SS Geeks Bearing Gifts (v5.0) Read online

  And she was somehow going to have to get over that.

  ***

  Staying in her office obviously wasn’t calming her down, so Bethanne decided to supervise Mr. Greco’s intake exam. She wasn’t the only person who had found her way to receiving. So had every woman in the place and about half the men.

  As she pushed her way through the crowd, she saw Mr. Greco lounging in front of Craig’s desk, answering questions as if the response really didn’t matter.

  The crowd didn’t seem to matter to him either. He was clearly the kind of man who received attention wherever he went.

  Which begged the question: What the hell was he doing here?

  Bethanne almost pulled him aside and asked, but she got wrapped up in watching the way his hands moved as he made a point. His fingers were long and tapered, his movements graceful, and that voice—she still couldn’t decide if it was more Hugh Jackman or Gregory Peck.

  She completely lost her opportunity to talk to Mr. Greco during intake because she found herself wondering if his hands indicated the size (and elegance) of other parts.

  And while she wondered, Craig led Mr. Greco to the small video section of the warehouse.

  Craig also had the foresight to order everyone else back to work.

  They went, reluctantly, not because Craig told them to, but because Bethanne was there. And the young geeks all believed that Bethanne was too old and dried up to be interested in Mr. Greco. She clearly had to be in the intake area to supervise Craig (and the rest of them). She certainly wouldn’t be interested in a man as gorgeous, luscious, and just plain amazing as Mr. Greco.

  Still, she was glad they left. She trailed her employee and his beautiful charge to the video wing, and settled on a chair to watch.

  The video wing was small but state-of-the-art. Bethanne could have produced an independent film in that little section of the warehouse—if the independent filmmaker wanted a choice of three sets (a bedroom, a comfortable kitchen, and an outdoorsy scene that varied depending on what the interviewee wanted, thanks to a more-expensive-than-she-wanted-to-think-about blue screen).

  Mr. Greco chose a sun-dappled Mediterranean scene—lots of white with marble stairs and columns and an unbelievably blue sea sparkling in the distance. The image, viewed through a monitor, made his eyes bluer and his hair a richer black. It also brought out his glow, as if that sun-dappled whiteness had reflected on his own incredibly lovely olive-colored skin.

  Craig gave him the option of doing one, two or five v-logs. (“You won’t have to return as often if you do the first five right now,” Craig said, admirably repeating the pitch, “and you get a price break. Mr. Greco smiled at him. “Everyone loves a price break,” he said.)

  Bethanne watched, listened, absorbed, and didn’t remember a word the man said. When he finished, she turned to one of the lab techs (whose name escaped her—damn near everything was escaping her at the moment, including her usual level of perfection), and said they needed someone like Craig to do the edit.

  Of course, she had to whack the lab tech twice before she even got the woman’s attention. And then the woman asked, “Who the hell else will be as oblivious as Craig?”

  It took five minutes to remember who Bethanne’s macho employees were, and another two minutes to confirm that a couple of those macho, macho men weren’t simply compensating.

  Then she excused herself, went into the corridor, and took several deep breaths. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

  A single man shouldn’t make a sensible woman crazy. He shouldn’t make an entire business crazy, yet he had done that with hers.

  She finally got a grip on herself—or could at least pretend to have a grip—when she headed down the corridor to the intake area, determined to read his profile.

  Instead, she ran into him.

  Literally.

  The man smelled of sunshine. She noticed that first. He wore no cologne, none of that damn bodyspray so many geeky men thought improved their chances with the opposite sex. He put his very firm hands on her shoulders and helped settle her.

  Instead, shivers ran through her. His touch was quite unsettling.

  She wanted to melt into him, but that would be unprofessional. More than unprofessional. It would be embarrassing.

  And the idea of embarrassing herself in front of this man made her untangle herself from his grasp.

  She extended her hand. “Bethanne Dupree. I own Eros (dot) com.”

