Any Way You Want Me (6 page)

“After we pick up a tree, want to take a streetcar there and be tourists today?”

“God, I can’t remember the last time I was down there.”

“And we could shop for some more gifts to put under the tree….”

Yasmine smiled at the idea of taking a streetcar and playing tourists. “Should we put on white sneakers and
jeans and I ‘heart’ San Francisco T-shirts so we’ll blend in with the crowd?”

He made a face. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Promise to buy me a San Francisco snow globe, and you’ve got yourself a date.”

C
ASS LIKED TO COOK
once in a while, but she had to admit, her culinary concoctions didn’t always turn out the way she hoped. Hosting her first dinner party in months, she’d fully intended to produce not a single disaster dish for her friends by planning ahead and sticking closely to the recipes. But now, thanks to procrastination, her whole stupid plan was going to hell.

And if this Drew guy turned out to be a toad, Yasmine would pay. The doorbell rang, and Cassandra checked her appearance in the mirror on her way to answer. Not that she felt too concerned about impressions—she’d seen a few of the computer monkeys Yasmine worked with.

Peering through her peephole, her subconscious began to calculate exactly how much her best friend would have to pay, but her mental calculator halted on the plus sign.

The guy on the other side was tall, thin, with shaggy brown hair in need of a good cut. He wore a pair of wire-rim glasses, and it didn’t look as though he’d shaved yet today. Still, he wasn’t bad looking.

Further inspection revealed that he was wearing a red-and-green flannel shirt that looked way too Paul Bunyan for Cass’s taste, and was so new and starchy he’d probably ripped the sale tag off it a half hour ago.

That’s
what he’d chosen to wear to impress her? It must have been his effort at looking festive, and she had to give him credit for trying. She even felt a little sense of affection that he’d gotten spiffed up for her in his finest logging apparel.

She accepted her questionable fate and opened the door. “Hi, Drew. Thank you so much for coming over—and on Christmas Eve.”

He smiled and extended a hand, which she accepted in an awkward handshake.

“No problem. Yasmine said you were desperate.”

Cass imagined her best friend telling this guy that she was lonely and horny, that she hadn’t had a decent date all month and hadn’t come within shouting distance of a live, naked penis in longer than she cared to admit.

He seemed to realize his mistake. “Oh, I mean, desperate to get your computer fixed. Not, you know…desperate for anything else.”

A surprised laugh burst out of her, easing the tension in the air.

“Come on in,” she said. “I’ll try not to look too desperate.”

She led him to the traitorous computer from hell, which always managed to conk out on her at the most inopportune times, such as when she was in need of a midnight shoe-shopping binge or a midafternoon perusal of hot guy pics on the Internet.

“So what seems to be the problem? Something about the Internet not working?”

Cass told him about the error message she was getting, and he nodded as he checked something on the back of the CPU. Seeming to be satisfied with what was
going on back there in the never-never land of cables and cords, he sat down, then started rambling on in techno-babble as he typed and clicked his way through various screens.

She mmm-hmmed and nodded as if she had a clue what he was talking about, then made an excuse about something she needed to check in the kitchen. Alone in the midst of her self-created domestic purgatory, she rummaged around in the fridge pretending to have a purpose. Her only real agenda was to stay away from Drew while she tried to think of some suitable reason to tell Yasmine why she couldn’t ask him out.

Such as he wore a Paul Bunyan shirt and talked so fast and about such dull things she could hardly understand him. Maybe she’d be fibbing a bit on the second part, but she was pretty sure he’d prove her right, given enough time. He definitely didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d go for an over-the-hill ex-stripper. She’d probably have to go trolling the late-night leftovers at her favorite nightclubs to find those guys—so it was a good thing she didn’t really want a guy at all.

After rummaging around the kitchen for as long as she reasonably could, she poked her head out the doorway and asked, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks,” Drew said. “I think I’ve got your problem fixed.”

“Wow, already?”

