Dating and Other Dangers (2 page)

‘Where did you get that?’ And how on earth had he tracked her down?

‘I find it so ironic that you deliver seminars to the other employees about protecting their
online presence and reputation when you’re so vicious in cyberspace yourself.’

‘Do you have a point, Mr Rush?’ She curled her toes and tensed her muscles. She wanted to escape but refused to run away. Because she really needed to know what his point was. Despite her hammering heart, she told herself to keep calm. She was safe. She’d never used Hammond computers for her forums and she never would—her job mattered too much.

‘What do you think, Nadia? Why am I here?’

She shrugged her shoulders slightly. ‘No reason I can think of. Unless you wish to discuss possible employment at Hammond, I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.’

He smiled as he surveyed her. Sitting back in his seat, he was now completely at ease, as if he was the one who worked here, and not total stranger who’d just come in off the street. And he was completely gorgeous, in an all-male, all-arrogant way.

Oh, yes—woman be
warned
. She knew his type—too good-looking for his own good. A spoilt playboy who’d been outed as a two/three/four or more timer for sure. And he wasn’t happy about it? Too bad.

His eyes compelled her to answer his
challenge. Fire burned in them—literally a touch of russet in the cinnamon iris—impossible to ignore.

But she’d damn well try. ‘You might be twice my size, but you don’t intimidate me. You can take your threatening attitude elsewhere.’

‘Threatening?’ He laughed. The sound spiked the air with danger. ‘I’m not here to threaten, Nadia. I’m here to extract a promise.’

She quickly touched her tongue to the inside of her dry lips.

‘The thread about me is defamatory,’ he said bluntly.

‘Well …’ She forced a smile. ‘The defence to defamation is truth.’

‘That’s right,’ he agreed.

‘So you’re saying what’s on there
isn’t
the truth?’

‘That’s right.’

She shrugged. ‘So prove it.’

Six seconds passed by. Her senses had suddenly grown so acute she could hear the hand of her tiny watch ticking, so she knew exactly.

‘You don’t think that’s the wrong way round Nadia? In a free and just legal system a man is innocent until proven guilty. But in
the little world
you’ve
created he’s guilty until proven innocent. You don’t see a problem with that?’

She shot him a look designed to wither. ‘The men detailed on my site
are
guilty.’

His
answering glare was withering and then some. ‘You don’t accept that it might be open to abuse? You don’t think a woman with a vendetta might take advantage of it?’

‘A woman with a vendetta? Please—men like you made up that kind of stereotype.’

‘So you’re
not
a woman who was hurt by some man and seeking payback? That isn’t why you set this thing up?’

Her temper flared. ‘I set this up so people had access to information. All kinds of information.’

‘Because all men are bastards?’

‘Information about dating in the modern world,’ she corrected. But this conversation was futile. He was never going to understand—clearly his outsize ego was too bruised. ‘I don’t need to justify myself to you.’

‘Oh, I think you do.’ He leaned forward. ‘I think you need to justify your actions to a lot of people. And why won’t you come clean about it? Why hide behind online anonymity? Your employers here don’t even know.’

She glanced out of those windows, wishing they were solid walls now. Of course they didn’t know. They’d totally disapprove. They stressed online responsibility and reputation—it was what
she
taught every new recruit. And she did not want to jeopardise her job. She’d worked too hard to get it.

‘I don’t cheat,’ he said firmly. ‘And I don’t swindle naïve girls out of their life savings. So why am I on there?’

‘You’ve obviously hurt someone.’ And she’d be reading the thread to find out how, the second she got the chance.

‘So where’s my right of reply?’

‘You can post a rebuttal. You just have to register and log in.’

‘What? And give myself an anonymous identity like the shrews on there?’ He shook his head. ‘I think
you
need to take ownership of the site that you’ve created.
You
need to take responsibility for the accuracy of the content and for the damage that can ensue from it.’

‘In what way has it damaged you?’ He struck her as bulletproof.

He paused. ‘Reputation is an unquantifiably precious thing.’

She knew that. ‘So what do you want?’

