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The annual report of fun statistics about North Americans’ erotic behavior was being advertised all over Manhattan—on the sides of city buses and in the subway. Scheduled for its usual Christmas release, the magazine-style booklet was fashioned to look like a red-and-green file folder and was the perfect stocking stuffer.
“Can you give our audience a sneak preview?” urged Kate.
“It’s top secret. I can only say that this is the best Sex Files yet, and you should plan to race out and get your copy.”
As she watched him plug his little sister’s work instead of his own, the viewer’s heart missed a beat. “Family values,” she whispered. “A good sign.” He might be work obsessed, but he seemed to possess integrity.
“Well,” said Kate, wrapping up, “next time you join us on Rise and Shine, I want you to do us a big favor.”
“Anything for you, Kate.”
Kate grinned. “I want you to take the statistics from the Sex Files—all the facts about the most erotic behaviors in North America—and run the information through the FBI’s new Quick Composite software.”
Catching her drift, Oliver chuckled. “I see. You want me to generate photographs, showing what the sexiest man and woman would look like—if they existed?” Before Kate could respond, he continued. “I’ll be glad to, Kate, but before saying goodbye to our audience, I’d like to add that I usually find women the way I solve crimes.”
When Oliver Vargo looked into the camera, the blond woman shivered again, and for the first time since last night, it wasn’t from fear, but from the man’s dark, penetrating gaze. Her belly clenched and her body tingled. “I’d love to see the effect you have on women in real life,” she whispered. Even though he was on TV, her erogenous zones ached. If only her reaction to him could be as simple as raw lust…
For a second, she indulged the feeling, forgetting her troubles. No one had tried to kill her. She could go home and to work and use her bank and credit cards. She was wearing clothes that fit, too. Clothes she now imagined Oliver Vargo removing….
“I find women the way I solve crimes,” he repeated, then added, “the old-fashioned way.”
Did he mean he enjoyed missionary-style sex? Or taking a woman from behind? Or just cuddling, holding hands and kissing?
She shook her head to clear the thoughts. No doubt anything sexual with the man would be great, but at the moment, she had other needs. Even if she didn’t totally trust him, she was going to have to ask for his help.
“OH, C’MON, Big Brother,” Anna Vargo begged the next day at noon, seating herself on Oliver’s desk and digging a hand into an Au Bon Pain bag, pulling out two sandwiches. “Kate Olsen’s idea was inspired! All I want you to do is run the Sex Files statistics through your Quick Composite software.”
Oliver groaned, staring at the computer screen, which was running a list of the country’s most wanted criminals. “I’m working.”
“Be a sport,” she coaxed, unperturbed by his lack of immediate compliance. “I brought ham and Gouda on rye with hot mustard.” She waggled the sandwich in front of him. “Your favorite. And a double mochaccino. Besides, if you don’t help me, I’ll call Mom and Dad and tattle.”
“They’re in Utah. Besides, bribery’s illegal,” he retorted, taking the sandwich and unwrapping it. “You seem to forget you’re talking to an FBI agent.”
“Yeah, right. One I’ve seen in house slippers.”
As he bit into the sandwich, she flashed a smile, her teeth as straight and white as her brother’s. She had his black, wavy hair, too, although she dressed more stylishly, wearing trendy, thick-framed, black glasses and a tailored, front-zippered black leather jacket with black jeans. Oliver was wearing wide-waled corduroys and a white shirt.
He said, “I don’t own house slippers, Anna.”
“I was speaking metaphorically,” she quipped, taking a healthy bite of her own sandwich and washing it down with a gulp of latte. “That’s the problem with law enforcers, you know,” she chided. “You have no imagination. You’re too literal.”
“We have imaginations,” Oliver countered, pretending to be wounded even though his dark eyes were sparkling.
“Oh, really?” Anna didn’t look convinced as she glanced through a glassed-in window of her brother’s office at a sea of open-concept cubicles. “Gray was an inspired choice. All you G-men are regular Martha Stewarts.”
“My office in Quantico is colorful,” Oliver defended. “This space is only temporary, Anna.”
“Okay,” she conceded. “But everybody else, besides you, has a gray cubicle. Which only goes to show that you don’t fit in, Big Brother. Face it, you’re a renegade. A rebel.” Her voice was rising. “A man who’ll—”
“Run your Sex Files through my Quick Composite software?”