“Sometimes computers just sort of freak out and need to be turned off for ten seconds and restarted. That should be the first thing you try if you can’t figure out what’s wrong.”

“Oh,” she said, entering the living room again. “I think Yasmine has told me to do that before. I just forgot.”

“Not a big deal.” He opened up her Web browser, and there it was—the Internet back and waiting to tell her how to make parmesan stuffed mushrooms.

“You’re welcome to stay for a drink. I’ve got to get started on cooking right away though,” she said as she sat down at her desk.

“Thanks, but I’d better go. I have a family thing to attend today.”

“Ugh, family. I actually miss them this time of year—they’re all in Santa Barbara, and I didn’t feel like flying down there again for the weekend. So I’m having some friends over for dinner instead.”

She looked at him, and for the first time, noticed that he had a nice smile.

“I was wondering,” she said before she could change her mind, “if you’d like to go out sometime. I could take you to dinner as a thank-you for fixing my computer.”

He waved away her suggestion. “All I did was restart it. That’s not worth a meal.”

Boy was this guy dense. “So come to dinner, anyway.”

He blinked behind his glasses, and Cass was tempted to add, please don’t wear that shirt.

He flashed a crooked smile and shrugged. “Okay, why not?”

“How about Monday night? Are you free then?” Better to get the deed over with sooner rather than later was Cass’s philosophy.

Drew appeared to give the matter some thought, probably trying to decide whether a night with her
would be more exciting than a night of Internet porn, or whatever guys like him spent their time doing.

“I think I’m free. I mean, well…actually, I know I’m free.”

“Perfect. So why don’t you pick me up around six?”

“Yeah, um, sure. So, we’ll go to dinner.”

“I’d invite you to stay for dinner tonight, but you said you have family plans.”

Another shrug. “Yeah, I do.”

“You sure about that drink? You could keep me company while I cook.” She surprised herself with the insistence that he stay.

For whatever silly reason, she wanted companionship—anyone’s, apparently.

“Sure, some water would be great.”

“Let me just print these recipes, and I’ll be all set.”

Five minutes later she was wrist deep in the stuffing for her mushrooms, and Drew was busy hollowing out the mushrooms’ centers, even after she’d insisted he didn’t need to help. He’d claimed he couldn’t sit still and watch other people work, so she’d given in.

“You cook at home?” she asked.

“Not much. I’m always forgetting some important ingredient. Guess I don’t have the patience to be a great cook.”

“And I don’t have what it takes to be a computer genius.”

“So have you and Yasmine been friends long?” he asked.

“We met in college. I was a struggling grad student, and she was a prodigy acing all her classes without cracking a book.”

“A grad student. Let me guess—business? International relations?”

“Am I that obvious? I earned my MBA with lots of blood, sweat and tears.”

If he knew she’d really spent most of her college years working as a stripper, he’d have seen her in a totally different and not nearly so pleasant light. Cass saved that bit of information for her closest friends and confidantes—a category where the men in her life simply didn’t fit.

“So what do you do now?”

“I’m VP of marketing at an investment company downtown.”

“Wow, a vice president. Do you have your own office and everything?”

“Of course.” She glanced over and caught an odd smile on his lips. “What?”

He looked at her, and his smile faded. “Oh nothing.”

“No, really, you were smiling. You probably think I’m a cliché, don’t you? The stereotypical career-driven female with no time for a life.”

“Not at all. I swear, I wasn’t thinking anything like that, and you clearly have a life.”

“Then tell me what you
were
thinking.” Definitely the earliest Cass had ever made that request of a guy, and probably a welcome kiss-of-death for this doomed flirtation.

“I was thinking, it’s really sexy that you’re a high-powered career woman with your own office.”

She laughed, but secretly she was flattered.

“You think?” Cass had always considered the whole female exec thing pretty sexy, too, but she’d never heard a man express the sentiment.

“Guess I’ve got a thing for women in powerful places.”

