Dream Date with the Millionaire

by Melissa McClone

  She had the skills so she’d made the most of what nature had given her, just as her mother had taught her to do, and secured the job. Which meant she only had herself to blame for where she found herself today. She wanted to bang her head on the table for her stupidity.

  “The good news is we had an increase in traffic thanks to Danica’s marketing efforts.” James winked at her. No one at the company except him knew she was undercover, so to speak, spying on the local competition, Blinddatebrides.com. “Unfortunately the traffic exceeded our capacity so we’ve been having to add machines. But that’s not a bad problem. Traffic will drive our advertising revenue. That means more money for us. Anyone have other ideas to generate more users?”

  No one said anything.

  “Rethinking our branding might help,” she suggested. “Taglines, image, ads, name.”

  James clenched his jaw. “Our Web site name rocks.”

  “Totally.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dani listened to the men in the room support their boss who they held in almost cult leader esteem. The only other woman at the table, Shelley, the office manager, shook her head and mouthed the word sorry to Dani.

  The responses didn’t deter her. She had to do something. Say something.

  “Look at Blinddatebrides.com.” The name of the fastest-growing competitor brought groans from the three engineers at the table, but Dani kept going. “When people hear Blinddatebrides.com, they can’t help but think about brides. That word connotes weddings, which makes people think relationships, marriage, permanence. That’s appealing to users.”

  “Only if you want to end up with a ball and chain,” a Ruby on Rails developer named Andrew murmured.

  Dani ignored him. “Granted, your…I mean our…site’s name does have ‘mate’, but ‘hook’ makes people think of…”

  “What?” James asked.

  “One-night stands,” a PHP programmer, who probably hadn’t showered let alone had a date in a month, said.

  People—okay, guys—laughed.

  “Yeah, sex,” the interface hacker offered. “Sex appeals to a lot of people, too.”

  The two men gave each other high fives.

  Dani sighed. “I worry the name brings about images of hookups, not serious relationships.”

  No one spoke.

  “There’s such a thing as a niche market,” Andrew said. “Hookups can be our niche.”

  She stared at all the nodding heads. Male heads. No wonder women had a hard time finding good men to date these days. Not that she was interested in anything to do with dating.

  “I appreciate you bringing this up, Danica,” James said finally. “I’ll have to think about what you said.”

  Which meant he would never mention it again. That was how things worked around here. James’s way or the highway. He’d given her a choice—join Blinddatebrides.com or quit. She needed the paycheck so did as he’d requested. Up until that point, she’d really liked the challenges of being in on the ground floor of a start-up again. Now she hated getting up in the morning.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  No one said a word. No one ever did. Except her. She didn’t know why she bothered.

  “Get to work, people.” James clapped his hands together. “We don’t want anyone to be lonely tonight. They need to hook a mate!”

  Dani trudged back to her cubicle, frustrated and tired. She’d stayed up late last night sending out another batch of résumés. Speaking of which, she’d better check her e-mail in case someone had replied. She clicked on her in-box. There, at the top, was a new message, but not from a potential employer. This was one was from bigbrother@blinddatebrides.com with the subject header “I read your profile.”

  Oh, no. She squeezed her eyes shut. Another guy who wanted to get to know her.

  Her stomach churned. She hated this. Sure, she could just hit “delete”—that was par for the course on many dating sites—but Blinddatebrides.com was different. The site touted itself as a community where politeness and manners mattered. Users were requested to reply, even if the intent was to give someone a brush-off. Still, the thought of telling another guy she wasn’t interested in getting to know him better made her feel physically ill.

  But what else could she do?

  Leading a guy on when she was on the site under false pretenses ranked right up there with corporate spying in her book. She massaged her forehead to stop a full-on headache from erupting. Okay, one rejection wasn’t going to send some guy scampering back to his mommy in tears, but…

  Why did this keep happening?

  Dani had taken steps to ensure it wouldn’t. What sense of honor she had left had made her fill out the profile questionnaire truthfully so she understood when the compatibility program deemed her a match with someone. But Dani had hedged against the computer algorithms by uploading the most unattractive photo of herself she could find. She looked downright ugly. While other women uploaded more than one picture to their profile page, she hadn’t.

  She’d also downplayed her interests to make herself sound…well…about as exciting as a slug inching across a driveway at dawn. She’d listed the library as her favorite place to spend a Saturday night and a collection of Jane Austen novels as her must-have item if stranded on a desert island.

  No man should want to date her.

  Maybe this one didn’t. Maybe he was one of those guys, the players, who only wanted to have sex. If that were the case, she wouldn’t mind telling him to get lost.

  Dani opened her eyes and read the entire e-mail.

  To: “Sanfrandani”

  From: “Bigbrother”

  Subject: I read your profile

  Who are you searching for? Mr. Darcy? Or Mr. Knightley?

  -bb

  Dani reread the message. Twice.

  Okay, she was impressed this guy knew the names of two Jane Austen heroes, but who did he take her for? Intelligent, impulsive Lizzy or smug, interfering Emma?

