Countdown To A Kiss A New Year's Eve Anthology
The Perfect Kiss Chapter Five
That was odd. Munchkin touching him that way. Lewis filed it away, knowing he could easily be pulled into a vortex when trying to figure out what a woman was saying or doing or meaning. Basically, any kind of communication with a woman that wasn't computer coding related could throw him.
It wasn't like he was a virgin or anything. He'd even had a couple of semi-girlfriends along the way. But he'd always felt as if he were underwater when they were sending signals. He could tell they were communicating with him, but the message was muted and unintelligible.
Granted, he didn't try very hard with any of them, immersed as he was in getting his company to the level it had become. And knowing that in the end, none of them were Grace Devine.
He'd never felt anything like that with Darcy before. Had never needed to decipher her meaning. But she'd never gently stroked his cheek before either.
Oh, wait. Yes, she had, that one time when he and Brooks had gotten really scraped up scaling a chain link fence they had no business climbing. She'd stroked his cheek then as Ellen Bennett sprayed Bactine on his scrapes. She'd brushed his hair out of his eyes, too. So, could he deduce that it was her Florence Nightingale mode when she touched him like that?
But no, she was the one hurt now, not him.
Right. Her ankle. He looked around for something that Darcy could rest her leg on while sitting in the hard-as-hell chair. Everything was bolted down. What kind of people would steal chairs and tables from a hospital emergency room? He didn't really want to know.
He lifted her leg and rested it on his knee. "This will have to do for now."
"Um...but..."
"It's okay. Just fill out your forms." She nodded and took the pen that was attached by chain to the clipboard (another thing fastened down!) and started to write. Her hair fell forward and she tucked the right side behind her ear, something she'd been doing ever since Lewis had known her. Even when she wore her hair in a ponytail, as she had for most of their lives, strands would inevitably come loose and she'd push them behind her ear. It was a movement as familiar to Lewis as his own name and he felt a rush of...nostalgia? Tenderness? Something that made him feel instead of think.
How unusual.
He stopped staring at her hair and studied her face, which now sported another look that conjured up more emotions in him that he didn't understand. She was biting her lower lip, something she always did when concentrating. He'd seen that look a thousand times, but he'd never really noticed her lips before. Never noticed how plump and full they were. How when she bit the lower lip it became even redder.
And tempting.
He nearly fell over with that crazy thought. He righted himself just in time. Darcy glanced up at him, but he looked away and she returned to her forms. His eyes were just about to stray back to her mouth when the whoosh of the outside doors caught his attention. In stumbled four college-age kids, two boys and two girls, arm in arm, seemingly holding each other up.
Lewis quickly looked them over, trying to figure out which one was hurt. No blood on any of them, no discernible limp, no-
"Bluuuurgh," one of the boys bellowed as he vomited all over himself and the floor. Darcy's head popped up, taking in the group just as one of the girls followed suit and blew chunks, out-spewing her pal by a good three feet of splatter.
"Oh God," Darcy whispered and gagged.
"Don't look. Keep your head down," Lewis told her and she followed his suggestion, but her shoulders lurched when the third kid erupted.
Nurse Georgie was out from behind the desk area, a bucket in one hand, a large pink plastic container in the other, moving much more quickly than Lewis would have thought her able. "Dear Lord, please tell me none of you drove here," she said as she put the bucket down in front of the fourth one just in time.
"We're not drunk," said the first boy who had puked. "It must be food...." He couldn't finish, but Georgie had shoved the bedpan into his hands so at least when he hurled this time, it wasn't all over the floor.
She turned back to Lewis and Darcy. "Take her into room number three. I'll be with you when I get some help with these four."
Lewis was about to ask questions when another one of the kids erupted, so he swept Darcy into his arms-clipboard, jacket and all-skirted the group of kids as widely as he could, and moved down the hallway to the well-marked rooms. Darcy opened the door to Room Three for him and they stepped in. He quickly shut the door behind them with his foot. You could still hear the horrible retching, but not quite so loudly. And at least they didn't have to see-or smell-it anymore.