“It’ll only take a minute, Ollie,” she urged, polishing off the first half of her sandwich and reaching for the rest. “Everybody at the office wants to know what North America’s most erotic guy looks like. And you’re the only one who can show us.”
Grinning, he opened his arms wide.
She rolled her eyes. “You? Oh, please.” Reaching into the pocket of her leather jacket, she pulled out a CD. “Here. Just stick this in your ROM.”
As if he could deny Anna anything. She was the only woman on earth who could get away with calling him Ollie. “That’s the new Sex Files?” Oliver queried, pretending to hedge as he continued eating, but only because he loved teasing her. “You’re going to get me fired, you know.”
“Never.” She smirked. “You’re too good at your job.”
“Pride goeth before a fall.”
“Oh, don’t get puritanical.” She groaned. “From the way those sparks were flying on Rise and Shine, I—and everybody else—was imagining how you and Kate Olsen must have gone at it after you finished taping that show yesterday.”
“Did not,” he said.
Not that Kate Olsen hadn’t tried. Practically salivating, she’d come into the dressing room without knocking, and when she’d found he was only changing shirts, not pants, she’d looked seriously disappointed. She’d propositioned him, too. Reaching over and cupping his privates was about as direct as it could get.
Why he hadn’t gone for it, Oliver couldn’t say. But ever since he’d finished building his dream home near Quantico, women hadn’t held the same appeal. He figured it was because he was starting to look for something more than just sex. For somebody who intrigued him enough to share a life with. Or maybe, perish the thought, he’d just been too damn tired.
Between giving workshops on profiling, traveling to scenes of unsolved crimes around the country and promoting the new book, he’d been in fifty cities in the past twenty-five days. He’d lived in a string of hotels he didn’t even want to contemplate, and now he was having trouble sleeping in New York because of the noise.
At least Anna was leaving tomorrow. He loved his sister, and was sorry they wouldn’t be able to visit during most of his stay, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t visit Quantico on weekends. His New York assignment had unfortunately coincided with a vacation she’d planned with her boyfriend, Vic, a photographer for the Sex Files. Since this year’s Sex Files had been put to bed, the two had angled for—and gotten—a six-week unpaid leave. After they left for the Virgin Islands, Oliver could move from his hotel into their tiny—but quiet—West Village apartment.
And then he could finally sleep, providing their wily black cat, Midnight, let him. At least there’d be no more wake-up calls, intrusive maids and newspapers shoved under his door. Glancing around the office, Oliver decided the only thing worse than hotels was the new paperless FBI.
Like every large company, the FBI was deciding that hard-copy records took up too much space. Data was being transferred to computers, then destroyed. Trouble was, there was a huge margin for error in relying on electronic information. When Oliver’s e-ticket from L.A. to New York wasn’t at the airport, for example, Oliver had to buy another ticket that cost the agency—and ultimately the taxpayer—twice the price of the initial ticket.
The flight was a nightmare, too. Every time Oliver boarded an airplane, the seats got smaller and the food tasted more like plastic. How flight attendants survived, he’d never know. He sighed, thinking of the wanted posters usually displayed in airports and post offices. This week they were being recalled, soon to be replaced by an easier-to-read format. If you asked Oliver, it was all busywork, generated by people who weren’t good enough agents to actually solve crimes.
“You still here, Oliver?” Before he could respond, Anna added, “You know that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, right?”
“Good thing my name’s not Jack.”
She nodded at a blond man in an expensive suit wending his way through the cubicles. A distinctive birthmark stained his left cheek. “That’s Miles McLaughlin, right? He looks like Don Johnson on the Miami Vice reruns.” She paused. “And you’re right. He also looks like a jerk.”
Oliver eyed the head of the Information Systems Department, brainchild for the paperless FBI and co-creator of the new Quick Composite software. “What tipped you off? That he’s wearing sunglasses inside the building?”
Anna laughed, contemplating a tall, massively built black man with a shaved head who was as nattily dressed as Miles. “Yep. His sidekick looks like an African-American Bruce Willis.”
“Kevin Hall.” He was the other half of the Quick Composite team. “In their honor, I’m calling my next book Disappearing Evidence. Or maybe the Virtual FBI…”
“What about FBI Dot-Com?”