  His smile was slow and sexy, not the full wattage thing he’d done outside, but something infinitely more effective. “Ray Greco.”

  He took her hand, but didn’t shake it. He just held it, as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

  Her cheeks heated. Her whole body heated. She had a full-on major hot flash, even though she hadn’t reached that time of life yet.

  She made herself shake his hand once and let go. His fingers released hers a little slowly, almost reluctantly it seemed.

  She blinked. Each breath was a struggle for control. She held onto her brain like a woman under anesthesia trying to remain conscious.

  “I must say, Mr. Greco, you’re not our usual client.”

  He raised a single eyebrow. The movement was elegant, simple, and not affected at all. Had any other man done it, it would have seemed affected.

  He didn’t seem to know how to be affected.

  “Really?” he asked, and she couldn’t tell if the tone was sarcastic or not. (Hell, she couldn’t tell if his voice was more Gregory Peck or Hugh Jackman, so how was she going to hear nuance?) “What is your usual kind of client?”

  She bit her lower lip. Mr. Greco hadn’t been vetted yet. For all she knew, he was a representative of the competition, with a teeny tiny webcam attached somewhere on his person. If she spoke the truth about her clients, she might see a video of that truth on YouTube, and that video might make its way to 20/20. She could almost see the teaser: Internet Dating Services—what they really think of their clients, followed by her own voice-over saying, Well, usually, Mr. Greco, they’re fat, pimply, socially awkward men who make more money than should be allowed….

  But she didn’t exactly know how to answer Mr. Greco without insulting him too. Because she couldn’t say, Our usual client is a high-achieving male with an IQ off the charts since that would imply that Mr. Greco wasn’t a) high achieving or had b) an IQ off the charts.

  (Although she did think that. Why did she think that? Because he was so pretty? Pretty men could be smart, couldn’t they? Couldn’t they?)

  “It just seems,” she said, “that a man like you wouldn’t need a service to get a date.”

  “Ah,” he said, as if he just understood the secrets of the universe. “You’re right. I don’t need a—what do you call it?—service to get a date. I’m hoping that Eros (dot) com will help me find the right date.”

  “The right date,” Bethanne repeated. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? The right date. Not any date. Not just a date. But the right date.

  Already she could picture the advertising. Of course, Ray Greco would be front and center, saying in that delightfully deep voice, Eros (dot) com helped me find the right date. It’s so hard to find the perfect person on your own…

  “You know, Mr. Greco,” she said, “this would make a spectacular marketing campaign. I’m just heading to dinner. Would you like to join me? We could talk about the difference between a date and the right date.”

  His eyes narrowed and for a moment, she thought she had made a mistake.

  Then he smiled that multi-megawatt smile.

  “Of course,” he said. “Dinner would be absolutely lovely.”

  ***

  And dinner was absolutely lovely, and so was dessert, and so was the long, incredibly aerobic sleepless night that followed, along with the wonderful breakfast, and the too-soon parting. Ray—and he was Ray now, not Mr. Greco—promised he’d pick her up after work for another dinner and, she hoped, another sleepless night, and maybe an even better break
fast.

  Bethanne was whistling as she came into work.

  Only to find her staff running around in tight circles, everyone with an air of complete panic because, as Stuart finally informed her, the server crashed.

  “Why didn’t someone call me?” Bethanne asked.

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Stuart snapped in response.

  She flushed, but he was too distracted to notice. He and the other IT guys were trying to bring the server back on line, but every time they did, the damn thing crashed again. Stuart was making mumbly noises about calling Larry, which was something he hadn’t done since their awful break-up—Larry & Stuart’s, not Bethanne & Larry’s—nearly a dozen years before.

  “Why is the server crashing?” Bethanne asked.

  “Why is the sky blue?” Stuart snapped at her. “No one knows.”

  “Actually,” one of the IT guys said from behind a stack of microprocessing equipment, “they do know why the sky is blue….”