  Still, his message intrigued Dani. She typed a reply and hit “send.” With a satisfied smile on her face, she leaned back in her chair. And almost fell over backward.

  Uh-oh. What had she done?

  She shouldn’t have replied. Dani grimaced. She wasn’t supposed to engage Bigbrother in more e-mails. She was supposed to tell him she wasn’t interested. To. Go. Away. Politely, of course.

  Only she hadn’t wanted to do that.

  Not when his e-mail had been unlike any of the others she’d received. He’d obviously read her profile and asked his question based on what she’d written. Not on her photo or bra size. Maybe he was genuinely interested.

  Or maybe he was ugly.

  Her eyes locked on the link to his profile that would transport her to a page all about him, a page with his picture.

  Curiosity trickled down the length of her arm to her fingertip, hovering above the laptop’s trackpad. She wanted to know more about Bigbrother. Read what he’d written about himself. See what he looked like.

  Temptation flared. She moved the cursor to the link. All she had to do was click, but she couldn’t.

  The less Dani knew about Bigbrother, the better.

  She wasn’t looking to meet a guy. She didn’t want to meet a guy. Especially one from Blinddatebrides.com.

  Not under these circumstances.

  Ignoring the twinge of regret, she closed his e-mail.

  Goodbye, Bigbrother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AS BRYCE sipped his coffee, hoping the caffeine would get him through the rest of the day, he stared at the four hundred unread e-mails in his in-box. No way could he get through all of them in the next fifteen minutes, but there was one reply he hoped to find.

  He skimmed the list of senders and found the name he was looking for…

  Sanfrandani.

  That didn’t take long.

  He couldn’t curb his suspicions and wanted to see what she had to say. Which w
ould it be? A polite brush-off or a straight-to-the-point-please-don’t-contact-me-again? Curious, he opened the message.

  To: “Bigbrother”

  From: “Sanfrandani”

  Subject: RE: I read your profile

  Desperately seeking…Colonel Brandon.

  -sfd

  Bryce frowned and reread the e-mail. He called Joelle into his office. “Who is Colonel Brandon?”

  “Didn’t he kill Miss Scarlet in the library with the—”

  “No. That’s a game. This one is in a book. Jane Austen.”

  Joelle stared blankly at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “You have to know this.”

  She raised a finely arched brow. “Because I’m female?”

  “Because…” Oh, hell, she had him there. “Yeah.”

  “I majored in Economics, not English Lit.”

  Bryce had majored in Computer Science. He pressed his lips together, still staring at the screen. “Wasn’t there a movie?”

  “Not that I saw. Not with a Colonel Brandon. Colin Firth, now…Yum.”

  “Spare me.”

  Joelle shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to Google this Colonel guy, then. Or call your sister.”

  Caitlin.

  Thinking of his younger sister brought a smile to Bryce’s face. Of course, Caitlin would know the answer. She was a font of movie trivia, especially chick flicks, but a call to her would lead to a lengthy discussion about wedding preparations. Bryce was happy she’d found the love she’d been hoping for on Blinddatebrides.com. Keeping her safe had been his main reason for creating the Web site, but he didn’t have time to discuss whether champagne-pink or midnight-blue would be the better choice for bridesmaids’ dresses. And he didn’t want her probing him about whether he’d found a date for her upcoming engagement party yet.

  His search query resulted in 336,000 documents. The Colonel was a character in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, but the descriptions Bryce read didn’t make sense. One article called the Colonel “sad and reserved.” Another said he was a “dull older man.”

  Nothing, however, explained why Sanfrandani was desperately seeking the Colonel. She was twenty-six, according to her profile—too young for such an old, boring guy. Unless she was a gold-digger.

  Bryce stared at Sanfrandani’s picture. Even though he couldn’t make out any of her facial features, she seemed to have a graceful neck. And that red bandana was starting to grow on him. Still, a woman after a rich husband would have uploaded a better photograph.

  But why had she responded to him so mysteriously, almost playfully, instead of telling him to get lost? She’d brushed off the other guys who had contacted her. Was she leading Bryce on? Or not?

  He was annoyed. Intrigued.

  Attracted.

  Not attracted, he corrected. This was an investigation, not a flirtation.

  Bryce needed more information so he could figure out where she was coming from and what kind of game she was playing. Then he would know what to do. As he hit “reply”, he heard a commotion outside.

  He hastily typed a response. He would have rather taken his time, but that wasn’t an option right now.

  “Look at this,” someone yelled outside his office. “Am I really seeing this?”

  A low hum buzzed.

  Not a good kind of noise either.

  Bryce hit “send” with a twinge of regret, but he needed to find out what was going on out there.

  “SQL injection.”

  The words stopped him cold.

  “No way.”

  “It can’t be.”

  He understood the disbelief in the voices. The denial.

  “It is.”

  Damn. Bryce bolted to the door. Someone had entered an executable code disguised as data into the site. No doubt trying to steal credit card and other personal information from the database.

  Outside his office, the noise level increased exponentially, his team springing into action like an Emergency Room staff with multiple casualties coming in. Except these injuries weren’t as easily diagnosed, and the damage unknown.