He placed her on the examination table, which was more of a gurney with wheels and its side rails in the down position. He turned and studied the door. It was wider than most, so that you could easily wheel out the bed. This set-up was better than most emergency rooms he'd seen on TV where there were only the thin curtains that separated patients. He turned back to Darcy, who seemed to still be holding back an eruption of her own. "Munchkin? You all right? That was pretty gross out there. I mean, my God, who'd have thought those kids could even hold that-"
"Stop," she said firmly. And he did. "I think I'm a sympathy spewer. Whenever I see it, I just..." Her shoulders, exposed and creamy pale next to the black of her dress, lurched forward and Lewis quickly found the wastebasket and brought it to her. She pulled back from the brink and waved the basket away. "I think I'm okay. At least I can't see it anymore." As if on cue, another loud gagging sound came from the outer area. "Dear God, why did I leave my phone at home? At least I could have put some music on, and my earbuds in."
Lewis pulled out his phone, turned the volume as high as possible, and put the music rotation on shuffle. He set it down next Darcy's hip brushing the full curve as he did. "No earbuds, but it should help."
She patted his hand. "Thanks, Lewis. Thank you for everything."
"No problem," he said. And really, it wasn't. He still had plenty of time before midnight.
"So, Lewis..."
"Yes?"
"What did that gorgeous man from the FBI want with you?"
He stiffened, not sure it was from the reminder of the FBI, or from Darcy thinking the man who had been with Grace was gorgeous.
"Um...well...I'm not entirely sure. It could be..."
"Lewis, spill."
And he did. "The NSA..." At her blank look, he clarified. "They're the guys who create and break code."
"Like, computer code, or secret code?"
"Both. But mostly secret code. The thing is, secret codes can be embedded into computer codes, gaming codes in particular. They've been trying to interview me. One appointment I completely forgot about."
Darcy shrugged, not surprised. She knew him pretty well.
"The other appointment? Well, we'd just acquired three new games through a company we hadn't dealt with before. We usually do pretty thorough checks on the designers, basically looking for infringements on other designs, that type of thing. We don't usually buy from outside sources because we have so many great designers on our own staff. But these games were so great, we wanted them." Darcy sat up a bit straighter at that and he wondered if her ankle had begun to hurt more. "You okay?" he asked.
Nodding, she replied, "Go on. The games were so good, you just had to have them..."
"Right. They all passed our usual code checks. We were just about to do clearance on the designers, when we heard PlayStation was sniffing around, so we bought them. Fast."
"So, you never knew who actually designed them, just the development company they worked for."
"Right. And not too long after that sale, I got a call from the NSA wanting to set up a meeting."
"That could just be coincidence." She shifted on the bed. Assuming she was in pain, he reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, gently lifted her ballooned ankle, and slid the pillow underneath. "There's probably nothing in those games that would set off the NSA."
"Yeah, it could be. But the timing is suspect."
"I wouldn't worry about it. Just meet with them. They probably want to just pick your brain."
He sighed. He'd thought of that, of course. But for some reason, the buying of games before he'd thoroughly checked them-and their designers-out seemed a little easier to face than the idea of being some guinea pig for a government agency.
"Yeah. I know. Doesn't look like I'm going to be able to avoid it with this guy Ramos in town. Still, I'd like to put them off a little longer. At least until I can do the due diligence I should have done with those games in the first place. It was just sloppy, and if I hadn't been so eager to beat a competitor, none of this would be happening."
"It's not the games. At least not the three new ones you bought."
He looked at her, his head tilted. "Huh?"
"What was the name of the development company you bought the games from?"
"Pegasus. They're fairly new, and I don't think they have that many designers, but they've developed a few awesome-" Darcy had turned her clipboard around and nudged it into his gut. "What?"
"Look under 'Employer'," she said, nudging the board at him again.
He pushed his glasses up his nose, took the clipboard from her and scanned the form. "Pegasus? Not the same Pegasus?" She nodded, her shimmery hair swinging. His mind followed the movement for a moment until Darcy softly but firmly said, "Lewis, focus," which brought him back to the form. "Under position it says video game designer." She nodded again.
"I knew you'd majored in Graphic Design, but..."
"With an IT degree, too. I've been designing for the last four years."