  “And we know why the server is crashing,” Stuart said, still using that awful tone. “You should know why the server is crashing. Everyone else on the planet does.”

  Then he disappeared into the bowels of the IT department, choosing not to answer her question. So she peered around that stack of microprocessing equipment at the IT guy who actually knew why the sky was blue.

  This IT guy—who called himself BloggerBoy and whose real name she couldn’t remember—looked like a typical Eros (dot) com client, the kind she couldn’t describe to Ray yesterday.

  (Was it only yesterday? Her entire life had changed since then. Surely it must have been weeks, maybe even months ago. So many things shouldn’t have happened within twenty-four hours…)

  “The sky is blue,” he said, “because of the way light—”

  “I know why the sky is blue,” she lied. “I want to know why the server is crashing.”

  “Oh,” he said and somehow managed to sound like a man who just realized his boss didn’t know how to add two plus two. “Because of the v-log.”

  “The v-log?” she asked.

  “You know,” he said, “of the really pretty guy.”

  He said that with such disinterest that she realized BloggerBoy was one of her extremely straight employees. He could note the attractiveness of another male, but only in a disinterested, just-the-facts kinda way.

  For some reason, that little detail about BloggerBoy surprised her.

  It took her a moment to get past the surprise and realize what he was talking about. “Someone put up Ray Greco’s profile?”

  “And his v-log. He paid for everything. And Rachel said to get it onsite as soon as possible because we’d get so many new subscribers that we’d probably make this year’s nut in a single day. Which, I suppose, we would have, if everyone who tried to log onto the site had been able to log onto the site. But we’re not set up for this kind of volume and it’s not going away. Everyone wants a piece of this guy, and if they don’t want a piece of this guy, we want to know how to become this guy…”

  His voice trailed off as he noticed his own slip.

  “I mean,” he said, “you know, they want to know how to become this guy.”

  “I know what you mean,” Bethanne said. She had gotten a piece of this guy and enjoyed every single bit of it. “Do what you must to get us back on line.”

  “Aye, aye, Capitan,” he said in a really strange accent—probably some film reference that she didn’t recognize. Then he buried his face in the electronics again.

  The server was down for the first time in their history. Ray’s beautiful self had brought down the business, creating the first real crisis since the early lawsuits.

  Somehow that didn’t bother her as much as his profile did. Not what was in it, but the fact of it. The fact that her staff had put it up, when it was clear she and Ray were involved.

  Only it wasn’t clear. It couldn’t be clear. Even though it felt like she had known him all her life, she had known him less than twenty-four hours, and in those twenty-four hours she had done things she hadn’t even imagined possible…

  She took a deep breath, trying to get the slow-motion replay out of her head.

  She had a crisis to solve and a dinner to have and an all night-aerobic session to look forward to and then of course breakfast and what had Scarlett O’Hara said? Tomorrow is another day.

  Bethanne whistled all the way to her office—which, she would admit later, wasn’t her normal crisis response.

  It wasn’t normal at all.

  ***

  But then again, dinner followed by aerobics followed by breakfast wasn’t normal for her either. Although it could become normal and she wouldn’t complain. Even if she collapsed from lack of sleep.

  The server came up on day three, Eros (dot) com got hit with more subscribers than it had gotten on its most successful four subscription drives combined, and all of the newcomers—every last one of them—wanted a date with Ray.

  Who seemed just tickled pink about it.

  Well, tickled gorgeous, anyway.

  When that man smiled, he was not just the prettiest man Bethanne had ever seen, but he was the prettiest man in the entire universe.

  She would swear to it.

  And so, she thought, would everyone else in the office.

  Somehow Ray had arrived at the office right at the moment the server came back on line. Bethanne wasn’t notified of his presence for several hours.

  In fact, she wasn’t notified of his presence at all. She saw him as she walked to the lunchroom for yet another cup of coffee.

