All systems are go with author Ruth Owen as she bytes down on this sexy tale of two computer experts who go viral for one another. “The Terminator.” That’s what they call security consultant Jack Fagan, a man without a pixel of human compassion. Katrina Sheffield isn’t about to let someone with his reputation mess with Einstein, her company’s prized artificial intelligence system. She’s determined to find the dirt on Jack before his unscrupulous methods sizzle her microchips.
Kat knows she shouldn’t fall for a man with no permanent address—and no desire to have one—but when someone hacks into Einstein, she has no choice but to turn to the one man who can help prove her innocence. Jack’s price is high. He’ll take nothing less than her complete surrender: of her company secrets, her sexual fantasies, and, ultimately, her heart.
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from other Loveswept titles.
Release date:
October 14, 2013
Publisher:
Loveswept
Print pages:
256
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Katrina Sheffield pushed the blond fringe out of her eyes and glared in disbelief at the interoffice memo she held in her hands. “Chris,” she muttered, “you’re out of your tree. I know I asked for help, but … Fagen?”
She glanced over at the multiple stacks of paper on her desk, in the bins that could easily be labeled “Problems, problems, and more problems.” As security manager of Sheffield Industries Miami Project Development Complex it seemed that all she did these days was specialize in problems. A month ago she’d asked her cousin Chris Sheffield, who headed up the development branch of their family business, to find her a reliable consultant to help restructure her security system. Three weeks ago Chris’s wife Melanie had delivered their first child. Apparently fatherhood had scrambled his brain—normally Chris would never have suggested hiring someone as unacceptable as Jack Fagen to help her out.
Correction, she thought grimly. According to the memo, Fagen was already hired. She was supposed to meet with him tonight to discuss his assignment.
She’d sooner meet with the devil.
She stood up and paced her office in long-legged strides. “Fagen,” she muttered angrily. “The man’s strictly out for himself. He’s an exploiter, an opportunist—”
“Actually,” said a voice from the computer console in the corner of her office, “he’s a Leo.”
“Einstein?” Kat said, surprised to hear his voice. “I thought you were working on the weather projections for southeastern crop maximization.”
“Did. Finished. Was piece of toast,” Einstein said, using his favorite skewed expression. Einstein was Sheffield Industries’ first artificial-intelligence computer. He could perform thousands of intricate calculations per minute, but the nuances of human speech occasionally eluded him. Hardly surprising, since he’d picked up most of his vocabulary from MTV and the Shopping Channel. “Besides,” he added, cocking his video camera to one side, “this more interesting. Are we hiring ‘the Terminator’?”
So even Einstein had heard of Jack Fagen’s nickname. “Not if I can help it,” she stated, angrily shaking her head. “The man is bad news. Maybe he is one of the best security consultants in the Western world, but he’s got less human compassion than the machines he works on.” Her violet eyes flashed with sudden and very real concern. “He could rip apart my entire ‘neural net’ if it doesn’t meet his exacting standards. And lord knows what he’d do to PINK.”
PINK, the Prototype for Intelligent Network Computers, was the joint creation of Einstein and the Sheffield technicians. She was the most advanced artificially generated intelligence in the world, but she had a nature as fickle as a firefly. PINK’s frequent and highly dangerous travels over unsecured computer lines was the major source of Katrina’s many headaches.
Einstein, however, didn’t share Kat’s concern over Fagen’s influence on his protégée. His video camera spun three-sixty and his mechanical voice was modulated with laughter. “PINK’ll drive him crazy. Be fun to watch.”
“E, this is serious. Hiring Fagen would be an A-one security risk, worse than … than Preston Gates ever was.” She cursed, hating the fact that she still stumbled over his name, even after all these months. “They’re birds of a feather.”
“Files indicate both are Caucasian males in their fourth decade of existence, employed in the computer industry,” Einstein corrected. “Relation to avian species not documented.”
“Sorry, my mistake,” Kat said, mellowing somewhat at the computer’s dedicated adherence to logic. Life would be a great deal simpler if she could live by figures and files, instead of the muddled, unreliable emotions that too often ruled her decisions. Figures and files …
She stopped pacing. “Einstein, can you get my secretary a complete listing of Jack Fagen’s record by the end of the day?”
“Natch. Start right now,” E said, signing off.
Katrina walked to her desk, a thoughtful smile playing on her lips. She studied Chris’s memo, which included the address of the Coral Gables estate where Fagen was staying. It wasn’t his own personal residence, she noted, since the memo stated he was installing a security system for the absent owner.
Not his address. Katrina leaned back in her chair and tapped her fingertips against her lips in concentration. As far as she could recall, Jack Fagen had no permanent address. He was a confirmed wanderer. That, in itself, seemed suspect.
Einstein’s reliance on files and figures had given her an idea. Somewhere in Fagen’s record there was bound to be an incident she could use to discredit him, something that would show Chris that Jack Fagen wasn’t the kind of person they wanted working for Sheffield Industries. Chris might not put much faith in rumors, but Kat had learned the hard way that when it came to her system’s security, it paid to be cautious. Besides, a man didn’t get a nickname like Terminator by making friends and influencing people.
Terminator. Briefly she wondered why a man of his international reputation would take on the relatively small job of restructuring her security network. But then, why did a man like him do anything? She’d heard rumors that he was completely amoral, thoroughly unprincipled, and utterly ruthless.
She’d also heard rumors he was handsome as hell.
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