Brooks had never mentioned that fact to him. Or had he and Lewis just never processed it? Likely it was the latter. A thought came to him. "Those three games we bought? They weren't yours, were they?"
Darcy nodded, a smile widening across her face. "You're looking at what my bonus on 'The Geek Shall Inherit the Mirth' bought me." She did a little "ta-da" movement with her hand down her sparkly dress and to her see-through shoes. Well, shoe. "Oh crap, I lost my other shoe when I fell!"
"I don't know what Pegasus' bonus structure is, but given what we paid for that game, I'm guessing that was a pretty nice bonus check."
"Exactly," she said, but her tone had turned from triumphant to dismal as she stared at her shoe-less right foot.
"And you spent it on a dress and shoes?"
"Not just any dress and shoes. A Dolce & Gabbana gown and Louboutin shoes."
"I...what..."
"Never mind. Fat lot of good either of them did me. Stuck in here all night." She waved her arm around the small room.
"You could wear the dress to next year's party." The look she gave him made him realize he'd once again stepped into it. "Or not."
"No," she sighed. "But maybe somewhere in Boston, though I don't get many invitations to formal events." She wiggled her good foot, still ensconced in the impossibly high heel. "But I'll never get to wear these again."
She let out another sigh, and Lewis thought this sigh could turn bad. Like, to tears or something. He had to do something to take her mind off her dumb, and crazy-expensive, shoes. "So, Munchkin, is-"
"Darcy," she interrupted. "I'm not a Munchkin anymore, Lewis. I'm a woman now, well into my twenties. I will always be small, okay? But petite. Not a Munchkin." There was a definite tone in her voice.
Ohhhhkaaay. Lewis didn't understand women's moods-didn't understand other people's moods much at all-but he knew this could get ugly real quickly. "I loved your games, Darcy. The minute I saw them I told my guys to do whatever it took to acquire them for KampsApps' gaming division."
That perked her up a little. At least she stopped staring at her foot where the missing shoe would have been. "Really? I didn't know that. I wasn't in on any of those discussions. Designers at Pegasus never are."
"Really. Especially Mirth. The minute I saw the prototype demo, it was...I don't know...it's totally original, of course, and hilarious, but something about it just seemed...hmm...familiar, somehow. It was weird. But I had to have it."
It wasn't like he was a virgin or anything. He'd even had a couple of semi-girlfriends along the way. But he'd always felt as if he were underwater when they were sending signals. He could tell they were communicating with him, but the message was muted and unintelligible.
Granted, he didn't try very hard with any of them, immersed as he was in getting his company to the level it had become. And knowing that in the end, none of them were Grace Devine.
He'd never felt anything like that with Darcy before. Had never needed to decipher her meaning. But she'd never gently stroked his cheek before either.
Oh, wait. Yes, she had, that one time when he and Brooks had gotten really scraped up scaling a chain link fence they had no business climbing. She'd stroked his cheek then as Ellen Bennett sprayed Bactine on his scrapes. She'd brushed his hair out of his eyes, too. So, could he deduce that it was her Florence Nightingale mode when she touched him like that?
But no, she was the one hurt now, not him.
Right. Her ankle. He looked around for something that Darcy could rest her leg on while sitting in the hard-as-hell chair. Everything was bolted down. What kind of people would steal chairs and tables from a hospital emergency room? He didn't really want to know.
He lifted her leg and rested it on his knee. "This will have to do for now."
"Um...but..."
"It's okay. Just fill out your forms." She nodded and took the pen that was attached by chain to the clipboard (another thing fastened down!) and started to write. Her hair fell forward and she tucked the right side behind her ear, something she'd been doing ever since Lewis had known her. Even when she wore her hair in a ponytail, as she had for most of their lives, strands would inevitably come loose and she'd push them behind her ear. It was a movement as familiar to Lewis as his own name and he felt a rush of...nostalgia? Tenderness? Something that made him feel instead of think.
How unusual.
He stopped staring at her hair and studied her face, which now sported another look that conjured up more emotions in him that he didn't understand. She was biting her lower lip, something she always did when concentrating. He'd seen that look a thousand times, but he'd never really noticed her lips before. Never noticed how plump and full they were. How when she bit the lower lip it became even redder.
