Double Trouble Read online

  I had a surprise for him.

  “Hey!” I shouted, then swung the skillet. It’s not sporting, after all, to just bash someone on the head from behind.

  I like to see the whites of their eyes.

  He turned, swore, and I saw in the nick of time that it was James. I averted my swing just as he caught my wrist.

  “What kind of greeting is that?”

  “Security system,” I said, my heart still going like a trip hammer. “Crude but effective.”

  He exhaled, the epitome of skepticism. “As long as there’s only one person. Why don’t you live somewhere safer?”

  He didn’t let go of my wrist. His grip wasn’t tight enough that I couldn’t have squirmed free, but he was warm and I told myself that a little human touch was welcome post-crisis.

  Assuming for the moment that James wasn’t pure predator of some genetically distant class of reptiles. He could probably feel the race of my pulse, smell my blood and all that. That would explain the glint of his eyes.

  “Because it’s cheap space and I’m impoverished. Sadly, I don’t have your array of choices for real estate.” I pulled my wrist out of his grip and headed back to the kitchen zone. My heart was still racing only because of the shock, I was sure.

  It had nothing, nothing, to do with James Coxwell standing in my place for the very first time ever, looking around with undisguised curiosity. There was someone in my cave and that was bad enough.

  I chopped with a vengeance, but forced myself to stop when I tore the nori seaweed in my frenzy. I took a deep breath but couldn’t dispel my incredible unease with having James in my loft.

  Probably he wanted something. Sadly there was no good way of tossing him out, at least not without his cooperation. He’s a lot bigger than me and stubborn enough to not leave before he was ready. Even rudeness wouldn’t scare him off.

  I looked through my lashes, just checking, and noticed only now that he had changed out of his suit. His khakis were too perfectly fitted to be off the rack, his casual shirt was open at the collar and his leather jacket was brown. He looked utterly suburban.

  And surprisingly good. I was definitely losing my edge. Celibacy was adversely affecting my judgment.

  More time running the stairs was definitely in order. I’d double up tomorrow.

  James was watching me, as if he could read my thoughts or at least gauge my attraction to him. Sick, sick, sick, to even be thinking of my sister’s husband in any sort of sexual terms. Sordid. Tacky. Beneath my status as a reasonable and sensible individual.

  Even if…but never mind that for now.

  So, the strategy obviously was to give James whatever he came for and do so ASAP, thus to restore my precious privacy.

  “Any particular reason for this unexpected pleasure?” I asked, infusing my words with about as much warmth as he had greeted me with earlier.

  He smiled, shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis and sauntered closer. “Is that a payback for the way I welcomed you today?”

  Caught. I shrugged, sheepish, and made a fuss over my fishies. “Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry.” He leaned against my counter-on-wheels. Fortunately, the wheels were locked down, saving him from a graceless tumble.

  But then, maybe it wouldn’t have been graceless. He’d probably checked the brakes before leaning. I had to remind myself that James was more observant than the average bear. Calculating.

  God only knew what he was concluding on the basis of my agitation. In self-defense, I gave him a double dose of attitude. “What do you want anyhow?”

  “Advice.”

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Be serious.”

  “I am. You’re the only person who knows the whole deal.”

  Wow, there was a frightening assertion. I feigned ignorance. “Me? I know nothing…”

  “Be serious, Maralys.” He dismissed my act with a flick of the wrist. “You listened to the whole thing today and I know it.”

  And here I thought I’d be so stealthy. I snuck a glance, but he looked more amused than angry.

  “What kind of person do you think I am?” I demanded, but couldn’t summon the right tone of indignation.

  “The same kind of person as I am. You listened. I would have listened. Case closed.”

  Well, what could I say to that? I chopped.

  “Go ahead,” James prompted, almost teasing. “Tell me that you were just curious.”

  “Well…”

  “Well, I would have been surprised if you’d done anything different.”

  Liza began “Farewell Mein Leibenherr” one more time and I considered that it wasn’t perhaps the most sensitive choice of music. I hit the remote and cycled the CD player on to the next disk, an Ella Fitzgerald greatest hits compilation. Cole Porter stuff. A bit more intimate than I’d like, but I wasn’t going to go change the CD’s - then he’d know that it bothered me.

  James seemed to be content to wait for me to say something. He was studying me closely, the kind of carefully assessing look that makes your hair prickle.

  Oh yes, lots of that male-female vibe. Hawk on the hunt for lunch. Or at least a good romp in the nest. I was a bit too aware of the proximity of the futon.

  “Don’t you have kids?” I demanded.

  “Karate night. I have -” he checked his watch, which was a nice elegant piece of machinery. You’ve got to love the style of a man who doesn’t flaunt his bucks with gaudy junk. “- forty-five minutes before I have to start back.”

  “And you came all the way into the evil city, just to see me. What’s wrong with this picture, James?”

  “You’re suddenly very modest.”

  I spared him a sharp glance, but his expression was all innocence. “Is that a joke?”

  “What do you think?”

