I felt oddly anxious and unhappy going through the doors of Paragon. My company, along with the people who worked there, had always been my sanctuary. But now we were under siege.

In my office, I pushed all anxieties to the side. I had a report to finalize, and it was more important than ever that I focus. I set up a meeting with my legal team for later that day. I caught up on emails, working for an hour, happy to lose myself in the details.

Hannah came into my office at lunch, bringing us both salads. Her usually sunny disposition was nowhere to be found. She sat across from me, eating quietly and watching me.

Finally, I broke down. “What’s your problem? Why are you staring at me like that?”

She kept chewing, a foul look clouding her face. “I’m just waiting.”

“For what?”

Her lower lip stuck out in a pout, just like it used to when we were little and she wasn’t getting her way. “For you to tell me about last night.”

I sighed. “It was…fine.” Clearly, my little sister was feeling left out.

Hannah snorted. “Stephanie said you came in this morning after she did.”

Stephanie might get fired today. “She had no right to tell you that.”

Hannah jutted her chin out defiantly. “I made her. Don’t be mad at her.”

With my appetite shot, I pushed my salad to the side. “I told you I was at Gabe’s. I slept at his house last night.” My cheeks warmed at the memory. As engrossed as I’d been with work that morning, I hadn’t been able to dwell much on the previous night.

“Obviously.” She sniffed and continued to inspect me. “Your skin looks really good.”

I patted my face, confused. “It does?”

She leaned forward in her chair, suspiciously examining me. “You’re glowing.”

I caught on to what she meant. It must have been written all over my face. A small smile played on my lips. I had to tell my baby sister, even if she’d probably use the information as leverage to start shopping for wedding dresses and all other sorts of ridiculousness. Still, I couldn’t resist.

I patted my hair as a full-blown grin spread across my face. “I should be.”

“Shut the fuck up!” she yelled, springing to her feet. “You did not!”

I nodded, unable to stop smiling. “I did so.”

“Oh my God, finally!” Hannah clapped and jumped up and down. “Was it awesome? Did it hurt? Is he your boyfriend now?”

“Yes. Sort of. I think so.”

I don’t even think she heard my answers because she was so busy jumping up and down and clapping.

“Hannah, stop. Calm down.” I finally came back to my senses. “Sit. There are actually a few things we need to talk about.”

I told her about what Leo had found and what it probably meant. The information that Clive had stolen had been sold to an outside partner, most likely a Chinese one, and they were burning the midnight oil trying to reverse-engineer my successful prototype.

She bit her lip. “Wow. This is just getting worse, isn’t it?”

“It’s not getting better,” I admitted. “Listen, in light of these recent developments, Gabe thinks it’s safer if I stay with him.”

Hannah laughed. “That sounds like a ploy, but I like it.”

I shrugged, trying to downplay it. “He also invited you to come stay at his place if you’d be more comfortable.”

She grinned at me. “No way. I have a feeling you two are loud.”

I blushed furiously. “We are not.” Well, Gabe wasn’t. If I remembered correctly, I’d screamed my head off last night.

Hannah was watching my face, so I cut off that train of thought quickly.

“So?” she asked. “Enough about the corporate espionage. Let’s talk about something good. What’s the deal with you and Gabe?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

She cocked her head, looking thoughtful. “I knew he was going to be the right guy for you.”

“You knew no such thing,” I said immediately, which wasn’t the same thing as saying she was wrong.

She smiled slyly. “The lady doth protest too much.”

I groaned and put my head on my desk. “Stop.”

“Okay.” I could hear the grin in her voice. “But I’m totally going to buy new lingerie for you. I now have another reason to go shopping—win-win!” She patted my hair and pranced out.

Ugh. At least Hannah was shopping for lingerie and not wedding dresses. It was a small victory, but I’d take it for now. I kept my head on the desk for another minute, loving the cool feel of the wood against my face. It was like an oasis of calm in the desert of my anxiety.

My phone buzzed. I picked it up and read a text from Gabe. You were so busy fighting with me this morning that I forgot to tell you—last night was incredible. I can’t stop thinking about you.

I clutched my phone as if it were a precious metal or even better, an undiscovered periodic element.

I can’t stop thinking about you, either, I wrote back.

The beasts were already out of their cages, running wild. I might as well go for it.

Another text came through. I’m coming to get you at six. Have your damn clothes sent over or I’ll hold you captive and keep you naked for the rest of the week.

Even though I suddenly felt hot, I shivered. So much for calm.

* * *

Gabe maneuvered the Spyder through the downtown traffic. “I told you, I’m taking you to dinner.”

“Why?” If I had to leave Paragon, I only wanted to be at Gabe’s. For…very specific reasons.

He put his hand on my knee. “A couple of things. First, as soon as I get you home, I’m going to want you naked. I’ve been thinking about that tight little body of yours all day.”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t have an answer to that.

“We have things to discuss—important things. I also want to see if we’re being followed. It’ll be easier to ascertain that if we’re in a public place.”

