She stared at him in horror. "Why didn't you say anything?" You total jackass.
He shrugged. "I wanted to see what would happen next."
Unemployment was what was happening next. "Horace, you're fired!"
With the audacity to look startled, Horace said, "Hey! Whoa, don't overreact."
That was not overreacting. Overreacting would be grabbing his nuts with her hand and squeezing the hell out of them.
She had been doing a week-long striptease on her website and no one had bothered to mention it to her.
That was it.
Nobody turned her into an online stripper and got away with it. Time to take Evan up on his idea to get revenge on the Three Commandos.
It was petty and juvenile and wouldn't solve her problems, but the Three Cs were just begging to get knocked down a peg or two.
Besides, she needed to talk to Evan, and clear the air about her dog-in-heat imitation earlier. But first she was going to tell him to hack away, with her permission.
It would be her pleasure.
Chapter four
Evan stared at Halley on the screen, restored to her previous state of conservative dress and tray holding.
He should be feeling smug, pleased with himself. It had taken him only two hours and thirty-seven minutes to fix Halley's website.
Naked was better, he concluded. Not that weird impostor body, but Halley's real body, soft and curvy and peach colored. That would be way more interesting than the goofy brown dress she was wearing in the original, now-restored, shot.
It wasn't what he should be thinking about, but he couldn't stop the image from assaulting him. Nor could he stop doing a mental instant replay of the kiss he and Halley had exchanged.
A better apology was in order. But he didn't want to apologize. He wanted to lock her up in his bedroom and keep her so sexually satisfied she'd never think to leave him again.
The idea had merit. But it was probably illegal.
But if Halley were willing…
Of course, that wasn't going to happen.
Evan stood up and stretched his arms up over his head. While he had dragged on khaki shorts over his boxers at some point, he had never bothered with a shirt. It was sticky in his apartment since the AC had crashed and his landlord had yet to fix it.
The heat was causing a thin sheen of sweat to roll across his chest and forehead, making him itch. He wandered toward the kitchen, realizing he had never eaten breakfast or lunch and he was now starving. But when Evan got into something like breaking through the hackers' trail, he lost sight of mundane tasks like eating.
Now that he was done, his appetite returned with a vengeance. Despite the funny odor kicking up out of his garbage receptacle in the kitchen. Wrinkling his nose, he bagged it up and hustled it out to the dumpster, squinting as the bright sun hit him in the eyes.
Back inside, he sprayed a little disinfectant and felt better about the whole thing. The kitchen was almost clean now. Halley would be proud of him.
He was eating a bowl of corn flakes with a spotty banana when someone pounded on his door. Furiously.
Could it be? No, she wouldn't come back. Would she? Evan ditched the corn flakes after one last big bite and nearly tripped over his bare feet to get to the door. If this was Halley, if this was his second chance, he was going to pull out all the stops and charm her right out of her tank top.
No, no, he was going to apologize and keep his damn hands to himself. Scout's honor.
He pulled the door open.
Only Evan had never been a Boy Scout.
Halley looked like a hot fudge sundae on a spoon. And he wanted to lick every inch of her.
"Back so soon?"
Halley's hands were on her hips, causing her tank top to shift and bunch in various delicious places. Her lipstick had been bitten off, and her foot tapped up and down restlessly. A desperate passionate sort of gleam radiated from her green eyes, and Evan wasn't idiot enough to think that passion was for him.
Halley looked pissed off and ready to take names.
"Okay, here's the deal." Halley placed her hand on his chest and gave him a healthy shove to push him out of her way as she charged into the apartment like Xena, Warrior Caterer.
He had no idea what she was going to say, but he knew, just knew, it wasn't going to be what he wanted her to say. Which was, Rip my clothes off me, sport.
Halley's lip quivered. "That picture of me has been there a week, Evan. A week! A client canceled on me, my employees are printing pictures of me, and my dad saw it. My dad!"
Her glassy eyes were huge.
No, not what he wanted to hear. And shit, she was having a breakdown in front of him. For Halley to lose control was more than a little alarming, it was damn scary.
Evan put his hands on her arms and rubbed in a gentle and hopefully soothing manner. "Shh, sweet stuff, it's alright. I fixed the site. Everything is normal again."
"Thank you." She sniffled, then gave him a ferocious stare, clamping down on her lips to stop the trembling. "But now I want revenge. Just like you said. I want the Three Commandos to hang."
Evan was stunned into momentary silence. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe releasing all that anxiety would be a great relief for Halley. Or it might send her over the edge into a place that required antidepressants.
A little unsure, he said, "I thought you said that you were busy."
She shrugged, and he released her arms. The tears and trembling had stopped, and she looked in control of herself again. "My inventory spreadsheets can wait."
Evan studied her carefully, wishing she wouldn't use words like spread. She seemed to have forgotten that a few hours earlier he had tried to do just that to her.
Aside from the hysterical reaction to her website, she was acting normally toward him. Did that mean he was forgiven for trying to jump her bones?
"Listen, are we okay? You and me."
Halley's cheeks went pink and she blew her hair out of her eyes. "Why wouldn't we be? Oh, you mean because of earlier. That."
Yes, that. Her embarrassment was obvious, and he couldn't stand that. The thing he loved about his friendship with Halley was how comfortable they were with each other. That was exactly what he didn't want to lose, and why he had never confessed his feelings for her.
He said, "Look, maybe we should just forget it, forget that anything ever happened."
He brushed the uncooperative hair out of her eye in a very platonic fashion and gave her a slow smile, meant to reassure her that he would stick to business. "We'll just get straight to the hacking."
Halley swore to God, if he only knew what he was doing to her. Now that she'd put a twisted perverted spin on the word hack, every time he said it, she shivered right down to her toes in orgasmic anticipation.
But at least he was letting her off the hook. They were going to forget her overenthusiastic response to his kiss and go on like normal. "Okay, good, great, yeah, definitely. We'll forget all about it."
Since when had his eyes turned that exact shade of hot chocolate before you added the marshmallows? Forcing herself to focus on the more important thing hereher career she said, "So let's get hacking. I want to do something really bad."
It wouldn't bring back the clients or restore her dignity, but it might make her feel less like she'd swallowed a peach pit.
Evan's jaw clenched. Halley became aware that he was only a foot in front of her and that he still wasn't wearing a shirt. Her fingers jerked in eagerness to touch.
"Really bad?" His voice sounded funny, as if she had stepped on his foot in heels.
Somehow that sounded faintly suggestive. Of course, she suspected he could be talking about sewage and somehow she would find a way to be turned on. It was pathetic.
"Yes. Bad. Really bad." Halley wanted to kick herself. She sounded like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rainman.