Page 224 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

‘About ten days before I came to work for you.’ She swallowed, her brief, unsettling rendezvous with Harris Carver flashing across her mind, so real and vivid that for an instant she could smell the leather of the club armchair and feel its smooth warmth against her back.

‘What happened in between?’

‘With him? Nothing. I just told you. I only met him once.’

‘You’ve told me a lot of things, Sydney. Most of them are either untrue or a partial truth so I’m sure you’ll understand my reluctance to take you at your word.’

His voice was taut and strained. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this back in New York? Or out on the beach? I thought we had some kind of understanding, but you were lying to me and you’d still be lying to me now if somebody hadn’t mentioned Carver’s name. I mean, when were you going to tell me?’

She swallowed.

‘I met him once,’ she repeated. ‘There was no reason to meet him again. But I needed the time in between to create my identity and references.’

‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing.’ Her throat tightened as Tiger’s eyes jerked to hers. ‘So, the cyber-security company of yours is a front. This is what you do. You tout your hacking services to billionaires. Steal on demand.’ His eyes narrowed, and the air in the room snapped tight. ‘Does he know about this? About you being here with me?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t. I haven’t told anyone. And I don’t steal on demand. I’ve never—’

‘Stolen anything,’ he finished her sentence and the sneer in his voice made something curl up inside her. ‘I remember. Back in New York when I confronted you, you said, “This is the first time I’ve done anything like this,” and I didn’t believe you. But then I found out about your brothers and I thought you might be telling the truth. But you were lying then and you’re lying now, aren’t you?’

No, and yes. No, she had never hacked anyone and stolen their IP, but yes, she had done something even more reckless and dangerous. She had taken her ex-husband’s phone.

So tell him. Tell him what you stole.

But she couldn’t, because that would mean telling him why she had stolen the phone. Which would mean telling him about Noah and opening up a can of worms, opening herself up so that he would see the ugliness of the scars that hadn’t faded, laying bare her stupidity and weakness.

And she didn’t know why but the idea of him seeing that, knowing that about her, felt like the very worst thing she could imagine right now.

‘It’s not what you’re thinking,’ she said quietly.

‘The trouble is,’ he said after a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, ‘everything I know about you tells me that it is exactly what I’m thinking.’

Her hands clenched. ‘He approached me. Harris Carver. His people got in touch with me. It was all very hush-hush. I had to sign an NDA and they picked me and took me to some private members’ club.’

He frowned. ‘You mean the Millenium?’

‘I don’t know. We went in via some underground car park. I didn’t see anybody except a man in a suit who showed us where to go.’

Tiger reached back and switched on the light on his desk and she had a sudden sharp memory of a different lamp on a different desk and a moment in time that had snapped through her like a lightning strike and left her singed and shaking inside.

‘I didn’t know what he wanted me to do when I agreed to meet him. I thought he was going to offer me a job. A job at HCI.’

‘You wanted to work for him?’ His eyes blazed, and if theirs had been a different kind of relationship she might have thought there was a jealousy to his temper.

‘Not him. His business. I needed money and HCI is an S&P 500 company.’

‘Right, and he’s so squeaky clean, isn’t he? Harris Carver: all-round good guy.’

She thought back to that nerve-racking meeting and Carver’s steady grey gaze. ‘No, I didn’t think he was a good guy. I felt like I was swimming in a tank with a shark the whole time I was there.’

‘But he made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.’

‘I did refuse it. I told him that I wasn’t comfortable doing what he wanted. But it was a lot of money for three days’ work.’

‘Work?’ His mouth twisted into a shape that made it hard to breathe. ‘For the last time, what you did wasn’t work. It was theft. Here.’

She blinked. Tiger was holding out the flash drive he had taken from her. ‘But I’m guessing my word counts for nothing alongside Saint Carver’s, so why don’t you take a look? See for yourself.’

His anger was different this time. It felt older, and bitter, as if it had been left to fester. As if he, not Carver, had been wronged.