"SO DID YOU STAY OUT OF trouble this month, Sage?"
Sage Matthews held Ian Chandler's steady gray-eyed gaze
for a long moment and pursed her lips, as if she had to
think carefully before speaking. She looked down at the
drink she held in her hand, slipped the straw between her
cherry-red lips and sucked slowly, drawing her cheeks in
so that her mouth formed a sexy pout around the plastic,
closing her eyes as the cool burst of carbonation hit her
throat. She released the straw and caught a stray bit of
fizz with her tongue before answering.
"Exactly what kind of trouble would you be referring to,
Ian?" Her soft southeastern Virginia accent added a lilt
of mischief to her sultry purr.
Ian sighed, his full, gorgeous lips drawing into a tight,
impatient line, and Sage felt a little spark of
satisfaction. Ian might be the sexiest man she'd ever met,
but she fought any attraction she'd ever felt because he
was also a huge, unforgivable thorn in her side.
Sure, he was only doing his job, but for five years he'd
controlled almost every aspect of her life. Annoying him —
and teasing him — was one of the few ways she had to
wrestle that control back into her hands. It was a small
advantage, true, but she made the most of it.
It was an additional benefit that the air-conditioning in
the Norfolk Police Department, where Ian had his new
office — part of the new job he was leaving his post as a
federal agent for — was on the fritz. The sweltering
August heat created a fine film of sweat on her skin,
making her thin tank dress cling to her, leaving little to
the imagination. Sage didn't want to be subtle. She wanted
federal agent Ian Chandler, who specialized in computer
crime, to sweat.
She hadn't worn anything underneath the light shift
because she was more comfortable that way but also because
she was going to see Ian for her monthly check-in. The
more to tempt you with, she thought devilishly. Sage
didn't really want Ian, she just wanted to torture him
with what he couldn't have. She slid a glance over his
handsome features. She had a weakness for dark-haired men.
Ian was a sexy guy. Too bad he was a cop.
But just five more days and she would be free of Ian for
good. And hopefully free of a past that had been holding
her back for too long. Her sentence for the computer
crimes she'd been arrested for almost five years ago was
nearly over. Ian Chandler was the federal agent who'd
arrested her and he'd been assigned to "monitor her
progress" throughout her sentence.
What that really meant was that he had the right to invade
every corner of her life, watch her constantly, ask her
anything he wanted and pry into every detail of her
activities. If he caught her doing anything he thought
broke the rules, he could throw her in jail. No questions
asked.
It rankled her that he had so much power over her life,
though she'd learned to live with it. Sage was determined
never to give him the satisfaction of catching her
slipping up — or any kind of satisfaction, for that
matter. But he couldn't arrest her for flirting.
Not that he'd ever expressed interest. Ian was the epitome
of straight and narrow. It wasn't in his nature to break
the rules or back off from enforcing them. She tempted him
incessantly, knowing he would never cross the line. But
that fact only made pushing the limits all the more
enjoyable.
She got up out of the chair and sat on the corner of his
very organized desk. The room was clean as a whistle, the
chrome gleaming, the windows sparkling clear. Everything
was exactly in its place, and Sage pushed a neatly stacked
pile of papers carelessly to the side as she made room for
herself. She leaned over to throw her empty paper cup in
the garbage can, not-so-subtly inviting him to take a peek
at what was revealed by the slight sag of her neckline as
she did so.
He just looked away.
She smiled and crossed one slender leg over the other,
swinging it as if to some unheard song playing in her
head, and picked up a pen to play with between her nimble,
tanned fingers. "Oh, you know I've been good, Ian. I'm
always good."
Sexual innuendo aside, she had been good — not that she
had much choice. As much as she liked to mess with Ian,
she had no desire to end up in prison, so she'd also
played it straight and narrow, as contrary as that was to
her nature. There was no way she was going to lose what
precious little freedom she had. She'd been a fool for a
man once, which was what had gotten her into this mess in
the first place. She wasn't about to do it again.
The first eighteen months of her sentence had been pure
hell — house arrest, ensured by a nasty ankle bracelet
that she could have removed herself within an hour if
doing so wouldn't have landed her directly in a cement
cage.
It seemed extreme for simply letting a virus out on the
Net — especially when she had been duped into doing it.
Not that anyone would believe her. Technically she had
released it, but the fact that she had no idea what was on
the disk she'd slipped into the computer that day didn't
matter.
She'd told the one of the investigators who'd questioned
her that she hadn't written the virus, but he'd clearly
thought she was just trying to slip the rap. And she
hadn't been able to prove otherwise; even to her own eyes
the evidence was damning. Locke, the hacker who had set
her up, had made sure of that.
