My Nerdy Valentine (Nerds, #7)(29)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

"Borrowed your keys. I hope you don’t mind."

"No, of course not." She glanced at the box. "But you shouldn’t be buying food. Let me pay you for—"

"I don’t think streusel counts as food. I’m sure it’s bad for us, but I can’t pass a German bakery without buying streusel."

"I love streusel." This wasn’t fair. She was so close to her goal, and the perfect man had dropped out of the sky. What were the chances that she’d ever find someone who would provide her three favorite C-words—cli**xes, coffee, and cake—without any prompting from her?

"Then have a seat and we’ll load up on caffeine and carbs. It’s the American way."

"I’ll get the coffee." She started toward the small kitchen.

"Nope." He pushed back his seat and stood. "I’ll get it."

"That’s silly." She kept going. "While I slept in like a princess, you went out and picked up the paper and the streusel. Then you made the coffee. The least I can do is serve it."

He caught her by the arm. "Sit down. Really. I need something to do, and the more stationary you are, the better." He let go of her immediately.

"Why?" She glanced at the open drapes and her lust disappeared as she remembered why this cute nerd was in her apartment in the first place. "You haven’t seen anyone prowling around, have you? Maybe we should close the curtains."

"No, no, I haven’t seen anybody. I didn’t mean to scare you. I opened the curtains on purpose, though."

She looked at him in confusion. "I don’t understand."

‘To keep me honest." His gaze, flickering with heat, probed hers. "Do you need me to explain that?"

Her nerve endings sizzled. They had no condoms. She recited that as a mantra. No condoms, no condoms, no condoms. Unless he’d bought some along with the newspaper.

"In case you need any more clarification, I came dangerously close to buying condoms when I picked up the paper."

She gulped. ‘That’s why I wore my ugly bathrobe and my bald slippers."

"And you thought that would make a difference?"

Her heart thumped faster. "It always worked with my ex."

"I can’t speak for him. As far as I’m concerned, the bathrobe and slippers have zero effect on my problem. They might make it worse, because I’m dying to pry you out of that hideous thing."

"I’ll get dressed."

"Hey, you don’t have to do that. Just sit down and let me run around serving coffee and streusel. I’m sure I’ll be able to control myself if I stay busy."

He might be able to, but now that she knew what he was thinking, she couldn’t trust herself. "We need to get out of here."

"There’s an idea. But do we just leave the coffee and streusel?"

"There are two travel mugs in my cupboard. We can eat streusel and drink coffee on the bus. I’ll be out in ten minutes."

"And where would we be going?"

Crazy. "Gloria’s office. Maybe looking through her client files will help us remember why we’re in this ridiculous situation to begin with."

TWENTY-TWO

Managing the coffee and streusel on the bus gave Will something to deal with besides his libido, so from that standpoint leaving the apartment had been a great idea. But when Amanda locked them inside the office and took off her coat, he began to wonder if they’d made the right move.

The way he figured it, they’d be fine if they stayed out here in Amanda’s area. After all, that’s where the file cabinets were located, so logically they had no reason to go into Gloria’s office. Her door stood open, though, and he could see the red leather love seat from here.

If that love seat could talk, the conversation would be X-rated. Will felt the pull of that office with its framed prints from The Joy of Sex. Gloria kept her supplies in there—vibrators and flavored oils and videos and, probably, condoms.

"I’ll take the As and you can take the Bs." Amanda turned from the lateral file drawer she’d opened, a stack of hanging files balanced in both hands. "Will? Is something wrong? You’re still wearing your jacket."

He shook himself out of his sensual daze. "Sorry." Taking off his jacket, he hung it on the coat tree next to Amanda’s. "Daydreaming."

"You’re worried about Justin, aren’t you?"

He hadn’t given a thought to Justin since they’d left him at Geekland. But it was as good an excuse as any. "Yeah, a little bit."

"I don’t think you have to be. Gloria’s not really evil, and she might be therapeutic for him."

