Allie was hunched over my computer, a determined look on her face as she worked.

And I was seriously considering hiring her. But not because I had some sort of fantasy about bending her over my desk at work...well, not only because of that.

She was fucking brilliant.

“I told you, I don’t keep anything on my laptop that could compromise any of my accounts. Too much of a security risk.”

Not that it'd stopped her from trying. All morning. Not just searching my accounts. She'd been searching the stock market, looking for something, anything, that could give her a hint about what her father was doing.

Hours of almost non-stop work, and now, she was getting a headache, I could see it.

“I know.” She groaned and rubbed at the back of her neck. Shaking her head, she leaned back and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes for a minute. “I need to access the system from the firm. That's the only way I'll be able to find what I need.”

“We can go in tomorrow.”

“Today,” she insisted.

“Tomorrow,” I said firmly. “I’ll have one of my top accountants meet you, and you all can start looking for…” I shook my head. “Whatever it is you want to find. Maybe you should give up on styling hair and try your hand at forensic accounting.”

She gave me a half-hearted smile. “Yeah, right.”

One of these days, she'd accept the fact of how amazing she was.

I leaned over her and reached for they keyboard to close things down. She caught my wrist before I could, her eyes narrowing. “Hey, I’m working.”

“No. You’re done. I know you’re trying to help.”

She tugged on my wrist again, and I missed the icon I needed, hitting a folder on the desktop instead.

Bending over her, I kissed her. She bit my lower lip, and my blood raced south. Under my hand, I felt keys clacking, and I shifted my hand away from the keyboard, bracing it. “You’re done working for now.”

“Maybe…” She smiled against my lips. “Maybe you could distract me, and I’ll forget about it.”

That sounded good to me.

But as I straightened up, her gaze slid past me and fixed on the screen. For a second, her gaze came back to mine.

Then it went back to the screen, and she kept staring.

“Who…” She licked her lips. I might have bent down and followed the same path with my own tongue, but the expression in her eyes had me pausing. “Jal, that picture. Who is that?”

* * *

I was wrong.

We ended up going into the firm after all.

Now, as I stood in the office belonging to one of my execs, I couldn't help but marvel at how much my life had changed in just a few short weeks. I'd gone from being excited about fatherhood while loathing the idea of marriage, to knowing that I did eventually want children, but only with the woman poking around on the computer in hopes of breaking the password.

“I’m not a hacker,” Allie finally said, throwing up her hands. “I can’t figure out what to do. I barely knew the guy, other than to say he was tight with Kendrick. Had this stupid poodle. Loved that weird thing. Mistress FiFi.”

She looked at me, her eyes widening before she bent back over the computer. A few seconds later, she whooped.

“Don’t tell me it was Mistress FiFi.” I shook my head. “No dumbass would use that.”

“It’s Mistress FiFi…backward.” She grinned.

“Shit.” It occurred to me that maybe I should come down on the guy for being a dumbass, but either we were intruding on his privacy for no reason, or it was a good thing he was a dumbass. Still, I made a mental note to send out a company-wide email reminding people about the guidelines for passwords.

“Why exactly are you so sure he’s somehow involved in this?” I asked as I moved to stand behind her.

“I've just got a feeling.” Her mouth twisted in a sour frown as she navigated the mouse around, clicking on the email. She read a few, shaking her head, then continued, “He used to work with my…with Kendrick. He was let go. I only know about it because Diamond raised hell about him coming over to the house once. There was something shady about the circumstances under which he left the firm, but Kendrick said he had his uses.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Arms crossed over my chest, I looked around the room. “My background checks are thorough. If there were something that would have caused him to be terminated, it would have shown on a background check.”

“Only if he was caught.” She glanced up at me. “And this was like fifteen years ago. I just never forgot the man’s face. He looks like a rat.”

He did.

The office belonged to a Gary Hammerstein, and Hammerstein most definitely looked like a rat, a narrow, sharp face, hair thinning on top and a grayish pink complexion. His eyes were small and beady. I remembered that the few times I’d met him, he’d always had a nervous, jittery sort of air, but I’d been told he was good at what he did. A lot of people who made their living behind computers weren't that socially adept.

My eyes landed on the one personal touch in the office. “Son of a bitch.” Scowling, I grabbed the picture and showed it to Allie. “Do you know this guy too?”

Allie glanced at it and shook her head. “No. Should I?”

“He left the company where your dad works a few years ago. I hired him away, actually. Kendrick took it with pretty good humor, but now…” I fought the urge to throw the picture against the wall. “He’s the one who recommended Hammerstein.”

Allie lapsed into silence when I started to pace, and the only noise was that of her fingers on the keyboard for several minutes.

“He keeps his passwords saved on the computer so I can get into everything, but I’m not finding anything,” Allie said finally. “But…”

I turned and looked at her.

She leaned back, her lips pursed as she stared at the computer. “He deletes his internet history. Completely. For somebody who's lazy enough to use his dog’s name for a password, and doesn’t log out of his work email, that seems a little…odd.”

Odd. Yeah. I'd say suspicious.

“I’m calling my tech man in.”

Letting her head drop back to rest on the padded, pillowed chair, she studied me. “Is that legal?”

“He signed a contract when he came to work here. As the CEO, if I have any reason to suspect suspicious or possibly illegal activity, I can search the offices, computers, rip up the damn carpet if I want. And he knows it.” Phone already in hand, I stared at the computer as though that alone would force it to divulge its secrets. “And the bastard knows it. That’s why he’s wiping the Internet history.”