“Great.” Now he was worried we were being followed?

We pulled up to a sleek-looking Japanese restaurant on First Street. I texted Timmy, who was in the car behind us, to come sit in the bar and keep an eye out.

“Do you have a guy with you?”

Gabe nodded. “He’s out here, somewhere.”

“Doing what?”

“Surveillance.” He shrugged. “Armed surveillance.”

I grimaced as the valet opened my car door. “This is getting out of control.”

“No.” Gabe came around the front of the Spyder and laced his fingers through mine. “This is already out of control.”

We sat in the restaurant, and I listlessly read the menu. Between thinking about being naked in Gabe’s arms again and worrying about Clive Warren, I had no appetite.

Gabe watched me. “You have to eat.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Is that a command? I thought we were framing those as requests.”

“You don’t want me to pull rank on you, do you?” He grinned at me. “I could withhold things from you. Things you seem to like.”

I went right back to the menu. “I’m ordering, I’m ordering.”

“Did you meet with your lawyers?”

“Yes. And by the way—they’ve approved Dynamica’s financials. They’re drafting up the partnership agreement.”

“Excellent. Partner.” He grinned at me, then turned serious. “Did you catch them up to speed on everything else?”

I nodded, groaning. “They were pissed.”

“Do you blame them? You’ve been withholding a lot of crucial information.”

“No, I don’t blame them.”

My personal attorney, Bethany O’Donnell, had sat in on the meeting this afternoon. She’d practically ripped my head off after I divulged everything that had happened with Clive over the past few weeks.

“What was their position?”

“They said that I could absolutely have Clive arrested for willful and malicious misappropriation of my intellectual property. With my testimony, the chip, and what we’ve uncovered from his system, there’s plenty of proof. Although the stuff I hacked from him could get me into trouble. The good news is, if I went after him in federal court, I wouldn’t necessarily have to expose my technology in filings…”

“So are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know.” I swirled the ice around in my water glass. “We talked about it for hours. The problem is, even though Clive is clearly guilty, he’s not my ultimate opponent anymore. That’s whoever he sold it to in China—and Clive is my only link to them right now.”

“So you want him out of jail. Conducting business as usual.” Gabe didn’t sound happy about it.

I shrugged, avoiding his piercing gaze for the moment. “My team said that enforcing trade secret protection against non-U.S. companies can be difficult. So we can try to go after them, but it could take a long time. And we don’t even know who ‘they’ are yet.”

“I think I have an idea.” Gabe scrubbed a hand across his face. “I had my technology expert review the files you sent me. He did some digging.”

When I’d left the office, Leo still hadn’t found out who the Chinese email address belonged to. “Did he find anything?”

“The email address belongs to a Chinese woman who works in Shenzhen. She’s an executive assistant.”

My heart started pounding. “Do you know who she is?”

He shook his head. “But I know where she works and who she works for. She’s the assistant to Li Na Zhao, the CEO of Jiàn Innovations, which is the most aggressively growing healthcare deliverable company in China.”

I stared at his face, wishing he would take this information back.

“Are you familiar with her work?”

“Of course.” Relieved to have wine on hand, I took a gulp. “Jiàn Innovations is growing rapidly. I’ve been watching them. They’ve developed some healthcare apps that are being widely used in China, and that they’re looking to become more of a global competitor.”

Gabe sat back. “If Clive sold them the information he stole from you, we have a problem. They are a much bigger fish than Warren Technologies. Maybe they even organized the hack, and Clive was just a worker bee.”

I balled up my napkin, my hands working restlessly while my mind raced.

“Clive was in China earlier this year, right?”

“Right.” My voice sounded miserable to my own ears.

“I’d like to have Dave, my tech guy, go and work with Leo. I think that together, they could cover a lot of ground. I’d like to see what correspondence or contact we can find between Clive and Jiàn. I’d also like them to start looking into Zhao, to see if there’s anything they can find out about her that could help us. You should bring this information to legal, to see what they say about building a case against Jiàn Innovations.”

I took a deep breath and blew it out. “I need Dave’s background cleared first.”

“Of course. I’ll email his biographical information to your team now. Then, I’ll send him over so they can do his fingerprints. He’s ready to go.”

Gabe took out his phone and started texting furiously. I did the same, alerting my team that Dave would be coming into Paragon to start working tonight. The server brought our dinner, and I could feel Gabe watching me as I pushed the food around on my plate. The possibility that my technology had been stolen by a company as large and aggressive as Jiàn Innovations was making me feel physically ill.

Gabe continued to watch me. “I’m glad that you had your clothes sent over. I’m also glad you’re being cooperative about Dave. He’s brilliant, but I thought I was going to have to work harder to convince you. You’re being so agreeable, it’s throwing me off.”

I swallowed my food without tasting it. “You’re not my enemy.” I reached out to grab his hand, lacing my fingers through his. “Now that I have real ones, I can see that clearly.”