Cass stared at the glob of mushroom stuffing she’d formed in the bowl. She’d been mixing it furiously with her hands as they talked, and now it was ready to be used as filling for the mushroom caps. But her mind was a million miles from finger foods. It occurred to her then that what Drew had said about her job wasn’t just flattering. It was an incredible…turn-on.

Her plans to ditch Drew at the earliest opportunity weren’t sounding so great now. In fact, she was beginning to wonder what lay beneath his unpolished exterior. Could computer geeks be sexy, too? Never one to shy away from the big questions, she decided to face the matter head-on.

Cass’s hands were covered in stuffing, and she brushed them off as best she could. Then she scooped up a glob with her finger and closed the distance between herself and Drew. “Want a taste?”

He spun around, and she nearly pinned him between herself and the counter. “Um, sure,” he said, looking a little perplexed by her proximity.

Up close he had a thoroughly male presence, and she was only a few inches away, close enough that if she shifted her hips, she’d bump against him.

She lifted her finger to his mouth, and it occurred to her only then that he might be one of those fussy guys with hygiene issues. If she had to point out to him that she’d washed her hands before diving into the mushroom stuffing—

But she didn’t.

He took her hand in his and guided her finger into
his mouth, then let his tongue caress it, lingering and tasting long enough to make her panties wet. He may have had no fashion sense, but he knew how to work over a finger. And if he knew how to work her there…

Cass slid her finger from his mouth, then caught the look of confusion in his eyes, and she flashed a smile.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“For cleaning your finger off?”

“Yeah.”

“Tastes good,” he said. “The stuffing, I mean.”

There was a pause, not exactly an awkward one. Cass suddenly wanted a better feel for his lips. When he kissed, did he use his tongue as well as he did when licking a finger? She looked at his mouth and tried to imagine kissing him. Surprisingly, it was an easy fantasy to conjure.

She decided that on their date, instead of giving him a quick heave-ho—unless Drew turned into an obnoxious dork—she would satisfy her curiosity.

Cass tried to make sense of the fact that she was completely horny for a guy who lacked obviously sexy physical attributes. Unlike Yasmine, she liked her men gorgeous and hard-bodied. She didn’t go for subtleties, not in any part of her life, but with Drew…His appeal was all about subtlety.

“What’s wrong?” Drew asked.

“Um, nothing.” She produced a fake-sounding laugh.

“What was that?”

“A finger licking?”

“I know what it
was.
I mean—”

“How did we go from making stuffed mushrooms to you sucking my finger? I don’t know.”

Except, she did know. There wasn’t anything like sex to distract a guy from getting serious or playing the getting-to-know-you game or pretty much anything else. The last thing she needed was to complicate her newfound happiness with another relationship. But she would hate to turn down a little action in her sex life.

From somewhere in the region of Drew’s ass, a little bell rang. Cass looked at his pants, an old pair of khakis, as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a digital organizer.

“Sorry,” he said, as he flipped open the top. He read the screen and said, “I’m supposed to be at a family get-together in twenty minutes. Guess I’d better be going.”

“Thanks for stopping by,” she said as she took a step back and gave him some distance. “I’ll see you Monday?”

“Definitely.”

Cass smiled. “Have a merry Christmas.”

“You, too,” Drew said as he stepped out the door, then turned to look at her. “And call me if you have any more computer problems.”

When she was alone in the apartment again, she looked at her crusty hands and sighed. For a crazy moment she’d been tempted to abandon her boyfriend-free happiness for the mysteries of the unknown with a guy who wasn’t her type.

She didn’t want to like Drew, but she did want to get laid. She didn’t really want him to be too into her, and yet she found herself wanting to impress him. Clearly, she needed to get a grip.

Cass had just flirted with her first nerd, and the experience hadn’t even been remotely unpleasant. She might have even called it a pleasure.

