Tempting the Corporate Spy

by Angela Claire

Overview

Whiz kid Liv Altman is working on Internet anti-piracy software that could be huge. It could also be dangerous. And someone wants it badly enough to blackmail only the very best hacker—the infamous and reclusive Jonathon Crestwell—into stealing it…

Liv usually has no trouble ignoring the computer geeks she works with every day, but her new corporate consultant is definitely not easy to ignore. He's tall and dead hot, with deep blue eyes that make Liv think the naughtiest of HR-violating thoughts. When she finds him unexpectedly in her office one evening, things take a turn for the sexier. But come morning, Liv will discover the truth about her new employee...and what he really wants.

Each book in the Sleeping with the Enemy series is a standalone, full-length story that can be enjoyed out of order.
Series Order:
Book #1 Tempting the CEO
Book #2 Tempting the Corporate Spy
Book #3 Tempting the New Boss

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633751842
Publisher:	Entangled Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	03/03/2015
Series:	Sleeping with the Enemy , #2
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	188
Sales rank:	451,636
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Angela Claire, like most writers, grew up loving to read, which led to a degree in English literature, which in turn led to unemployment. Not having been born to wealth, Angela developed a more practical plan for eating and paying her rent—hence the dreaded and expected descent into law school and inevitable career as a lawyer. Once she paid off her pesky yet massive student loans, Angela saved for an escape from the law profession one day. Now a multi-published author, she does what she loves, but with a little less leeway on the eating and paying rent thing.

Read an Excerpt

Tempting the Corporate Spy

A Sleeping with an Enemy Novel

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By Angela Claire

Entangled Publishing, LLC

Copyright © 2015 Angela Claire
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63375-184-2

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CHAPTER 1

Liv Altman dragged her hands through her blonde hair, unseating a clip in the process, and looked up from her desk at the stubborn, interfering woman in front of her. "I don't know what you have in mind, Jen, but I already have a secretary."

"You don't have a secretary. You have a doddering old maiden aunt who likes to reorganize an obsolete Rolodex and needs to call the helpline every time she wants to turn on her computer."

"Cecily's not my aunt." Liv didn't bother to deny the rest of the charges since they were, after all, true. And Jen, her oldest friend and current human resources representative, would be quick to point it out.

"Well, you treat her like your aunt. She's an employee, Livvie. You can fire her."

If Liv didn't love this woman who was like a sister to her, she'd hate her. Jenny Sealy had been bossing her around since they'd met in the first grade, back home in Northwest Detroit. Twenty years later, in Manhattan, she was still at it. An MBA along the way only enabled Jen to do it more efficiently.

"When have I ever steered you wrong?" She added quickly, "Career wise?"

"I can't fire Cecily. She's a sweet old lady."

"She's done something with her computer. It sends me fake messages from you that blow up into obscene cartoons when I open them. Then IT sends me a memo saying I'm violating policy. She's a disaster."

"How do you know she did it?"

"IT knows these things. You of all people should get that. You went to MIT, not me."

"Maybe it's a bug in her computer."

"I had them check on it. It's not the computer. It's her. And she's so muddled. If you really won't fire her — and how did I know you were going to say that? — then promote her instead."

"That makes a lot of sense."

"It's done in corporate America all the time."

"Is that how you plan on making it up the corporate ladder?"

"Ouch," Jen deadpanned, not letting the insult stop her. "Peterson is looking for a new secretary and he does absolutely nothing. I'm not even sure he has a computer. She'll get more money working for somebody higher up the chain and will have to do even less actual work."

"Why are you so anxious to get rid of my secretary anyway?"

"Other than this latest fiasco?"

"Yeah, other than that."

"How about that she can't remember to give you a phone message to save her soul?"

Liv liked that Cecily didn't give her phone messages most of the time. There was nobody she really wanted to talk to anyway. Except maybe Jen. But she just showed up in Liv's office eventually anyway.

As for everybody else, even if the old gal did manage to give her the messages, Liv could always pretend she hadn't. An absent-minded secretary provided plausible deniability.

"Really, Liv, if we're both going to move up the Lincoln ladder like we planned, then you're going to have to start letting me help you on a few of these things. I know what I'm doing."

She had to admit that the pull Jen had exhibited by getting Liv one of the rare offices at headquarters with a shower in an adjoining bathroom did impress her.

"The only point of a secretary these days is to show you're important enough to have one. Stature. And Cecily does not say stature. Oh, why can't I get these things through to you? God knows I've tried with your wardrobe!"

"Fine. I give up. Yes to whatever you have in mind." Once Jen got going on Liv's wardrobe, or lack thereof, it would waste an hour at least. Best to fight her battles where she could. "But what about poor Cecily? I don't want to hurt her feelings."

"I've already taken the liberty of transferring her to Peterson with your highest recommendation. She's four floors above your office as we speak, and if she manages to find her way to the elevator tonight it'll be a miracle."

"Jen!"

"Don't worry. She'll have plenty to do. I sent that moldering old Rolodex with her too."

"All right then." Liv sighed, pushing Jen's hip off her desk to get at a paper she'd been sitting on. "I'm fine with whoever you hired to replace her. I assume that's what you're getting at."