Will hoped that he’d served a therapeutic purpose for Amanda last night. They still hadn’t talked about it, and he would guess she didn’t want to talk about it, ever. That was beginning to bother him. He didn’t like the idea that she could ignore what had happened when it was all he could think about.

"Sexual release can be therapeutic, I guess." He said it on purpose, to see how she’d react.

She flushed, which made her blue eyes even more blue. "Yes, it can." She cleared her throat. "Listen, I’m not proud of taking advantage last night."

Finally. "I don’t look at it that way. Nobody had a gun to my head." He wanted her to know that he’d enjoyed himself, despite the frustration involved.

Her face was so red she looked sunburned. "It wasn’t exactly a fair exchange, Will."

"I didn’t expect that. You’re the one with the extra dose of stress." He’d wanted her to acknowledge what had happened, not heap blame on herself. "If I was of some help, then—"

"You were, but I—oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I just took what I wanted with no thought to mutual satisfaction. That was a Gloria move, and I like to think of myself as being more … more …"

"Hey, you are more. More of everything." He longed to hold her close, but that would lead them to places she didn’t want to go. "You’ve been pushing yourself for months, and now this stalker comes along to add to your troubles. You needed to get rid of all that tension."

She swallowed. "I should have kept the red vibrator. Then I wouldn’t have had to bother you."

"It was no bother, and I’m glad you did."

She gazed at him for several seconds. "That has to be the one and only."

"I know." Intellectually he knew that. Convincing his body was another matter. "Now let’s put all that behind us and get some work done."

"Right. Now remember that we’re breaking the client confidentiality rule by doing this." She handed him the files. "But I can’t wait for Monday, and Gloria might want to help, but she’d be bored in the first five minutes and give up."

As he took the files, he was careful not to touch her. "I promise to forget everything I find out. Now, where should I go with these?"

"You’d be better off with a desk. Do you want to use Gloria’s or mine?"

No contest. He had to stay out of that steamy den of Gloria’s at all costs. "Yours." And he wouldn’t think about Amanda sitting in there surrounded by all those sexual aids and sexy pictures. He’d concentrate on the task at hand. "What am I looking for?"

"Any notations that indicate deviant behavior. Sadism or masochism, fetishes, especially if they seem especially weird, anything that seems sexually aggressive, I guess. Unusual autoerotic methods."

"Say, what?"

"Masturbation."

"Oh." He prayed that his expression didn’t give away that he’d engaged in some autoeroticism last night. So far as he knew, it wasn’t the least bit unusual in nature, though. Same technique he’d used since puberty.

"Make a note of any suspicious ones, and when you’re done, put those back and start on the Cs." She picked up her stack and walked into Gloria’s office.

He took up his position at her desk, and there was the little hummingbird staring him in the face. He picked it up and cradled it in the palm of his hand. The hummingbird image got to him. He wanted to do something to make Amanda’s life easier so she didn’t have to flap her wings so damned hard.

Years ago he’d seen a hummingbird’s nest—this tight little golf-ball-sized cup, extremely neat, barely large enough to hold the tiny bird hunkered down in it. No birdhouse. No protection from the wind or the rain. Will had wanted to build a tiny roof over the nest, and he felt the same urge now with Amanda.

Finding her stalker would help, and he could start with that. He put down the hummingbird and flipped open the top file.

Twenty minutes later, he looked at his list of suspects. Every damned person in the As sounded like a deviant to him. He found guys who liked to do it in a vat of noodles, guys who couldn’t get it up unless they were watching CNN, guys who admitted to owning more than one anatomically correct blowup doll.

Gloria must draw nothing but wackos, which meant that almost anyone in these files could be the stalker. Even when he separated out the ones Amanda and Gloria had already identified as having no contact with Amanda, that eliminated only five. Twenty-two potential valentine crazies were left, and he was only in the As.

Maybe Amanda was better at weeding out the super-weird from the marginally weird. If not, they were wasting their time.

"How’re you doing in there?" he called out.

"I already have fifteen names."

