Her fingers flew over the keys as she began setting it up. “Yeah. Going online was pretty much the only way I got any freedom. Plus Dad didn’t know what I was doing so that was an added bonus.”
Jax shifted, his body warm against her and she let herself lean against him a little, wondering if he’d pull away. He didn’t, watching the screen over her shoulder. “Show me what you can do,” he murmured.
The deep sound of his voice so close to her ear was incredibly sexy and she had to fight to keep her focus on the computer screen. “Like what?”
“Well, did you only play games or were there other things?”
“Oh, a few other things. Watch this.” She slid a finger over the trackpad. “Here’s the Morrow Web site. Pretty nice, huh?” She opened the command line window and began typing.
“What are you doing?”
“Wait and see.”
It didn’t take very long. The Morrow firewall was impressive but she’d seen similar architecture before and she knew its weaknesses. It didn’t matter how good a company’s security was, there were always weaknesses.
“What the fuck?” Jax breathed in her ear, his voice full of shock. “How did you get access to my e-mail account?”
“A little thing known as hacking.” Pandora grinned, pleased with herself and trying to ignore the feel of his breath against the sensitive skin at the back of her neck . “Your security sucks, Mr. Morrow.” Then she squinted at the screen, an e-mail subject header catching her eye. “Hey, isn’t Sean your brother?”
He ignored this. “What else can you do?” His voice was suddenly businesslike. Sharp.
So he wanted to be impressed, did he? Well, shit. She could so do that.
Pandora thought for a minute, then brought up another Web site.
“No way,” Jax said. “No fucking way.”
She grinned and proceeded to hack her way into the FBI’s mainframe. She’d done it once before and though it hadn’t been easy, it hadn’t exactly been difficult, either.
As a list of highly classified files began to unreel on the screen, Jax said curtly, “I think you’d better get out of there before someone spots you.”
“They won’t,” she said with absolutely certainty. “At least they didn’t the other time I got in.”
“Jesus, Pandora. Shut that bloody thing down before I pull the plug.”
She got herself out and as she did so he leaned forward, the hard heat of his body pressing against her spine, reaching past her to firmly close the laptop.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
One long finger caught her beneath the chin, turning her to face him. “That is one hell of a skill set you’ve got there.”
She caught her breath at the touch. God, it had only been a couple of days but already she was desperate for him. Forcing herself to pay attention to what he was saying, she replied, “Well, yeah. I did say I wasn’t bad with computers.”
“I think I may have a job for you that isn’t in our HR department.”
“I told you, I don’t—”
“Hear me out. I always thought my IT department was the best and so was the security of our systems. But clearly it’s not.” The expression in his eyes now was measuring. Calculating. Looking at her like she was a potential employee. Which for some reason got her even hotter for him. “Tell, me, did you do a lot of this type of stuff?”
“What? Hacking?” Her voice sounded a little thick, much to her irritation. “Yeah, but I never did anything malicious or stole anything. It was more like a dare or a challenge, just to see if I could.”
“And Garret doesn’t know you have these skills?”
Pandora quelled an internal shiver. She’d hidden what she could do from her father for years, mainly because if he’d known, he’d no doubt have put her to work. “No. I didn’t want him finding out. I never wanted to get into corporate espionage or anything.”
“Okay then. I’d like to employ you as a security consultant. I want you to assess all Morrow’s security plus give my IT team a full rundown on how they can improve it.”
She blinked. “But I—”
“You have skills, Pandora. I want to use them.”
A flush of pleasure warmed her skin, drowning out her previous hurt. Well, she knew she had skills, she’d just never thought she’d be able to use them. A career was another thing there hadn’t been much point thinking about, not when her future had always been to be the wife to whichever of her father’s colleagues had earned her.
“I’m still not sure. I want to be independent, you know that.”