A Nerd to Remember Read online

  A Nerd to Remember

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  Also by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  About the Author

  A NERD TO REMEMBER © 2016 Vicki Lewis Thompson

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Ocean Dance Press, LLC, PO Box 69901, Oro Valley AZ 85737

  Visit the author’s website at www.VickiLewisThompson.com

  Prologue

  Seven years earlier . . .

  Life in a sorority house had been a blessing and a curse for Jocelyn Salisbury. Solid friendships were the blessing, especially for a shy bookworm who needed friends who’d drag her away from studying to play volleyball on the beach. Parties were the curse, but she was a senior so this was the last Halloween bash she’d have to endure.

  The year before she’d dressed as Judge Judy but this time she’d taken her sisters’ suggestions and worn a sparkly mask and a harem costume. A revealing outfit wasn’t her style, but at least it gave her some anonymity since all the women gyrating to the deafening music looked very much the same.

  She should get out there and shake her booty, too. She’d been coached on her technique and she’d finally become a decent dancer. Instead she hung back by the staircase as usual and watched while she sipped beer from a red Dixie cup.

  “Having fun?”

  Adrenaline flooded her system at the unexpected sound of a deep male voice directly behind her. She took a calming breath. Guys who enjoyed these crazy parties weren’t ever her type so striking up a conversation with this one was pointless. She’d employ her usual tactic – pretend that she needed a bathroom break and slip upstairs to her room.

  But when she turned around to confront him, she forgot her rehearsed speech. Spiderman hung upside down from the railing on the first landing. She stared at him, fascinated by his position and the detailed costume worthy of an appearance at ComicCon. “Are you drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing up there?”

  “Waiting for a kiss.”

  “Novel approach.” Now she couldn’t get the Spiderman kiss scene out of her head. She moved a step closer and sure enough, if she pulled down the bottom of his mask, his mouth would line up with hers. Every girl in her high school had dreamed of reenacting that moment. “So you’re hoping that some woman will come along who’s seen the movie?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Interesting choice of words. Not hey, baby, come and get some of this but that’s the plan. He wasn’t a typical frat boy out for a good time. “You deserve points for creativity.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hesitated because acting on impulse was so unlike her, but the fantasy was too tempting. “Okay, why not?” As risks go it wasn’t a huge one, yet as she put her Dixie cup on the floor and straightened, she was out of breath and a little shaky.

  His chest heaved, too, which was comforting. If he walked on the nerdy side, he wasn’t any more used to kissing strangers than she was. When she touched his neck to get a grip on his mask, he sucked in air.

  Her heart pounded as she gently pulled the stretchy material over his chin and down past his mouth. The gesture seemed incredibly intimate. His lips parted slightly and his breathing changed.

  He had a great mouth – full and sensuous, yet distinctly male. At first she’d been mostly curious, but now she was eager to discover if he knew how to use what nature had given him. Cupping his face in both hands, she leaned closer and caught a whiff of peppermint. He’d thought of everything.

  Her pulse raced as she gently made contact. His velvet mouth was moist and supple with an underlying firmness that telegraphed skill. She’d never kissed a man upside down before and the sensation was more erotic than she would have guessed. Although she was tentative in the beginning, she soon grew bold enough to suck on the tantalizing fullness of his lower lip.

  He mirrored her, drawing her bottom lip in. When she began to explore with her tongue, so did he, as if he wanted her to take the lead. That excited her even more, and she shifted the angle to go deeper.

  This kiss was turning out way better than she’d expected. She’d rate it several notches above any she’d had until now. Either the guy had kissed a lot of women or he’d studied up on the technique because he was excellent at it.

  The noise of the party faded as their increasingly passionate connection became her only reality. His lips were so delicious that she didn’t want to give them up, but he couldn’t hang upside down forever. If they didn’t take a break soon he might pass out.

  That didn’t mean their make-out session had to end, though. She was breathing hard by the time she reluctantly let go and backed away. “You should come down.”

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded strained.

  “Do you need help?”

  “No.” Taking a quick breath, he pulled himself up. His arm muscles bulged but that wasn’t all that was bulging. Spandex hid nothing. Once he was on the landing, he braced his arms against the railing and gulped in air. At last he straightened, pulled his mask over his chin and started down the stairs.

  “Wait.”

  He paused and cleared his throat. “If you want a repeat, I’m not sure I can do that again. I’m still dizzy.”

  “I wouldn’t ask that of you.” She walked to the foot of the stairs and gazed up at him. She could still feel the imprint of his mouth on hers. She wanted it there again and she wanted whatever might come after those hot kisses. “Would you like to go somewhere more private?”

  “Where?”

  She climbed the stairs. “My room.”

  Chapter One

  Jaw clenched, Garrett Upton took the stairs instead of the elevator to the fourth floor law offices of Gorham, Tennant and Fielding. The exercise helped calm his agitation. If he’d done his job, the meeting with an intellectual property lawyer wouldn’t have been necessary. As chief of security at BMUS, an acronym for Beam Me Up, Scotty, he was supposed to protect the tech startup’s creative assets and he’d failed to do so.