Y
ASMINE GAZED UP
at the pointy top of the eight-foot-tall Christmas tree. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Kyle looked from the supersize tree to her. “What?”

“For one thing, we can’t carry that all the way home. And for another, it would take up my entire living room.”

“Oh, right. Well, how about that one?” He pointed to a tree that was maybe two feet shorter.

“Think tabletop.” Yasmine turned and headed for the smallest trees on the lot.

Twenty feet away, on the other side of a chain-link fence, the roar of traffic was a constant reminder that they were still in the city and not an evergreen forest. A car horn honked, a seagull squawked overhead and the scent of car exhaust filled the air. Ah, urban life. Yasmine loved it.

She caught Kyle’s look of disdain as he peered down at the little tree she’d stopped in front of. “What?”

“It’s just so…small.”

“What is it about guys and tree size? It’s like some kind of phallic thing.”

“Freud was a crackpot.”

“I promise, the size of your tree doesn’t in any way reflect on the size of your manhood. Okay?”

He rolled his eyes at her and strolled over to the next
biggest tree. “Did you do this with your parents as a kid? Go pick out a tree every year?”

“A few times, but since we spent most of our holidays in Paris, we normally didn’t have a tree.”

“No Christmas tree? Where did Santa leave presents?”

“In our stockings. We always packed those and took them to France every year, and since whatever we got had to fit in our suitcase for the flight home, I always got tiny gifts.”

“We went out to the woods and chopped down trees when I was really little. Later we had a fake tree, one of those perfectly cone-shaped ones with branches so unbendable you could hang bowling balls on it for ornaments.”

Yasmine tried to imagine Kyle as a little boy and couldn’t. She spotted a cute little tree without any major holes and pointed to it. “How about this one?”

He shrugged. “Sure, I guess if you want to prove size doesn’t matter.”

She caught the attention of an employee clad in a green apron, and then they stood waiting for him to help them. “Do you have siblings?”

Part of her wanted to know everything about Kyle, and another part of her just wanted to keep him vague and anonymous, not another guy she could fall for only to find that he was more enamored with her outside than her inside.

“An older brother and a younger sister. We fought all the time growing up, but we’re friends now.”

“I’ve always envied people with siblings, but I guess I had it pretty easy, not having to compete for attention or Christmas presents or anything.”

“It must have been lonely sometimes, being an only child.” He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, and Yasmine got a ridiculous little chill.

She tightened her long green scarf and tugged her denim jacket closed against the damp, cool air. Overhead, clouds formed a dense white blanket.

“I had nannies who were usually lots of fun. Leave it to my mom to hire the very best. But when I saw other kids at the playground with their siblings, I always told myself someday my parents would have more kids. I had this whole imaginary family made up in my head.”

The tree lot employee arrived, and Kyle told him which tree they wanted. He gave them a claim tag for it, and as he took it to the register for them, they went to the huge line that snaked through the left side of the lot and waited.

“I always thought I’d have at least two kids so neither of them would be lonely or have to make up imaginary families,” Kyle said, and Yasmine felt a stab of dread that they’d entered that precarious territory few couples ventured into unless they were getting serious—the kids discussion.

Definitely not a talk to have with a weekend fling.

“I had a sister named Angelina, and a brother named Blaize, and another sister named Anastasia. They were all younger than me, and they all did whatever I told them to do.” Yasmine deliberately kept her tone light to steer the conversation away from serious territory.

“Those are pretty fancy names.”

“Hey, I was a kid who read a lot and watched too much TV. I think Blaize was a soap opera character at the time.”

“What about you? Do you want to have your own kids someday?”

Whoa, there—too much, too fast. Yasmine’s stomach knotted.

“I, um, haven’t really thought about it.”

“Who hasn’t thought about having kids?”

She raised her hand. “Me! Me!”

“So your goal in life is just to work at a virtual-sex software company and live in an apartment alone?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it, and she was afraid Kyle could tell.

