to the beach together.
The memory made the room feel overly warm and he could almost smell the tang of salty air mixed with the fragrance of the coconut-oil suntan lotion he’d spread on her back. He could almost feel the slick silk of her skin beneath his fingers, the press of her slender body against his own.
“Hey, you’ve got Solitaire in here,” she said with delight.
“There won’t be time for playing games,” he replied, grateful for the interruption in his thoughts. The way they’d been headed, he would have needed to take a cold shower within minutes.
“There’s always time for Solitaire,” she protested. “I do some of my best thinking on other things when I’m playing that game.”
It was exactly the reason he’d loaded the game into the computer, because he found that his mind worked out other problems while playing a game of Solitaire.
He wasn’t about to admit that to her. The fact that they had anything in common appalled him.
It had been because he’d thought they shared a lot of things five years ago that he’d made a fool of himself. He wasn’t about to allow that to happen again.
She pushed back a little from the desk and grabbed her purse. She withdrew a packet of crackers and opened them, gazing at him thoughtfully. “Now, tell me again what makes you suspect a hacker has been accessing the Utopia files.”
He couldn’t believe she was going to eat at his desk. Apparently his feelings showed on his face.
“Sorry,” she said, gesturing to the crackers, “but the food on the plane sucked.” She bit into a cracker and he tried not to focus on the crumbs that appeared on the edge of the desk. “What makes you think somebody is hacking into your Utopia program?”
“Everything seemed fine until about a month ago.” Nate stared at his computer screen in front of him as he explained the situation. It was still too soon not to find looking at her too much of a distraction to his thought process.
“Then, about a month ago I noticed the first segment of the program showed up as having been copied and a string here and there had been changed, making the whole thing unworkable. I thought maybe one of the techs working with me had made some adjustments for one reason or another.”
He rose from the desk chair and paced the floor in front of the coffee table. “I fixed the problem area and made a mental note to discuss it with the techs but then forgot about it. Then about a week later I discovered the same thing, only it was in another segment of the program. At that time I spoke to the tech team to see if anyone was trying to make improvements and was carelessly making errors, but none of them admitted to doing it.”
She popped another cracker into her mouth and pulled a bottle of water from her oversize purse. “How many techs have access to the program?”
“Our five top people, that’s it.” He sat back down and tried not to notice the familiar, delectable scent of her.
“And what do you know about them?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What do you know about them? You know, their families, their personal lives? What kind of people are they?”
He looked at her blankly. “They’re very bright and hardworking,” he began. “They’ve been with me since I was hired on.”
“What about their personal lives?” she pressed. She looked at him in astonishment, obviously seeing the clueless expression on his face. “You’ve been working with these people for almost five years and you don’t know anything about their personal lives?”
He felt a censure in her words and it irritated him. “I don’t have time to socialize. I work with these people, I don’t visit with them.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” she muttered under her breath.
“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong,” he replied. “I trust the people I work with implicitly.”
“What possible reason could anyone have for copying segments of the program?” She crooked a perfectly formed auburn eyebrow upward.
Had she married? The question popped into his head unbidden. Nothing that he’d read about her indicated she had a spouse, but the articles had focused solely on her work. He quickly checked her left hand, where no ring adorned her finger.
“Nate? Why would somebody be copying the program?” she repeated.
“That’s easy, it would have to be to sell. Wintersoft has dozens of competitors who would love to get their hands on this program before its release.”
“Of course, a copy of this program would be worth lots of money.”
“A small fortune,” he agreed. “We’ve heard through the grapevine that one of our competitors has more information about the Utopia program than they should. I’m thinking someone in their technology department has figured out a way to break into our system.”
“Okay, then I guess the best place to start is at the beginning.” With the lightest of touches, she pulled up the icon for the Utopia program and typed in the password he’d given her.
“Before I can really start any investigative work, I need to spend some time with the program.”
He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting to attend on another matter. I should be back here in an hour or so.” He hesitated, hating the fact that he was leaving her alone in his private sanctum for any length of time and yet desperately needing some space.
“Don’t worry, Nate. I won’t bounce on your sweet leather sofa or drink all your booze while you’re gone. I promise I won’t even open one of your desk drawers.”
He hoped not. The last thing he wanted was for her to open his bottom drawer, look inside and see the magazines that had the articles on her inside.
“I’ll see you when I get back,” he said tersely, and left the office.
He’d lied. There was no meeting to attend, no reason for him to have left. Rather, he’d needed to get some air, get the smell of her out of his nose, calm the nerves that she’d seemed to get on from the moment she’d first entered his office.
He stood in the hallway, for a moment unsure where to go. He didn’t even know where the employee lounge was. He’d never been there.
Taking the elevator, he went down to the bottom floor of the building and stepped outside, where he hoped a blast of frigid air would freeze out all thoughts of a beach, a blanket and a woman named Kat.
He’d been brilliant five years ago when they’d both gone to the same specialized school in California. She’d been there as a scholarship student and he’d been there under his own financial auspices.
Although she’d immediately been drawn to his brooding, dark good looks, his mind had attracted her as well.
As she worked through the Utopia program files, his brilliance was evident once again. If he was independent, this program would make him a multimillionaire, as it was
