Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 18

'I sent her out to buy some sandwiches. I thought she'd know what you liked.'

'You didn't have to do that.' In some respects, she wished he hadn't. Or that he'd gone himself, so she'd had time to prepare herself for seeing him again.

Ha. All the time in the world wouldn't have been enough to prepare herself for seeing him again. He still sent her weak at the knees, even though she'd schooled herself all the way here to be cool, calm and collected.

'Where's the machine?' she asked, knowing she sounded abrupt, but not knowing how else to deal with the feelings flooding through her. Once she set to work, she knew she'd be fine, so the quicker she got to his computer, the better. 'Let me have a look at it, and I'll tell you if it's fixable-and how long it's going to take.'

Without further comment, he ushered her into his office. One look at the screen had her sighing. 'Looks like a virus attack. Don't you have virus protection software? Or a firewall?'

'Firewall?' He looked blank.

'You're just plug-and-play, aren't you?' she asked wryly.

'Look, it's just my computer.' He flapped his hands dismissively. 'It's where I store my work.'

'In other words, it's your livelihood. You should protect it better.'

'I've got a virus checker,' he protested.

'Is it up to date?'

'It does everything automatically.'

And it was obvious he didn't have a clue how it worked. Wouldn't know if it had gone wrong. 'You're a business, Max. You connect to the net and that leaves your machine wide open for attack. You really need a firewall as well. Do you keep a backup of your files on Lisa's machine?'

He winced. 'Er, no. I do keep backups, though. On a CD-ROM,' he offered.

'A flash drive is more reliable,' she said. 'As long as you back up regularly. And by that I mean do it every single night-it takes less than ten minutes to transfer all your files, and literally seconds to copy the latest versions of your files. It also means you'll never lose more than a single day's work if something goes wrong. Do the backups on CD once a week, too.'

'You do this often, don't you?' Max asked, sounding rueful.

'Yup. And it's usually a repeat job for a client who's been caught once and promised they'll never, ever do it again. As time pa.s.ses, so does the memory of how scared they were when they thought they'd lost everything. Then they get complacent. Forget to do their backups. They panic, the first time, but then they discover they got away with it and they really let it slide-that extra five minutes a day gets eaten up. Before they know it, it's a couple of months since they did their last backup. And, bam, they get caught again-and they're left in a mess.' She shrugged. 'Right. The first thing we need to do is get you working again. Do you use the same software on Lisa's machine as you do on yours?'

He shook his head. 'Not all of it. I do my notes in the same word-processing program she uses, but the design software is just on mine.'

'Do you have the master disks for your software?'

He looked fidgety. 'Somewhere, yes.' He raked a hand through his hair. 'I leave the admin to Lisa. She'll know where they are.'

'Good. If you can find them, and your last backup, we'll do a quick temporary fix-we'll install the software on my laptop.'

'On your laptop?' he queried, sounding surprised.

'First rule of troubleshooting. Get the client back to normal as quickly as possible. Time's money, in business-and I won't be using my laptop while I'm fixing your machine. So I'll set you up on my laptop and you can at least keep working while I sort out the problems.'

'Thank you.'

Though, as Cyn had suspected, when Lisa came back and found the software master disks for her, it turned out that Max's backup routines were haphazard. The last disk he'd used was corrupted, and the one before that was dated from months before, so it didn't have the files he wanted on it.

'He's been n.o.bbled,' Lisa said, looking furious.

'You don't know that for sure. Magnetic media isn't perfect-disks corrupt all the time, even CD-ROMs,' Cyn said.

'But you can physically corrupt a disk?' Lisa persisted.

Cyn nodded. 'It's possible, yes. But you're being paranoid, Lise. Joe's obviously got you to prompt him on too many conspiracy theory scripts.' She turned to Max. 'Looks as if I'll have to do this the long way. But, as I said, feel free to use my laptop until I've fixed your machine. You can at least work on some of your current stuff.'

'You are going to be able to get my stuff back?' he asked.

She bit her lip. 'I can't promise I can retrieve all your data. It depends on which sort of virus. .h.i.t you-whether it's a worm, a Trojan or another sort of virus. Different ones screw up different types of files.'

