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‘Don’t make such a fuss—it’s not as if I’m trying to seduce you with jewellery,’ he had said, amusing everyone but Regan with his apparent joke. ‘This is a loan, not a gift. It’s an old one of mine—I just had the jeweller at Palm Cove whip out a few links so that the band would fit a smaller wrist. Hazel is a stickler for being on time for appointments, and you won’t come up to scratch if you don’t carry a reliable timepiece.’
Regan had been forced to act pleased and thank him nicely.
‘It’s fully waterproof and shockproof, so you can safely forget you’ve got it on,’ he’d told her. ‘You can even wear it washing your hair in the shower, if you like, though perhaps you’re the kind of woman who prefers to do it in the bath.’
He had stood smiling at her blandly while Regan’s eyes had spat violet fire, her composure almost destroyed by the vivid mental video of Joshua as he had been That Night, his tapered torso slick with soapy water as he’d braced his shoulders against the curving back of the marble bath and lifted her astride him with dripping arms, bringing her hard down on his up-thrust hips, churning up the waves until a tsunami of sensation had almost drowned them both!
His eyes had flickered to the band on her wrist and she’d felt it like a mark of his possession as he goaded softly, ‘How fortunate that you don’t appear to be as allergic to platinum as you are to gold…’
‘You’ve left footprints all over the pla
ce, you know.’
‘What?’ Regan wrenched herself from her memories to find Ryan edging closer to her terminal. ‘Where?’ She automatically looked down at the carpet.
‘On those files you’ve just been altering…you’re leaving a trail that any competent hacker could follow.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she said hollowly.
‘It’s just a clumsy way of doing it, that’s all. I mean, I think the actual idea is clever,’ Ryan said kindly. ‘You have a printing company that in the process of long, legal winding-up has discovered a breach of its former contract with Palm Cove Developments that invokes a lump-sum penalty repayment clause. It’s just that if the data and dates don’t match up in all those files by the time the bank cheque arrives, your tampering is going to look pretty obvious to an expert…’
Regan was speechless.
‘I could do it, you know!’ Ryan’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. ‘I could hack in and manipulate the software to completely obliterate any sign you’d been in there. Or, I could use a very specific virus that would corrupt the data if anyone tried to call up the original file on that contract—’
‘No! Ryan—you don’t know what you’re saying!’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve been hacking around in the system and tracking what everyone’s doing for days,’ he confided. ‘The security here really sucks and the passwords are a joke.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re trying to put money back into the system, aren’t you? Sort of like Robin Hood in reverse—’
‘Nothing like Robin Hood!’ Regan was horrified by his admiration. ‘For goodness’ sake, Ryan, what I’m doing is dishonest!’ She bit her lip; she hadn’t meant to admit anything.
‘Yeah, but for a good cause—you didn’t steal it, right?’ he stated, with an absolute confidence that she found unbearably touching. ‘You’re obviously just covering for someone else. Those files you were extracting were originally created with a password held by Michael Frances—I checked. Hey, I hope you haven’t forgotten there’ll be back-up files somewhere, too…’
Regan propped her head on her hand and closed her eyes, appalled that her sins had found her out before she had barely even begun. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten—that was the first thing I did, because the back-ups are kept at the legal office, where I work. Michael was my husband,’ she sighed. ‘Before he died he skimmed off the money by awarding contracts for printing posters and sales brochures to a fictitious firm, while he actually had the job done at a cheaper price.’
‘Cool!’
Her head jerked up. ‘No, it is not cool, Ryan!’ she hissed furiously, surreptitiously checking that there was no one else in the vicinity. ‘It’s outright theft. It’s totally immoral and wrong. And what I’m doing is wrong, too. It’s nothing to be proud of!’
‘So why’re you doing it?’
She shook her head helplessly. How could she explain the reckless anger that had driven her to act so out of character?
His bony, tanned hand slid over the top of her twisting fingers. ‘Hey, look it’s OK. I’m not going to squeal. I know if I help you we can make this work, with a few modifications—’
She wouldn’t let herself even contemplate it. Help him cheat and lie and deceive the one he loved? The way that Michael had?
‘No—I don’t want you involved in any way.’
‘But I already am involved!’
That was undeniable. Shared knowledge made them coconspirators. ‘The correct thing for you to do would be to go straight to someone of authority in the company and tell them what I’ve done,’ she forced herself to say. ‘Or at least tell your father,’ she said, flinging herself on her sword.
‘Tell Dad? Are you crazy! Why would I want to tell him anything? Let Dad find his own fun!’
Fun? Regan looked at him as though he was an alien being. It must be the generation gap, she thought. He might be an intellectual genius, but physically and emotionally he was still a teenager, super-charged on his surging hormones. In contrast she felt as jaded as an old hag.
‘I’m glad you feel that way, Ryan, because that’s exactly what I intend doing.’
