CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

A S THEY REACHED his office, Tiger sidestepped past her, dragging a chair in his wake and dumping it in front of his desk.

‘Sit,’ he said coolly, and that coolness surprised him because inside his fury was churning like white-hot magma. It was astonishing to him that this was even happening. His firewalls were the stuff of legend, as complex and intractable to unravel as a Gordian knot, but Sydney had somehow hacked his server. But even more astonishing than that was the fact that she was currently masquerading as an employee.

How had this happened? To him? He was not easily duped, particularly by women, but earlier when she’d come into his office, he’d actually thought that his head of IT had made a mistake. Nobody that young could be so nerveless. In part that was why he’d wanted her to bring him his lunch—so that he could meet her in person before he confronted her. Only then he’d got distracted by that soft mouth of hers and the pale curve of her jaw. The same jaw that was currently tilting up defiantly in his general direction.

‘You know, actually, I don’t think I will. You see, I don’t work for you any more. My contracted hours ended three minutes ago so—’

He watched as she took a step back, but as she turned towards the exit one of the huge security guards moved in front of the doorway to block her escape.

Tiger held up his hand. ‘Thanks, Carlos. I can take it from here. I’ll let you know when I need you.’

There was a soft but final-sounding click as Carlos closed the door.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said, letting the warning in his words extend to his glittering gold gaze. ‘Like I said, you and I need to have a talk.’

‘I don’t know what this is about but—’ she began, but he cut her off.

‘You know exactly what this is about. But I’m happy to spell it out. You hacked my system and you stole from me. So why don’t you stop with the whole wide-eyed, first-time-in-New-York act and take a seat? And then I suggest you start talking.’

She sat down with such bad grace that it made him want to frogmarch her down to the police station himself. And yet a part of him was captivated by her and the strange, seductive tension between them and this verbal sparring that felt almost like foreplay.

What the—?

He swore silently, caught off guard by the inappropriateness of that thought and, blanking his mind to the pulse of heat beating a slow drum roll down his linea alba, he leaned back against the desk, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

‘You’ve made a mistake.’

His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘I don’t make mistakes.’ He wasn’t boasting. He was careful, tediously so, and he was happy to exploit any loophole that served his purpose, but the last time he’d been wrongfully accused of something, he’d ended up getting kicked out of university, so he didn’t make mistakes.

The memory of Harris’s cold-eyed contempt made him feel suddenly adrift, and, hating it still had the power over him, he focused his frustration on the woman sitting in front of him.

‘You, on the other hand, have racked up quite a few in the last few days. Although I prefer to give them their correct title, which is criminal offences. There’s gaining unauthorised access to a computer system. Stealing data, presumably with the intention of selling it on to a third party. Industrial espionage. But I’m no lawyer so I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.’

That was better, he thought, feeling a sharp stab of satisfaction as her face stilled. ‘What?’ His eyes held hers as he deliberately let his mouth pull into a shape that could only be described as mocking.

‘Did you think you’re the first? ’Fraid not. You’re certainly not the best,’ he said softly, but with a hint of malice because he wanted to punish her, to wound her pride. Watching her pupils flare, he knew that he’d hit his target.

‘It’s not quite an everyday occurrence but I get a lot of people trying to mess me over.’

Sydney glared at him. ‘If this is how you behave, I can well believe it.’

He stared down at her, his gaze bright and steady, his mouth a contemptuous curl, but he could feel the spark of her defiance igniting a flame he didn’t normally feel and shouldn’t be feeling because this woman, this red-haired vixen who had done more than any man would dare to do, she should be apologising at least or, better still, be on her knees begging for mercy.

A burst of heat, astonishing in its intensity, surged through his veins as his brain offered up all manner of possible reasons for her to be kneeling in front of him that he didn’t want to acknowledge with Sydney here in the room.

‘The difference with you is that I don’t normally have the pleasure of meeting them face to face.’

