The Playboy's Proposal. Amanda Browning

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      Kathryn felt colour heat her cheeks, aware that if he had arrived a few minutes sooner he would have walked in on quite a different scenario, and she wouldn’t have heard the last of it.

      ‘Dinner,’ she explained with feigned nonchalance. ‘I was just saying I hadn’t eaten all day. I’m starving.’

      ‘Me, too,’ Drew agreed, and as if to underline the fact his stomach rumbled audibly.

      ‘Help yourself to a drink, Drew,’ Joel invited with a laugh. ‘I’ll just go and see what’s keeping Agnes.’

      Drew followed the suggestion, but turned to his cousin the instant they were alone. ‘Dinner?’ he challenged with an old-fashioned look.

      Kathryn stared him out, her chin raised. ‘What else?’ she countered, daring him to argue, but Drew, for once, wisely decided to hold his own counsel. She drained her glass and was tempted to refill it. Joel had won round one on points; she could only hope to do better in round two.

      Dinner was every bit as delicious as it had promised to be. The meat and vegetables were cooked to perfection, and there was fresh crusty bread to go with it. The two men spent most of the meal discussing Drew’s trip to Germany tomorrow, and Kathryn was happy to be left alone. She found herself watching Joel with fascination. Even talking business, he had an animation about him that held her rapt. She didn’t bother to follow the thread of the conversation, for Drew’s job was as much a mystery to her as hers was to him, merely sat and enjoyed the view.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Joel apologised later as they sat over coffee. ‘It was rude to exclude you, but there were certain matters I needed to touch base on with Drew before he leaves.’

      Kathryn shrugged that off. She wasn’t so vain she needed constant attention. ‘No problem. I was far more interested in my food. Agnes is a wonderful cook.’

      ‘I’ll be sure to tell her you said so,’ he responded, pushing his empty cup away. ‘It’s not too late. If you’re not too tired, we can take a look at the computer now,’ he declared with a glance at his watch.

      Kathryn was never too tired to work on a computer. ‘That’s fine by me.’ She nodded, and stood up. ‘Are you coming, Drew?’

      ‘I’ll beg off, if you don’t mind. Computers are a complete turn-off for me. Go ahead and enjoy yourselves,’ he teased, though, unseen by his cousin, his smile faded as he watched them leave.

      Joel’s study was at the rear of the house and was set up with state-of-the-art equipment from the computer itself, to fax machines, printers and scanners. Everything he could possibly need was there, but he couldn’t use it because of what one woman had done in anger.

      ‘So, this is the scene of the crime,’ Kathryn declared dryly, looking around her with interest. ‘At least she didn’t resort to smashing things. OK, let’s see just what damage she did do.’ Making herself comfortable at the desk, she switched the computer on, and the first thing that appeared was a message informing Joel he had mail.

      ‘The Internet’s working at least,’ she observed wryly, hoping it was a good sign that things weren’t too bad after all. ‘Want to see what it is?’

      Standing behind her, his hands resting on the back of her chair, Joel nodded. ‘OK.’

      Clicking on the box, Kathryn watched the screen unfold. The message itself was short and sweet, and originated from someone called Magda. ‘That’s her, I take it?’ she enquired with lashings of irony, for the message was explicit about what Joel could do with certain parts of his anatomy.

      ‘She has a volatile temper,’ Joel said by way of confirmation.

      That much was obvious. ‘Her knowledge of human anatomy seems a little basic. Does she know you can’t actually do that?’ she taunted over her shoulder.

      ‘Just get on with it, will you?’ he growled irritably, and she bit back a smile. Right now he was more like a grouchy bear than a wolf.

      Kathryn started hitting keys. ‘I’d get on better if you weren’t breathing over my shoulder,’ she remarked. It was unsettling, not to say downright distracting. She could feel the heat of his body even through the chair, whilst her nose was assailed by the tangy scent of his cologne mixed with pure male essence. It sent messages to her brain that were totally out of place, even if they were undeniably tantalising.

      Instead of moving away, Joel lowered his head until his mouth was next to her ear. ‘Does my being this close bother you?’ he asked in that sexy drawl which crawled over her flesh, starting up flash-fires which made concentrating on the job at hand extremely difficult.

      Feeling too hot and far too bothered for comfort, she nevertheless denied it. ‘Not at all.’

      ‘Liar,’ he taunted with a chuckle, and she closed her eyes momentarily as a powerful wave of desire swept through her system. She was glad she was sitting, because standing would have been an effort. He was playing hardball, and it didn’t help that her senses were fighting on his side.

      ‘Abuse me at your peril,’ she warned him, her fingers flying over the keys whilst she struggled to appear cool, calm and collected. It was nothing short of amazing that she never hit a wrong one. ‘I can probably do a lot worse to your hard drive than dear Magda did,’ she added, then sat back with a tiny frown creasing her forehead.

      ‘How does it look?’ Joel asked seriously, and she folded her arms.

      ‘It looks as if she was seriously miffed with you!’ Kathryn exclaimed sardonically. From her very brief perusal it was hard to say just how extensive the damage was, but one thing had swiftly become apparent. Magda was no novice when it came to computers. She had known what she was doing.

      ‘We’ll take that as read, shall we?’ Joel suggested tersely, and Kathryn obligingly subdued her amusement.

      ‘OK, seriously. Have you any idea what’s missing?’

      ‘All the work I’ve been doing on several new projects.’

      ‘Did you keep back-up files on disk?’ One look at his face told her the answer to that.

      ‘I made back-up files in the system, but I couldn’t find them. I presume she deleted them, too.’

      Kathryn sighed heavily. ‘In future I suggest you copy sensitive material on disk and put them somewhere safe. At a guess, I’d say all your files are gone. The question is, was she mad enough to wipe them entirely, or did she just trash them? Which means we can retrieve them with a bit of work. Now, if she really wanted to be mean, she could have infected you with a virus.’

      ‘I keep the anti-virus constantly updated,’ Joel informed her, and she was relieved, because they could be darned tricky devils.

      ‘Thank goodness for that. Still, I’ll check that she didn’t set a booby-trap before continuing. You realise there’s every probability she wasn’t actually physically here, don’t you? She would have logged into your database from her own computer. At a guess, I’d say behind her undoubted feminine attractions dear Magda is a dedicated computer hacker,’ she declared, looking up to find Joel frowning ferociously.

      Catching her eye, he grimaced. ‘I had no idea,’ he admitted reluctantly.

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