  I glared at him, suspecting that he was messing with my mind and not knowing how to prove it. Yet. “It can’t be a joke, because you have no sense of humor. This is an established fact. And a man without a sense of humor cannot make a joke, at least not intentionally..”

  “Res ipsa loquitur.”

  I gave him a poisonous look. “If you’re trying to make me aware that you enjoyed some eight years of post-secondary education, while I copped out after one, your point is made.”

  “I’m not. It means ‘the matter speaks for itself’.”

  “Do lawyers all speak gook?”

  “Not so much anymore. But I really liked Latin.”

  “Because it’s logical and tough to learn?”

  “Because I loved Classics.” He picked up a slice of cucumber and ate it. “Given my choice, I would have been a Classics major, maybe taught Roman history somewhere and deciphered old inscriptions.”

  I stared at him. This did not jive with what I knew of him, but then a lot of the things I’d seen and heard regarding James Coxwell in the last twenty-four hours didn’t jive with what I thought I’d known about him. That sentence is not nearly as troubling as its import, btw. “Get out.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Then, why didn’t you do it?”

  “I said given my choice.” He arched one brow, daring me to challenge him on this. “I haven’t had choices ever. It’s kind of a novelty.”

  “You could have made choices anyhow.”

  James chuckled and I knew what he was thinking. I’d heard his father. How could a kid have defied that? And I suppose that sooner or later, doing what you’re told becomes a habit.

  Just like not doing what you’re told does.

  “Was he always that way?”

  “What way?”

  “Bombastic. Judgmental. Furious. Choose a negative attribute - your former father seems to have them all in abundance supply.”

  James winced. “No. I’ve only seen him lose it a couple of times and that’s been recent. He was always old stone face, the king of self-control.”

  “At least you came by that honestly.”

  He laughed.


  I didn’t. I chopped, and James looked around. What more could I say?

  Well, I did have one question. “So, are you a victim of your father’s parenting?”

  “How so?”

  I had his attention but good, and trod carefully. “Well, is that why you give away so little and make such tough calls?”

  Subtext being - is that why your marriage tanked?

  James thought about it, considering the question before he replied. “No. I’m a product of it.”

  “Explain.”

  “More accurately, I’ve experienced that parenting. What I make of that experience is up to me. I don’t have to, for example, parent the way he did, although the instinctive reaction is often the one I experienced.”

  I remembered Marcia saying how annoying it was to be sounding like our Mom when she scolded the boys. I nodded, then looked at him. “Do you follow that instinct?”

  “I try like hell not to.”

  “You don’t seem to have done much with that experience yet. I mean, it could be said that you’re living a shadow of your father’s life.”

  “It could have been,” he corrected softly. “But I’m just getting warmed up. Maybe the real test is seeing what I do with it from here.”

  Our gazes met and held and things definitely headed to the land of toasty. I could imagine that learning that Robert Coxwell wasn’t really your father might not entirely be a bad thing. I looked away, feigning fascination with my prep work and James looked around, the silence stretching between us.

  “What do you do here, anyhow?” he asked finally.

  “I write code.” I checked but James was still waiting, my answer clearly having been deemed insufficient. “Besides the advice column, which was an idea that has yet to generate the advertising revenue I’d hoped for, I design websites and web-interactive business solutions.”

  “Like?”

  “You don’t really want to know.”

  He pulled up a stool and shed his jacket. “Actually, I do.”

  I looked again, looked hard, but James really did seem interested. “In forty-five minutes?”

  He grinned. “Forty. Give me the executive summary.”

  I put down my knife and gave it to him from both barrels. He’d asked for it, but I didn’t expect him to survive. “Okay, right now I’m doing a remote human resources solution for a software company with telecommuting employees and freelancers all over the world. They don’t want to ship forms all over the place, so we’ve created a secure web portal for employees. They can log in and update their records and request forms and modify their coverage. They have a cafeteria style benefits plan that people can change as their needs change and their single office person was drowning in paperwork. This way it’s streamlined and the single person can still keep on top of things.”

  To his credit, James didn’t so much as blink. He was making short work of my cucumber slices, though. “How secure a portal?”

  Trust him to cut to the beast at the core of the thing. “As secure as I can make it.”

  He looked me dead in the eye. “How secure is that?”

  “Not nearly enough.” I shrugged. “It’ll be as tight as a drum when I deliver, but anything can be hacked with time.”

  “You have a contract with these people?”

  “Well, duh.”

  James put out his hand.

  I knew what he wanted but I shook my head. “My business is my business, thank you very much.”

  “And you can’t afford a sufficiently experienced legal counsel who could firewall you from the kinds of liability claims you could face from this.”

  “Excuse me, but…”

  “Maralys, you’re talking about social security numbers, and tax withholding data, and income and addresses and God knows what other personal information, all in one handy database. You’d be in deep trouble if someone hacked into this and used the data illegally.”

  “Anything can be hacked!”

  “And they probably know that.”

  “They should. I told them.” I sliced with unnecessary force.

  “But if the worst case happens, they’ll have to do something to make it look good. You’re a freelance contractor, Maralys, and the best candidate for scapegoat.”