She held his gaze. ‘For the last time, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, I’m a hard worker but I do have to get up from my computer sometimes, and there’re people coming and going all day. Any one of them could have done whatever it is you think I did.’

He heard her breath go shallow as his gaze narrowed on her. ‘I don’t think you did it, I know you did. I have proof. So do you, actually. It’s in your bag.’ Now, he held out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’

‘What? No.’ Her fingers tightened around the handle of her bag. Her pulse was beating a wild staccato in her throat and just for a second there she had looked scared, and far too young to be sparring with a man like him.

But she had brought this on herself.

‘I’m not going to ask again.’

She gave a small, taut laugh. ‘Let me guess. This is where you threaten me. Where you tell me that we can do this the easy way or the hard way.’

His eyes met hers. ‘Easy’s not on the table. Just hard, and harder.’

‘There’s nothing in my bag.’

‘Then you won’t mind me taking a look inside.’

‘Not if you don’t mind me hurling it at your head first,’ she snapped back as if he were the one at fault here, and for a moment he was stunned and furious all over again that she should talk to him that way, and yet for some reason he also wanted to laugh.

He settled for shrugging. ‘Not the most sensible of responses unless you’re looking to add assault to your list of crimes.’

She drew a breath, and he could see she was trying to maintain her composure. ‘I haven’t committed any crimes,’ she said firmly, her eyes fixed on his as she stalked past him and upended her bag and shook it, scattering the contents across his desk. As she tossed the bag at him, her face gave nothing away but he was looking for a flash drive, not remorse, and, taking his time, he sifted through the detritus on his desk before checking the interior of the bag.

‘Happy?’ she said as his eyes found hers.

‘Not yet. But I will be. Empty your pockets, Sydney,’ he ordered, pushing away from the desk, and maybe there was something wrong with him, but he found he very nearly enjoyed the small, sharp intake of breath that followed his instruction.

Sydney’s chin jerked up, not only because Tiger had got to his feet but because he had used her real name. She stared back at him, panic lifting her up and throwing her down like a dark rushing tide, pulling her under and sweeping her out into the ocean.

She had thought she’d been careful, ultra careful, but normally she was the one looking for the intruder. Not the intruder herself.

‘Not a nice feeling, is it? Having people upend your life?’ he said softly, so softly that for a moment her brain actually got confused and thought that he was backing off. But then that mouth of his twisted into a smile that made her understand that she was in trouble. Made her understand on a stomach-churning, visceral level just how ruthless he was.

Sydney held her breath. It didn’t really change anything, but part of the reason she’d been just about holding it together was because she could tell herself that this was happening to Sierra. Now it was happening to her. Now it felt real.

All of it.

Blood rushed to her cheeks as she remembered that strange weightless feeling when he took hold of her arm, and that longing to get closer—

‘How did you find out my name?’ she said hoarsely.

He gestured towards the ID tag. ‘I called in a favour. An ex-secret service friend of mine ran a facial recognition check and your driver’s licence came up. You’re Sydney Truitt. You live in Los Angeles and you’re the CEO of Orb Weaver, a cyber-security company. A little detail that, oddly, you chose not to put on your CV.’

‘It wasn’t relevant,’ she said as calmly as she could, fixing her gaze at a point to the left of his shoulder.

He didn’t respond for a moment and she tried telling herself that it didn’t get to her, but inevitably, as she knew it would, her head turned towards him of its own accord. There was a look of dark impatience on his face.

‘If you say so. What is relevant is that, approximately seventeen hours ago, my head of IT picked up some unusual out-of-hours activity on your CPU.’

This was the worst-case scenario. She felt her stomach drop. It was a quiet program but she’d had to keep it running day and night.

‘They check, you see, and it was low-level, just working quietly away in the background, but your machine was doing something it shouldn’t. I’ll let you have a few moments to come up with a reason why that was happening, but in the meantime, you can empty your pockets. Oh, and let me be clear—if you don’t, I will ask Carlos to do it for you,’ he added.

