CHAPTER ONE

      GRIFFIN MCKENNA was a pirate.

      The newspapers, and the Wall Street pundits, said he was a financial genius, but Dana Anderson knew better. McKenna was a pirate, plain and simple. He took whatever he wanted, whether it was a corporation or a woman.

      What else could you call a man like that?

      Gorgeous, that was what, according to the gossip columns. Dana supposed there were some women who’d find him attractive. The sapphire-blue eyes, the thick, silky black hair, the cleft chin and the nose that was almost perfectly straight except for a faint bend in the middle...all of it seemed exactly right for McKenna’s broad-shouldered, long-legged body.

      So what? Nobody’d ever said pirates had to be homely.

      McKenna bought companies that were in trouble, scooping them up like a kid taking candy from a dish, and turned them into moneymakers. And, they said, he managed such feats because he had skill, courage and determination. They left out the fact that he’d also started life with an inheritance big enough to float a small kingdom, or that he got obvious pleasure from controlling the destinies of others.

      And from having people fawn over him—especially women.

      But not all women, thought Dana as she marched down the hall to McKenna’s office. No, definitely not all. She, for instance, was not the least bit impressed by the man. She’d seen him, early on, for what he was. Not just a pirate but a charter member of the Good Old Boys club. An arrogant, egotistical, self-important Male Chauvinist, capital M, capital C.

      What he needed, instead of gushing columnists and swooning females, was the truth.

      Well, she was about to deliver it.

      She paused outside his office.

      Not the truth about his overrated, overpublicized self. Dana wasn’t a fool. She had more than a job here, at Data Bytes; she had a career, one she’d worked damn hard for, and she intended to keep it. The truth she’d tell him. the truth he needed to learn, was about the company’s all-new, highly touted computer program, the one that was going to be on display at the big software convention in Miami this coming weekend—the program that was supposed to save Data Bytes from going belly-up.

      But it wouldn’t. It couldn’t, because the code that underlay it was a disaster.

      She’d already tried telling that to McKenna a week ago.

      “Mr. McKenna is a very busy man,” his secretary, the formidable Miss Macy, had said. Dana had replied that The Very Busy Man himself had made it clear, during the organizational meeting he’d held, that he was also A Very Approachable Man.

      She hadn’t mentioned that he’d also made it clear he was a man who believed in gender equality the way a skunk believed in deodorants.

      Not that it came as a surprise. What kind of man got his name into the gossip columns all the time? What kind of man was photographed with a different woman each week?

      What kind of man made the sort of joke McKenna had made at that organizational meeting?

      “Remember,” he’d intoned solemnly, “we’re all in this together, people. If Data Bytes is going to fulfill the vision I have for it—and I assure you, it will—it’ll be because every man here works his tail off to make it happen.”

      “Every man, and woman,” Jeannie Aarons had called out, and McKenna had grinned along with all the others.

      “An interesting observation,” he’d said with wide-eyed innocence, and, after the laughter had died down, he’d added that he never doubted the value of the “female of the species.”

      “I’ll just bet you don’t,” Dana had muttered under her breath.

      If she had any lingering doubts, McKenna had swept them aside when she’d met with him last week, after Macy had finally agreed to grant her an audience. She had come armed with printouts to support her contention that the new code was not going to be ready on time—but McKenna hadn’t been the least bit interested in listening.

      “How do you do?” he’d said, rising from behind his desk like an emperor greeting his subject. “Would you care for some coffee? Some tea?”

      “Nothing, thank you,” Dana had said politely, and then she’d launched into her speech only to have McKenna cut her off in the middle with an imperious wave of the hand.

      “Yes, yes,” he’d said. “Dave told me that he thought you might come by to protect.”

      “I’m not protesting, sir,” Dana started to say, but then his words hit home. “Dave told you? You mean, you already know there’s a problem?” It was such a relief, knowing Dave had finally faced reality, that she smiled. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I never dreamed—”

      “—That you’d be passed over for promotion.” McKenna nodded. “Dave explained that to me. He understands why that’s made you unhappy.”

      “I was passed over. But that isn’t why—”

      “He also told me that you’ve complained that you haven’t been given enough credit for your work.”

      “Complained?”

      “Politely,