“Clever. They’re referring to this place as the E-Bureau.”
Anna giggled. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You sound cynical. I thought you backed the bureau all the way.”
Oliver had done so publicly, but for every criminal caught by new methods, others roamed free and, as far as he was concerned, the agency’s E-Bureau was siphoning manpower. Destroying hard-copy records was crazy. “You should see what’s happening downstairs.”
“That bad, huh?”
The basement was in pandemonium. On the first floor, files from open cardboard boxes were being scanned into a central database. Upstairs, Miles and Kevin were holding meetings, announcing that in the new global economy, evidence was going to become superfluous. “J. Edgar Hoover’s probably rolling over in his grave,” Oliver muttered. He slugged back a last gulp of mochaccino just as lightning flashed, illuminating the entrance to Grand Central Station.
“Big Brother,” Anna said, shaking her head, “you look grim. I think Kate Olsen hit the nail on the head.” Laughing, her eyes twinkling, Anna reiterated Kate’s words. “‘We know you deal with the darker side of life, Mr. Vargo, but what about the lighter side?’” Pausing, Anna offered her best dumb-doofus expression, then lightly mocked her brother, saying, “Duh? Lighter side? Fun? What’s that?”
Oliver couldn’t help but smile.
“Which brings me to something else,” she plunged on. “While I’m in the Virgin Islands, promise me you’ll meet some people. I’m leaving phone numbers for all my girlfriends who developed crushes on you when they saw you on TV. They all want you in the worst way.”
“So, it was you who put all those condoms in my wallet.”
“Who did you think it was? The condom fairy?” He chuckled as she continued. “You seem stressed and overtired, and you look like you need a vacation. Since it’s been so long that you’ve obviously forgotten, sex is the closest thing to a vacation when you don’t have time to go out of town.”
“It hasn’t been that long.”
She leveled him with a stare. “Did you do it with Kate Olsen?”
“None of your business.”
“I didn’t think so,” Anna returned.
Damn. His little sister had been playing matchmaker ever since his arrival. When it came to fixing him up, he was beginning to think there was nothing she wouldn’t try. While he considered calling one of her friends for a date, he looked down at the entrance to Grand Central and a sidewalk teeming with open umbrellas. People without them crowded under awnings, craning their necks to stare at the downpour as if they expected the rain to stop sometime soon. Others lifted coats over their heads and ran through the deluge.
“Have fun while I’m gone,” Anna was saying. “You work all the time, Ollie.”
So did she, and the way Oliver figured it, they were lucky to love their work. Anna’s boyfriend, Vic, was just as passionate and could talk for hours about the various ways photographers manipulated images. Kate Olsen also enjoyed working, so it was too bad she hadn’t rung his chimes. The truth was, lately he’d been rejecting most women. It was as if, deep down, he’d decided on an image of what he was really looking for and now he was waiting for that dream woman to materialize.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Anna announced, drawing Oliver from his reverie as she put the Sex Files CD into his ROM drive. “We’ll get a picture of the sexiest woman first. That’ll get your juices flowing, so you’ll be ready to call all my friends who are dying to meet you.”
This was definitely more intriguing than getting a printout of the sexiest man. “I’m working on the Most Wanted List.”
Anna leaned and jiggled the mouse, moving the cursor. “We can keep that program open,” she assured. “We’ll minimize it and work in another window.” He watched as she hit RUN.
They waited.
And then text filled the screen. Anna groaned in disappointment. “I thought you said we’d get a picture.”
“We will when you scroll down.”
“Oh, but this is good,” she whispered, reading the words. “America’s Sexiest Woman would be named Cameron,” she announced breathlessly.
“And according to this, she’d be tall,” he added. “Five-eleven.”
“Her measurements are thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six,” continued Anna. “And she loves wearing sexy clothes.”
“She sounds like a walking cliché.” Still, as he continued reading, there was no denying the pull of arousal. Barely suppressing a shiver, he tried to ignore the tightening below his belt, but it only increased when he read that Cameron never wore panties under her Lycra slacks, body-hugging knit dresses and silk teddies.