He would do it as well. This was not a man who made empty threats.

She had been cornered before so many times in the past by a different angry man and back then she’d tried to placate, to distract, tried to make herself small because she had been too scared to stand up to him.

Only for some reason she wasn’t afraid of this man. Not physically anyway.

Still, though, she felt goosebumps spread across her skin as his glittering, disdainful gaze narrowed on her face. But she couldn’t crack now. If she kept her head there was a chance she could front this out. Her throat tightened. She had to front it out.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the flash drive and put it onto the palm of his hand. For a moment he stared at her assessingly, as if she were an animal in a trap and he were deciding how best to put her out of her misery.

‘Is that it?’

She nodded.

He turned it over between his fingers. ‘I know what you’ve taken. My question is what you were planning on doing with it. Because we both know that you weren’t doing this for fun.’

Sydney breathed out shakily. For a moment she considered telling Tiger that it wasn’t her idea. That she had been hired by Harris Carver to do his dirty work. But, really, what would be the point of giving up his name? Carver would deny all knowledge of their meeting and she had no proof.

Except her word, and right now she was pretty sure that wouldn’t count for much.

Now it was her turn to shrug. ‘Actually, I was. It’s what people like me do,’ she lied. ‘We like the challenge and it’s kind of like a hobby, seeing if we can get into a system. And I can see why that might upset you.’

‘Is that an apology? Because you might need to work on it a little.’

‘You’re just sore because I beat your firewalls.’

He looked at her levelly. ‘I’m sore because you lied to me and because you tried to steal from me at the same time as taking a salary from me.’

In the past, with Noah, she was always having to defend herself against untrue accusations and at the time she had often thought it would be fairer if she had done the things he’d claimed. But now she discovered that it wasn’t a comfortable feeling being accused of something she had done, however justifiably.

She took a step forward, her hands balling by her sides. ‘I don’t steal.’

‘Is something getting lost in translation? Because typically stealing is when you take someone else’s property without permission.’ The sarcastic note in his voice was like a steel scraping against the flint of her temper and she felt a spark catch fire.

‘If you’d let me finish,’ she snapped. ‘What I was trying to say was that I don’t steal from people who don’t deserve it.’

‘Right, because you’re just a gender-flipped modern-day Robin Hood.’ He didn’t roll his eyes. There was no need. ‘You’re delusional.’

‘And you’re a hypocrite.’ She was practically shouting now, her voice shaking with an anger that was only partially aimed at Tiger but she let it roll through her. ‘You make me sick. You break the rules all the time.’

She felt the fury in her words bang into him and bounce away harmlessly because this man was not some soft-handed, Ivy League trust-fund baby. Tiger McIntyre had worked in the mines before he’d pushed his business into the big time. It was going to take more than a few insults to make him back off. Most likely it would take some very big sticks and stones. Boulders perhaps.

‘Rules, not laws. Nothing I do is illegal.’

She shook her head, her fury giving way to panic now, because she was running out of options, out of words. She could feel the trap closing around her.

‘Just because you haven’t been punished doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be. But you’re rich enough to bully and buy your way out of trouble.’

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ he said softly.

‘And you don’t know anything about me,’ she retorted.

‘I know you’re a hacker, and that you think that makes you different from other criminals, you know, the ones that rob stores and steal cars.’

‘I’ve never stolen anything. This is the first time I—’

He shook his head. ‘Even if that were true, what difference does it make? You’re still just a thief.’

Tiger watched her eyebrows lift into cool, delicate arcs.

‘Well, at least I don’t get my kicks from playing judge, jury and executioner.’

He didn’t know what he’d expected when he’d stalked back into his office with Sydney. Tears maybe. Possibly hysterics. The contents of her bag hurled in his face. But not this defiance, this bravado, this cat-and-mouse wordplay that was entirely irrelevant and extraneous, and yet for some reason he was enjoying it. Enjoying her and the feeling of having her right where he wanted her.

Not that she would admit to that.