He sat back in his seat, the back of his
fingers brushing his mouth and jaw. She tried very hard not to follow the movement and focus on that mouth with its full lips. Instead she tried to meet his gaze—except it seemed it had wandered …

She watched, steaming up, as he looked at her mouth, her neck, her chest. She saw the deepening fire in his expression and felt the response inside herself—her muscles shifting as hormones rushed. Beneath her blouse her breasts tightened …

Of course her body would react to just a look from this too handsome playboy stud. Her mating instinct was so
off
.

Slowly his lashes lifted and he captured her gaze with his gleaming one. ‘I guess if I have to prove it, then I’ll prove it.’

‘How are you going to do that?’ And why was she suddenly whispering?

‘Three dates,’ he said, just as softly.

‘Pardon?’

‘You and I are going to go out on three dates. You’re the judge, jury and the executioner, right? So judge me on the facts. I’ll prove to you that what’s up on your site is untrue.’

She laughed—only one note lower than hysterical. It was preposterous. ‘I’m not dating you.’

‘It’s that or call your lawyers.’ His gaze coasted over her again, assessing in the most base way. ‘Got lots of money for lawyers, Nadia? No, of course you don’t. Otherwise why would you be working as a lowly HR assistant?’

‘The users of my forum sign a waiver.’ She tried to recover her ground. ‘I can’t be held responsible for what they put up there.’

‘It’s so convenient for you to hide behind that rule, isn’t it? I think it could be due for a test in court, though.’ He smiled sympathetically. ‘And it’ll take months. All that time off work… Everyone here at work is going to know, Nadia. And your family, friends …’ His eyes narrowed. ‘They don’t know either, do they?’ He went for the kill. ‘You’re going to need good lawyers for a long and expensive time, honey.’

‘You’re willing to waste that money yourself?’ Her stomach churned. He couldn’t be serious. Surely he wouldn’t do that?

‘I don’t think it is a waste. Anyway, I
am
a lawyer, I can represent myself.’

Of course he was a lawyer. He was every inch an aggressive, adversarial jerk. Well, he wasn’t going to intimidate
her
. She swallowed back the bile burning its way up her
throat. ‘I’m not taking your thread down. It’s freedom of speech.’

‘Actually, I don’t want you to take it down,’ he said thought fully. ‘Let’s face it, once things are out there on the web they’re out there for ever. What I want is a retrac tion.’

‘Then you need to contact the woman you slimed, not me.’ He didn’t need to involve
her
at all. Three dates? It was ridiculous.

‘They’re anonymous—I don’t know who they are.’

They?
Oh, how very nice. ‘And you can’t figure it out because there are so many possibilities?’ She widened her eyes in fake surprise. ‘Be honest.’ She snapped into attack mode. ‘What you really want is a suck-up piece, going on about how fabulous you are in bed.’

‘You’re offering to sleep with me so you can report with accuracy?’

Her face went hot. So did every other part of her body.

‘I don’t need your approval to know my worth as a lover, Nadia. What I want is an acknowledgement that sometimes people put things up there with a warped perspective. Although what I
really
want is for you to pull the plug on this poisonous swamp of bitterness altogether.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘Being a bitch is that important to you?’

She shrugged. ‘If warning other women about jerks who want to use them makes me a bitch, then I’m happy to be considered one. For a long time.’

‘So how do you know what they put up is accurate?’

‘Why would anyone lie?’ It was simple. ‘I’ve already told you these aren’t women with a vendetta. These are women who’ve been hurt really badly.’

‘Women like you?’

She froze for a nano-second. ‘It isn’t personal for me.’

‘Like hell it isn’t.’

Grimly, she hid her fists beneath the desk and tried to think of a way out. But she was backed into a corner and she knew it. ‘Okay, then. You want three dates? Fine. But we go Dutch.’

He winced theatrically, but that didn’t hide the satisfaction in his eyes. ‘Yeah, you would be that crass.’

‘I wouldn’t want to feel I owed you anything, Mr Rush. Or that you expected anything from me because you bought me an expensive dinner.’

