Don’t Love, Don’t Lose

“I don’t need to indulge in any subterfuge, Mr. Malone. I did this as a favor to Aunt Della, because she’s important to me and I trust her judgment. I can’t claim to know why she did it this way. Perhaps she thought you wouldn’t agree to this meeting otherwise, and she has decided that this meeting is in your best interest? Perhaps you’re not accustomed to asking for help? If you believe in taking care of problems that prick at your ego all on your own, perhaps she believed this was the only way to get you to take on a consultant you needed.”

“I don’t need you to be my shrink, Ms. Turner.”

“I wouldn’t presume to try. I am, however, a software engineer. I’m a coder, and I’m a hacker. I know, for instance, that you paid too much for a property on Eastern Avenue. Since the property belonged to a woman who had a family of seven, and the property was fairly rundown – at risk of an inspection from the health department, in fact – I assume that you paid too much because you wanted to. I assume that Aunt Della, even if she doesn’t know this, saw in you the kind of person who would do that, and decided to help you, whether you liked it or not.”

And in the process, thought Jasmine irritably, dragged her into a mess she didn’t want to be in. She didn’t want to be in this coffee shop – it was too trendy for her, to be honest – and she did not want to be with this man who had altogether too much impact for her liking. She was not handling the situation or herself with the kind of calmness that she counted on from herself. None of this was going according to plan for her.

“How the devil did you know that?”

“I told you, Mr. Malone, that I am very good at finding out things. If it’s online, or if it has been online at any time, I can find it. If it’s offline, I can track it if I get access to the system, even if it’s deleted. Nothing is ever deleted forever. Everything leaves a trace, and I can follow even the faintest of traces – when I want to. I don’t always want to do it, Mr. Malone, and I’m not sure I want to right now.”

“Della broke her contract by speaking to you about this.”

“Since you don’t have the knowledge necessary to track her calls, and this has been penciled in as a meeting about design, there’s no way for you to prove that. Perhaps if you’d thought to record this meeting, it would’ve been possible, but I don’t think you did, Mr. Malone. If you don’t want my help, it suits me just fine. As I mentioned, though I’m sure it does not interest you, I recently acquired a cat, and it appears a cat needs more time and attention than is popularly believed. I do not need the money I would charge you if I were to do this for you. Talking to you was a favor to Aunt Della. And if you make any kind of trouble for Aunt Della about this – I’m sure you feel she overstepped, but she is sensible and practical, and this is a solution for you, even if you might not wish to take it – then believe me, Mr. Malone, I will make trouble for you. I can, and I will.”

Jasmine’s throat was dry by the time she finished saying that. She wished the staff at the coffee shop were good enough to at least get her a glass of water. She really needed it.

Had she really threatened this man? And revealed that she had hacked into him? It had taken a lot of digging to find what she had found, and it was pretty much all she had found. He could very well call her bluff and cause her and her aunt all kinds of problems if he were so inclined.

What was wrong with her?

Couldn’t the coffee shop turn the air-conditioners on? They charged enough to be able to afford it. She was getting pretty overheated.

“Are you threatening me, Ms. Turner?”

Jasmine swallowed, hard, at the silky smoothness of his voice. Oh, this was definitely not a man to mess with. Whoever the mole was, it should be pretty easy to find them without her help. The mole would be the biggest idiot in the place, and the one who lacked any sense of self-preservation. He didn’t need her really.

Aunt Della was in so much trouble, she had no idea.

“Of course not. As long as you’re not threatening me, or my Aunt Della. I take my family very seriously, Mr. Malone. I take my family’s well-being and happiness very, very seriously. Now, do I assume that you don’t want my help, or anything to do with me? Shall I leave?”

The way he was surveying her made her feel like a pinned butterfly. Jasmine had never before considered lepidopterists, but she decided that she did not like them, not one bit.

“Dinner.”

Jasmine frowned.

“It’s nine-twenty in the morning. What time zone are you in?”

“I meant tonight, Ms. Turner. Have dinner with me tonight and we can talk about this.”

Jasmine’s frown only deepened.

“I have forty minutes now. That should be enough for you to decide if you want what I can do. If you don’t, there’s no point in us wasting each other’s time.”

He shook his head.

Was he smirking? Yes, that looked like he was smirking. She really did not like men who smirked at her.

Who the hell did he think he was? He needed her. He was the one who needed her, not the other way round.

But Aunt Della needed him, even if she didn’t need the job. It would make Aunt Della sad if she got fired. Besides, if he did decide to make life miserable for her…

No, he couldn’t do that, she suddenly realized. People loved Aunt Della. He apparently wanted to earn brownie points with the community, and making Aunt Della cry would be a terrible way to do that. She was sure he was smart enough to understand that.

Jasmine felt a little better when she realized that.

“You thought of something that makes you feel better about this,” observed the obnoxious man in his perfectly tailored Italian suit. He should have looked uncomfortable, sticking out like a sore thumb – all right, sticking out like excellent mascarpone among store brand and processed cheese. But he looked like he could mold his environment to him. The idea of adapting to suit the world, thought Jasmine sourly, had probably never occurred to him.

She definitely didn’t want to have dinner with him. So why was her heart beating just a little faster?

Because her heart was an idiot, she told herself sternly. The rest of her didn’t have to follow suit.

“My thoughts are really none of your concern, Mr. Malone. Do you want the forty minutes? Or shall we just say goodbye and pretend that none of this happened?”

“Oh no, I think not, Ms. Turner. You kept me waiting for ten minutes. If there’s one thing I dislike, it’s being kept waiting. It shows a lack of organizational skills and a lack of respect for the other person’s time. I don’t think you like that assessment.”

Oh, he didn’t think?

Jasmine was frowning so hard that she could see her own flared nostrils.

“I am sorry that I kept you waiting. I assure you, I do not make a habit of it.”

She was so close to telling him exactly what he could do with his time and his pompous shoes.

She had ideas. She had lots of them.

“I assume you don’t. You can meet me for dinner tonight and prove that to me.”

“I don’t need to prove anything to you, Mr. Malone.”

“And yet, think of how disappointed your Aunt Della will be if this doesn’t work out the way she planned it.”

That was the moment a few things clicked for Jasmine. Oh, it was mortifying to realize that this stranger had cottoned on before she had, and it was even more mortifying to know that he might have had good reason to believe that she’d been in on it.

So his earlier indignation hadn’t been only because he thought she had attempted subterfuge to get work from him. She could’ve lived with that. There was nothing wrong with trying whatever you could to get your foot in the door when you had to. These rich men traveled in their own circles and rarely looked for people who weren’t like them when they had work to offer. People like her did have to try a few tricks to even be considered.