Not yet, anyway.

‘You have quite a mouth on you, Ms Truitt,’ he said at last. ‘Lots of opinions. Lots of accusations. Just not much in the way of cold, hard facts. But I pay my taxes so I guess I can leave it to the police to find those out.’

Sydney stared at him, her face stilling as if his words had cast a spell over her. If he hadn’t been watching her covertly since lunchtime, he might not even have noticed the slight quiver to her body as if she was having to hold herself together not just metaphorically but literally.

He felt something pinch inside him.

He had been telling the truth when he’d said that this wasn’t the first time his company had been hacked. For any major business, institution or high-profile celebrity it was a constant threat. Some hackers did it for the rush. Some liked the challenge of defeating a worthy opponent. Others did it for the chaos they caused, or simply the money. All had a willingness to break the law.

But, for all her defiance, this woman didn’t strike him as being some kind of disrupter. In truth, she seemed altogether too young to be playing games with people like him. And yet there was a wariness in her eyes that didn’t match her age, a tautness to her shoulders as if she were waiting for the sky to fall on her.

Only surely it already had. This was it. The end of the world. Disaster not averted. A real-life elimination event involving her reputation.

It didn’t make any sense.

Then again, nothing about this woman or how she made him react made any kind of sense. Why, for example, when he should be focusing on the fact that he had caught her red-handed hacking his system, was he so aware of that curl of dark red hair that had come loose from the riotous mass of dark copper strands twisted into a low ponytail? Why could he not tear his gaze away from where it now lay coiled in a question mark over her right breast?

That he was even thinking about her hair, much less her breast, was just one of many things that had happened today that Tiger McIntyre didn’t understand. First there had been the moment earlier when she’d walked, no, sashayed into his office with his lunch. Women walked in and out of his office all day every day and normally he barely registered them, but for some reason Sydney had made him stop reading his emails.

He swore silently. And not just any old email. An email from the United States space administrator no less.

But as he’d looked up and caught sight of her reflection in the glass that hadn’t seemed to matter. And he had watched her in silence, waiting for her to acknowledge him, confused at his uncharacteristic behaviour because he never watched or waited for any woman.

And they always acknowledged him first, even the ones who thought they were playing hard to get.

But she hadn’t.

Because she was a thief, he told himself irritably. Probably she couldn’t meet his eye because she was hacking into his accounts, stealing his IP.

Only that wasn’t true. She had met his eye. His chest tightened, remembering the gleam of her irises. Espresso brown. That was the colour of her eyes, and as their gazes had locked, he’d felt his heart accelerate and every single nerve ending start to shiver just as if he’d downed several black coffees in quick succession. It had sideswiped him and he’d been completely shaken by the burst of heat and need that had roared through him, so much so that he had taken her arm as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do.

Shaking his head free of that memory, he took a step towards her. ‘What did you think was going to happen? That you’d get a dressing-down and then I’d let you walk out of here? This doesn’t go away. This only gets worse.’

She was staring past him into the darkness. ‘I didn’t get that far.’

That made no sense either. Sydney was clearly smart. Smart enough to create a false employment record and get herself hired by the temp agency. Smart enough to hack past the McIntyre firewalls.

And yet he believed her.

‘Maybe you should have done, because you accessed my private server without authorisation. You’ve stolen intellectual property presumably for profit. You’re looking at time in a federal prison.’

‘No.’ Now her eyes found his. She was shaking her head and her voice sounded thin, as if she was finding it hard to speak, but he told himself that he didn’t care, that she deserved to feel like that. ‘I can’t go to prison. I have commitments, responsibilities—’

‘You mean a child?’

It was as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. Which was ridiculous. She was a stranger. He had clapped eyes on her for the first time today. More importantly, she was a liar and a thief, and yet the thought of her having had a baby with some man that wasn’t him scraped against something inside him.

‘No. That’s not what I mean. I have bills to pay.’

