The Passionate Mistake Read Free

though, does it?” she had nearly worn the cup of coffee Cathy was ferrying at the time.
    No, she didn’t want to punish Francine, but if she incriminated her as a person sniffing around secure areas of the network and got her into trouble . . . well, that would just be unfortunate, wouldn’t it?
    Cathy opened the meetings application she had been sent when she first arrived at DigiCom, made a note of all the attendees and their seating arrangements then flicked the tab for record. Keeping her strokes on the screen’s virtual keyboard very light to avoid disturbing the sound pick-up, she got back to work.
    She felt the little surge of excitement as she entered Francine’s password. This task was more exciting when in the room crammed full of the company’s people than alone at her desk. She rolled her eyes at her own thrill-seeking tendencies. She was virtually living on stress and adrenalin these days, in between the maddening spells of boredom.
    No wonder she was nearly going insane, with tension coming and going like a pendulum swing. Who wouldn’t?
    In seconds she was deep in the network, working on the firewall again. She found the tag linked to the unauthorized search query – stupid of her, she should have scanned for that first – and told it Francine was authorized, which it accepted without demur. Her search query – with a slightly tweaked script in case her previous one had been logged and sent a red flag to the system – netted a dozen files that looked promising.
    Trawling through one, she appr oved the elegance of the script. It was written by an expert programmer; though hmmm, not bug-free. She altered a pair of pathways that could cause the coder trouble down the road, an absent-minded action, just because she could.
    She paused to t ake a quick glance around the room, checking for any threat, but she was ignored. The man at the front of the crowd now was quite a good speaker and he held the interest of his listeners. Dave. It was her job to know everyone, so know them she did. Dave Carter, flaccid belly overhanging his pants, one hand resting on the top of the mass as it jiggled along with his laughter at his own joke. Others laughed too. Yes, a good speaker. She didn’t like his code though. Weak. Too many keystrokes to say too little. He needed to pare back.
    She scanned sideways and her attention was caught by the boss, sitting to Dave’s left, alternately listening and swiping at the screen of his own tablet. From her angle she couldn’t see what programs he was in. She was curious. Michael Summers was his name, and him she watched too much. Watched him almost obsessively whenever she encountered him, in fact, though she did her best not to. He was certainly charismatic enough. Even when quietly listening to someone else talk he drew attention; a natural-born leader.
    H is tablet looked fragile in those square, muscular hands with veins roping all over them. Big capable hands. Mmmm. Good hands. The rest of him was big too. Broad shoulders under a smoky blue polo-neck shirt, dark blue denim clasping large, shapely thighs. When he shifted to lean back in his chair his shirt draped conveniently over his pectorals and flat abdomen. Convenient for someone checking him out, that is. Her gaze wandered dreamily back up to his face, and she almost bit her tongue.
    Without moving his head his eyes were now on her, a dark , penetrating gaze that made her hot all over. Certain she was blushing, she pretended great interest in what Dave was saying. He was theorizing about the need parents had for an application to track their offspring’s whereabouts and show their location on a map.
    For agonizing moments she stared unblinking at Dave, until finally she dared flick her eyes back towards the boss for a swift reconnaissance. He too was looking at Dave again, his blandly interested expression unchanged. She released the breath she’d been holding. Then she went back to the program, straightening out two