He pulled a face. 'You're talking a different language.'

'Techie speak,' Lisa said. 'Tell me about it. She does it all the time at home.'

'Just ignore me,' Cyn said. 'I'll be as quick as I can.'

'I'll try not to get in your way,' Max said.

A tall order, considering how aware of him Cyn was. Her body remembered his touch and wanted more. Wanted to press itself up against him and feel the heat of his skin. Feel the strength of his muscles tensing as he lowered himself onto her. Feel his body becoming part of hers.

Well, tough. It wasn't going to happen, so she'd just have to exercise a bit of will power.

Then she noticed that, although Lisa had left her to it, Max had lingered.

'What?' she asked.

'You take your coffee black, don't you?' he asked.

He remembered? She damped down the surge of pleasure. 'Techie safety rules, number one. Never trust the milk.'

'Why?'

She smiled. 'Because most techies never quite got out of the student lifestyle. You get involved in programming and you don't think about anything else-and even if you remember to check the sell-by date on the milk, there's no guarantee that you know what day it is anyway. So either you get into the habit of sniffing the milk first, or...'

'I get the picture,' he said with a grimace. 'Black coffee coming up.'

He didn't interrupt her as such, when he walked back into the room, though her body was screaming, 'He's here! He's here!' Cyn sipped the coffee absently, trying to concentrate on the task before her.

She soon had her laptop in working order for him, and set it up on the table next to his drawing-board. A little while later, she found out what the problem was with his machine, and sucked her teeth.

'What is it?' Max asked immediately. Almost as if he'd been watching her, waiting for her to do or say something. Though that was silly. Of course he hadn't.

'Your problem is something that's called a Trojan horse-it's called that because the file contains a hidden program, pretty much like the Greeks hiding inside the wooden horse they sent to Troy,' she explained.

'So what does this Trojan thing do?' he asked, coming to stand beside her.

'Depends on the program. Most of the time, it means your computer's sending your pa.s.swords or other data to someone else's computer.'

'So it was deliberately aimed at me?' He stared at her, shocked.

'Not necessarily-but it's a possibility, yes.'

'What's the bottom line?'

'I have to back up your hard disk, reformat it, reinstall the operating system and your applications, check all your data files, then reinstall them when I'm sure they're clean.'

'You're going to wipe my computer?' he asked.

She nodded.

His face whitened. 'Could I lose what's left of my data? I mean, for good?'

She had to be honest with him. 'It's a possibility, yes.'

'Do you have to wipe it?'

'It's the only way to get your machine clean again.'

He blew out a breath. 'I could lose my data.' Said slowly. As if it was too scary to believe.

'Or it could have been transferred out of your machine already. I might be able to find a hidden copy somewhere, but...' She shrugged. 'Let's just hope you've been lucky.'

'Someone can do that? Someone could steal my files from another computer?'

'Yes.'

He blinked hard, as if trying to get his head round the idea. 'Can you stop it?'

'I can fix it,' she said.

He nodded. 'Then do it. Please.' He swallowed. 'And if my files are gone, can you find out where they went?'

She raised an eyebrow. 'You're asking me to hack into someone else's computer?'

Clearly he hadn't realised the implications of his request, because his eyes widened. 'Oh. I imagine that's illegal?'

'Yes. Though my view is that if someone hacks you, they're fair game for being hacked back,' she said softly. 'What I'm doing is really computer forensics-tracing everything back. Even if they're extremely clever, whoever did this will have left footprints.'

'Footprints?' he echoed, sounding mystified.

'You walk on a solid surface, you leave footprints. You do something in cybers.p.a.ce, and you leave some sort of signals behind-a kind of electronic pathway. Footprints.'

'And you can follow these footprints?'

She nodded. 'They could have bounced the data anywhere round the world-that is, put out a false trail-but, given time, I can trace it through to the end and track them down.' She raked a hand through her hair. 'What would be helpful is knowing if anyone bears you a grudge-or if you've done anything to upset anyone, recently?'