He felt a rush of relief, sharp and so incomprehensible that it was swiftly replaced by anger. With her, with himself and, as usual, with his father. Because there was no day when he didn’t feel angry with his father.

His teeth were on edge, his body so tense now that he thought it might fly apart. ‘You should have thought about that before you took me on.’ It was out of his hands. There were laws. She had broken them.

‘I could work for you.’

He frowned. Her beautiful dark eyes were narrowed on his face and there was a faint tremor beneath her skin.

‘You? Work for me.’ He repeated the words as if he couldn’t believe that he’d heard them correctly, although he knew that his hearing was perfect. ‘You think I’d trust you to work for me? After this?’ He laughed then, showing his teeth, although it was a laugh without a hint of mirth. ‘I don’t do second chances, Ms Truitt. You cross me once, we’re done.’

‘I got past your firewall,’ she said after a hard pause, and there was a flush to her cheeks. ‘That shouldn’t have happened. I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

‘An argument which might have more power if you hadn’t been caught.’ Why was he even having this conversation? He should just let the police deal with her, and, in the meantime, Carlos could babysit her.

And yet, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that, and he didn’t understand why. He just knew that at some point in their conversation he had drifted closer to her. Too close. Close enough that he could touch her if he wanted to. Which, in spite of what she had done, he did.

His eyes rested on her flushed face, then dropped to the curve of her mouth.

Such a thing had never happened before and knowing that this woman was the reason, that she was causing this uncharacteristic reaction, made him feel more tense than he’d ever felt. He wasn’t that man; had never wanted to be the kind of man who let his need for a woman dictate his behaviour.

His jaw tightened. Unsurprisingly, given that ever since he was four years old he’d watched his father make a total fool of himself with women, watched him confuse lust with love. Gerry McIntyre could casually mention a woman’s name over breakfast one day and the next he would have proposed to her.

It was a pattern that had repeated itself over twenty years and cost his father a fortune. By the time Tiger took over following his father’s premature death at fifty-nine, the medium-sized mining business Gerry had inherited from his father had been whittled away, hollowed out to fund his multiple divorces. All that had remained was the name, a whole heap of debt and a bunch of unpaid, understandably unhappy employees. Oh, and some very rich former wives.

Not substitute mothers, none even attempting to be. He had been nothing to them. Just a rival pull on his father’s time. Not that his father had needed much pulling. Whenever he’d fallen in love, Gerry had been like a blinkered horse galloping for the finishing line.

Tiger had so longed for his father’s attention. And there had been times when Gerry would remember he had a son, like when he’d wanted to watch the game. Mostly, though, Tiger had been easily forgotten, a lonely little boy who’d had to be self-reliant to survive. Who’d grown up to become a solitary, elusive man.

Because he wasn’t like his father. He had no intention of marrying one woman, let alone six. As for letting Sydney Truitt near his business, forget it. He’d seen his father lose too much from trusting the wrong people. He preferred to put his faith in the evidence to hand and, on that basis, Sydney was not someone he could trust.

His gaze moved to where she stood a few feet away. Anyone else in her position would be pleading by now, or need restraining by the security guards, but there was a stillness to her as she waited for his next move and he found himself admiring her composure.

What the—?

Clearly, he needed a break more urgently than he’d thought if he was starting to admire someone he’d just caught stealing from him. He was obviously suffering from nervous exhaustion. Only, from somewhere at the margins of his mind, an idea was taking shape. Briefly, he tested it for weakness.

But it was sound. Pragmatic. A near-perfect solution to a problem that he had shelved on the flight back to New York.

It was also completely insane, he told himself.

Or was it? In business, if you had your rival over a metaphorical barrel, you took what you wanted, what you needed, and right now he needed a no-strings partner. But just because Sydney would be given access to his private life, it didn’t mean that it was personal. This was a transaction like any other.

‘You react well to pressure,’ he said after a moment.