And tempting.
He nearly fell over with that crazy thought. He righted himself just in time. Darcy glanced up at him, but he looked away and she returned to her forms. His eyes were just about to stray back to her mouth when the whoosh of the outside doors caught his attention. In stumbled four college-age kids, two boys and two girls, arm in arm, seemingly holding each other up.
Lewis quickly looked them over, trying to figure out which one was hurt. No blood on any of them, no discernible limp, no-
"Bluuuurgh," one of the boys bellowed as he vomited all over himself and the floor. Darcy's head popped up, taking in the group just as one of the girls followed suit and blew chunks, out-spewing her pal by a good three feet of splatter.
"Oh God," Darcy whispered and gagged.
"Don't look. Keep your head down," Lewis told her and she followed his suggestion, but her shoulders lurched when the third kid erupted.
Nurse Georgie was out from behind the desk area, a bucket in one hand, a large pink plastic container in the other, moving much more quickly than Lewis would have thought her able. "Dear Lord, please tell me none of you drove here," she said as she put the bucket down in front of the fourth one just in time.
"We're not drunk," said the first boy who had puked. "It must be food...." He couldn't finish, but Georgie had shoved the bedpan into his hands so at least when he hurled this time, it wasn't all over the floor.
She turned back to Lewis and Darcy. "Take her into room number three. I'll be with you when I get some help with these four."
Lewis was about to ask questions when another one of the kids erupted, so he swept Darcy into his arms-clipboard, jacket and all-skirted the group of kids as widely as he could, and moved down the hallway to the well-marked rooms. Darcy opened the door to Room Three for him and they stepped in. He quickly shut the door behind them with his foot. You could still hear the horrible retching, but not quite so loudly. And at least they didn't have to see-or smell-it anymore.
He placed her on the examination table, which was more of a gurney with wheels and its side rails in the down position. He turned and studied the door. It was wider than most, so that you could easily wheel out the bed. This set-up was better than most emergency rooms he'd seen on TV where there were only the thin curtains that separated patients. He turned back to Darcy, who seemed to still be holding back an eruption of her own. "Munchkin? You all right? That was pretty gross out there. I mean, my God, who'd have thought those kids could even hold that-"
"Stop," she said firmly. And he did. "I think I'm a sympathy spewer. Whenever I see it, I just..." Her shoulders, exposed and creamy pale next to the black of her dress, lurched forward and Lewis quickly found the wastebasket and brought it to her. She pulled back from the brink and waved the basket away. "I think I'm okay. At least I can't see it anymore." As if on cue, another loud gagging sound came from the outer area. "Dear God, why did I leave my phone at home? At least I could have put some music on, and my earbuds in."
Lewis pulled out his phone, turned the volume as high as possible, and put the music rotation on shuffle. He set it down next Darcy's hip brushing the full curve as he did. "No earbuds, but it should help."
She patted his hand. "Thanks, Lewis. Thank you for everything."
"No problem," he said. And really, it wasn't. He still had plenty of time before midnight.
"So, Lewis..."
"Yes?"
"What did that gorgeous man from the FBI want with you?"
He stiffened, not sure it was from the reminder of the FBI, or from Darcy thinking the man who had been with Grace was gorgeous.
"Um...well...I'm not entirely sure. It could be..."
"Lewis, spill."
And he did. "The NSA..." At her blank look, he clarified. "They're the guys who create and break code."
"Like, computer code, or secret code?"
"Both. But mostly secret code. The thing is, secret codes can be embedded into computer codes, gaming codes in particular. They've been trying to interview me. One appointment I completely forgot about."
Darcy shrugged, not surprised. She knew him pretty well.
"The other appointment? Well, we'd just acquired three new games through a company we hadn't dealt with before. We usually do pretty thorough checks on the designers, basically looking for infringements on other designs, that type of thing. We don't usually buy from outside sources because we have so many great designers on our own staff. But these games were so great, we wanted them." Darcy sat up a bit straighter at that and he wondered if her ankle had begun to hurt more. "You okay?" he asked.
Nodding, she replied, "Go on. The games were so good, you just had to have them..."
