Rules of Engagement

The sweater was one of those fuzzy things and looked as if it would be soft to the touch. He also couldn’t help but notice that the sweater emphasized the thrust of her full breasts.

The more he thought about it, the more he was sure she’d worn the sweater on purpose, just to irritate him.

“You’re in my chair,” he said crisply.

“Does it matter? There are two chairs and two computers.” She looked up at him innocently.

“Yes, it does matter. I need to be on my own computer. There are things on it I need to work on that you won’t be able to access, things that have nothing to do with the Utopia program.”

“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.