“Ow!”
“Jesus,” I say, starting for her. “Are you OK? Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m fine!” she says, waving me off. She struggles up to her feet. Her hair is a mess and her glasses are askew. She wipes the hair out of her face and pushes her specs up the bridge of her nose.
She’s so goddamn cute, I want to fuck her right here. Which is not my usual reaction to things that are adorable, but oh, well. The heart wants what it wants.
“OK,” she says. “You’re so sure that I’m this awful Sexpert person, but meanwhile your friend is sure it’s Myrtle, yeah?”
“Yes. That is an accurate summary of the last five minutes.”
“Fine, Mr. Smart Breeches.” So fuckin’ adorable. She goes on, “So how come you’re right and he’s wrong?”
“Because I am. Because Myrtle doesn’t have…” I nod at her chest.
“What? What are you talking about? Myrtle has fabulous boobs.”
“They’re fine.”
“Seriously? Men go crazy for her.”
“Sure. She’s OK. And her boobs are too. But they’re not…” Again, I indicate her chestal area.
She draws her head back, confused. “Wait. You can’t possibly be saying that I’m sexier than Myrtle?”
“No, I think I can. And I think that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
She blushes. “Oh my God. That’s… I’ve never… That’s so… Wait! Stop! You’re trying to Jedi mind trick me into admitting something!”
“I’m honestly not.” I put my hand on my heart to suggest my earnestness, or something. “I just know it’s not Myrtle.”
“How?”
I shake my head a little. “Because. It’s not her voice.”
Eden swallows. She takes a breath. She blinks. “Wh—Why… I mean… How do you know?”
“Because I know.”
“How?”
“Hi, Andrew Hawthorne? CEO of Aureality? Have we met? This is what I do for a living.”
“But the…person, whoever it is, is using your app, aren’t they? To disguise their voice? I mean, I’ve heard her. It sounds like she is.”
“Yeah. She is. But we can decrypt it.”
“You can?”
I nod. “And once we do—”
“You mean you haven’t yet?”
I hate this. I wish she’d just come clean. “No. Not yet. But we will. And when we do, we’ll run it through a new app we have and I’ll be able to make a definitive call.”
There’s a long pause while I wait for her to say anything. Finally, she does.
“OK. Super. Good for you. And then what? What will Pierce do when you guys find her?”
I shrug. “I dunno.”
“I mean, he can’t really sue somebody just for having a similar idea, can he? I mean what if they had the idea first?”
I take a deep breath. Blow it out. OK. So. Here we go. “I dunno, Eden. Did they have it first?”
Her eyes go saucer wide behind her glasses. “Why do you keep asking me? Why do you think this Sexpert person is me? Seriously. Why?”
I shake my head and say, “Dessert.”
“Dessert? Hell does that mean? What about dessert?”
“You shook your cupcakes at me in my place. And apart from the fact that you have, and I mean this sincerely, the most gorgeous cupcakes I have ever seen”—I smile, still trying to be charming even as I’m accusing this girl of being my friend’s nemesis—“all of the videos I’ve watched now in trying to help Pierce… all of them have been heavily confection-oriented.”
Her eyes go yet even wider. “Seriously? That’s it?”
I lean in to her even closer so that I can whisper in her ear, “Eden, everything you did with me on my terrace. It’s all in the videos.”
I pull back and the look of abject despair on her face breaks my heart a little.
“But… I…”
“Hey,” I say, taking her hand, which she jerks away. “It’s OK. It really is. Just… and I have to ask… you didn’t actually steal the idea, did you?”
And almost before the question is out of my mouth, that same mouth is being slapped. Hard. Like, shit, like, really, really fucking hard.
“Ow!” That’s me. Obviously. “What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she says. “I’m sorry! That’s not like me! I don’t know what came over me, I just—”
But that’s all that she gets out of her mouth before my just-slapped and still-stinging lips are on hers. Kissing her. Also hard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – EDEN
Holy shit. Perfect timing!
Because for a second there I felt a little like a top-heavy ice cream cone and one more lick was gonna send it crashing down onto the sidewalk.
Oh… ohhhhhh…. ohhhhhhhh… that feels nice. He’s such a great kisser.
“Eden,” he says, still kissing me.
“I’m not the Sexpert,” I whisper back.
“But the other day…”
“Look,” I say, breaking contact. “I’m gonna tell you something but you gotta promise not to tell anyone, OK?”
He cocks his head at me. Like, OK, here we go. I’ve finally worn her down and she’s gonna come clean.
But they’ve got nothing on me. Yet. He said they’re working on decryption, but they don’t have it. Yet.