Free Wired by Liz Maverick Page A

bunch of lies about me.”
    I kept my mouth shut and thought about Leonardo’s similar reference to Mason getting at me first and “poisoning” me.
    â€œWhen did you see Leo?” he pressed.
    â€œA few hours ago.”
    â€œTell me everything he said.”
    â€œHe explained that you two are at odds, trying to get this damn code you think I’ve written. Or thatyou think I’m
going
to write. In any event, the long and the short of it is that he’s going to try to get it from me, and you’re here to stop him.”
    â€œThat’s actually a really fair summary, all things considered,” Mason said. “Where did he find you?”
    â€œI was at the employment agency and he just suddenly . . . appeared.” I raised an eyebrow. “Why are you doing this, Mason?” I asked quietly. Was it too much to be told the truth? “Why are you suddenly all over me when we haven’t seen each other in years? We don’t know each other anymore.”
    â€œWe know each other,” he argued. Then he admitted, “but I guess that when I think about it, maybe you never really got a chance to know me for who I truly am.”
    Oh, please. What a line
. I tried to put him in his place: “How does ‘oversexed hunk of meat’ sound?”
    He grinned. “It sounds like a compliment. I know you considered it an attractive quality at the time.”
    I totally blushed, and the hotter my cheeks got, the more embarrassed I became. “How could you possibly know, much less remember, what I thought about you?” Was I fishing? I didn’t want to think about it.
    Mason leaned against the wall and gave me the impression he was thinking carefully. “I remember you were . . . complicated. I remember a tense, seething mass of black sitting at the breakfast table eating Cap’n Crunch. I remember the way you looked at me like I was dogshit—when you weren’t busy drooling over my ass.”
    His mouth widened into a full grin. “One morning I glanced over the top edge of the sports section at you, and it occurred to me that I might be with the wrongroommate. And I’d have bet a lot of money that you were thinking the same thing. But what sane guy is going to trade a simple girl in for a complicated one?”
    It was true. All of it. He did remember. And while I didn’t want to admit anything, something else in me didn’t want to deny it, either. I liked the idea that he knew I’d once had a thing for him, just as I liked the idea that he liked it too. I liked this all-American Mason in a different way than I had been moved by Leonardo. In a powerful way. So I just stood there in the doorway with an invisible wall up, my arms folded across my chest like armor, trying to again appear like I couldn’t stand anything about him.
    â€œYou want more?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” I said in a disinterested tone. I immediately regretted it as he rolled his eyes.
    â€œIs there anything else Leo said that you forgot to mention?”
    I knew Mason would know more about what Kaysar was up to than I did, and that I should give him the details if I were to trust him, but I was still afraid. I didn’t know how much I wanted to tell one about the other. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
    â€œRight. I see how it is. So, you’re not going to let me come in even to look around?”
    â€œNot a chance in hell,” I agreed.
    After a long pause, Mason sighed. “Mark my words. At some point you’ll be begging me to move in with you.”
    I gave him no reason to believe that point would come anytime soon.
    Finally, he just nodded. Slipping a really cool device out from the side of his cell phone, he fit it overhis index finger like a finger glove with a small stylus protrusion and tapped some information into the phone. Then he pulled an old-school reporter’s notepad from his pocket and twisted