Page 195 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

But she had brought this on herself.

‘I’m not going to ask again.’

She gave a small, taut laugh. ‘Let me guess. This is where you threaten me. Where you tell me that we can do this the easy way or the hard way.’

His eyes met hers. ‘Easy’s not on the table. Just hard, and harder.’

‘There’s nothing in my bag.’

‘Then you won’t mind me taking a look inside.’

‘Not if you don’t mind me hurling it at your head first,’ she snapped back as if he were the one at fault here, and for a moment he was stunned and furious all over again that she should talk to him that way, and yet for some reason he also wanted to laugh.

He settled for shrugging. ‘Not the most sensible of responses unless you’re looking to add assault to your list of crimes.’

She drew a breath, and he could see she was trying to maintain her composure. ‘I haven’t committed any crimes,’ she said firmly, her eyes fixed on his as she stalked past him and upended her bag and shook it, scattering the contents across his desk. As she tossed the bag at him, her face gave nothing away but he was looking for a flash drive, not remorse, and, taking his time, he sifted through the detritus on his desk before checking the interior of the bag.

‘Happy?’ she said as his eyes found hers.

‘Not yet. But I will be. Empty your pockets, Sydney,’ he ordered, pushing away from the desk, and maybe there was something wrong with him, but he found he very nearly enjoyed the small, sharp intake of breath that followed his instruction.

Sydney’s chin jerked up, not only because Tiger had got to his feet but because he had used her real name. She stared back at him, panic lifting her up and throwing her down like a dark rushing tide, pulling her under and sweeping her out into the ocean.

She had thought she’d been careful, ultra careful, but normally she was the one looking for the intruder. Not the intruder herself.

‘Not a nice feeling, is it? Having people upend your life?’ he said softly, so softly that for a moment her brain actually got confused and thought that he was backing off. But then that mouth of his twisted into a smile that made her understand that she was in trouble. Made her understand on a stomach-churning, visceral level just how ruthless he was.

Sydney held her breath. It didn’t really change anything, but part of the reason she’d been just about holding it together was because she could tell herself that this was happening to Sierra. Now it was happening to her. Now it felt real.

All of it.

Blood rushed to her cheeks as she remembered that strange weightless feeling when he took hold of her arm, and that longing to get closer—

‘How did you find out my name?’ she said hoarsely.

He gestured towards the ID tag. ‘I called in a favour. An ex-secret service friend of mine ran a facial recognition check and your driver’s licence came up. You’re Sydney Truitt. You live in Los Angeles and you’re the CEO of Orb Weaver, a cyber-security company. A little detail that, oddly, you chose not to put on your CV.’

‘It wasn’t relevant,’ she said as calmly as she could, fixing her gaze at a point to the left of his shoulder.

He didn’t respond for a moment and she tried telling herself that it didn’t get to her, but inevitably, as she knew it would, her head turned towards him of its own accord. There was a look of dark impatience on his face.

‘If you say so. What is relevant is that, approximately seventeen hours ago, my head of IT picked up some unusual out-of-hours activity on your CPU.’

This was the worst-case scenario. She felt her stomach drop. It was a quiet program but she’d had to keep it running day and night.

‘They check, you see, and it was low-level, just working quietly away in the background, but your machine was doing something it shouldn’t. I’ll let you have a few moments to come up with a reason why that was happening, but in the meantime, you can empty your pockets. Oh, and let me be clear—if you don’t, I will ask Carlos to do it for you,’ he added.

He would do it as well. This was not a man who made empty threats.

She had been cornered before so many times in the past by a different angry man and back then she’d tried to placate, to distract, tried to make herself small because she had been too scared to stand up to him.

Only for some reason she wasn’t afraid of this man. Not physically anyway.

Still, though, she felt goosebumps spread across her skin as his glittering, disdainful gaze narrowed on her face. But she couldn’t crack now. If she kept her head there was a chance she could front this out. Her throat tightened. She had to front it out.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the flash drive and put it onto the palm of his hand. For a moment he stared at her assessingly, as if she were an animal in a trap and he were deciding how best to put her out of her misery.

‘Is that it?’

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