Yasmine had given up on having big, lofty goals somewhere along the way. She’d decided while serving her time in juvenile detention that when she got out, she’d just be happy with whatever life presented her. She didn’t think there would be much point in expecting big things from her future, careerwise, and somehow she’d come to have the same low expectations of her personal life.

“Judging by your reputation at work, it seems like you’re capable of running your own software company instead of just being a programmer for one.”

She shrugged. “I’m not much of a business person.”

Kyle flashed her an odd look but said nothing more. A few seconds later, they’d made it to the cash register, and he insisted on paying for the tree. He propped it on his shoulder for the walk home.

“You look so outdoorsy with that tree slung over your shoulder,” she said as they crossed the street.

“Oh, yeah? Are you into the outdoorsy look?”

“I didn’t think so, but it works for you.” She let her gaze travel from his eyes downward, over his broad chest to his waist and below.

He slipped his free arm around her waist, and she felt his finger hook into her belt loop. The gesture seemed more intimate somehow than she was prepared for, and she had to resist the urge to pull away. She was truly a person with issues when she could sleep with a guy, but when he slipped his finger into her belt loop, all of a sudden she was feeling freaked.

Clearly, she needed help.

“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked, surprisingly attuned to her mood changes.

“Oh, nothing. Guess I’m just getting hungry for lunch.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie.

“Can you make it until we get down to the wharf, or do you need to eat now?”

Yasmine must have been desperate for affection, because that one little gesture of concern for her well-being nearly melted her heart. “I guess I can hold out for clam chowder in a sourdough bowl.”

They made it back to her apartment, dropped off the tree and headed out for the streetcar stop a block away.

As an adult, Yasmine drove everywhere. She hadn’t taken a streetcar probably since her teen years. And standing at the corner, without warning, her chest filled up with a strange longing for something she couldn’t name.

Something about Kyle and the streetcars and this little escape from reality they seemed to have embarked upon made her think too much about the past, about the things she couldn’t change. But she couldn’t let that crap get her down now. She owed herself a weekend of pure escapist fantasy, and she was determined to enjoy every fleeting moment of it.

T
HE STREET CAR
stopped on The Embarcadero not far from Fisherman’s Wharf, and Alex reminded himself for the hundredth time why he was with Yasmine. Not to have fun, and not to forget all his problems, but to find out if she was still a hacker. He’d suggested they go on their little tourist excursion as a way to gain her trust, to get her to let her guard down in a completely different environment than the one in which she usually lived. But it was just so damn easy to lose himself in her company, and he had to admit, he was thoroughly enjoying playing the tourist in his adopted city for the first time.

During the ride to the waterfront, they took in the scenery together, probably looking to all the world like a pair of happy lovers. He felt more comfortable with Yasmine than he should have, and he liked her more than he should have. She was more comfortable in her own skin than most of the women he’d ever known, and her comfort with herself made it easy for others to be at ease with her.

He couldn’t help thinking, in another time, another place, maybe they could have been a real couple. But as soon as the thought formed in his head, he banished it. He knew too well the dangers of wanting what he couldn’t have.

When they reached their final stop, Alex stepped off the street car and extended his hand to Yasmine as she stepped down, too. The weather here was a little windier than it had been at her place, and he was glad now that he’d worn a heavy leather jacket and his flannel-lined jeans. The scent of the ocean mingled with the less pleasant odor of sea lions, and as they crossed onto the
sidewalk, they had to keep moving to avoid blocking the steady stream of tourists milling through.

“Where to?” he asked Yasmine once they had a chance to stop and get their bearings.

“Toward the smell of food.”

They wandered a row of seafood vendors until they found one with the best looking bowls, then crossed the street with their sourdough bowls and colds cans of Coke and sat on a concrete platform where people, seagulls and pigeons gathered for lunch. A particularly large seagull landed a few feet away from them and stood eyeing their food, while the less aggressive birds nervously edged closer a few inches at a time.

