Trust Me by Jayne Ann Krentz Page A

following evening. He had a rare talent for screwing up his private life.
    Stark sat in his darkened study and contemplated the elegant, colorful, seemingly random pattern he had created on the computer screen.
    The apparent chaos was a thing of beauty to his eyes. It flowed endlessly from one fascinating shape into another. Impelled by a hidden mathematical imperative, it evolved, changed, and reformed itself until the original pattern disintegrated into nothingness.
    But Stark knew how to retrieve the original pattern, and that was the secret that was going to make ARCANE the most sophisticated encryption and decryption software in the world. At least for a while.
    Given the rapid pace of software design development, no single program could hope to remain state-of-the-art forever. ARCANE would need to be constantly improved and updated. But Stark was willing to bet that it would be a long time before anyone caught up with ARCANE.
    Stark Security Systems stood to make a great deal of money off the security program. The biggest customer would be the U.S. Government, which wanted it to protect several of its most sensitive computer systems and those of its high-tech research labs.
    Stark intended to plow the profits from ARCANE into the development of a variety of other security systems that would, in turn, be suited for the private sector.
    It was all so beautifully complicated and yet so astoundingly simple. A perfect example of the dynamics of complex structures.
    Stark wished he could employ the same mathematics on Desdemona.
    She was entirely different from any other woman he had ever held in his arms. Not that there had been all that many. Long periods of celibacy punctuated by a few sputtering affairs had marked his adult love life thus far. He had not enjoyed the instability of the pattern. He wanted a predictable relationship, just as he wanted predictability in his software designs.
    Marriage had, therefore, been the obvious solution. Except that he hadn't been able to implement it.
    It was not as though he hadn't done his best to select a suitable mate. He had applied all of his powers of logic and rational thinking to the problem of obtaining one. But somehow, something always went wrong.
    Desdemona had been right when she had guessed that she would be an experiment for him. She definitely did not fit his profile of a suitable wife. But he wanted her with a sense of deep, restless urgency that was startlingly new and excruciatingly intense.
    Stark promised himself that he would not go into the relationship with the notion of making it permanent. That way lay disaster. For once in his life, he would allow the whims of fortune and fate to carry him where they wished.
    It was a disturbing but strangely exciting thought.
    Stark gazed at the glowing screen, aware that his whole body was already stirring in anticipation of Thursday night.
    It occurred to him that his rationalization of an affair with Desdemona might simply be the by-product of another extended period of celibacy. The truth was, it had been a long time since he had gotten laid.
    Pamela had been too busy for sex for at least two months before the wedding date. And things hadn't been what one would call lively between them before that.
    Looking back on the string of excuses he'd heard during those last weeks before the wedding, Stark glumly acknowledged that he should have had a clue that something was amiss. But, as usual, he hadn't figured out that something had gone wrong in the relationship until he had found himself standing alone at the altar.
     
    Thursday morning Desdemona was hunched over her computer when Henry and Kirsten swept through the doorway of her office.
    “Be with you in a second.” Desdemona nibbled anxiously on her lower lip as she hit the enter key to store the latest version of a luncheon menu featuring spinach and feta cheese in phyllo pastry. “Oh, damn.”
    “What's wrong?” Kirsten asked.
    “I think I just lost the earlier