Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 20

His gaze was fixed intently on hers as he turned her hand over, pressed a kiss into her palm and folded her fingers over it. 'Cyn. We've still got unfinished business.'

'No, we haven't.' She pulled her hand back. 'And I can't...if you push me...'

'I don't want to push you,' he whispered, 'but it's there. That spark between us. I've never felt-'

'Stop. Please. I can't do this.' Well, she could. But she wanted to keep her heart in one piece. Which it wouldn't be, if she let Max make love to her. Because tonight would be the third time.

The last time.

Better to leave it now and keep her heart intact. 'I'll see you tomorrow,' she said, climbing out of the car. And she closed the door without waiting for his reply.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE house seemed empty when Max returned. Which was crazy. He loved his house. He'd always felt comfortable in it, even when it had been more or less a pile of rubble inside and had had no heating whatsoever. It had always been enough for him. His dream.

But he'd shared his office today-something he hadn't done since going solo. He liked his own s.p.a.ce, which was why he'd given Lisa an office of her own. And yet it had felt good today, working with Cyn across the other side of the room from him. Okay, so he hadn't been at his most productive-every so often, he'd looked up from his desk and just watched her working. That intense, focused look on her face-she'd had that same look when they'd made love. His body tightened as he remembered carrying Cyn to his bed. Remembered pus.h.i.+ng deep, deep inside her. Remembered the feel of her body tightening round his.

He swallowed hard. h.e.l.l. Tonight, it would have been so easy to start it all over again. That stupid impulse to ma.s.sage her neck...Luckily she'd been the one to call a halt. If she hadn't, he knew where she'd have ended up, and it wouldn't have been her own bed. And the only thing she'd have been wearing was him.

He groaned. He needed to feel Cyn's body wrapped round his again. It wasn't just l.u.s.t. It was something more than that-something that made him want to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction from her. Yet, at the same time, he wanted to run straight to her.

Ah, h.e.l.l. He knew this feeling. The same feeling he'd had when he'd first seen his house. He'd known there were going to be huge challenges, but he'd fallen in love with it at first sight.

His house.

His woman.

Same feeling. Which meant this was the real thing. She was The One.

Oh, Lord. He was in love with Cyn Reynolds. In love with a woman who right now was as wary of him as an alley cat. And with good reason, because his past was everything she didn't want. Mr No-Commitment.

Somehow, he was going to have to persuade her to give him another chance. To give them a chance. To make her realise that, with her, he was different-that he could do commitment where she was concerned.

Sat.u.r.day was much like Friday. Cyn said a polite h.e.l.lo to Max; and then was instantly absorbed in her work. Max brought her a mug of coffee, without comment; she murmured thanks but barely seemed to notice him.

Whereas Max couldn't take his eyes off her. He was talking on the phone and realised that he'd completely missed what his client had just said, because he'd been too busy watching the copper glints in Cyn's hair, or noticing the way her fingers flew across the keyboard, or the way she caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth when she was concentrating.

He turned away to concentrate on his call.

He'd just put the phone down when he heard a quiet but intense, 'Yes!' and the whirr of his printer.

He looked over to see her smiling broadly. 'Have you found something?' he asked.

'Your computer is now unglued. Your files are all still there-and they're date-stamped. I'm just printing off the stats.'

'Stats?'

'Your word-processing files have a section which shows when the file was first created, how many revisions you've made, how long you spent working on it and when you last accessed it,' she explained.

It was news to him. And he obviously looked blank because she grinned. 'Before you ask, yes, it can be altered-by someone who knows what they're doing. But that means messing about with a computer's clock, and any techie would know within three seconds of talking to you that you wouldn't have a clue how to do it. I'd say you're in the clear.'

'I...I dunno what to say. Just that you're brilliant.' And I want to kiss you.

His mouth went dry. G.o.d, he wanted to kiss her. Wrap his arms round her. Feel her wrapped round him.

'I owe you,' he said huskily.

'No, this is payback for the way you stopped the gossip at Mich.e.l.le Wilson's wedding. And I haven't finished, yet. I'm going to track down whoever did it. Now, has anyone except Lisa had access to your computer?'

'No.' He frowned. 'Well, maybe. I did a favour for a friend and had someone with me on work experience for a while, about a year back. Charlotte. Apparently she wanted to be an architect but her family wouldn't take her seriously.' Something that had pressed all his b.u.t.tons. Brought all his guilt tumbling back to the surface. 'She was taking a year out before starting university and thought if she got some work experience it would help her cause.' His client and old friend Alice had asked him to help Charlotte, as a favour to her. So of course he'd said yes.

'And this work experience took place while you were working on these files? Or with any of the clients you lost?' Cyn queried.

