Anyone entering the room would identify Noelle, with the straight, dark hair and the clear blue eyes of the Summer Clan, as the unrelated participant. But despite not being an Evergreen, Noelle was an important component of any strategy meeting. Her experience as a CIA operative would be very helpful.
She sat forward, her gaze intent, her tablet at the ready. “So, who’s the hacker, Cole?”
“An old girlfriend from college.”
Dash grinned. “Ah. So it’s Taryn.”
“How do you know that?” Noelle was in full interrogation mode.
“Because Cole only has one old girlfriend from college who counts,” Dash said. “That makes this easy, bro. Pay her a visit and find a way to offer her some of Noelle’s memory-erasing cocoa. Problem solved.”
“Negative on that, Dash.” Noelle’s tone was brisk, even a little defensive. “Our current formula isn’t sophisticated enough to create selective memory loss, which is what’s needed here.”
Cole turned his attention to her. He hated to put her on the spot, but he needed to know his options, just in case. “How fast can you beef up the formula?”
“It shouldn’t take long.” She said it quickly, as if forestalling any discussion. “I’ll have a more versatile batch soon.”
“How soon?”
A hint of panic flashed in her expression, and was quickly replaced by a confident smile. “Not today, but very soon. I’m just saying that if you give Taryn the cocoa we have on hand, she’d forget hacking into Evergreen, but if she’s trying to get a rise out of you, she’ll hack in again.”
“Get a rise out of him?” Dash chuckled. “Under the circumstances, you might want to rephrase that.”
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, grow up, Dash.”
“Not planning on it, Noelle.”
Their banter hit too close to home. Cole ducked his head and studied the wreath pattern in the thick green carpeting as he fought the heat climbing his cheeks. This was hell. His brothers and sister knew too much about Taryn, which was his own damned fault.
He’d left MIT in the middle of his senior year, right before Christmas break. All his fanciful dreams about Taryn had died that Christmas when he’d realized he wasn’t ever going back to college. He’d abandoned her without an explanation. But what could he have said? That he was a wizard going home to help his family straighten out the “Naughty or Nice” list and make sure Christmas went off without a hitch?
Lying hadn’t been an option. He’d learned early in life that his brain didn’t work that way, and everything that came out of his mouth was true, no matter how embarrassing or unwise the statement. Over the years, he’d trained himself to hold his tongue in delicate situations.
But leaving Taryn so abruptly when she’d done nothing to deserve that treatment had gnawed at him. On New Year’s Eve at the clan’s ancestral lodge on Mistletoe Mountain, he’d mainlined champagne and spilled his guts to his brothers. Belle had found out the whole story eventually, as sisters usually do. He could feel them all waiting with bated breath for his next move.
He prayed it wasn’t a stupid one. “I need to find out how she got in.” He lifted his head and glanced around the room. Everyone seemed to be with him so far. “It’s not surprising that she could do it. I’ve done some digging, and discovered she freelances as a computer security tester. Multinational corporations hire her to see if she can hack into their systems. If she can hack in, she takes care of whatever weakness she finds.”
“And she’s a certified genius like Cole,” Ethan added helpfully. “I remember you telling us she’s very smart.”
Cole let out a breath. “Actually, she’s smarter than I am.”
“Whoa!” Dash pushed away from the wall. “They must be ice-skating in hell. Did you just admit someone was smarter than you, big brother?”
“Yep.” He’d fallen in love with her brain first and her body second. He still remembered that first glance into her eyes, framed with enormous tortoiseshell glasses. The intelligence shining in those hazel depths had stolen his breath. “That’s why she was able to hack in. But if I hire her to strengthen the system, then we shouldn’t have to—”
“Wait a minute.” Noelle glanced up from her tablet, where she’d been typing notes. “Hire her? How can you do that without creating an even bigger security risk?”
“My question, exactly.” Belle polished off her coffee and set the mug on Cole’s desk.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” Cole said. That was the understatement of the year. He’d discovered Taryn’s handiwork at midnight and hadn’t slept since. “The good people of Gingerbread are convinced we operate a Christmas ornament factory in this building, and that’s all Taryn has to know. I’ll code her access card so she’s restricted to the IT floor.”
“What about the categories in the database?” Ethan asked. “Won’t she wonder about those?”
Cole shrugged. “I’ll say it’s appropriate to our Christmas-themed business, which it is. It’s not her job to worry about what’s in the database, anyway. I’m hiring her to correct a flaw in our system. I’m sure she’s worked with other corporations that maintain a high level of secrecy about their products.”
“Yes, if you’re talking about military applications and technical innovation.” Noelle frowned. “But why be secretive about Christmas ornaments? It makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ethan glanced up at Cole. “I see where you’re going with this. The fact is we do make Christmas ornaments that are prized the world over. If Taryn suspects that’s a cover for something else, so what? It’s not her job to speculate. If she made a habit of prying into things that don’t concern her, she’d be out of business in no time.”
Belle swiveled her chair back and forth. “Even so, I don’t like it. I can keep the elves off the IT floor while she’s here, but what if she runs into Santa? He could show up anywhere, including the lobby, and he’s something of a loose cannon these days.”
Noelle groaned. “Tell me about it. Did you know he’s started jogging?”
“Jogging? Well, sugarplums!” Belle let her head fall back against the chair. “No, I didn’t know that.” Raising her head, she looked at Noelle. “Merry told me he’s acting weird and is on some crazy diet, but I hadn’t heard about the jogging. I don’t know how that’s supposed to help matters.”
“What in St. Nicholas’s name are you talking about?” Cole stared at them. “And why don’t I know about it?”
“I hated to bother you unless it was urgent,” Belle said. “We all hoped it would blow over.”
“It still could.” Ethan sounded determinedly cheerful. “Okay, so Kris forgot their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and Merry’s pissed, but I’m sure after all these years together she’ll come around.”
“Don’t count on it,” Dash said. “Women are complicated creatures.”
“We have to be,” Noelle said, “in order to compensate for men being so—”
“That’s enough of that.” Cole scrubbed a hand over his face. “We need to focus. So Kris and Merry are having marital problems. What’s that got to do with the diet and jogging?”
“My best guess?” Noelle glanced up from her tablet. “He’s intimidated because Merry’s signed up for skiing lessons with Guido,