the cool Raine Covington? Then he saw the puzzlement, and the searching—it was amazing how you could see the mind functioning behind someone’s eyes. She whispered his name, more to herself than him.

“Jack Harris.” She shook herself, and blinked. “I’m sorry.” She diverted her eyes, looking down. “I just thought maybe we had met before.”

“No, I can safely say we’ve never met.”

He had just watched her from afar; they never had actually spoken. Right now, this minute, he found himself closer to her than he ever had been, practically pressed up against her slim, soft form twice within an hour. He shifted a little, trying to slide by, and it just happened that his shoulder brushed one of the soft mounds under her sweater. He saw her eyes widen, and felt a little jab of heat himself. Looking down, he saw a nipple bud tightly beneath the soft material, and felt a masculine surge of satisfaction. Oh, yeah, she definitely noticed he was there.

“Um…” She was flustered, he noted, and trying to move past. Getting a grip, he ignored his moment of insanity and walked around to the front of the desk.

What had gotten into him? Sheesh, she would have him up on charges of sexual harassment, and she wouldn’t be far off the mark. He also felt…guilty? Shaking his head again, he knew he had made the right decision about meeting Nilla or breaking it off. Now he was actually feeling guilty about having a response to another woman behind the back of his virtual lover? This was ridiculous. He had to get his life back. He had to have sex. With a real woman. Clearing his throat, he modulated his voice to be cool and professional.

“What kinds of other problems have you been having?”

“I came in on Monday, and for some reason, all my article files had been erased. I had backups of most of them, but it put me behind because—”