She stared at him, those brown eyes confused, but curious. Because his non sequitur had piqued her interest. And that in turn had piqued his. Curiosity, the desire to know more and so be more, that he understood. More than understood, he thought, remembering the first time his father had taken him to the copper mine in Colorado. It had propelled him forward, given him wings.

The need to have control over what was his. To not have to sit by, powerless to intervene as it slipped through his fingers, that was the engine that drove him onwards, but his curiosity was the fuel.

‘Yes.’ As she nodded, the slight movement of her head made another curl slip free of its moorings and watching its progress made him feel light-headed.

‘It’s part of the job. If you get emotional then you lose focus.’

True, he thought, dragging his eyes away from the distracting curl back to her face. Only that didn’t help because now the part of his brain that should be cool and clinical was distracted by the freckles on her face.

She had beautiful skin, smooth and pale aside from a faint flush of pink along her cheekbones, so a perfect canvas for that mesmerising sprinkling of sun kisses. A beat of heat danced along his limbs. Was that all there were or were there others elsewhere?

‘That’s good to know,’ he said, shutting the door on that thought. ‘You see, while we’ve been talking, I’ve realised I have got a use for you after all. A short-term contract.’

He watched as her shoulders dropped fractionally. ‘You won’t regret it. I can start tomorrow.’ She hesitated. ‘But I’ll need some kind of security clearance to get into the building. My pass expired today.’

He let her wait, as she had made him wait earlier in the day, liking how it made the colour in her cheeks spread like spilt wine.

Finally, he shook his head. ‘You won’t need a pass. I don’t want you anywhere near my office. But you will need a passport.’

Her forehead creased. ‘Where do you want me to go?’

My bed , he thought, his body suddenly hot and tight.

Without the pants, but she could keep that blouse on. His gaze dropped to her spiked heels. And those shoes. It was a cliché, but clichés became clichés because they spoke to something true.

But not enough to act on. Coming to his senses, he met her gaze. ‘Venice,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s where I want you to go. Where you need to be.’

‘You have an office in Venice?’

‘No, I don’t. And I don’t need your hacking skills. I have a big event coming up. In Venice. I need a date, a girlfriend of sorts. Just for a week.’

She was looking at him as if he had lost his mind, and to be fair a part of him was thinking exactly the same.

‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ Her eyes clashed with his, the pupils wide with shock and outrage. ‘Because it’s not funny.’

‘It’s not a joke. It’s a proposition. A chance for you to avoid a prison term. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept. You see it a lot in the movies. Bunch of no-good criminals are offered freedom and a pardon if they take on a dangerous mission. I believe it’s called the “boxed crook” trope.’

She let out a small, brittle laugh. ‘And there I was thinking you were just being a typical male sleazebag taking advantage of a situation to get his leg over.’

The mouth on her! Tiger stared down at Sydney, feeling his hackles rise. ‘For the record, I don’t take advantage of women, Ms Truitt. And in any case, you don’t need to worry. I’m very choosy about who I get my leg over.’

‘Then I suggest you “choose” some other woman,’ she said, and there was an edge to her voice that made him think his words had hit their target. ‘There must be one in New York who would enjoy your company.’

‘Many,’ he said coolly. ‘But I can’t think of another woman who shares your unique skill set. You see, I need someone who understands that our “relationship” is just for show. Someone who can play a part under pressure. Persuade people that she’s something she’s not. Lie to their faces.’ His eyes locked with hers. ‘Someone willing and available to bend to my will.’

Her pupils flared. ‘Then you definitely need to choose another woman because I’m neither of those things.’

Watching her face, Tiger wondered what it was exactly about this woman that drew him to her so intensely. It was maddening to feel this way, but to not understand why.

Most likely it was just this whole set-up, he reassured himself. He was intrigued, or maybe that wasn’t the right way to describe how he was feeling but he couldn’t think of a better one.

‘You misunderstand me, Sydney.’ He saw her hands ball into fists as he used her name. ‘When I said willing and available, I meant within the context of the alternative being jail time.’