Rules of Engagement

“Oh, okay.” She got out of his chair and sat in the one next to his.

Again settled in his own chair, he couldn’t help but smell her. It was the same way she’d smelled years ago—a blend like sunshine and citrus, fresh and clean and just a bit tangy.

He remembered watching her one morning as she spritzed herself with the scent, amazed to see her spray the perfume not only in the hollow of her throat and behind her ears, but also behind her knees. She’d explained to him that fragrance always drifts upward, thus the spray behind the knees.

“Are we going to work or are you just going to sit there with a half smile on your face?” she asked.

He slammed back to the present. If there’d been a half smile on his face, it disappeared into a frown of irritation.

He was being punished. He wasn’t sure why, or what he had done to spit at the Fates, but they were obviously angry with him. That’s why they had sent Kat back into his life.

“We’re going to work,” he snapped. He opened his top drawer, pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her.

“You signed all the confidentiality agreements?” he asked.

She nodded. “They’ve been signed, sealed and delivered.”

“This is your password to gain entry into the program. Memorize it and, whatever you do, don’t share it with anyone else.”

“Oh rats, I had planned to meet some Boston boy babe tonight and whisper my password into his ear.”

“I don’t find you amusing in the least.” He slammed his drawer shut.

“Ah, then I guess it’s good that I find myself amusing enough for both of us.” The smile on her face disappeared and her eyes narrowed slightly. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a bubbleheaded bimbo, Nate. I know the importance of keeping a password secure.”

A flush worked itself up his neck. She was right. He’d been condescending. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Your gracious apology is accepted,” she replied. She looked at the password, a combination of numbers and symbols, then handed it back to him and turned on the monitor in front of her. “Now, what I need to do is take some time to familiarize myself with the system before I take a look at your program.”

He nodded and focused his attention on his own monitor. He could certainly occupy his time while she became acquainted with the particular software they used.

For a few minutes there was silence. If not for the tantalizing scent of her, he could almost forget she sat next to him.

Almost.

He found himself casting surreptitious glances her way, comparing the way she looked now to the way she had looked five years ago when he’d been so besotted with her. Five years ago they had both been twenty-six years old. She’d changed little in the passing years.

Her hair was still a wavy auburn cap, the short cut emphasizing her high cheekbones and dark-fringed, large hazel eyes. She was tall and slender and his mind flashed with a vision of her in the tiny bright yellow bikini she’d worn when they’d gone 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 she could understand why Wintersoft was worried about a breach in the security of the program.

As she scanned the files, she tried not to notice the subtle scent of expensive cologne that still wafted in the air. It was a different scent than what he’d worn five years before, but certainly just as appealing.

She got up from the desk and grabbed an orange from the fruit basket on the coffee table. After sitting back down at the desk, she peeled the orange and stared at the monitor, her thoughts still filled with the man who had just left the room.

The school they had attended in Silicon Valley had been a six-month term and it had taken her two months to get the bright, handsome Nate away from his computer and into enjoying life.

“Ancient history,” she muttered aloud as she finished peeling the orange. As she ate the slices, she marveled at the complexities of what he’d developed and all that was at stake if a hacker was stealing portions of the program.

She lost track of time as she explored the features of Utopia. She had just hit a glitch in the program when Nate returned to the office.

She saw his look of dismay as he took in her orange peels on a napkin in front of her. “Sorry,” she said, and scooped the peels into a trash can next to the desk. “Guess you don’t munch and work in the same place.”

“I never eat or drink at the computer.”

“I always eat and drink at the computer,” she said. She’d forgotten how rigid he could be, how compulsive in habit. “Did you know you have a glitch?”

He stood behind her and saw where she was at in the program. “Yeah, that’s the only problem I have left to solve before it’s done.”

“It’s brilliant, Nate,” she said, and enjoyed the first real hint of a smile that crossed his face.

“Thanks.” He slid into his chair and his features lit with animation, making him not just handsome but sexy as all get-out. “I’ve worked it in my head for months, visualized it for years. I still can’t believe it’s finally coming together.”

“All we have to do is catch one little nasty hacker before he messes it up,” she said.

The half smile fell from his lips and he nodded. “So far a total of five sections have been copied and subtly changed. I haven’t been able to find out how the hacker is entering the system.”

“You must have an open back door somewhere,” she said.

“I’m aware of that. I just haven’t been able to figure out where it is.”

He’d seemed rather churlish to her before he’d left for his meeting and she’d hoped he’d be in a better frame of mind when he returned, but if anything he seemed more tense.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to find the portal and close it up tight,” she said in an attempt to ease his mind. Her words seemed to have the opposite effect on him.

“If I’d just had a little more time I’m sure I could have figured it out on my own,” he replied.

Pride. Good grief, she thought. What she was dealing with here was apparently wounded male pride. “I’m sure that’s true. But, hopefully with time being of the essence and two of us working to solve the problem, we can do it in half the time.”

“Hopefully, we can solve it in no time at all and you can get back to your life in California.”

She was suddenly tired, and more than a little bit irritated. From the moment she’d stepped into his office, he’d done nothing to make her feel welcome. She’d had a long plane ride, hadn’t eaten properly all day and decided at that moment that what she wanted to do was check into her hotel room, get a hot meal and better prepare herself for working side by side with the reluctant Nate.

“There’s nothing I’d love better than to solve this problem right now and get out of your hair, but I’m going to get settled in my hotel for the night and start fresh in the morning.” She stood and turned off her monitor.

She picked up her coat from the arm of the leather sofa and pulled a key from the pocket as he got up from his chair. “If you could just direct me to the Brisbain Hotel.”