  There was an ugly little bit of reality and one I couldn’t argue. He was right and we both knew it. “Thing is, I assumed they had an intranet, but they don’t.”

  “Intra: within. As opposed to inter: between.” James toyed with a cucumber slice. “You thought they had a private network but they don’t. You’re having to move this data over the public data freeways. Even worse.”

  I nodded, impressed despite myself. “Who says Latin is dead?”

  “Wasn’t me.” He met my gaze. “And this has given you a huge security problem.”

  “Enormous,” I admitted, because there didn’t seem to be a lot of point in being cagey. “An intranet is controlled much more easily, because there are only a certain number of portals and you know what and where they all are. Using the Internet…” I shuddered. “It’s filled with pitfalls. I’m logging tons of hours to try to plug the holes. I’m good, but I won’t be babysitting this after delivery. They’re not paying me nearly enough for that.”

  “Why wouldn’t they have an intranet?”

  “Cost. Their workers are few and far flung.” I put down the knife. “But I assumed that since they’re swapping all this proprietary code back and forth that they’d have a more long term view and bitten on the cost.”

  “To protect their investment.”

  “Uh huh.” I sliced with undisguised disgust. “But they’re a bunch of cowboys. I should have known better. Now I’m paying big-time for a lack of due diligence on my part.”

  “Or a lack of disclosure on theirs,” James mused.

  I looked up, like a dog hoping for scraps.

  “You could call it a breach of the understood t’s and c’s. Terms and conditions,” he amended when I looked blank. “You could certainly use it as a justification to amend your t’s and c’s, if not your price. That’s a big variable. It could be argued that it was incumbent upon them to make that clear to you at the outset.”

  I wagged the knife at him. “Careful, Coxwell. I’m starting to like you.”

  Again with the killer smile. He flicked his finger at me, as if that would summon the paperwork into his hand. “Give me the contract.”

  “Isn’t there some saying about the Devil arguing Scripture?”

  “Maybe there is. Think of it as a favor. I’ll sleep better knowing that your butt is covered in Teflon.”

  “Why? I’m a source of cheap daycare?”

  “Hardly. Call it an attack of conscience.”

  “A likely story,” I muttered, but I got the contract. I was pleased, but you probably already know that. I take care of myself, but there’s a limit to how many specialties a person can have.

  A pet shark has its appeal. Especially one who works for free.

  James pulled out his glasses and flicked through the contract, his gaze sharp enough to leave slice lines on the paper. I winced when he glanced my way. “Who wrote this?”

  “Me. I mean, who else?”

  “Don’t give up your day job, Maralys. Any two-bit lawyer could steer an ocean liner through the holes in these clauses.”

  “I don’t think so…”

  “I do. Maybe you and your clients can gather around together and sing Kum Ba Ya together.”

  “Why does that sound like an insult?”

  James chucked his glasses on the counter. “This contract’s got no teeth, Maralys. You might as well not have a contract at all.” Decision made, James folded it up and tucked it away in his jacket pocket along with his glasses. “I’ll get you a new one in the next couple of days. There’s so much to revise that it won’t be legible by the time I mark it up.”

  I don’t much take to people making decisions for me. Helping is one thing, this was another.

  And yo
u ought to know by now that I wasn’t going to be shy about making my feelings known.

  * * *

  Subject: thanks for the brews

  Hey, querida -

  Nameless maid of silken voice and keen wit;

  Thine beer arrived without nary a slip.

  I’d share with thee a divine sip

  If you’d come my way, upon an airship.

  ;-D>

  What do you say?

  Dennis

  –-

  I propped a hand on my hip and gave James my best glare. It’s a pretty good one, but he didn’t even flinch. “Who asked you to play God? I didn’t hire you and I don’t need your handouts.”

  “Wrong-o,” he said, no doubt deliberately echoing my earlier challenge. “You can’t afford me, and you do need me. This contract is proof enough of that.”

  James grinned and braced his elbows on the counter, clearly making an effort to charm me into agreement.

  It damn near worked, but what he said was the ticket. “Let’s just say that I owe you for the other night. You trust people too much, Maralys. It’s no wonder you get stung. Let me build you the kind of firewall that I understand. Let me do this for you.”

  I was touched - and weakening - though I’d be damned if I’d let it show. “It’s signed already. Too late for you to play superhero.”

  “Not at all. Say you don’t deliver until they sign my addendum.” He winked. “Don’t worry. It will be in perfectly good faith and a natural clarification of the standing agreement given the change in the understood situation.” He paused for a heartbeat. “Tell them that your prick lawyer made you do it. They’ll believe you.”

  I laughed at that and we both relaxed a little. “I guess you do owe me,” I mused.

  “In more ways than one.”

  I left that one alone. All alone. It was getting a bit convivial for me. “But you didn’t come here to fix my contract.”

  “Nope.”

  “What, then?”

  James got up and paced around the perimeter of my loft, then came back to me. “You know, I’m starting to have a certain empathy for salmon.”