“Thanks. Hey, genius—that cookie’s five months old.” Kyle had chuckled as his sister scrambled for a paper towel.

Later, on her way out the door, Jordan had revisited the issue, more seriously this time. “Don’t worry about Dad. He’ll get there eventually.”

Kyle hoped Jordan was right. For the most part, their father had handled Kyle’s very public arrest and conviction as well as could be expected. Like Jordan, Grey had been at all of Kyle’s court appearances and had visited him in prison every week. Still, things were a little awkward with his dad these days, and there was no doubt that a man-to-man conversation was in order.

Eventually.

Pushing that issue temporarily aside, Kyle stripped out of his running clothes and took a quick shower. He checked his watch and saw that he had a good half hour before his visitors arrived, so he settled in at the desk in his office to read the evening news on his thirty-inch flat-screen monitor.

After perusing the national news, he skimmed the Tech section of the Wall Street Journal. He exhaled in annoyance when he saw that his upcoming court appearance was the second story on the page.

At least he hadn’t been one of the headlines, although he had no doubt that his picture would once again be plastered all over the papers come Tuesday, when the judge ruled on the government’s motion. It was ridiculous, really, that one screwup—yes, he’d screwed up, he fully admitted that—had gotten this much attention. People broke the law every day. Okay, several federal laws in his case, but still.

Kyle ignored the Wall Street Journal story, not needing to go over the lurid details. He knew full well what he’d done—hell, half the free world knew what he’d done. In legal terms, he’d been convicted of multiple counts of electronic transmission of malicious codes to cause damage to protected computers. In tech terms—language he preferred over all that lawyer-speak—five months ago he’d orchestrated a distributed denial of service attack against a global communications network through the use of a “botnet,” a network of computers infected via malware without their owners’ knowledge or consent.

Or, in the common vernacular, he’d hacked into Twitter and crashed the site for two days in what was undoubtedly the most boneheaded move of his life.

And the whole thing had started over a woman.

He’d met Daniela, a Victoria’s Secret model who lived in New York, at a friend’s art show in SoHo, and they’d hit it off instantly. She was beautiful, she had a genuine appreciation for art and photography and could talk passionately about the subject for hours, and she didn’t take herself too seriously. They’d spent the entire weekend together in New York, a whirlwind of sex, restaurants, bars, and fun—which was all that Kyle had been looking for at the time.

They had begun casually dating long distance after that, with Kyle flying out to New York a few times over the next several months to see Daniela, and the tabloids had begun to gossip about their relationship. The supermodel and the billionaire heir.

“Imagine that. My brother’s dating another model,” Jordan had called to say after seeing him and Daniela mentioned in the Scene and Heard column of the Tribune. “Ever think about diversifying your portfolio?” she’d asked dryly.

“Why?” he’d said matter-of-factly. “I like dating models.”

“Not enough to introduce any of them to me or Dad,” she’d shot back.

His sister always did have the most annoying way of pointing out things like that.

It was true, he’d never been in a long-term relationship, and there was one simple reason for that: he liked being single. As well he should. Over the course of the last nine years, he’d settled into his life at Rhodes Corporation, climbing up the corporate ladder all the way to executive vice president of network security. He worked hard, but he also liked to play hard, and he saw no reason to tie himself down to one woman. He always kept things light and easy, never promising anything more than a good time for however long things lasted.

Still, Jordan’s comment nagged at him. The bachelor scene had begun to feel a little…old at times. Sure, a man in his position generally never had problems meeting women, but he was starting to wonder whether casual dating and hot hookups were enough. He’d always assumed he’d settle down at some point—he’d grown up in a happy, loving family and knew that was something he wanted for himself eventually—so he figured, perhaps, it was time he started taking some steps toward that.

With that in mind, he’d begun to spend more weekends with Daniela, either flying out to New York to visit her or paying for her to come to Chicago. He wasn’t naive enough to think their relationship was perfect, but in the nine years he’d played the field, he’d yet to find this so-called “perfect fit” with any woman. So he ignored those concerns—after all, a man could do a lot worse than having a Victoria’s Secret model in his bed on a regular basis.

But about six months into their relationship, when Daniela asked about meeting his family, Kyle hesitated. Because he’d never introduced them to a woman before, it seemed like a huge step. Gigantic. For years, it had been just the three of them: him, his dad, and Jordan. Together they’d navigated the often-surreal spotlight they’d been thrust into because of his father’s wealth and, miraculously, had come out mostly normal on the other side. So despite the fact that he’d been dating Daniela longer than anyone else, and had even twice used the word girlfriend when describing her, he’d hemmed and hawed and changed the subject without giving her a direct answer.