‘Actually, I’m expecting quite a lot from
you Nadia.’ He smiled with genuine amusement. ‘And call me Ethan.’

She stood up and walked to the door, because if she didn’t her anger was going to burst out utterly inappropriately. He stood too. She saw him take in her height and glance down to register the height of her heels. She just knew he was mentally calculating the difference if the shoes were off.

‘Very dangerous things come in small packages,’ she said tightly.

He grinned—the patronising, “amused by the little girl” grin that she’d seen way too many times in her life.

‘So do very precious things,’ he countered softly.

She didn’t see him the rest of the way out. Couldn’t. The wave of heat all but blinded her. Half fury, half something else altogether. Oh, yes, he deserved to be on WomanBWarned, even if he wasn’t a bona fide candidate. He’d trample hearts without any effort whatsoever.

But not hers. Never,
ever
hers.

W
OMAN
BW
ARNED

Top tips for surviving the dating jungle. What not to do on your first date …

Don’t drink—at least not much. Alcohol impairs judgment and you want to make safe, sensible decisions.

Don’t be too sexual—if it’s a possible relationship you want, not a one night hook-up, then keep a little mystery. You want to be taken seriously.

Don’t go on and on about your ex(es) or your ailments or how awful your boss is. Negativity is a downer.

Don’t go to the movies—it’s a cop-out. You want to get to know the person,
not sit next to them in silence for two hours.

Don’t try too hard—just relax and be yourself.

E
THAN
sprawled on the sofa in his apartment and laughed as he read, his laptop balanced his stomach. Oh, boy!
OlderNWiser
—the online pseudonym for one Nadia Keenan—really had her rules, didn’t she? There were a ton of little blog bits on her site, giving tips for this and that in the dating realm. As if she was some kind of expert.

He
so
didn’t think so.

The woman needed a lesson or fifty from a true master. And he knew just how he was going to do it—by taking over her own turf, of course. Fighting fire with fire and all that. Because anyone could set up a blog, right? And fortunately he was partner at a firm that
didn’t
have uptight HR princesses like Nadia Keenan. His firm believed in treating adults like adults, and didn’t care about what personal things employees decided to put up on the internet. There were no draconian, moralistic guidelines attempting to govern their workers’ private lives. So long as it wasn’t work-related, and didn’t impact negatively on
the business, they weren’t interested. If the people he did deals with stumbled across it they’d most likely laugh and cheer him on. They were human, with senses of humour.

Yeah, it wasn’t because of
his
work that he was bothered by her reputation-shredding website. For him, it was the core injustice of having to prove innocence instead of guilt. That violation of a fundamental legal principle. Okay, there was an element of the personal too. They’d picked on the wrong Rush. Ethan didn’t deserve to be slated—it was his father who was the jerk. And Ethan refused to be anything like his father—not fickle, not deceitful, not hurtful. Ethan might play, but he was up-front and honest about it, and always nice to the women whose company he enjoyed. Mind you, he didn’t feel like being nice to Nadia Keenan.

He logged onto one of the major blogging sites and thought for a second about a title.

GuysGetWise?

Fantastic—not registered, and his to use.

And his tagline?

Taking on the Dirt-Dishing Dating Divette.

He could do alliteration too, see? And at least he could spell, rather than use basically illiterate abbreviations. The t-crossing, i-dotting legal writer in him detested those.
Although admittedly “divette” was his own invention—but she was too itty-bitty to be a true diva. He filled in the little grid detailing “all about this blog” …

Because he was so much more of an expert on dating than Ms OlderNWiser, and she was going to know it. He chuckled as he composed his first entry. There was nothing like a direct challenge to get his blood pumping. Grin wolfish, he started typing the beginning …

Wrong.

A cinema is a nice, totally safe environment that can push the defrost button on even the most hardened ice queen—like
OlderNWiser
herself.

