Free Mr Perfect by Linda Howard

car. "I've been dreading having to get in the car."
    He looked at the car, then at her as she gripped the open door and slowly, painfully lifted her right leg and eased it inside. He blew out a breath, as if steeling himself to perform an unpleasant task, and held her arm to steady her as she inched her way under the wheel.
    "Thanks," she said, relieved the task was over. "Sure." He crouched down in the open door. "You want to file charges for assault?"
    She pursed her lips. "I hit him first."
    She thought he might be fighting another grin. God, she hoped he won; she didn't want to see another one so soon. She might start thinking he was human. "There is that," he agreed. He stood up and started to close the car door for her. "A massage will help the soreness. And a steam bath."
    She gave him an outraged look. "Steam? You mean I had a cold shower this morning for nothing?"
    He began laughing, and she really, really wished he hadn't done that. He had a nice deep laugh and very white teeth. "Cold is good, too. Try alternating heat and cold to loosen up. And get a massage if you can."
    She didn't think Hammerstead had a spa hidden anywhere on the premises, but she might call around and book one for this afternoon when she got off work. She nodded. "Good idea. Thanks."
    He nodded and closed the door, stepping back. Lifting one hand in a wave, he walked to his car. Before he even got the door open, Jaine had the Viper purring down the street.
    So maybe she could get along with him, she thought, smiling a little. He and his handcuffs had certainly come in handy the night before.
    Despite lingering to talk to him, she was still early to work, which gave her time to ease out of the car. Today the sign above the elevator buttons said: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION; IT'S BUNDLED WITH YOUR SOFTWARE. Somehow she thought management would frown more on that than on the sign from the day before, but all the geeks and nerds on the first two floors probably thought it was hilarious. The office gradually filled. The conversation that morning was exclusively about the article in the newsletter, split fifty-fifty between the contents and speculation about the identity of the four women. Most were of the opinion the entire article was the brainchild of the author, that the four friends were fictitious, which suited Jaine just fine. She kept her mouth shut and her fingers crossed. "I scanned the article and sent it to my cousin in Chicago," she overheard someone say as he walked past in the hallway. She was fairly certain he wasn't talking about an article in the Detroit News.
    Great. It was spreading.
    Because she winced at just the thought of having to get into and out of the car several times to go to lunch, she made do with peanut butter crackers and a soft drink in the snack room. She could have asked T.J. or one of the others to bring her back something for lunch, but didn't feel like going into explanations of why she had problems getting into her car. Saying she tackled a drunk would sound like bragging, when in truth she had simply been too angry to think about what she was doing. Leah Street entered and took her neatly packed lunch out of the refrigerator. She had a sandwich (turkey breast and lettuce on whole wheat), a cup of vegetable soup (which she heated in the microwave), and an orange. Jaine sighed, torn between hate and envy. How could you like someone who was so organized? People like Leah, she thought, were put on earth to make everyone else look inefficient. If she had thought, she could have packed her own lunch instead of having to make do with peanut butter crackers and a diet soda.
    "May I join you?" Leah asked, and Jaine felt a twinge of guilt. Since they were the only two people in the snack room, she should have asked Leah to sit down. Most people at Hammer-stead would simply have sat down, but maybe Leah had been made to feel unwelcome often enough that she felt she had to ask.
    "Sure," Jaine said, trying to infuse some