“It’s two blocks from here. As you exit the building go left and you can’t miss it. I’ll call you a cab.” He picked up the phone.

“No, it’s ridiculous to call a cab to take me two blocks. Besides, I’d rather walk. I definitely could use some fresh air. I’ve noticed it’s very stuffy in here.” She hoped he got the jab. She pulled on her coat and grabbed the handle on her suitcase. “I suppose you’re in at the crack of dawn most mornings?”

“Nine will be fine,” he replied. Had she ever really heard his voice radiating with warmth? Or had it always held that cold, sardonic tone?

She opened the office door. “See you tomorrow, Nate.” She pulled her wheeled suitcase out into the hallway and breathed a deep sigh.

She was tired, too tired to concentrate on the program with her thoughts focused too intently on Nate. She’d thought she’d see him again and it would be no big deal. She hadn’t expected his surliness and she certainly hadn’t expected the twinge in her heart.

Pressing the button on the elevator, she promised herself that this evening she’d resolve her emotions where he was concerned so she could begin tomorrow focused solely on solving the problem, as she’d been hired to do.

She stepped into the elevator and was surprised when Nate slid through the doors to ride down with her. He’d pulled on a midlength gray coat and looked every inch the successful businessman.

“Going home to the little lady?” she asked as the elevator door whooshed closed.

“There is no little lady.”

“Ah, going home to the big lady?”

Almost…almost he smiled, but it was only a promising glimmer in his eyes before it was snuffed out by a scowl. “There is no lady at all. I figured I’d better walk you to your hotel. It’s late enough you shouldn’t be walking the streets alone.”

He held out a hand for her suitcase. For a moment stubbornness made her fingers tighten around the handle, but she was tired and the suitcase was heavy, so she relinquished it to him as the elevator doors opened.

“So, you haven’t married?” she asked as they stepped out of the elevator.

“No, what about you?”

“Marriage has never been high on my priority list,” she replied.

“Yeah, I seem to remember that.” There was a touch of bitterness in his voice, the first real indication to her that the past they’d shared wasn’t totally forgotten.

A responding swell of bitterness rose in her. She swallowed against it, refusing to give it a voice. There was nothing to be gained in rehashing a past relationship that wasn’t meant to be. There was no reason to bring up old issues that might make the two of them working together more difficult.

As they stepped into the office building lobby, the floor-to-ceiling windows ahead revealed a wintry wonderland. At least three inches of snow had fallen.

“Oh, Nate! Isn’t it beautiful?” She hurried ahead of him and pushed through the double doors and outside. She twirled around on the sidewalk, her arms raised to the heavens, where the snow was still coming down at a good clip.

After the tension in the office, the stress of the past couple of hours, she felt like dancing in the street, reveling in the snow that was as alien to her as Nate’s taciturn nature.

“It’s just snow,” Nate said.

“My first snow,” she exclaimed.

“Really? So, you never drove up to Oregon or anywhere to experience snow skiing or snowmobiling?”

“Never took the time. It’s a long drive to the mountains.”

She picked up a handful of the white snow and packed it into a ball, then eyed Nate with a wicked gleam.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned.

She didn’t. She threw it and it splatted into the center of his chest. He stared down at his coat, then back at her in disbelief. Slowly he released his hold on her suitcase, leaned down and grabbed a handful of snow.

“Nate, no.” A giggle escaped her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you!” As she saw the intent in his eyes, she turned and ran and was hit square in the back with his snowball.

They made their way toward the Brisbain Hotel one snowball at a time and, more than once, she heard Nate’s deep laughter ring out.

She was pleased to know he still had the capacity to laugh. While they had been in his office she’d begun to think he was anatomically incapable of laughter.

She felt warmer than she had since the moment she’d stepped off the plane, despite the frigid temperatures and falling snow.

They stopped in front of the hotel and he reached out to brush the snow off her hair and face. He’d touched her only a moment when all laughter faded from his eyes and he stepped back from her, tension once again radiating from every pore of his body.

“Here you are, safe and sound.” He held out her suitcase and she took it from him.

“Thank you for walking me here,” she said. “It was quite chivalrous of you.”

“Lloyd and Emily Winters would never forgive me if anything happened to you before the hacker is caught.”

Kat suddenly felt the chill of the air not only around her, but blowing through her as well. For just a moment, as Nate’s laughter had filled the air, she’d almost forgotten he was the man who had broken her heart.

She’d almost forgotten he was the man without a heart, the man for whom life held no meaning outside of his work.

“Thanks, anyway,” she replied. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

With a curt nod, he turned on his heels and left, a gray-clad solitary figure against the pristine snow.

She watched until he disappeared from her sight, then she turned and went into the hotel lobby. Wintersoft, Inc. had spared no expense on her room.

The first thing she did when she entered the luxury suite was order in room service. Only when a decent meal was in the works did she unpack her suitcase and change into an oversize T-shirt that served as her sleeping attire.

She hadn’t really considered that working with Nate would be so difficult. She hadn’t believed that just by looking at him she’d remember the fact that he had been a breathtaking, passionate lover.

But she couldn’t forget that those four months she’d spent with him, months of laughing and loving, of craziness and embracing life had been nothing more than a temporary illusion.

It had been four months that Nate had been able to pretend to be human. He’d managed to make her believe he understood people, that he understood her. Her time with him had culminated in the discovery that he was nothing like the kind of man she’d thought him to be.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” she said aloud as she stretched out on the sofa with her room service table in front of her.

She’d been fooled by Nate Leeman once in her life. She’d thought that if you cut him, he’d bleed blood like normal people, but she had learned that if you cut him, he bled gigabytes and stuffy Bostonian ideals of home, hearth and wife. She hadn’t fit then, and likely never would.

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