When she has to get dressed at all, the text read, Cameron likes to get out and have spicy, erotic adventures. She especially loves the excitement of world travel and meeting new male playmates. She likes a hint of danger, too. Exploring kinky aphrodisiacs is her favorite pastime, and she dabbles in everything from body paints to edible undies. Cameron will do absolutely anything—and everything—to please her man.
Oliver was surprised by how easily he was getting sucked into the fantasy. He prided himself on not being sexist and for liking a woman for her mind, though he thoroughly enjoyed the rest. “If I was a woman,” he commented, dragging a hand through his hair, “I’d hate this kind of thing.”
Anna laughed. “But you’re a man.”
As such, he had to admit that he found this fantasy woman appealing. “Point taken.”
Anna merely shrugged. “Ah. You don’t scroll. There’s a link.” She clicked on the mouse. In the instant before the image of America’s Sexiest Woman filled the screen, she said, “So, this is what Cameron would look like if she were real.”
Oliver felt as if somebody had punched him. Her hair was dark blond, a shade most would call honey, but it was shot through with everything from pale straw to bumblebee yellow to strands of brilliant white. Looking as soft as silk, it hung in loose waves past her shoulders, tightening into curls where the ends rested on a tan cashmere sweater.
His eyes dropped to her breasts. Slightly aroused nipples pebbled under the shirt. In contrast to what he’d felt with Kate Olsen, he found himself imagining cupping those mounds, then slowly stroking their creamy sides and swirling his tongue around their excited, satiny tips. When his eyes traveled toward her face, he couldn’t tear them away. Her neck was so nice. Very round, very creamy. And her face… “She reminds me of film stars from the forties.”
“Veronica Lake, maybe,” Anna agreed.
Parted in a jagged line, her hair framed her face, waving over one of her unusually wide-set dark eyes, lending an air of mystery. Miles McLaughlin hadn’t been kidding about the photographic quality of the pictures generated by Quick Composite, either. Cameron definitely looked real.
And familiar.
He could swear he’d seen her somewhere, but that was probably because she was such a cliché-woman, blond and dark-eyed with a perfect body. Because the picture looked so real, he had to remind himself that she didn’t really exist as he continued surveying her.
Her face was closer to round than oval; her cheekbones high and slanted. Light-brown eyebrows arched on poreless, pink-toned skin. Her mouth was decidedly kissable, the red, glistening lips parted slightly. The velvet tip of a tongue was exposed, touching a very slight, sexy gap between her two front teeth.
“Before you get carried away, Oliver,” murmured Anna, studying his expression, “please remember she’s not real.”
He barely heard.
“I’ll come back when you’re not so bedazzled,” she continued on a sigh, planting a kiss on her brother’s cheek. “I still want to see the sexiest guy. But now I’m late. I’ve got to run to Bloomie’s for another bathing suit to take to the islands. See you for dinner? After work, Vic and I want to take you to Little Italy. We want you to meet a friend of ours. If you hit it off, you can spend time together on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Her family—”
“Is going out of town, just like you and Vic, and Mom and Dad. C’mon, quit worrying about me. I’ll be fine over the holidays. And I’ll get my own dates.”
“When?”
He merely shrugged, his gaze returning to the computer screen. When he looked up again, Anna was gone. Because he turned instinctively toward the window to catch a glimpse of her, he was staring down at Forty-second Street when lightning jagged across the sky, illuminating the entrance to Grand Central Station.
The flash lasted only a heartbeat, just long enough for his jaw to slacken and for his heart to miss a beat as the angry sky turned dark again. He felt sure he was going crazy. But she’d been standing there, hadn’t she? He shook his head in disbelief, but he could swear he’d seen the same woman whose image still filled his computer screen.
“Cameron,” he murmured. But it was impossible. It wasn’t really her. It couldn’t be.
No. The lightning had come as fast as a camera flash. Oliver was far away, too. And besides, Cameron wasn’t even real. She was just a computer-generated image they’d gotten by crossing the Sex Files with Quick Composite.
And yet he could swear he’d seen her standing under an awning, staring up at him. She was exactly the same as the picture in every detail, tall and curvy with blond hair that fell over one eye. She’d been wearing a green raincoat. His mouth went dry as he edged closer to the window. Not a man usually given to flights of fancy, he set his mouth in a grim line as he stared down, his eyes piercing the rain and darkness.
When the lightning flashed again, the woman was gone.