  A receptionist ushered him into a conference room where his buddy Tony Bainbridge, the CEO for BMUS, sat at a round table next to Charlotte Wingate, the head of HR and the only person in that department for now. The company wasn’t big enough yet to warrant a lot of employees. Unless this security hole was plugged, it might never become the powerhouse they’d all envisioned.

  “Hey, Upton.” Tony gave him a big smile. “Don’t look so glum. This will work itself out.”

  “Yeah, but I knew Blake was bad news the minute you hired him. I should have set up more surveillance earlier.” Garrett took a seat next to Charlotte and put his computer case on the table in front of him. “How’s this for an HR nightmare?”

  “Like Tony said, we’ll get him eventually. We just have to figure out how to hang onto his daddy’s funding in the process.”

  “Yeah, there’s that.” Blake Pearson had received a job in exchange for his father’s hefty investment in BMUS. Initially everyone had thought he was merely incompetent. Apparently he
was also a thief. Garrett had been tipped off that Blake had approached a rival company offering to sell an app that sounded exactly like the one BMUS was about to launch.

  Garrett looked over at Tony, who’d uncharacteristically loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his dress shirt. “Going all Casual Friday on us today?”

  “In case you didn’t notice,” Tony said. “It’s exceptionally warm in here. The receptionist said the A/C is malfunctioning.”

  “I did notice but I thought it was me. I came up the stairs.”

  Tony laughed. “Of course you did. What are you bench-pressing these days? Three-fifty?”

  “More like three-twenty –” He stopped talking when the conference room door opened.

  A slim redhead wearing frameless glasses and a conservative navy suit entered the conference room. “Hello, everybody. Sorry about the toasty temperature. Should be fixed soon.” She’d pinned up her hair in a tidy arrangement on top of her head. Her hair, her outfit and the sheaf of papers she carried made her look quite lawyerly.

  She also looked familiar. Wait a minute. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Surely their lawyer wasn’t –

  “No worries, Jocelyn.” Charlotte got up to hug her. “It’s not that bad.”

  He nearly lost it. Clearly the Universe had a sense of humor. Seven years ago he’d left Jocelyn Salisbury lying naked and sexually satisfied in her sorority house bedroom. They’d had no condoms available so he’d had to improvise, but they’d had a lot of fun that Halloween night.

  Tony had been one of the nerdy friends who’d dared him to crash the Halloween party in his Spiderman suit. Rylan and Fraser Krause, also founders of BMUS, had been the other two who’d egged him on. They’d bet him he couldn’t score a kiss. He’d landed that and more, although he’d never told them the whole story.

  While it had been a nerd victory of sorts, it had been special, not something a guy should boast about even to his best friends. He and Jocelyn hadn’t exchanged names, but her red hair and sorority affiliation had made it easy to find her on social media. The posts and pictures had convinced him that she was as cool and sophisticated as the other women in that sorority.

  He’d decided against contacting her again. Sure, they’d hit it off sexually, but that didn’t mean she’d react well to the news that her mystery lover was a tech geek who could write and speak Klingon. Uncloaking himself would likely have ruined the experience for both of them.

  Thank God he’d come to that conclusion because when she walked into the conference room her gaze swept over him without a flicker of recognition. Her sorority house bedroom had been fairly dark. Although he’d had to ditch the Spiderman suit to enjoy the encounter, he doubted that she’d remember anything significant about him.

  For one thing, he’d changed a lot since then. He worked out regularly and had bulked up quite a bit. He’d never fit into that Spiderman suit now. These days he had a salon haircut, a neatly trimmed beard and a better wardrobe.

  He didn’t feel so much like a nerd anymore, but seeing Jocelyn rocketed him back to those days. By the time he’d returned from his stroll down memory lane, Tony and Charlotte had laid out the facts of the case.

  Jocelyn had made notes while they talked and she studied them for a few minutes before glancing around the table. Once again her blue gaze remained calm and professional. “What you have is circumstantial evidence. If you want to implicate this guy, you need more.”

  “Like what?’ Garrett was a little concerned that she’d recognize his voice but he couldn’t stay silent when the situation was critical and he was the guy who was supposed to help fix it.

  She didn’t react as if his voice had any effect on her. “A confession of guilt. And because you have this issue with his father investing in your company, we need his father to hear that confession.”

  Tony nodded. “I like that scenario. How do we set it up?”

  “I’ll work with Jocelyn on it,” Garrett heard himself say, despite the warning bells in his head. “We need to set a trap. Maybe we’ll find some ideas in the transcript I have from my conversation with the guy who tipped me off. It’s on my computer.“

  Jocelyn focused on him for the first time. “Excellent. I want to see that.”

  “Also, the sooner we come up with a plan and put it in place, the less likely Pearson will suspect anything. We have to act before he figures out we’re on to him.”

