Chapter 20

The phone rang, cutting off Eric's disgusted response. David grabbed the receiver. "Yeah, he's here. Who shall I say is calling?" A wide, nasty grin formed under the bushy beard and mustache. "Sure, I'll get him." He covered the receiver with one hand and chortled. "Yo, lover-boy. Seems there's a Dr. Lori Tremain on the line. You want to talk to her?"

"Give me that, you asshole!" Eric reached out one long arm and snagged the phone out of David's beefy hand. There were occasional advantages to having limbs like an orangutan. "Lori?"

"Hi, Eric." Her voice was sweet and hesitant.

"Hi, yourself. What's up?" As usual, he didn't know what to say to her.

"I think I got hit by the WYRM virus," she told him. Her rich, feminine voice was sending a hot current of lust straight to Eric's groin. "My leopard gecko data files suddenly disappeared this afternoon."

"Damn!" Eric winced in sympathy. He knew how important that research was to her, especially this close to tenure time. "Have you tried to recover the file?"

"Um-hmm," she affirmed. "My department computer tech tried, too. No luck. I thought that maybe, since you're familiar with the virus, you might have some suggestions."

Eric looked at his watch. It was 4:30. He was close enough to be done for the day. "Will you be in your office in about fifteen minutes?" he asked.

She agreed and he hung up the phone, glaring back at Dave's amused expression.

"She got WYRMed," Eric told Dave blandly. "Guess knowing a professional geek comes in handy now and then."

"Or it gave her a good excuse to make the next move," David offered helpfully. "Take her to dinner after you finish playing with her hardware. Then take her home and play with her software."

"Have I told you lately that you're a dickhead?" Eric asked casually, grabbing a flash drive with his favorite debugging software.

David checked his navy surplus diving watch. It blended well with his usual outfit of camouflage jacket, worn jeans and combat boots. Today, the orange T-shirt under the fatigue jacket read, "You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me". Eric thought that this particular shirt probably had a basis in fact. Sometimes David really did live in a parallel universe.

Dave grinned at Eric as he replied, "Not in the last five minutes, anyway."

"Well, remind me next time." Eric grabbed his backpack and stuffed the disks inside. "Why don't you go kill someone, or something?"

"Paintball isn't till Saturday and I don't have sword-fighting practice till the weather warms up. The only things I'll be killing tonight are the bad guys in the latest version of Halo Reach. Stop by and see it if you don't get anywhere with your science teacher." Dave was into computer games, live-action role-playing, medieval re-creations and pseudo-military operations - pretty much all the stereotypical computer programmer hobbies. Eric tagged along once in a while, but he wasn't seriously into any of it, like a lot of their colleagues were. Strangely enough, for a systems analyst, Eric actually enjoyed real life, at least some of the time. Especially recently, when it brought him into contact with a certain brown-eyed herpetologist.

Lori waited anxiously, nervous about facing Eric for the first time since their disastrous date. She was also trying to shoo an openly curious Wesley out of her office.

"But I want to meet him," Wes asserted, swinging her legs from her perch on top of Lori's lab bench. "Somebody's got to check up on you. Look what you ended up with the last time."

"Go away, Wesley. The last thing I need right now is competition." The words were friendly, but there was a smattering of underlying insecurity. "Look what happened the last time I introduced you to my date."

"I hated Warren, he hated me. What's the problem?"

"Oh," Lori was momentarily nonplussed. "I forgot about Warren. I was talking about Ben."

Wes winced. Ben Montoya was still a bit of a sore spot in the two women's friendship. "You and Ben were never like that."

Lori grinned. "I know that, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have hopes those first few days. You have to admit, he's a knock-out."

"He's a knockout, fine. What's your point?" Wes's sharp tone revealed an uncharacteristic hint of exasperation.

"My point is that the gorgeous guy who moved in downstairs took me to dinner and what happened?" Lori's sandaled foot tapped in a rapid staccato beat. "We went out to dinner, we ran into you and that was the immediate end of all my lovely fantasies about Latin romance. One look at the divine Dr. Iversen and Ben stopped being able to see any other woman on the planet. So go away, you can't have Eric." Lori had been thinking about Ben's remarks all day and had decided she did owe it to herself to give Eric another chance.

Wes's lovely features softened. "If he's right for you, Lori, he won't pay any attention to me," she told her friend. "I just don't want to see you get mixed up with another loser."

"Eric is nothing like Warren," Lori insisted. Her foot was still tapping and her fingers fidgeted nervously with the hem of her broomstick-pleated skirt. It was one of her favorites and she'd worn it today in an attempt to cheer herself up. Greens, aquas and purples ran together in a watercolor, sea-toned print.

"Yeah," Wesley acknowledged. "I believe you. But did you go too far the other way? Lori, I know you don't believe this but you're so pretty, as well as being smart and funny. You deserve a great guy, one who appreciates you."

Lori smiled mistily at her friend. "Thanks for the morale boost, Wes. You're a good friend." She narrowed her eyes, but grinned. "But I still want this encounter with Eric to be alone." She sighed deeply. "Ben talked me into calling him, but I still don't know how it's going to go. I really don't think we need an audience at this stage. I promise, if anything develops, you'll get to meet him."

The other woman nodded in reluctant understanding and uncoiled her long sleek body from the lab table. "Oh, all right, but call me later to tell me how it went."

"Deal," Lori agreed, nodding crisply. "Now, get!"