  “Run forensics on the logs,” Bryce ordered.

  “Already on it,” Christopher, a rock-star caliber software engineer, said.

  Bryce nodded his approval. “We need a snapshot of the database right now.”

  “I’ll do it,” someone said from across the room.

  “Let’s patch the hole, people. Compromised data?” he asked Grant, his number two employee.

  Compromised data—the stealing or copying of customers’ personal information—would be a PR nightmare. Even if credit card account numbers hadn’t been captured, there was the issue of privacy. Online dating may have become an accepted way to find love, but some people would be embarrassed to have their anonymous use of the Web site become public knowledge.

  Grant rubbed his hand over his face. “We don’t know yet.”

  “Okay.” Bryce projected calm. “Then let’s find out.”

  He wanted to jump into the trenches and dig his fingers in. Bryce was a techie at heart, but he was also the boss. Sometimes the two didn’t mesh well together. Today he would make sure things worked. He couldn’t afford for them not to.

  “Should we shut down the site?” Grant asked.

  Bryce shook his head. “Not unless we have to.”

  “Don’t want to lose the revenue?”

  The money didn’t matter to Bryce right now. This was personal. “I don’t want to tip off the hackers. Not if we can nail them.”

  “It’s a mess in here,” someone murmured from a few desks away.

  Bryce imagined himself as one of the Jane Austen heroes Sanfrandani liked to read about, ready to clean up the mess and save the day. Yeah, right.

  He sat at an empty desk, one being set up for a new hire, and logged on to the system to double-check the database. Bryce wanted to see that personal information—everything from names and passwords to credit card numbers—was encrypted. The data was. “How strong is the encryption?”

  “Strong enough to keep a 100,000-computer botnet busy for years,” a security specialist answered.

  Good news. But Bryce was still going to have to call their lawyer as soon as he had a better handle on things. It was going to be a long day. And most likely an even longer night.

  Talk about a long day.

  Dani stretched her arms above her head. She needed a nap but would settle for more caffeine. She’d spent her afternoon working on search engine optimization aka SEO. Increasing traffic to the site was a big part of her marketing job. The more hits, the more clicks. And that meant more money—advertising revenue. But turning visitors into repeat users was important, too, and sometimes harder to do. Especially when the site lacked the type of content it needed to draw people back. Content she’d found on Blinddatebrides.com. Content she now had to create for Hookamate.com.

  Too bad she was more interested in checking her e-mail every five minutes to see if Bigbrother had replied. She’d never been like this before, waiting for some strange guy to e-mail her, disappointed when he hadn’t.

  Pathetic.

  That was what she was.

  And distracted ever since she’d checked out Bigbrother’s profile. Talk about making a big mistake with a single click.

  He lived in San Francisco and was cute in a geeky sort of way. In his picture, he wore a San Francisco Giants baseball cap pulled low on his brow. Dark hair stuck out from the sides. He was dressed casually in a Boston Red Sox shirt and a pair of faded jeans. The photo wasn’t a close-up, but she caught a hint of a smile on his face. He almost looked…shy. She liked that.

  A beep sounded. Dani checked her e-mail again.

  Jackpot.

  Bigbrother had replied. Anticipation unleashed the butterflies in her stomach. She couldn’t wait to see what he’d written. She opened the message.

  To: “Sanfrandani” .com>

  From: “Bigbrother”

  Subject: Colonel Brandon

  You’re searching for a dull old guy who wears a uniform?

  The oh-so-romantic-loves-unconditionally Colonel was near perfect in her mind, but she could see how some might see him as a dull old guy. Especially a man who, based on his attire in his profile picture, preferred baseball to Jane Austen. Dani laughed.

  “Care to share the joke?” James asked.

  She turned in her chair. Her boss stood at the entrance to her cubicle.

  Her cheeks warmed, but then she realized she had nothing to be embarrassed about. James was the one who wanted her checking out the site. “It’s an e-mail from someone on Blinddatebrides.com.”

  James’s eyes narrowed. “A male someone?”

  She nodded. “Just doing my job.”

  “A good job at that.” He beamed. “So when are you going out with him?”

  “I’m not,” Dani said with a twinge of regret. Bigbrother was the only one of the men who had contacted her that she wanted to meet.

  “Too many other fish to fry?”

  Oh, boy. He had that all wrong. “Uh…no.”

  “So he must be a loser, then. How many other guys have you met from bdb?” James never called their local competitor by their full name. He seemed to have it in for them, but she didn’t know why and was too afraid to ask.

  “None,” she admitted.

  He gave her the once-over. “It can’t be from a lack of offers. None of them meet your standards?”

  “Nothing like that.” She peered over the cubicle walls to see if anyone was around or listening. “I can’t accept any dates,” she whispered.

  “Why not?” he asked. “And why are you whispering?”

  “Because of the…you know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She lowered her voice more. “The spying.”

  James sighed. “It’s called market research, Danica. Every company does it, so please get over your aversion to your job responsibilities.”