The air almost hummed with tension. 'Apart from you, you mean?' Max asked.

Her eyes widened in shock. She was a computer whiz. His computer was in ruins. Had he really made a connection that wasn't there? Did he honestly think she'd do something like that, because he hadn't called her? Her chin lifted. 'If you think I planned this...'

'No. No!' he said hastily. 'I didn't mean it to come out like that. What I meant was, I can't think of anyone I've upset. I've made a mess of things with you, and I'm sorry for that. I wanted to see you again, yes-but not in these circ.u.mstances. And you wouldn't do anything like this to me anyway.'

'How do you know?' she asked.

'Because I'm a good judge of character. And you have integrity.'

'I have the skills to do it.'

'But you still wouldn't do it,' he insisted. 'You're not a back-door operator. You wouldn't hurt someone by stealth. You'd face a problem head-on-just like you did with the wedding.'

'When I took a trophy boyfriend along and faked it, you mean?'

'I don't remember any faking,' he said softly. 'You were there with me.'

The air thrummed between them. Yes, she'd been there with him. Danced with him. Kissed him. Slept in his arms. Made love with him.

All her limbs seemed to have turned to lead. And her brain was definitely resembling cotton wool. Time to get some professional distance in there. She looked away. 'I'm trying to fix your system, here. Let's concentrate on that, shall we?'

'Sure. I'll go back to my drawing-board and let you get on. But in answer to your question, no, I can't think of anyone I've upset.'

'So this guy who's claiming you stole his ideas...you haven't had a run-in with him?'

'I've never even heard of him before today,' Max said quietly. 'I know the firm, Rutter's-it's a fairly large one, but not one I've had dealings with. It's not my old firm. I can't think of anything other than the normal business rivalry,' he said. 'And this definitely isn't normal. You just don't do this to a business rival. You let your designs speak for themselves. It's the client's choice, at the end of the day.'

'Have you had any other business problems recently? Something that might be linked?' Cyn asked.

He frowned. 'Yeah. I've lost a few tenders, lately. People who've changed their mind and gone with someone else. I did wonder this morning if it might be linked with this.'

'Could be.' She nodded. 'Who did they go with? The same firm as the one that's saying you copied their designs?'

'I don't think so. I haven't been able to pin anything down.'

'Right. Well, I'll start digging. It might take me a couple of days,' she warned.

Days? He was having trouble concentrating when she'd only been around for an hour or so. And he was definitely having trouble keeping his hands to himself. Every time he looked up and saw her concentrating on the screen, he wanted to walk over to her desk-his desk-grab her, and kiss her. Weird. Even in that anonymous grey business suit, she was the most desirable woman he'd ever met. Particularly as he remembered what she looked like underneath that suit. What she felt like. G.o.d, he wanted to touch her! Touch her and taste her and lose himself in her and forget this nightmare. 'Days?' he croaked.

She shrugged. 'If you'd kept proper backups, it wouldn't be a problem, would it?'

She was seriously scary, in business mode. Cool, efficient, a little bit abrupt. The best at what she did-he knew at a gut level that if anyone could fix this, she could. But her eyes were cool when she looked at him, not warm with desire as they had been last Friday night. Friday, when she'd come apart in his arms and he'd seen it in her eyes.

Today, she'd made it very clear she wasn't interested. If he pushed her now, she'd walk out of his life. Which would leave his business and his personal life in rubble. He had to back off. Now. Regroup. 'Point taken.'

She took out her mobile phone. 'I'll ring the office and let them know I'll be out for a while-that I definitely won't be back today and maybe not on Monday, either.'

'You're taking holiday to do this? But-no, that's not fair. You said this is going to take a while, and I don't expect you to give up your time for nothing.' He frowned. 'I'll pay you a consultancy fee. Invoice me for whatever the going rate is and I'll see Lisa pays you by bank transfer, the same day.'

She shook her head. 'Firstly, it's time in lieu-they owe me some. A lot, actually. Secondly, as I said, it's payback from me to you, for the wedding. You wouldn't let me pay for the room-or even my half.'