Elizabeth Bevarly - You've Got Male

Andrew—the smart, witty, creative, articulate man with whom Avery had fallen passionately in love—was cheating on her.

A month ago she’d known their first encounter must have been destiny. Fate. Kismet. It was simply Meant To Be. What difference did it make if they’d never actually met in person? Who cared if they’d never actually spoken to each other? Their cyber relationship was a meeting of minds, a melding of souls, a blending of hearts.

Until now.

Now he was typing nauseating pop-culture-infested lines to some cheap bit of cyberfluff with the screen name Tinky Bell. A brainless ninny who said things like “ur 2 kewl.”

The hideous massacre of the English language aside, Avery couldn’t believer her Andrew was talking about TV shows! He didn’t even watch TV!

But the clincher was Andrew using with Tinky Bell the same words that won Avery’s heart.

Well, she’d fix Andrew. Not only would she dump him, but she’d give him something to remember her by. Oh, yes. She’d create just the right farewell gift…one he and his precious computer system would never forget.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Mom, with love.

Because it’s been too long since I dedicated a book to you.

Thanks for so many things. You’re the best.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I have many people to thank for this one.

First, thanks to Liz Bemis of Bemis Web Design for helping me get all the technical jargon and equipment right, thereby enabling me to make Avery the computer whiz and Webhead that she is. Some of the technology and equipment that both OPUS and Avery use I made up myself, but it’s okay, because making up stuff is my job. If I did get anything wrong with the real stuff, it’s my fault, not Liz’s.

Thanks to Wanda Ottewell, my fabulous editor, for helping me buff the rough spots and see the gaps, and make everything in the story nice and neat. Thanks to Tracy Farrell and HQN Books for giving this book such a wonderful home. Thanks to Steve Axelrod for helping me find that home.

I’d also like to thank the incredibly nice, patient, generous David Dafoe, of Pro-Liquitech, whose lovely donation to Turning Point for Autism won him a brief appearance in the book. For more information about all the great things Turning Point does, visit their Web site at turningpoint1.com (don’t forget the 1!). It was great fun being able to invite a real person to the party at the Nesbitt estate.

Thanks, too, to good friends (you know who you are) for daily support and camaraderie and laughter that goes above and beyond the call of friendship. Without you guys, I’d be like Avery at the opening of chapter four.

And finally, as always, thanks to David and Eli, my lifelines. My life. Without you guys, I’d be lost.

I love you both bunches. Hug. Kiss. Pat.

AVERY NESBITT WAS IN LOVE. Madly, passionately, wildly in love. She was besotted. She was bedazzled. She was befuddled. She was in love as she’d never been in love before.

And it was with a man who went beyond dreamy. He was smart and witty. He was creative and articulate. He was handsome and sexy. He always said what she needed to hear, right when she needed to hear it. He knew her backward and forward, just as she knew him inside and out. And he loved her exactly the way she was. That, more than anything else, had sealed her fate and ensured that her love would last forever. Andrew Paddington made Avery feel as if nothing in her life would ever go wrong again. He was just perfect in every way.

The bastard.

Theirs had been a whirlwind courtship, had come at Avery out of nowhere and swept her into a fantasy worthy of an epic romance. Andrew was in her thoughts and her dreams, in her plans and her performance, in her ego and her id. He filled her days with delight and her nights with pleasure, imbued her with joy that made her downright giddy. And that was no small accomplishment for a woman who was normally pragmatic, cynical and down-to-earth. Although Avery had only met him a month ago, she’d known after that first encounter that their meeting must have been destiny. Fate. Kismet. It was simply Meant To Be.

Bastard.

What difference did it make if they’d never actually met in person? Physical trappings weren’t what love was about. Love was a meeting of minds, a melding of souls, a blending of hearts. Besides, they’d exchanged photos, and the ones he’d sent to her depicted him as a sandy-haired twentysomething with the eyes of a poet, the mouth of a troubadour, the hands of an artist and phenomenal pecs. He was an utter, unmitigated masterpiece.

Bastard, bastard, bastard.

Who cared if they’d never actually spoken to each other? Vocal avowals of devotion were as nebulous and inconstant as the wind. Avery had Andrew’s love for her in writing. In the loveliest prose she’d ever read, words—feelings—wrought so tenderly, they would move a despot to tears. After only four weeks, she had a file filled with his e-mails to her and she’d logged every chat-room exchange they’d shared in a special folder titled Snookypie. On those nights when she was alone and feeling dreamy and lovey-dovey, she lit candles and opened a bottle of wine, then read over his words again and again, pretending he was right there in her Central Park West condo, murmuring them into her ear.

Bastard squared.

But now the unthinkable was happening. Andrew was cheating on her with another woman. And Avery was finding out about it just as women did on those bad made-for-cable movies. She’d walked in on him and found him in bed with another woman.

