Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

2. WTF? What offer?

He looks over at me and raises an eyebrow. When he passes the paper back, I get: You said that I wouldn’t make it two weeks if I had to live your life. I don’t want two weeks. I want the rest of the semester.

I look over at him. He’s watching me intently, his eyes narrowing on mine. I look down at the paper. I don’t want to be intrigued. I don’t want to be interested. I don’t want to wonder what he means, what this entails. I don’t want to know about him.

My pen moves up the page and slowly, very slowly, circles the WTF I wrote earlier. I draw a few arrows pointing to it and add a smattering of exclamation marks around it, just in case he misses it. In case he’s not watching over my shoulder. I pass this over to him.

Come to lunch with me, he writes back. I’ll explain everything.

4.

TINA

Blake stops by his car on the way to lunch. “I have to put on my disguise,” he explains.

“Your disguise?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he walks to the car. He doesn’t take out a key. He doesn’t need to. As he approaches, the silver handles—which used to lie flush against the door—extend toward him. He opens the back door, revealing a surprising jumble of stuff: bright red running shoes, a crumpled towel, a handful of books, and myriad old receipts.

“Apparently,” I say dryly, “your media training also failed to include the old-fashioned art of cleaning up after yourself.”

He just laughs. “You sound like my dad. He’s a neat freak. I drive him crazy.” He pulls off his coat and then, as I’m watching, takes off his tie and unbuttons his blue-collared shirt. He removes this all in front of me. I catch a glimpse of a silver watch at his wrist.

Now that he’s stripped to nothing but a white undershirt, I can see his upper body. Blake is all lean muscles. That tattoo I glimpsed before is a complicated computer circuit board. The artist who did it has imbued the tat with a sense of a subtle glow, making it seem like those are real circuits embedded just below his skin. Despite myself, my fingers itch to touch it, to make sure that’s all real muscle and not actual metal. The art climbs from his wrist all the way to his shoulder; from this angle, it makes him look like he’s a cyborg in some science fiction film.

It’s freaking brilliant.

He rescues a dark blue Cal sweatshirt from the pile of crap and pulls it on. The shirt is overlarge; it completely swallows his wrists.

He kicks off his dark dress shoes, pulls out a case, and removes his contacts. Then he puts on the running shoes, dons thick-rimmed glasses, and as a finishing touch, rubs a pump of hair gel between his palms and rumples his hair. Like this, his khaki dress slacks could pass for cargo pants.

He turns to me. “What do you think?”

I think a lot of things.

I’m not sure what game he’s playing, but I’m already berating myself for coming along. I can’t afford to go to lunch with him. I can’t afford the meal. And—I do have my pride—I won’t let him pay. I definitely can’t afford to remember his biceps.

But despite my better judgment, that part of me that is swayed by classical standards of masculine appeal thinks he’s pretty freaking hot. I think I looked more than I should have when he took off his shirt, and I think he knows that.

I give him a critical once-over. “Good disguise,” I tell him. “But it needs a fake mustache.”

He cracks up.

“True story,” he says. “The only time I ever wore dress shirts before I started here was for events—interviews or products launches. Shit like that. Now I wear them all the time. People see the outfit and they think it’s me.” He shrugs. “This way, I get a little privacy.”

It would be so easy to let myself pretend I’m friends with Blake. He’s funny, and more down to earth than I expected. But it’s bad enough being attracted to him because of basic social programming. I can only imagine how much worse this would be if I legitimately liked him as an individual.

“That is awesome,” I say. “I can sell that story to some enterprising reporter for at least a hundred bucks.”

He gives me a patient smile. “Yes, but you won’t.”

“Because I’m going to be so blown away by your amazing charisma that I forget how much I need the money?” I wrinkle my nose to signify how likely this is.

“No. Because by the time lunch is over, you and I are going to be on the same page. Business-wise.”

“Oh, yes.” I frown at him. “That. What is this all about?”

He smiles enigmatically, but doesn’t say anything more until we’re settled into the half-empty top floor of a Vietnamese restaurant. We place our order and the waiter leaves us in peace.

Blake takes a paper napkin from the holder and unfolds it into a wisp of translucent whiteness, before rolling it up and setting it on the table between us. When he looks up, though, his eyes seem like flint—hard and impossible.