Melissa Mcclone - Dream Date with the Millionaire

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 would 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.