Well, okay, figuratively speaking. What had actually happened was that she’d stumbled upon him online, blabbing away with some cheap bit of cyberfluff in, of all places, a Survivor: Mall of America chat room. This after Andrew had assured Avery that he loathed popular culture as much as she did. But what really toasted her melbas was that the cyberfluff he was chatting with, who went by the screen name of—Avery had to bite back her nausea when she saw it—Tinky Belle, was clearly an idiot. But Andrew was agreeing with her that the music of Clay Aiken could, if people would just open their eyes and ears and hearts to it, bring peace and harmony to the entire planet.

Bastard cubed.

Unable to believe her eyes, Avery felt around until she located the chair in front of her desk and clumsily pulled it out. Then she nearly missed the surface of her desk when she set her bowl of Cajun popcorn and the bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi on top of it. She tugged at her electric-blue pajama pants spattered with images of French landmarks and numbly sat down, adjusting the oversize purple sweatshirt boasting Wellesley College as she did. Then she wiggled her toes in her fuzzy pink slippers to warm them, adjusted her little black-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose, pushed one of two long, thick black braids over her shoulder and studied the screen more closely.

Maybe she was wrong, she thought as she watched the rapid-fire exchange scroll by. She shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Surely Andrew wasn’t the only guy out there in cyberspace who used the handle Mad2Live. It was a phrase from On the Road, after all. And there were probably lots of Kerouac fans online. Andrew loved Avery. He’d told her so. He wouldn’t cheat on her like this. Especially not with some brainless ninny who said things like, “ur 2 kewl mad.”

Please, people! she wanted to shout at the screen whenever she saw message-board shorthand. Speak English! Or Spanish! Or French! Or German! Or some legitimate language that indicates you’re at least halfway literate! And capitalize where necessary! And for God’s sake, punctuate!

Even though she was a computer geek in the most extreme sense of the word, Avery couldn’t bring herself to type in anything other than the language she’d learned growing up in the Hamptons. Tony private schools could mess with you in a lot of ways, she knew, but at least they taught you to be well-spoken. That shouldn’t change just because your language of choice was cyber-speak.

She watched Mad2Live and Tinky Belle—gag—swap warm fuzzies for as long as she could stomach it and ultimately decided there was no way that this Mad2Live could be Andrew. Andrew would never, ever concede that the Survivor series was, as Tinky Belle claimed, “qualty educatnl programing u cn wach w/ the hole famly.”

Oh, yes, Avery thought. It’s definitely mus c tv.

She was about to leave the chat room to visit another—she was, after all, supposed to be working—when Mad2Live posted something that made her fingers convulse on the mouse: You, Tinky Belle, are a dazzling blossom of hope burgeoning at the center of an unforgiving cultural wasteland.

Acid heat splashed through Avery’s belly when she read that. Because those were the exact words Andrew had used to describe her that first night they met in a Henry James chat room. Except for the Tinky Belle part, since Avery’s screen name—at least that night—had been Daisy Miller. There was no way there could be two Mad2Lives on the Internet flirting with women by calling them dazzling blossoms of hope who burgeoned in cultural wastelands. That was Andrew—her Andrew—through and through.

After that it was impossible for Avery to ignore Tinky and Mad’s conversation. And as she watched the lines of dialogue on her screen roll past, she read more and more from Mad2Live that was pulled verbatim from some of the e-mails Andrew had sent to her. And she should know, since she’d practically memorized some of them.

Had she mentioned he was a complete bastard?

Eventually Tinky bade farewell to Mad and evaporated from the chat room, and Avery watched in astonishment as he immediately began to flirt with another occupant, this one calling herself Deb2000. But Deb wasn’t impressed by any of Mad’s cajoling, so, obviously disgruntled, Mad signed out of the chat room.

And Avery followed him.

Luckily she had dozens of screen names she used for her work and she could log in to rooms under several that Andrew would never recognize. And luckily, too, she knew the online community better than she knew even her own Manhattan neighborhood. Because the Internet was where Avery worked every single night. And it was where she played after she knocked off work. It was also where she shopped, where she learned and where she socialized. It was where she found her music, her books, her entertainment and her dinner selections. Hell, she pretty much lived on the Net. And she knew Andrew almost as well as she knew the online community.

Or at least she’d thought she knew him that well. But now she was beginning to think him a complete stranger. Because he flitted from one chat room to another, all of them themed around shallow pop-culture subject matter—everything from Pilates to low-carb cuisine—and in every one of them he waited long enough to identify which of the room’s inhabitants were female and which seemed to be the least, uh, bright. And then he chose one and began to work on her in exactly the way he had worked on Avery that first night he’d encountered her. And shame boiled within her when she realized that she had capitulated to his pretty words as easily as had women who thought deep-fried pork flesh was an essential part of good nutrition.