And I’m here in New York to play devil’s advocate with the team creating the Quick Composite software. My job’s to point out whatever the new technology misses.”
“And then?”
He sounded relieved. “I’m going home to Quantico.”
“Where your personal life is as intriguing as your professional one?”
Oliver shook his head. “Believe me,” he joked, “I get enough excitement at the office. It’s my younger sister, Anna, whose personal life sizzles. She lives here in New York City, and she’s a statistician for…” He paused to build anticipation. “The Sex Files.”
“The Sex Files?” the viewer whispered.
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