You can round it out more if you want by going for pizza before, if necessary—NOT the usual cheap delivery, guys. This first time it’s got to be gourmet. Be seen to be making an effort. But, as we all know, there’s nothing worse than being stuck at a pricey restaurant with a vacuous woman who has no conversation while waiting hours for two strips of potato, a fifty-pence-sized piece of steak and some weird green oil drizzled in dots on the edge of an oversized white plate. Instead go for pizza to say hi, and then ease off the pressure for a bit.

The movie gives you a couple of hours to settle into each other’s company—you’re close, but not too intensely focused on each other. Afterwards you’ve got something to talk about to start you off. And then, once she’s started, she won’t stop. Babes like to talk—and they will if warmed up. After a movie she’ll be in the mindset. So let her share with you.

Immutable dating fact: the more you let her share, the more she’ll want to be with you. It’s that simple.

You might wince, but the chick flick in particular is your friend. She’ll get the warm fuzzy feeling. Go for the one-two punch—the chick flick followed by dessert. She’ll be as gooey inside as the chocolate pudding she’s spooning in. And, bud, you will benefit from the happy ending hormones she’s riding on.

Brace yourselves and get her to a rom-com, feel-good kissy flick. That’s what I’ll be doing with Ms
OlderNWiser
. It’s the perfect first date softener. And us guys like soft.

Ethan paused, his fingers hovering above the keyboard, his lips twisting as an evil urge gripped him.

He hit “publish” before he had second thoughts. Hey, he’d said it all along—there was a lot of rubbish out there on the internet. And she’d shredded his rep anyway, right?
This was his way of reclaiming his own image. He didn’t really give a damn about what the anonymous readers on the ends of the ethernet thought, but he was
not
a cheat—yes, he played, but all the playmates had fun. And he’d get even the world’s most uptight woman to appreciate some
fun
…

His blood quickened, but he forced his brain to stay open for duty. He went into the WomanBWarned site and registered—under his own name—and then went to the
Mr 3 Dates and You’re Out
thread to comment.

The comment appeared beneath all the others. He’d well and truly thrown down the gauntlet. What he needed now were some supportive comments to get traffic his way and stack the odds in his favour. Happily, he had some guys who knew him well enough to know his tongue was—partly—in his cheek. Guys liked sport, and he was a team player. His team would get behind him. He put the link on his social networking page, then shut the laptop and closed his eyes.

And then it hit him.

This was
mad
. This wasn’t what was supposed to have happened. He was supposed to have gone in there all guns blazing and torn shreds off her. Demand she take down the thread, take down the whole damn site, and totally threaten to sue her.

Okay, he
had
threatened that.

But only after he’d been struck by a far more entertaining idea. The threat had simply been a way to push her into accepting that far more entertaining idea. With her
OlderNWiser
handle he’d figured he’d be facing down some ancient hardened up crone,
but in reality she looked like one of the fairies on his three-year-old niece’s miniature china teaset. All fine bones and fine features in her heart-shaped face, with her hair tumbling loose and kinking at the ends. And, yes, his thoughts
had
immediately kinked.

He’d have to be careful how he played this, because he refused to end up in a mess. He did charming and nice—never messy. But he’d teach her a lesson—Nadia Keenan was going
down
.

No,
not
sex—there’d be no sliding along sun-kissed limbs, no stroking delicate collarbones, no relentlessly touching ’til she begged for mercy and then screamed her ecstasy in his mouth. No matter how vivid that fantasy was, an even bigger temptation bit. He’d get her hot and twisted and then be a total gentleman. Restraint all the way. And she’d hate him even more than she already did.

He couldn’t get over the contradiction—she looked sweet but she savaged people with her vindictive website. Who’d hurt her, and how? She’d said it wasn’t personal, but there
had
to have been a guy who’d broken what little heart she had. Her online ID even acknowledged she was
OlderNWiser
.

He flipped the laptop open again, went
back to
WomanBWarned
and clicked on the archives link.

To win any game you had to be prepared. You had to understand your opponent’s weakness …

Nadia wished Megan was home, but she was in Greece for three weeks, meeting her boyfriend Sam’s family, meaning the flat they shared was quiet and empty and totally lacking in advice—the walls weren’t answering back.