“You think he’ll attack?” Alex asked.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if’ so much as ‘when.’ We’d better eat fast.”

He looked over and caught Yasmine tossing the seagull a piece of bread. “Isn’t that illegal or something?”

“Shh. I’m buying us time.”

He stole another glimpse of her and his heart swelled in his chest. He’d never wanted a woman so much as he wanted her then, sitting beside him on this cool, damp day. And he’d never been a bigger fool in his life. How had he turned physical desire into emotional desire overnight?

Okay, so it was a natural progression, but he’d been a fool not to anticipate it, not to realize he wasn’t the kind of guy who slept with women indiscriminately. He’d always considered sex a small part of the big picture in relationships.

He focused on the hot chowder and tried to let the more troubling thoughts vacate his mind, but no luck. By the time he’d emptied the bread bowl and started
breaking off pieces of it to eat, the thought that he was getting too emotionally involved with Yasmine could not be ignored.

“You look so serious,” she said. She’d finished her soup now and was breaking off more pieces of it and tossing them to the birds. Pigeons scampered around her sexy black boots, hoping to be the next recipient of her goodwill.

Alex forced a smile and took a drink of his Coke. “Just worried that one of these birds is going to dive bomb us if we don’t get moving soon.”

Had he really been stupid enough to think he could resolve ten years of wanting with a few nights of great sex? Had he really believed the situation wouldn’t get any more complicated than it already was?

Damn it, he had. Maybe deep down, he’d known he would be walking into a no-win situation, but he’d fooled himself.

Having tossed her last bit of bread and finished her drink, Yasmine gazed at the row of cheesy tourist shops lining the street across from where they sat. “I think we have to buy some T-shirts, don’t we? Isn’t that the rule if you come down here—you have to leave with a shirt that declares your love for San Francisco?”

“I’m no expert.”

“How about, I’ll pick out a shirt for you, and you pick one out for me?”

“How about we just skip the T-shirt thing? I thought we were shopping for snow globes.”

“Don’t try to distract me with plastic trinkets,” Yasmine said as she took his hand and tugged him toward the strip of shops. “I’m buying a shirt, and that’s final.”

Her hand in his felt right as they walked, felt like the kind of comfort he hadn’t realized he’d been wanting for a long time. He glanced over at her and was struck by the sensation that she recognized him. Fear shot through him, but he did his best to show no emotion.

“What?” he said when she continued to stare at him.

“It’s weird,” she said as they waited at the traffic light to cross. “I occasionally get the feeling we’ve known each other before.”

“Maybe we’ve bumped into each other around town somewhere. I jog in Golden Gate Park pretty often, usually around Stowe Lake.”

Had she detected the slight note of tension in his voice that he’d failed to hide?

“I doubt that’s it. I just can’t think where we might have met.”

Alex’s stomach churned as he scrambled for a way to change the subject. His gaze settled on the nearest shop, its entrance crowded with racks of T-shirts and its display window filled with trinkets, including snow globes. “Looks like we’ve found our destination,” he said.

It worked—instant distraction. Yasmine headed for the nearest rack and grabbed a bright-orange shirt that read ‘Orange you glad I visited San Francisco?”

She held it up and smiled. “This is perfect for you.”

“That’s the dumbest T-shirt I’ve ever seen.”

“Exactly. Now you have to find an even worse one for me.”

Alex gave her a look, but she draped the shirt over her arm and wandered farther into the store. He wanted to find something to dislike about her, something that would bring him back to Earth and show him that no
matter how perfect she seemed, she really was a common criminal.

He just needed a little more time. Another day or two would be enough for him to dig up the truth. Either that or fall head over heels in love.

W
HO KNEW DECORATING
a tree could turn into such an erotic undertaking?

Yasmine watched the tiny white lights twinkling and felt for a moment as though she was a little girl again, filled with the excitement of Christmas Eve. All the possibilities, the promise of goodies to come, the mystery of presents to be puzzled over and opened.