  “Right.“ She was all brisk efficiency. “I don’t have any more appointments until one o’clock, so if we can knock this out now, so much the better. Can everyone stay?”

  “You don’t need Charlotte and me if you have Garrett,” Tony said. “He’s our chief of security. Besides, if we head back to the office it’ll look more like business as usual.”

  “Good point.” Jocelyn turned to Garrett. “But you’re available?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She scanned her notes as if estimating the job ahead. “We might have to use the lunch hour.” She glanced up. “I can order us something.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’ll go grab my phone.” She tossed down her pen and pushed back her chair. “There’s a fabulous deli a block away, but if you don’t place the order before eleven, no telling when it’ll show up.” She looked at Garrett. “Any requests?”

  “I’m a sandwich and chips kind of guy. Can’t go wrong with something along those lines.”

  She smiled. “You’re easy.”

  “I try.” He returned her smile because he couldn’t seem to help it.

  Her attention lingered on him for the first time since she’d come in the room and her focus shifted to his mouth. A tiny frown appeared between her perfectly shaped brows.

  His pulse sped up. Could she possibly have recognized his mouth? She’d paid a lot of attention to it in the beginning when they’d had more light, but it had been upside down. That should make it tougher to ID when he was upright. He hoped.

  Glancing away, she placed her palms on the table and stood. “Okay, then. Let’s see what Garrett and I come up with. “

  He’d noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring. She could still be involved with someone, but looking at her hands reminded him of the pleasure she’d given him with those nimble fingers.

  Everyone got up when she did and Tony reached out to shake her hand. “Thanks for meeting with us on such short notice.”

  “That’s the advantage of being new at the game.” She laughed. “More openings in my schedule.”

  “That won’t last long.” Charlotte exchanged another quick hug with her. “Lunch next week?”

  “You bet. I’ll text you. Great meeting you, Tony.” Flashing another smile, she left the conference room.

  Garrett watched her go as he evaluated the risk involved in this scenario. He could be playing with fire. The contrast between the extremely orgasmic Jocelyn of seven years ago and the straight-laced Jocelyn of today was fascinating.

  He’d bow out of the working lunch except that handling this was his job. And he’d do it without causing a problem. If he didn’t blow his cover, the odds were against her making the connection. Besides, they’d only have to spend a few hours together before it would be over.

  Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “Is it my imagination, or is there a subtle vibe between you and our intellectual property lawyer?”

  “It’s your imagination, buddy.” Someday, months or perhaps years from now, he’d inform Tony about the irony of hiring Jocelyn Salisbury. “So I take it she’s a friend of yours, Charlotte?”

  “Yep, “ Charlotte said. “My sorority sister.”

  His brain turned into a pinball machine with lights flashing. “Huh.” He pictured a late-night gabfest where the topic was some dude in a Spiderman suit who’d been Jocelyn’s boy toy during the Halloween party. He began to sweat. “Then you two are probably close. I’ve never been in a sorority, but –”

  “That’s not what I hear.” Tony grinned at him.
r />   Garrett gave him the hairy eyeball and willed him to keep his big mouth shut on that subject. Forever.

  Charlotte glanced from Tony to Garrett. “Sounds like there’s a story here.”

  Tony cleared his throat. “Nope, no story.“

  “Okay.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me. I know you guys have secrets. But to answer your question, Jocelyn and I are friends, but not super close. We usually have lunch once a month or so. She was a year behind me in school so we didn’t pledge together.”

  Garrett relaxed. Jocelyn had been a senior when they’d had their Halloween encounter, which meant Charlotte would have graduated by then. She wouldn’t have been at the party or participated in a post mortem afterward. Disaster averted.

  “I can vouch for her ability, though,” Charlotte continued. “She’s one of the smartest people I know. That’s why we pledged her, to bring up the house’s collective GPA.” She chuckled. “She was a bit of a nerd back then, probably still is. It’s one of the things I like about her.”

  “She’s exactly what we need,” Tony said. “Text me when you’re finished here, okay? I don’t want you coming into the office to discuss it. We’ll arrange a rendezvous point.”

  Garrett smiled. “A rendezvous point? Are you enjoying this?”

  “Of course not! Why would I when the future of the company’s at stake?”

  Charlotte’s gaze met Garrett’s. “He’s enjoying it.”

  “Yeah, well.” Tony gave them a sheepish look. “It’s like living out a Star Trek episode where I play Captain Picard.” Then he focused on Garrett. “We need the happy ending.”

  “Don’t worry.” Garrett’s whole body tightened as if for battle. “We’ll have one.”

  After they left he pondered what Charlotte had said about Jocelyn. He’d always wondered why a woman wearing a suggestive outfit had been hanging out by the staircase. Her behavior had made his plan work like a charm, but with this added info, he would bet his entire collection of Star Wars action figures that Jocelyn had never told anyone about their Halloween adventure.