'Yes. The first one, actually-Phil Watkins.' He explained about the magazine article and how it had aroused his suspicions.

Cyn nodded. 'So she could have taken your designs.'

He frowned. 'Charlotte? No way. She'd only be partway through her first year of an architecture degree-she wouldn't have been able to pa.s.s herself off as qualified, and she certainly wouldn't be able to say the designs were her own. She couldn't have said it was a student project, because there was stuff she wouldn't have learned about yet on those designs. Besides, she was just a kid. Eighteen.'

'Age doesn't have anything to do with it,' Cyn said dryly. 'Hackers tend to start young.'

He shook his head. 'She couldn't have done it, Cyn. Really. She was shadowing me, learning all about what the job really entails, so she was with me all the time.'

'Including when you were in meetings?'

'Yes.'

'All of them?'

'Most of them. Except the ones where the client requested confidentiality,' he admitted. 'The ones where she wasn't with me, she was helping Lisa with filing and stuff.'

'And if Lisa was busy, she wouldn't have overseen every single bit of filing. So Charlotte did have the opportunity, both to fiddle with your computer and to remove your paper files.'

'Well, yes, I suppose so,' he admitted. 'But she didn't have a motive.'

'Hmm,' was all Cyn said.

'You think she did it?'

'Maybe. But you're right, she couldn't pa.s.s herself off as a qualified architect. Which means she has to be working with someone who is. My guess is it's the guy who claimed you stole his design. So we need to find a link between them.' Cyn frowned. 'Trust me on this. I'm going to have a word with the Oracle.'

'The Oracle?' Max echoed.

'Lise. That's what we called her at RCS, because she knows everything and everyone. If my theory's right, she'll get us the proof.'

'Hang on. You can't just accuse people-'

'Without proof,' Cyn cut in. 'Which is why I'm going to ask Lisa to check a few things out for me.'

'Anything I can do?'

'Just sit tight,' she said. 'I'll handle this.'

He was about to protest; then he saw the look in her eyes. Payback, she'd said. For once, she was the one doing the rescuing instead of the one being rescued. This would make things even between them, in her view.

And then, maybe, they'd have the chance to start again. A clean slate. No rescuing on either side. Equals.

Yeah. He could do that. He'd wait. Because she was worth it.

Lisa arrived mid-afternoon, made a few phone calls, then walked into Max's office with a tray of coffee and chocolate biscuits. 'You're going to need this,' she warned.

'Do I need to call my solicitor?' Max asked.

Lisa nodded. 'It's not good. You know how you drag me off to these architectural dos from time to time-well, I know a few of the other secretaries fairly well now. I had a chat to...' She paused. 'Well, her name isn't important. I promised I'd keep her out of it. But Jason Henry's name is definitely important.'

'Who's Jason Henry?' Cyn asked.

'The architect who claims I stole his designs. He's a rising star at Rutter's, one of the biggest practices in the city,' Max explained.

'Not that much of a star,' Lisa said. 'Apparently, he hasn't been living up to his early promise. His position at Rutter's is a bit wobbly, to say the least. He's brought in a couple of good clients over the last year, but not enough to please his boss. He's made some careless mistakes-mistakes that were easy to fix but cost the firm money. And it seems that winning the compet.i.tion-getting column inches for positive reasons and proving he's got what it takes in design terms-is about his only hope of keeping his job. So he needed a sure-fire winning entry. And our Max's design was the best bet.'

'Jason Henry's an architect, not a techie. And he doesn't even know me-at least, I can't ever remember meeting him. So how the h.e.l.l could he have accessed my designs?' Max shook his head. 'It doesn't stack up, Lise.'

'I'm afraid it does. Because Jason Henry,' Lisa told him quietly, 'has a girlfriend. She's a bit younger than he is. Nineteen years old. Name of Helen Jones.'

Max drummed his fingers on his desk. 'So that puts Charlotte in the clear, then.'

'Unfortunately not,' Lisa said. 'I described her to my contact-who told me that she sounded exactly like Jason's girlfriend. Helen Jones changes her hair colour every three weeks, but apart from that she's the same height, has the same eye colour, and even dresses the same as Charlotte. So it has to be her.'

Max shook his head. 'It can't be. There must be some kind of mistake. Coincidence. Charlotte's a friend of a friend of Alice's. Alice is an old friend of mine-she gave me my first break when I went solo,' he explained to Cyn. 'I've restored a couple of places for her now.'

'It looks as if Helen conned Alice as well. Appealed to her motherly instincts,' Lisa said with a sigh. 'Max, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Helen Jones's middle name is Charlotte. It's not a coincidence.'

Max raked a hand through his hair. 'I...I can't take this in.'

