Since I Fell For You(17)

It wasn’t simply because his job was to make sure nothing happened to her. After seeing her interact with both employees and business partners today, and her family the night before, he now knew for sure that she didn’t deserve to be treated poorly. Not by anyone.

He’d planned to wait until she was more comfortable with him before questioning her about the email, phone, and corporate server attacks that her brothers had informed him about, but time was now of the essence. Shoving aside his heated physical reaction to the way she’d said, “You’re dark, mysterious, and utterly addictive,” minutes before—when it had seemed strangely like she was trying to flirt with him—he focused his full attention on the current threat.

“What’s going on?”

“Our main server farm has been attacked. It’s not completely taken down yet, but we’ve got to act fast to keep it from collapsing.” Her expression was full of grim fury. “We have too many individuals, too many businesses around the world counting on our software to let it go down for even a second.”

“Your staff is already on it, aren’t they?”

“They are. And I need to get back in there and get into the trenches with them.”

He had seen enough to understand that while Suzanne would never say it herself, one of the reasons her staff needed her in the trenches with them was because her brain worked at unmatched speeds. If anyone was going to be able to come up with a solution to this problem quickly, it was likely to be her. She was miles more intelligent than any woman—or man—he’d ever met. And yet, she never shoved her brains in your face.

But he was pretty sure she was sprinting back to her office for more reasons than that. She also seemed to be the kind of person who was determined to fix every problem all by herself. Take the way she’d rejected her brothers’ attempts to help, for instance. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a team player. It seemed more that she might believe accepting help meant she was weak. Whereas Roman had learned a long time ago that sometimes letting someone else help you out of a rough spot was the very best choice you could make.

“How many times has this happened?”

They were running so fast neither of them should have been able to say much, but her answer was perfectly clear. “Too many.” She made a little growling sound. “We put in several new safeguards for our servers. This shouldn’t have happened. At least not this quickly—unless someone knew exactly where to look, exactly what to aim for.”

Her statement brought his earlier thoughts about digging into her employees’ backgrounds back to the forefront. “Do you think someone from inside your own company could be doing this?”

She shot him a horrified look. “No. No way. That’s not what I’m saying, not at all. My employees would never betray me.”

She was obviously disgusted with him for even suggesting it, but it seemed like an obvious question. At least for a guy like him, who had made the mistake of trusting the wrong person before. Honestly, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have trust like hers, but he wouldn’t press his point now. Instead, while she worked on getting the servers back to a hundred percent again, he’d start doing some digging of his own.

“I don’t know who’s doing this, but whoever they are, they’re damned smart if they could unravel our systems in less than twenty-four hours. Which means we’ll have to up our game.”

Right alongside the anger was a competitive edge. It was almost as if she welcomed the chance to spin her game up another level. By the hour, his respect for her grew. Respect that could be dangerously close to turning into something more if he didn’t lock his usual ironclad self-control back into place.

Roman was panting by the time they pushed through the front door of Suzanne’s building. She was too, but that didn’t stop her from sprinting up the stairs instead of taking the elevator.

Without pausing, she ran straight toward what he assumed was command central for her corporate servers. She didn’t seem to remember that she was still in running clothes, nor did she seem to notice that she was dripping with sweat as she quickly conferred with her employees. To Roman, it was almost as though they were speaking a foreign language. Seconds later, she was sliding into a chair and opening the laptop her assistant had brought for her.

No break. No transition or cool-down time. She simply went straight from the hard run to her even harder job with absolute focus, and not one second of complaint. There was work to be done, and it was obvious to Roman—and to each and every one of her employees—that she would do it.