Rules of Engagement

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.

Chapter Three

Nate walked briskly back to the office building, bending slightly into the wind that blew against his face. The only traffic on the street was a city snow truck slowly making its way with a plow lowered against the snowy pavement.

He had no intention of attempting the drive home with the snow still coming down at such a fast pace. The traffic would be horrible now, even worse for the morning commute if the snow continued to fall through the night.

As he walked, he tried to get a mental vision of Kat out of his mind—the vision of her cheeks all pink from the cold, her laughter pealing in the air with abandon, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she formed one snowball after another.

On the journey from the office to the hotel, she’d danced in the snow, fallen down and made a snow angel and had tried to talk him into building a snowman.

He’d loosened up only enough to lob snowballs at her as she squealed and ran ahead of him. Watching her, so full of life, so completely unaffected by what anyone else might think about her childish play, had stirred something inside him…something distinctly uncomfortable.

He brushed the snow off his coat and stamped his feet as he reentered the lobby of his office building. That was her problem—she had too much spontaneity.

She got an impulse and didn’t think, she just acted on it. Her exuberance for life was both infectious and irritating.

He’d always lived in Boston and had never had a snowball fight in his life. Within mere hours of being with Kat, she had him throwing snowballs and acting like a damned childish fool.

“Beautiful but treacherous,” he muttered as he hung his coat in the closet and returned to his desk chair.

How she had fooled him in those four months they’d shared a relationship. For the first time in his life he’d realized there was more to life than just computer chips and programs, a life other than diligent study and hard work.

She’d opened up a whole new world to him, a world where play and leisure were necessary, even demanded if he wanted to spend any time with her.

She’d introduced him to long barefoot walks on the beach, to sleeping late on Saturday mornings. She’d taught him how to play Monopoly and strip poker.

They had explored San Jose street by street, eating in charming little restaurants and shopping in funky stores that sold items he’d never consider wearing.

Nights they usually wound up at the apartment he was renting for the six months of his schooling. She shared a beach house in Santa Cruz with half a dozen young men and women. It was a place that afforded them little privacy and Nate had wanted privacy with her.