“Making snide comments about the company you work at now.”
“I was just saying,” he shrugged, “maybe they need to focus a little more on the internal aspects of their organization.”
“I think the company is fine, James.”
“And I think that if a company got hacked, maybe they need to do some serious evaluating as to whether their standards are good enough for the shifter world.”
Irritation washed over Allison. Why had she asked James to the party, again? Oh yeah, as a favor. Well, she was regretting that now. He was being kind of a sourpuss, and she wanted to hurry back to Christopher and McKenzie. She wanted to help them figure out what had happened, and she wanted to solve the issue.
She liked the company she worked for. She’d been with them for a long time, and she was part of the team. At least, she had always felt like she was. Christopher had kind of pushed her out this weekend, but that was just one thing. Maybe he had a good reason for not calling her.
Now, though, James was here, and he was acting like what happened was nothing more than juicy fodder. Well, in Allison’s opinion, the company didn’t need to be g
ossiped about. That wasn’t how you fixed serious issues.
“Don’t you have a project to work on?” Allison’s voice came out a bit harsher than she intended. James noticed, too. He tensed, staring at her.
“Yes,” he finally nodded, “I suppose that I do.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” she said hurriedly, trying to save face. “It’s just that things are a little chaotic over here right now.”
“I get it,” he said, nodding.
“And the project you’re working on is important.”
It was, too. He was helping to develop a new software that was going to make home security even stronger and more impenetrable. James was an expert in the field, and Allison thought he’d been a good choice for the company.
“I’ll see you later,” James said curtly.
Yeah, she’d pissed him off.
Shit.
Maybe she’d been too abrupt or harsh. Allison was usually a pretty friendly person, but she was anxious, and she was tired, and she was a little frustrated with everyone. She’d taken it out on James. That hadn’t been very fair of her.
James turned and left, walking away from Allison. The fact that he’d come by to see what trouble the company was in bothered her very much, but she could have been nicer. She felt embarrassed that she’d been so rude to him.
He was new, she realized, and office gossip was inevitable, but it still bugged her. The idea of gossiping when someone was having a hard time or a crazy day didn’t really sit well with her. She made a mental note to apologize the next time she saw James. It was the least she could do. Maybe she’d be able to salvage their new work friendship. She had to at least try.
She turned and walked away, heading toward the conference room. She tried to stop thinking about James. She had asked him to the party, and even though it was “as friends,” she was going to have to figure out how to survive a whole evening of entertaining him.
When she arrived at the conference room, the three brothers were there, along with McKenzie, who was their secretary. Peter Preston was there, too. He was the head of digital security. Rebecca Watson sat beside him. She was another security professional.
Then there was Allison.
It was a small group of people, but Allison understood that the guys probably wanted to keep this little breach as quiet as possible. That might not be feasible, unfortunately. Allison knew just as well as anyone else that gossip spread like wildfire. If James already knew, then other people already knew, and if the Monster brothers weren’t careful, it was going to be the talk of the town on Sapphire Island.
“What happened?” Declan was asking. He was pacing at the front of the room. Each of the brothers had their own little quirks. Declan’s was that he paced so much he’d actually started to wear out the flooring in his office.
“Sit down,” Brian said calmly. Brian was leaning back in his chair and had his legs crossed and propped up on the conference table. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned with what had happened, which was strange. Brian was, in many ways, the face of the company. Allison would have thought that he, out of everyone else, was the person who would be panicking.
“On Saturday night, McKenzie alerted me that there had been some sort of security...probing,” Christopher said.
He was sitting beside Brian, and even though he was speaking to the room, Allison felt like he was talking directly to her. It was a bit unnerving. She could still see his lips on hers. She could still taste him. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She needed to focus on what he was saying, and not on how good that kiss had felt.
“So, you came in,” Brian said. “You dealt with it.”
“I thought that I did,” Christopher said. “I was here all weekend working on everything that I could. From where I was, it seemed like minor stuff. I figured some kids had gotten a little too crazy with their high school computer class and had tried to hack us.”