She pushed aside the clothes-hangers in her wardrobe, desperately searching despite knowing exactly what items were there and that whatever it was she wanted wasn’t.

Because she didn’t know
what
she wanted and she didn’t have the funds to shop.

She had to ace it over Ethan Rush, but he had every angle covered. Good looking, intelligent, loaded—that was obvious from his clothes and his confidence. Everything came easily to him—even her acquiescence to his stupid idea. She had to shake him from his self-satisfied, smug little perch. But how?

She picked up the bag she’d tossed on her bed. Her phone rang just as she got hold of it. Megan—hooray for serendipity.

‘What do I wear to a date I don’t want to go on?’ Nadia asked straight off.

‘A date?’ Megan’s high-pitched amazement was no surprise. ‘Why don’t you want to go?’

‘Because he’s a complete jerk who’s bullied me into it.’

‘Nadia,’ Megan scoffed, ‘no one bullies you.’

Ten hours ago Nadia would have agreed. ‘If I don’t date him he says he’s going to sue me for defamation and out me as the woman behind WomanBWarned.’

‘Don’t tell me he’s on it?’

‘Yeah—has his own thread.
Mr 3 Dates and You’re Out.
Totally smooth snake who’s only interested in sex. Moves on immediately after. Serial dating offender, seriously arrogant. More than one victim has commented.’

‘He used
that
to get you to agree to go on a date with him?’

‘Three dates.’

‘Three?’
Megan started to giggle. ‘Oh, he’s good.’

‘He’s not good. He’s mad.’

‘But he won’t waste money suing. Just tell Hammond you run the site. They won’t care. It’s in your own hours and on your own equipment.’

‘I worked too hard to get that job. I’m not screwing it up.’ Independence mattered—achievement mattered. Nadia wasn’t failing now, having secured a great flat and a great job when no one in her family had believed a “little thing” like her could—or, worse,
should
. They’d thought a big city was too bad a place for her, so she’d gone to the biggest city in the country and got employed by one of the biggest, most traditional-to-a-T firms. That was the only way she could to prove herself to them—they’d just be baffled by her blog.

‘I’m reading the thread. He sounds interesting.’ Megan drew in a long, slow breath. ‘Good sex. When did you last have sex?’

Nadia banged the wardrobe door shut. It was all right for Megan. She and Sam were still in that honeymoon phase, so she was getting it at least twice a day. Nadia hadn’t had it twice in the last year. Or two.

‘Nadia.’ Megan’s tone totally changed. ‘Did you see his reply?’

Nadia’s blood iced up. ‘There wasn’t one.’ She ran into the lounge, where her computer dominated the dining table. Praise be to highspeed broadband, because the thread loaded in a flash. And it only took a flash to realise what he’d done.

‘He’s made it public. The dates.’ Her throat clogged. ‘Why? Everyone is going to know we’re going out.’ And there was going to be a
victor
? Oh, she’d been right. This was war.

‘Well, they know
he
is.’ Megan morphed into the voice of calm. ‘You’ve still got your anonymous ID. There’s a link to a blog. He has a blog?’

‘It’s new, and I’m already reading it,’ Nadia said grimly, quickly skimming the post and growing all the more aggravated.

But Megan giggled. ‘I can’t wait for him to “nail” you on the second date.’

‘He’s a conceited jerk. He’s not nailing anything.’ Certainly not her. And she certainly wasn’t feeling a quiver of excitement at the thought. The quiver was suppressed rage.

‘He’s good-looking, right?’ Megan asked. ‘He must be to be this confident.’

‘If you like over-sized macho men who think they’re it and everything else.’ Physical invincibility didn’t do their personalities any favours, and she didn’t need the over-protectiveness that tended to accompany their delusions of demi-god status.

‘He sounds just the ticket.’ Megan had pepped up. ‘What
are
you going to wear?’

Nadia bit back her growl. She knew Megan wanted her to be as loved-up and happy as
she was, but she didn’t want to be attractive to Ethan—she wanted armour. Fortunately high-pitched beeps interrupted whatever Megan was saying now.