"Right. They all passed our usual code checks. We were just about to do clearance on the designers, when we heard PlayStation was sniffing around, so we bought them. Fast."
"So, you never knew who actually designed them, just the development company they worked for."
"Right. And not too long after that sale, I got a call from the NSA wanting to set up a meeting."
"That could just be coincidence." She shifted on the bed. Assuming she was in pain, he reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, gently lifted her ballooned ankle, and slid the pillow underneath. "There's probably nothing in those games that would set off the NSA."
"Yeah, it could be. But the timing is suspect."
"I wouldn't worry about it. Just meet with them. They probably want to just pick your brain."
He sighed. He'd thought of that, of course. But for some reason, the buying of games before he'd thoroughly checked them-and their designers-out seemed a little easier to face than the idea of being some guinea pig for a government agency.
"Yeah. I know. Doesn't look like I'm going to be able to avoid it with this guy Ramos in town. Still, I'd like to put them off a little longer. At least until I can do the due diligence I should have done with those games in the first place. It was just sloppy, and if I hadn't been so eager to beat a competitor, none of this would be happening."
"It's not the games. At least not the three new ones you bought."
He looked at her, his head tilted. "Huh?"
"What was the name of the development company you bought the games from?"
"Pegasus. They're fairly new, and I don't think they have that many designers, but they've developed a few awesome-" Darcy had turned her clipboard around and nudged it into his gut. "What?"
"Look under 'Employer'," she said, nudging the board at him again.
He pushed his glasses up his nose, took the clipboard from her and scanned the form. "Pegasus? Not the same Pegasus?" She nodded, her shimmery hair swinging. His mind followed the movement for a moment until Darcy softly but firmly said, "Lewis, focus," which brought him back to the form. "Under position it says video game designer." She nodded again.
"I knew you'd majored in Graphic Design, but..."
"With an IT degree, too. I've been designing for the last four years."
Brooks had never mentioned that fact to him. Or had he and Lewis just never processed it? Likely it was the latter. A thought came to him. "Those three games we bought? They weren't yours, were they?"
Darcy nodded, a smile widening across her face. "You're looking at what my bonus on 'The Geek Shall Inherit the Mirth' bought me." She did a little "ta-da" movement with her hand down her sparkly dress and to her see-through shoes. Well, shoe. "Oh crap, I lost my other shoe when I fell!"
"I don't know what Pegasus' bonus structure is, but given what we paid for that game, I'm guessing that was a pretty nice bonus check."
"Exactly," she said, but her tone had turned from triumphant to dismal as she stared at her shoe-less right foot.
"And you spent it on a dress and shoes?"
"Not just any dress and shoes. A Dolce & Gabbana gown and Louboutin shoes."
"I...what..."
"Never mind. Fat lot of good either of them did me. Stuck in here all night." She waved her arm around the small room.
"You could wear the dress to next year's party." The look she gave him made him realize he'd once again stepped into it. "Or not."
"No," she sighed. "But maybe somewhere in Boston, though I don't get many invitations to formal events." She wiggled her good foot, still ensconced in the impossibly high heel. "But I'll never get to wear these again."
She let out another sigh, and Lewis thought this sigh could turn bad. Like, to tears or something. He had to do something to take her mind off her dumb, and crazy-expensive, shoes. "So, Munchkin, is-"
"Darcy," she interrupted. "I'm not a Munchkin anymore, Lewis. I'm a woman now, well into my twenties. I will always be small, okay? But petite. Not a Munchkin." There was a definite tone in her voice.
Ohhhhkaaay. Lewis didn't understand women's moods-didn't understand other people's moods much at all-but he knew this could get ugly real quickly. "I loved your games, Darcy. The minute I saw them I told my guys to do whatever it took to acquire them for KampsApps' gaming division."
That perked her up a little. At least she stopped staring at her foot where the missing shoe would have been. "Really? I didn't know that. I wasn't in on any of those discussions. Designers at Pegasus never are."
"Really. Especially Mirth. The minute I saw the prototype demo, it was...I don't know...it's totally original, of course, and hilarious, but something about it just seemed...hmm...familiar, somehow. It was weird. But I had to have it."