"Not exactly. But it's a wonderful coincidence because I have fantastic news for you."

She smiled at her friend. "Somehow I doubt that."

"You know how interested I am in management dynamics and new approaches to corporate interflow?"

"Well, kind of in one ear and out the other."

"Precisely when I was thinking about this problem with Cecily and what to do about it, I got a proposal from a management consultant who has some ground-breaking ideas on the subject."

"Miss Sealy?"

At the sound of the deep voice, Liv looked around her friend's shoulder to the door of the office suite. Jen studiously did not.

There was a really cute guy standing there. Nice eyes, friendly smile.

Liv usually didn't care for Jen's boy toys, but if this was her latest, Liv had to admit she was jealous. Of course, the guy had called Jen "Miss Sealy." Maybe he wasn't her love interest, but one of the countless junior analysts who followed Jen around from time to time, supposedly to learn the HR ropes. Come to think of it, other than his dimensions — he was tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips — and the fact he was attractive, the guy standing in the doorway didn't strike her as Jen's usual romantic type. Not enough of the bad boy in him. But he didn't look like one of Jen's trainees either. Not well dressed enough.

"Am I at the wrong place?" the guy asked, taking a tentative step into the office suite.

"Now don't blow your top," Jen whispered, "but while your secretary's desk is empty, we're going to have a corporate consultant 'shadow' you."

"What?" Liv asked, too shocked to keep her voice down. "Me? What's the idea there? I hate consultants!"

"Don't be rude," Jen admonished in an undertone before she turned to the guy in the door. "Come on in and meet Liv, Jon."

"I'm not rude, I'm just ..." Her voice trailed off by the time the consultant was right in front of them, all tall, dark, and handsome.

"Hey." He held out a hand to shake hers. "I'm Jon Foster."

Liv looked at his outstretched hand, then took it and stood up. Twenty-seven years old, a couple of fancy degrees to her name, and Liv still couldn't get used to sitting in a real office and shaking hands and everything.

Just like a grown-up. Who in their right mind was going to invest millions of dollars in something she developed?

She squelched the thought. Fake it until you make it. That was what guys did, right?

"Hi, Jon. I'm afraid you're catching me off guard here." She glared at Jen, who didn't have the decency to look the least bit guilty.

"No problem if you're not set up for me yet. I know I pitched this idea very suddenly, but the timing seemed right."

"Just perfect," Jen said. "Jon here consulted at Pitz and Lunder. You know, the law firm?" Liv shook her head.

"Well, that place functions at a crazy pace. Jon consults on corporate organizational matters, such as admins and other things. It just so happened that right as we decided to replace your admin, Jon pitched this idea of evaluating the optimum use of resources. He starts out with one executive and then fans out. He's going to do your evaluation pro bono even before we decide whether we want to engage him for tackling other parts of the organization."

"I don't even know what that means, Jen. Evaluate me how? Like an efficiency expert?"

"That's an old-fashioned term," the consultant said. "It's more complicated than that, but I promise not to be intrusive. Forget I'm here."

"You two will get along great. He's going to be exactly what you need," Jen said.

Liv flashed her friend another dirty look. Right. Some corporate-speak guy hanging around, distracting her with how cute he was and wasting her time by trying to discuss allocation or whatever. "I don't need anything, Jen. So you can find some other guinea pig to" — she glanced sort of apologetically at the guy — "experiment on."

"Nonsense," Jen said briskly. "This is the perfect place for Jon to start his evaluation. You've got all this empty office space from the last bout of layoffs, and extra computers — he's going to crunch some benefit numbers for me while he's here, so you can set him up on Cecily's computer and he can spend a few days looking at what she did, or didn't do, for you. And then of course he can interview you and make recommendations."

"An organization has to examine how it operates every once and a while, Miss Altman," he added, "to keep everything running at top speed. Pitz and Lunder, for example, was a real sweatshop, but for all they were driving their people, they weren't getting the proper returns. With just a few tweaks and behavioral modifications, I was able to change that."

"I'm sure you were," Jen assured him. "That's why we're placing you with our newest up and comer. Liv's a rising star here."

Jen's usual shameless plug left Liv cold, seeing as how she was still kind of annoyed at her.

"I'll be going now," Jen said airily, giving Jon a little wave.

"I'll walk you to the elevator." Liv grasped her friend's elbow, steering her out.

"No need. I know how busy you are and I wouldn't — " Liv hustled her friend out and shut the office door behind them. "This isn't funny."

"What?" she responded, all innocence, sauntering over to the elevators.

"A consultant? Please. I don't need a consultant. Why pick on me? What are you really doing here? Trying to fix me up, maybe?"

"Get over yourself, hon. You have a lot to learn."

"So you keep telling me. About what, though? That's the question, isn't it?" Jen shook her head reprovingly. "Management and corporate theory can improve the status quo, Liv."

"Even if I did believe that" — she pointed back to the closed office door — "are you trying to tell me you didn't notice how cute that guy is?"

"Of course I noticed. I'm not dead from the neck down like you are these days. But I wasn't trying to fix you up. Don't be ridiculous. We're not in seventh grade for God's sake."

