Page 190 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Theregatawas the social event of the year in the billionaires’ social calendar. Coming hot on the heels of the Monaco Yacht Show, it started with a spectacular pageant on the waters of the famous lagoon and ended with the Colombina masked ball, which was the biggest charitable fundraising event in Europe. Graced by monarchs, heads of state, A-list celebrities and the top one per cent. It would be unthinkable not to attend, particularly as this year he was sponsoring a boat.

But to go alone would be even more unthinkable. For a man like him, a beautiful woman was as essential as an expensive watch or a pair of handmade shoes. It wasn’t an ego thing. He didn’t want or need anyone’s approbation. It was more that perfection was intimidating. It kept people at arm’s length and that was how he liked it.

Which left him with a problem.

Alexandra, the latest in his string of ex-girlfriends, was still seething at his decision to unceremoniously end things a few weeks ago. Frankly, though, he couldn’t imagine asking her or any of his other exes anyway. Usually, he just asked whoever he was dating at the time, but if he invited them specifically then they would inevitably misread his intentions whatever he said.

What he needed was a woman who would behave like a girlfriend and then just walk away uncomplainingly. In other words, an escort, except he hadn’t ever and would never pay a woman to be his date.

Face it,he told himself.The woman you need doesn’t exist and there is no point in hoping you’re going to find her.

She was a creature of fantasy and, unlike his father, he was a man who dealt in facts, not feelings. And as he started to fasten his seat belt, he wondered once again if life might not be simpler on the moon.

Glancing up at the bank of clocks mounted on the wall opposite her desk, Sydney felt her heart accelerate. All of them showed different times. It was seven p.m. in Moscow, midnight in Beijing and five p.m. in London. Here in New York, it was only midday but the fact remained that she was running out of time. This was her last day working for the McIntyre Corporation and if she didn’t deliver her end of the bargain to Harris Carver then she wouldn’t get paid, and if she didn’t get paid...

Her shoulders tensed against the back of her chair.

She could still hear the panic beneath the bravado in her brother Connor’s voice when he’d called her from the police station. ‘It’s bad, Syd. They’re saying it could be one to five years for all of us.’ He paused, then cleared his throat. ‘Including Tate.’

Selling and buying stolen car parts was not the worst crime in the world. But it was not her brothers’ first offence. They had been in trouble since the day they could walk, always stupid stuff, avoidable stuff that made their mates laugh.

Until that day when she had called Connor on the phone she had stolen from ex-husband, Noah, and they had driven to Nevada to rescue her and ended up getting arrested for assault. They hadn’t hurt Noah. They had wanted to, but, in the end, it was she who had pushed him. She was the one who had punched and kicked him. And in his fury and spite, he had accused them of assaulting him because he knew that would hurt her the most.

And she could have saved them then. She could have gone to the police and told them the truth, but she had been so ashamed of her bruises, so ashamed of her weakness, and her brothers had felt so guilty that they hadn’t protected her, that they’d admitted to something that wasn’t true. Which meant that thanks to her all three of them had a record for assault.

One to five years in jail. Connor would probably be okay. He was the oldest and knew how to handle himself. Her middle brother, Jimmy, had a smart mouth but he made people laugh so he might get by. But Tate...

Suddenly it was hard to breathe past the lump in her throat. Tate was the youngest of her three brothers. Just ten months older than her. They had been in the same year at school and she knew him inside out. Knew definitively that he wouldn’t survive prison. All her brothers were magnets for trouble and not given to deep thinking, but Tate was softer than the others.

He couldn’t go to prison. None of them could. And it was her responsibility to make sure they didn’t. They had rescued her, saved her, in fact, and she was going to save them. But for that to happen, they needed a lawyer and not just the usual run-of-the-mill sort assigned by the court. She needed someone fierce and smart, which meant expensive. And that wouldn’t be the only cost. If they managed by some miracle to avoid prison time, they would all be facing hefty fines.

Which was why she had taken this temping job at McIntyre.

Her gaze dropped to the ID badge hanging around her neck.

For her the hardest part wasn’t having to live a lie. She had done that when she was with Noah. Kept the big secret of their marriage. It was just there was so much more riding on this than any other job. This was about more than money or her reputation as a white hat. It was about giving her brothers a second chance.

And you can do this, she told herself again. It was what she did every day for other businesses across the country. Tiptoeing her way around their cyber-security systems, using reverse-engineering malware to break down lines of code so that she could figure out how a virus worked and how to stop it.

Self-taught, she had worked hard to break into the industry and her business, Orb Weaver, was growing fast, and she wanted it to keep growing, which was why she had agreed to meet Carver in the first place.

And now she was working for the two biggest fish in the pond, only neither job was what she had imagined herself doing.

Gazing across the office to Tiger McIntyre’s empty office, Sydney shivered. She still wasn’t entirely sure that she had made the right choice. But she was here at the McIntyre headquarters off Fifth Avenue legitimately employed as an administrative assistant called Sierra Jones. And once she found the IP and returned to Carver, she would be paid. Far more money than was legitimately due for her services.

But then what she was doing wasn’t exactly legitimate.

‘You okay, Sierra?’

Her colleague, Abi, was staring at her uncertainly. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

She pasted a smile on her face. ‘I’m fine. I just remembered I forgot to eat breakfast,’ she lied.

Abi rolled her eyes. ‘I always forget to eat lunch whenhe’sin the building. I just get so nervous I’m going to mess up.’

There was no need to ask who ‘he’ was. He was the boss. Tiger McIntyre. Christened Tadhg but given his nickname because of his ferocious, single-minded pursuit of success, he was a man who had never encountered failure.

But Carver was right. He wasn’t a good person.

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