Of course he'd given her his password way back when. He came by her cubical and asked her to help with a computer problem. "Dialing in to the network is such a hassle," he said. So he put his mail icon and password on her desktop, and stopped in often during the day, pretending to work, mostly just flirting, laughing.

But now it was almost an obsession with her. What was Mike doing? When would he be in town? When would he be in the office, and not come to see her?

She really shouldn't have been shocked when she read the letter to a.hoff. "Just a quick hello," he'd written. a.hoff's response was quick, and in all lowercase. "of course i'd love to meet you." It was signed a. Just lowercase a. Her stomach hurt. And before she knew it, she hit delete.

When he came by her desk that Monday she wasn't really surprised. "hey," she said. "Hey," he said softly, kind of nicely, a little embarrassed, "How's it going? Its been a while," keeping that professional manner, pretending that they were just colleagues. "Did you have a nice weekend, do anything special?" she asked, hoping that he wouldn't tell her. "Na," he said, "did nothing, just worked. Played some cards with my brother. Would you mind...if I use your computer for a while?" "Sure," she mumbled, "but I gotta go into a meeting now...see you later?"

And she left him at her desk. Controlling herself, she didn't come back for at least an hour, plenty of time for him to be gone. But his email file wasn't.