'Sorry, Max. I think we've found our thief. The thing is, Helen doesn't want to be an architect at all. She's a techie. She's taking a gap year before going to Manchester to do a degree in computing,' Lisa said.

'I told you, hackers start young,' Cyn said dryly. 'If she's that bright, all she had to do was hack into the compet.i.tion files, find out who her boyfriend was up against, work out which one was most likely to win, and target that person.'

'Me?' Max frowned.

'You're the obvious target. I did an Internet search on you myself. It brought up page after page about the rising star of the architectural world, Max Taylor. You were tipped to win the compet.i.tion. Some of them even called you "King Max".'

'Oh, that's too much,' he protested, pulling a face. 'I'm an architect, that's all!'

'But you're a star in your world.' Cyn shrugged. 'So you were the obvious choice. And she spun you a sob story that was guaranteed to press your b.u.t.tons.'

He came to sit on the edge of Cyn's desk. 'There's no way she could have known about that.'

'It might have been in one of the profiles on the Net. Or maybe she talked to some people who knew you. She's young; she's attractive. At a party, she could have flirted with someone who thought he'd never get a smile from a pretty girl, and charmed him into telling her all about you-and he wouldn't have had the faintest idea that she was pumping him for information, because he'd been so bowled over at the fact she was paying him attention,' Cyn suggested. 'Or maybe she'd confessed to a particularly motherly secretary that she had this terrible crush on you; and the secretary wanted to protect her from someone who wouldn't date her more than three times before dumping her and refusing to return her calls.'

'Oh, come on.' Max scowled. 'I'm not that bad.'

'Yes, you are,' Lisa said.

'Enough for an older woman to want to look out for a young, innocent girl who had a crush on you and would get her heart broken,' Cyn said.

Oh, Lord. Did Cyn mean herself? That she thought he'd break her heart?

'She's right,' Lisa chipped in. 'You've got a reputation. And Helen's a good actress. She conned you. She conned me too-I can usually tell actors a mile off!'

'And when the older woman had finished trying to head Helen off, she'd have felt guilty that she'd been a bit unkind to you. So then she'd have told Helen a bit about you, why you were so driven,' Cyn said. 'It's not hard to work out. You've got a guilt streak a mile long about the fact you should've been a doctor like your dad, so you want to prove you're the best and you don't have time for relations.h.i.+ps.'

'So all Helen had to do was come and see you, claim she wanted to be an architect and her family was against it, and you'd be there to champion her and offer her some work experience,' Lisa finished.

He groaned. 'I'm that much of a sucker.'

'No. You're known for dating a lot, but businesswise you're known for being fair-you'll give people a chance. Which was why Alice sent her to you in the first place. Helen would have known that Alice would contact you, because Alice has sung your praises in enough articles in the press. If it hadn't worked with Alice, she'd have tried some of your other old clients, until she found someone who'd put in a good word with you,' Lisa said. 'Just look at your PR cuttings file. She'd have had plenty to choose from.'

'And if she loved Jason that much, she'd do her best to help him win that compet.i.tion and keep his job-by fair means or foul,' Cyn added. 'In this case, foul. Because she took your files. Being a techie, she knew how to transfer your files without you knowing it.'

'But she left before I even entered the designs,' Max protested. 'The timing was wrong.'

'That's why she left the Trojan behind-so she could still have access to your computer, in case you made any changes to the compet.i.tion design at the last minute,' Cyn explained. 'And that back-door access meant she could filch a couple of other clients for Jason and buy him a breathing s.p.a.ce, when things got a bit rocky at his firm. I bet if you dig deep enough you'll see his name there. It also meant she was able to turn your computer to soup yesterday, when she knew that letter would hit your desk.' She shrugged. 'The odds were that your machine wouldn't be fixed in time for you to get your files back and clear your name. So Jason Henry would've produced his files, which-after some clever work by Helen with the computer clock-were date-stamped to show he'd done the designs months ago. He'd have won the compet.i.tion with your design, and with the backing of a big company that had no idea how you'd been cheated.'

'So she had the motive and the opportunity,' Max said grimly.

'Exactly,' Cyn said. 'Now all I have to do is find the bit that links the Trojan to her. Now, she's clever, so she wouldn't have done it from her own machine-it'd be too easy to trace back. So she'd probably have used a public access terminal; an Internet cafe, or something like that. What I need to do now is find out where it was. Once I've found it, we can ask to see their records of who booked their machines and when.'

'They have records like that?' Max asked.

Cyn nodded in confirmation.

'And Helen's a pretty girl. They'll definitely remember her,' Lisa added.

'Max, can you sketch her?' Cyn asked.

'Sketch?' he asked, surprised.

'You're an architect. Which means you can draw, doesn't it?'

He frowned. 'I'm not an artist. I don't usually draw people.'