The worst of it was that she'd been banned from any use of
computers for five long years, a heavy price to pay,
though it was better than prison. The judge had made use
of flexible federal sentencing guidelines and had been
cruelly creative.
If Sage was so much as seen near a computer, even in a
store, or if she attempted to contact her hacker friends
from college, she would go to prison. She wasn't allowed
to own or use anything even remotely computerized, not
even a cell phone. Ian was the man who'd tracked her down
in the first place and he was in charge of making sure she
minded her p's and q's. Sage had never been one much for
p's and q's.
Ian's interference in her life had been considerable — she
had to check in with him monthly; he'd stopped by her home
unannounced, checked out her house and her habits, checked
on her classes when she was in school and later would
discuss her with her boss and coworkers at the plumbing
store where she currently worked.
She had even caught him going through her mail on a couple
of occasions. She'd never felt safe talking on the phone,
though most of her conversations were innocuous — she
didn't have many friends, as most of them had been
computer junkies just like her. The loss of control over
her own privacy was the worst punishment anyone could have
concocted, sometimes overwhelming her.
No part of her life had been safe from Ian's prying. Once
she'd been kissing a date good-night in front of her
apartment and had found out later that Ian had run a
background check on him. She'd discovered this at her
monthly meeting when Ian had asked her not to see the guy
again because he had a drunk-driving record. She'd railed
against the unfairness of it, not that it could change
anything.
Since then she'd stayed away from men, except for Ian.
Eying him speculatively, she spoke again, "Ian, there's
something I wanted to ask you."
"What's that?"
"Well, I am almost done with my time. I'll be a free and
responsible member of society again within the week. And
since you'll be starting a brand-new position and you
won't be a federal agent anymore, you won't be held back
by those silly ole rules that say you and I can't have a
more personal relationship, right? So maybe we could —"
She reached over a little farther and slid her hand over
his forearm, catching her breath at the hardness of the
muscle there, and pursed her lips appreciatively — Ian was
not just a desk jockey. The same crisp, black hair that he
wore nearly military-short was sprinkled over his skin,
and she wondered how it would feel to tangle her fingers
in it over his chest and in other places....
Ian's head snapped up at her touch. His eyes weren't cold
or distant now, but they were definitely pissed off. She
bit her lip, partially because his reaction nearly sent
her rocketing off the desk and back into her chair and
partially because she'd never thought he was capable of
such heat. Did it all just come from anger? Or was there
more to it? Right now those irises were dark as slate, and
she felt herself falling into them, forgetting the moment
at hand, where she was, who he was.
Wowsa.
She'd never really seen him angry. Usually he was just
aloof. A little frisson of excitement danced along her hot
skin at making him lose it, if just a little. Now, this
was fun. He yanked his arm from under her hand and pushed
his chair back, distancing them.
"I don't have to tell you that kind of behavior is
completely out of line. There's nothing between us and you
know it. And there never will be. I think it's time for
you to go."
She just laughed and got down from the desk, walking
slowly around the office, posing in the doorway while
turning to look at him, turning on full vixen mode.
"You sure about that?"
"Dead sure. I'll see you next week at your release
hearing. Behave yourself until then."
He'd sucked that heat right back in and buried it under
the cool, unflappable exterior once again. But now she was
intrigued. All of a sudden the sense of challenge that had
led her to computer hacking in the first place — the urge
to find your way into somewhere forbidden, to solve an
unsolvable puzzle — tugged at her.
What would it be like to try to get behind those straight-
and-narrow walls that encased Ian so securely? What would
be the key that would allow her access to what lay behind
them? What would she find there, inside the man who always
seemed so tightly under control?
She smiled, waving flirtatiously to Ian as she left the
office. What the courts didn't realize is that you didn't
get rid of a hacker by taking away their computer —
hacking was a way of life, a philosophy, a way of
thinking. And some challenges were just too good to resist.
"ANY LUCK YET?"
Ian looked up to see Marty Constantine standing in his
doorway and shook his head noncommittally. "We'll see.
Have the first interview today."
"When do you think the team will be up and running?"
Ian sat back in his chair, stretching and leveling a look
at the man who was both his close friend and his immediate
superior. He'd worked frequently with Marty over the years
in his position with the FBI and Ian had nothing but
respect for the man.
Though nothing had ever been said, Ian knew that Marty was
the reason he had been offered this cherry opportunity so
early in his career. It was fairly unusual to move from
the federal government to local law enforcement.