"That’s less than me. I have twenty-two in the A section alone." Rolling back the desk chair, he got up and went to lean in the doorway of Gloria’s office.

She glanced up from her stack of files. "I was so sure I’d recognize something that would give me a clue. But most of these people are seriously strange."

"Think about it. Gloria’s their therapist of choice. That should tell you something."

She nodded. "It does, indeed. Going through these riles, I began to wonder why I don’t have a dozen stalkers. This office is a hotbed of sexual deviance." She tapped a folder with her pen. "Like this guy. His favorite thing used to be climbing up on his roof, nak*d, and dancing to the YMCA song. That’s how he became aroused."

"Hey, that’s a music nut. Could it mean anything?"

"Nah. I read it before I realized Gloria and I had already eliminated him because he hasn’t been in since last year."

"So he quit singing nak*d on the roof?" Will felt like a Peeping Tom, but he couldn’t help being curious. He’d never known there were so many strange people out there.

"He quit after he slipped on a loose shingle and cracked his tailbone. Now he and his wife have sex while incorporating the hand movements of the YMCA song."

"Sounds complicated." Will took a closer look at the pen Amanda was using. Sure enough, it was the penis pen. "Couldn’t find anything else to write with, huh?"

Amanda looked at it. "Not in her office. She loves these pens. She had me order a case of them."

"And I thought it was one of a kind,"

"No way." She opened a desk drawer full of at least thirty of the flesh-colored pens. "She wanted to have them imprinted with her name and number to give out to clients, but I convinced her that might not be such a good idea."

"Sounds like truth in advertising to me." Will glanced around at the framed prints on the wall. He shouldn’t look at them, shouldn’t even be standing in the doorway.

Two vibrators, a green one and a blue one, lay on the coffee table in front of the love seat, along with a few sexually explicit magazines. The covers of the magazines showed women in various stages of undress. He thought of Amanda and wished there had been more light last night, especially if that would be his one and only, as she’d said.

"Believe it or not, Gloria helps people."

He turned back to Amanda, a little surprised that she’d be defending her boss.

She gestured to the stack of files. "I mean, where else would a guy who dances nak*d on his roof go for help? One thing about Gloria, she’s very accepting of odd behavior."

"I guess that explains why she went after me." Will gave in to the urge to step into the office and explore without having Gloria there ready to pounce. The place fascinated him, especially when he wasn’t in danger of being seduced by a wild sex therapist.

"You’re not odd."

He picked up a vibrator and set it down again. Then he walked over to the desk and leaned both hands on it. She was still holding the penis pen and seeing her with it drove him crazy.

So he tried not to look at it. "I’ll bet you thought I was odd when you first saw me."

"No I didn’t." But her expression gave her away.

He thought it was time for them to be truthful with each other. "What about the hat?"

"Different."

"Nerdy."

She blinked, but she held his gaze. "Okay, maybe somewhat. But since then I’ve come to know you."

"Have you?" He might know her in ways neither of them had planned, but he questioned how well she knew him.

"Well, maybe not…completely." The telltale flicker in her blue eyes indicated she might be thinking about what had happened last night. "But I don’t consider you a nerd."

The pen, the vibrators, the magazines, the framed Joy of Sex prints—he was drowning in sex and the words tumbled out uncensored. "Because you’ve let me strip you nak*d and make you come?"

Her eyes darkened and her grip tightened on the pen. "I don’t understand what that has to do with anything."

"You don’t want to admit that a nerd did that to you, and that you liked it."

She began to tremble. "That was a mistake, letting that happen."

He held her gaze. "Maybe. But it did happen." "Yes." Her breathing quickened.

"And I didn’t think I was a nerd, either. But I’ve changed my mind. Who else but a nerd would surround himself with this"—he gestured around Gloria’s office—"and nobly take the high road?"

"I guess … that makes me a nerd, too."

"I’m beginning to feel like an idiot, Amanda." He blew out a breath. "And I want you so much I can’t see straight."

Heat simmered in her eyes. "Same here."