Resolved To. Carole Buck
of her feminine charms. “But if it’d make me happy to have you come along...”
There was no need for her to finish the sentence. From what Lucy had observed, Hastings Chatwell Lee IV would lie down like a rug and let himself be stomped on by a herd of hobnail-booted hippos if he had an inkling that it would please his silver-haired sweetie pie.
“It’s a tempting offer, Tiff,” she acknowledged after a few seconds. “But I’m going to pass.”
A hint of steel entered Tiffany’s eyes. She opened her mouth, plainly intending to press her case. She was forestalled by the precipitous arrival of a gangly young man whose buzz-cut platinum hair and small silver nose ring were in striking contrast to his starched white shirt—complete with pocket protector—crisply ironed khaki pants and spit-polished penny loafers.
The young man’s name was Wayne Dweck, and he’d recently joined Gulliver’s Travels as a part-time office assistant. Wayne was passionately interested in computer technology and so-called alternative music. It was Lucy’s impression that he spent the bulk of his free time alternating between surfing the Internet and slam-dancing.
“‘Scuse me, Ms. Toulouse,” he said, a bit breathlessly. “But you’ve got a seriously expensive long-distance phone call. Some guy named Sergei, from St. Petersburg.”
“Sergei from St. Petersburg?” Lucy lifted her brows inquiringly.
“Sergei Illyanovich Gennady,” Tiffany elaborated with an airy gesture. “I met him last summer, on that singles cruise I took. You remember. The one to the Galapagos Islands. Such a nice man. It’s hard to believe he was a godless Communist for most of his life. He’s probably calling to wish me happy New Year.” She turned a beaming smile on Wayne and patted him on the cheek, her rings glinting. “Thank you, dear.”
The nostril-pierced part-timer turned beet red, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a Ping-Pong ball on a choppy sea. “N-no problem, Ms. Toulouse. My p-pleasure.”
Tiffany returned her crystalline gaze to Lucy. “You think about what I said,” she instructed firmly, then pivoted on her heel and walked away. There was a hint of Mae West in the sway of her hips.
“She is so... totally...cool,” Wayne declared in an ardently admiring tone, sagging briefly against the door frame.
“She’s totally something, all right,” Lucy wryly agreed.
“She should have her own home page on the Web.” The gawky office assistant ambled forward and plunked himself down in the chair Tiffany had vacated a short time before. “Do you think she’d mind if I started one? I could call it Travels with Tiffany, and I could post pictures from all the trips she’s taken. Maybe get her to write some commentary. I could link it to some of the other outstanding babe sites, too.”
Lucy bit the inside of her cheek, struggling to keep a straight face. “I think Tiffany would probably be Battered by the idea. Why don’t you talk to her about it first thing next weak?”
It was difficult to believe that Wayne could blush more vividly than he had a minute or so earlier, but he managed it.
“You mean, like, face-to-face?” he gasped, gripping the arms of the wingback chair. “On a ... reality ... basis?”
“Mmm-hmm ...”
There was an uncomfortable pause. After much squirming, Wayne finally said, “Maybe... Maybe I’ll E-mail her about it. I kind of have trouble keeping my head straight when she’s there in the, uh, flesh, you know? I get sort of warm and woozy. The first time I was introduced to her, it was right after I’d had lunch at that Mexican place over on Spring and I was scared I was going to blow burrito chunks in front of her. I’ve pretty much got that under control now, though. Not the warm and woozy part. The potential hurling.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“The thing is, I think Ms. Toulouse in one of those women who was born with megapheromones.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pheromones. Like, sex chemicals. Bugs secrete them, big-time.”
“Oh.”
“It has to do with smell, mostly. Human pheromones, that is. I mean, sometimes you sniff somebody, and wham. Instant attraction.” Wayne cocked his head, his brow furrowing. “Did that ever happen to you, Lucy?”
Her pulse stuttered. Memory assailed her, sending a ripple of heat coursing through her body.
The subtle appeal of expensive spice.
The more provocative allure of natural male musk.
Chris’s scent.
Oh, yes. Lucia Annette Falco knew what it was like to “sniff” a stranger and plunge headlong into love. Or lust. Or some irresistible blending of the two. And although it had been nearly ten years since—
“Lucy?”
She started, more than a little appalled at the waywardly erotic direction of her thoughts. She’d come to expect a certain amount of nostalgic weirdness from herself on New Year’s Eve. But this was ridiculous! It was even worse than the eager way she’d devoured that newspaper profile of Chris she happened to run across a few weeks back.
“I’m sorry, Wayne,” she said, shutting her mind to the memory of the distinguished-looking black-and-white photograph that had accompanied the laudatory article. “Yes. It happened to me. I once... sniffed...a man and was attracted to him. But it was a long, long time ago.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to be nosy....” Wayne stopped, frowning. Then he started to snicker. “Nosy,” he repeated. “About whether you ever got turned on by smelling some guy.” The snickering became snorting laughter. “Heh-heh-heh. Nosy. I like that.”
Lucy didn’t, for a variety of reasons. She gave the young man a few seconds to recover from his self-induced amusement, then reclaimed control of the conversation. “Shifting to a more serious subject, Wayne,” she began, in her crispest executive voice. “What’s the status on the new software?”
The younger man blinked several times, clearly lost. “The new software?”
“That Mr. Gulliver ordered.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Wayne grinned broadly, back in the loop. “It’s cool. Cutting-edge, but easy to upgrade. Mr. G. really knows his stuff. I was just finishing installing it when that Sergei guy called for Ms. Toulouse.”
“Good work.” Lucy was a firm believer in positive reinforcement.
“Thanks. I’m gonna wait a couple of weeks before I start programming the specialty functions. ‘Cause, like, I figure people need time to get used to the basic system before they can decide what kind of shortcuts they want.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“Just one thing.” Wayne’s expression became wheedling, underscoring his youth. “Are you sure you don’t want me to load the encryption system I showed you last week? I’ve been using it at my workstation since Christmas. It’s awesome, Lucy.”
“I’m sure it is.” So awesome, she didn’t have a due about how it worked or why the agency would want to utilize it. About the only thing she remembered from the enthusiastic demonstration Wayne had given her was the sequence of keystrokes that supposedly enabled him to send coded E-mail anywhere in the world.
“Well, then—”
“We’re not the Pentagon, Wayne.”
“Jeez, I hope not! Do you have any idea how easy it is to access most of the Defense Department’s data banks?”
Lucy stiffened, flashing on a scenario in which Gulliver’s Travels was invaded by federal agents and shut down as a hotbed of hacker activity.
“Oh, hey...” the young man forged on, apparently oblivious of the