  He was sitting on a desk in reception, staring at Stuart’s laptop. Stuart was sitting on a chair beside him, looking up at him worshipfully. Several members of the staff sat in a circle around him, offering comments.

  “I do hope this is work,” she snapped as she stepped into the room.

  A dozen people got up and ran to their desks. Stuart and the receptionist remained.

  “He’s scrolling through the responses so far,” Stuart said to Bethanne, proudly or so it seemed.

  “I never expected so much information.” Ray didn’t lift his head from the screen. He barely acknowledged her. “How am I supposed to pick the right date from this much information?”

  “There’s a program embedded into your account,” Stuart said. “You can sort potentials by whatever means you deem necessary.”

  “Hmmm,” Ray said, and pressed a few keys. “Like this?”

  Stuart leaned toward him, brushing against his thigh. Bethanne’s lips tightened. She wasn’t going to say anything. She had no right to say anything. After all, Stuart hadn’t done anything wrong, just flirted with a man who seemed oblivious to him.

  And Ray…Ray had paid for the dating service. He had the right to look through the responses.

  Hell, she would have looked through the responses if she had gotten that many. Which she hadn’t. Not that she had ever posted her own profile on the site. (She wasn’t, she kept telling herself, that desperate.)

  “By Olympus in all her majesty,” Ray said, “who knew that so many sour-faced women described themselves as intelligent.”

  “Maybe they are,” Bethanne said.

  Ray finally looked up at her. And smiled. That multi-megawatt smile warmed her just like it had the first time—every part of her except the little chill forming in her heart.

  “This is going to take me all night,” he said.

  “I certainly hope not,” she said. “We have reservations.”

  Stuart looked up at her in surprise. So did the receptionist. Bethanne smiled, even though she really didn’t feel like smiling at all. She wasn’t one of those sour-faced women, was she? What was wrong with her that her staff seemed surprised she would go to dinner with the handsomest man to ever walk into Eros (dot) com?

  “Yes, dinner,” Ray said. He didn’t seem to notice the harshness (and hint of panic) in her tone. “One always needs to eat. Especially with all of this facing hi
m.”

  “You can borrow the laptop,” Stuart said a bit too eagerly.

  Ray turned that smile on Stuart, who almost fell out of his chair.

  “Thank you,” Ray said.

  “Any time,” Stuart said. “It’s my pleasure. Really. To have you touch—”

  “Stuart,” Bethanne said, “don’t you need that laptop for work?”

  “No, not if I’m at my desk.” Then he flushed. “Which is where I’m going right now.”

  The receptionist looked at Ray, then at Bethanne, and finally she stood. “I should probably get some Post-Its from supply.”

  Bethanne could see the Post-Its on her desk from across the room. “Stay,” she said. “I’m sure Ray’ll be busy until we leave for dinner.”

  “And after,” he said distractedly, tapping a key as he scanned the material.

  And after. Bethanne would normally have been heartened by those words, but now. Because she knew he wasn’t speaking about dessert or aerobics. He was talking about the profiles on the screen.

  She sighed and walked back to her office, reminding herself all the way that he had come here to find the right date. Not any date. The right date. And what man, when faced with a willing applicant pool, took the very first volunteer?

  Except that he had taken the very first volunteer. The question wasn’t taking her. It was whether or not she was right applicant, not just the first available one.

  And he was clearly going to go through each and every one of those profiles to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake.

  ***

  She was able to keep it all in perspective—Ray, the aerobics, the profiles, the crashed server, the drooling women (and some men)—until the maitre d’ at the restaurant Ray had chosen let his arm brush Ray’s shoulder as he put the menu into Ray’s hands.

  The restaurant was exclusive, the interior dark and romantic, the table a private one in the back. They had been taking turns paying for dinner. On this night, it was Ray’s turn. He had chosen the restaurant, and if she hadn’t been so on edge, she would have loved the choice. The tablecloth was long enough that she could slip off her shoe and slide her bare foot along his thigh without anyone else noticing.