Liv eyed her suspiciously. Those seventh grade fix ups had been disastrous. Adolescent boys paired with Liv always ended up pining after Jen. Adult boys, too, come to think of it.

"I merely thought that if you weren't ever going to make time to date a real guy, you could at least have a reminder of what you're missing." Jen jabbed the button for the elevator and it uncharacteristically came right away.

She stepped in and smiled at Liv. "And it's free. So go back in there and put that gorgeous guy to use."

"I'm not even going to respond to that ridiculously easy double entendre," Liv said irritably as the doors closed.

When she went back into her office, Jon was still standing there, waiting for instructions, maybe, or an invitation to sit down. He smiled at her tentatively. Yep, first impression still held. Absolutely adorable. An annoyingly predictable heat flushed her cheeks. Someday she was going to forget about tackling piracy on the Internet and do something really useful, like figure out how to save women from blushing when they were nervous.

She didn't have a lot of practice around hot guys. That was Jen's thing. Liv had always gone for the geeky guys who could speak computer with her.

"You didn't know I was coming, I take it."

"Uh, no. Afraid not." She laughed. "I didn't even know my secretary was leaving."

He was dressed casually in a plain white oxford and khakis, but so cool looking it made her glance down at her own clothes. She wasn't in her usual "I'm a responsible adult" outfit because it was the once-a-week Jeans Day at the company. So she was wearing the standard t-shirt and comfortable jeans she always wore when the nine-to-fivers cleared out of the building. My Morning Jacket blazed out from the front of her shirt.

He gestured at it. "I like that group."

"Yeah. Me too." Like duh? Why else would she be wearing their name on her chest?

Jon looked around at the suite, complete with leather couch, coffee table, and fiftieth story view of the city.

"Nice."

"I've got a connection in HR. They assign the offices. I hope you're not going to recommend me out of here and into a cube."

He grinned, a lopsided, not-quite-full smile that made him even better looking. "I like cubes. They're cost efficient."

Uh oh.

"Do you mind if I sit right outside your office to start with?"

She nodded at the cube that Cecily had vacated without her noticing. She got so wrapped up in her work most of the time that she didn't pay attention to anything going on around her. She would have liked the chance to say goodbye to Cecily, the woman she'd worked with for over a year. Thank her. Maybe she'd pop up to Peterson's.

"Yeah. Sure. There's a phone. Computer. The works."

He sat at the now-empty desk and turned on the computer, a ridiculously easy task but one her former secretary rarely managed. It didn't matter. Whatever Liv needed on the computer she, of course, did for herself.

"Kind of lonely around here," he said.

Her office was on one of the floors that had been fully occupied before the latest round of layoffs. The corporate guys at the top were always trying to "cut the fat" — only below them of course — or operate "lean" or whatever the hell they called it. The last attempt had left the floor relatively deserted and her with a lavish office, thanks to Jen's pull.

"I have to admit, I still don't understand what it is you'll be doing here ... er, consulting on, I mean."

"It's a micro-approach to corporate mechanics. That's why we start with one employee at a time, usually a high potential one like you. It's a period of observation at first. I tend to sit in for the admin in order to check the organizational skeleton, if you will, with no buffers, and then I work outwards."

Sounded like corporate-speak to her. She looked at him blankly and he laughed. "For now, I'll just sit out here, go through your secretary's files, and observe the pace of the office. I have those benefit numbers to crunch for Miss Sealy as well, sort of a freebie for the opportunity."

"I still don't think I'm a good place to start," Liv objected. "I work by myself in my office and I'm not sure Cecily had any files."

"Well, let's take it one step at a time. You'd be amazed what I can glean from this approach."

"If you say so." Liv leaned over him and flicked a few keys to delete Cecily as the user and add him. "Let me help you get set up on the network, then. You'll need a password."

"Uh, let's use — "

"Don't tell me!" she warned automatically. God, for whatever kind of corporate management guru he was, he must be an absolute neophyte at computers. "Type it in yourself."

"Oh, right. I always forget about that part. I put yellow stickies with my password all over the place."

She nodded, appalled at the thought. Good thing she never let any document of consequence go any farther than her own laptop. Corporate policy required it be on the network as well, but she had her work so tightly secured no one was getting to it but her. No one in this company, certainly, and though it was kind of bragging to admit it, no one at all, anywhere.

"Just kidding," he added. "I'm not quite that bad. Almost, but not quite."

He typed something, then retyped it at the cue as she watched. He wasn't anything like the kind of guys she usually hung out with, computer programmers at heart, all of them. He had longish hair — not too long, but enough to fall over his eyes and force him to brush it away casually. Black and sort of curly, it dusted the top of his collar. She wondered how it would feel to run her fingers through it. Despite the wave, she didn't think it would be all bristly, since it looked shiny and sort of silky. His skin didn't look bristly either but tanned and smooth, though with his coloring he would probably have a five o'clock shadow by the end of the day, like James Franco.

"Okay, done. I entered it in twice."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Tempting the Corporate Spy by Angela Claire. Copyright © 2015 Angela Claire. Excerpted by permission of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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