Agent Provocateur Read Free Page A

beautiful and sexy Grace, will say, no, no, because he has someone he loves already.
     
    She had many discussions with Nicole about it. She needed to put things into perspective and her boss helped her.
    ‘Why do you do this?’ Grace asked.
    ‘I’m a detective, and one thing you learn pretty quickly in my business is that most disputes are about relationships. I didn’t set out to specialise but God, the number of people that wanted their partners followed, or tested, was huge. Now, it’s pretty much all I do.’
    ‘But how does it make you feel?’
    ‘Grace, I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes it makes me feel shitty, and it’s not just about infidelity in men. I am also hired by a number of men who think their partners are cheating – not as many as women, but it’s growing. I see what other people do to each other and it makes me sick. No one deserves to be lied to, to be cheated on; no one deserves the inevitable broken heart. You can let it get to you, totally consume your being, or you can just get on with it and think that every time you save someone from a bad relationship you’re almost doing them a favour. They may not see it straight away but one day they will.’
    ‘Do you think all men are cheats?’ Grace still held some hope of romance in the days when she started working for Nicole. She wanted to think that men weren’t all bad.
    ‘I wouldn’t be married if I thought that, Grace. No, not all men are cheats, but most of them are. I sometimes wonder if Paul is faithful because he knows that I’d be able to catch him. I wonder if he thinks I have tested him or will test him so he’s terrified of talking to another woman, but at the end of the day I think he loves me enough. Also he sees what I do and the hurt that can occur, and he’s just a decent man. And if there is one decent man, then there will be more. It’s just a case of finding them.’
    At that moment, Nicole took a maternal interest in Grace, which she still has now.
     
    When she wakes the following morning, Grace goes straight to her fish. She smiles and chats to them while they wait for breakfast, and once they’re fed she goes to make coffee. She stares blankly at her percolator and only when she is satisfied that it is filling properly does she go to the shower. By the time she has pulled on a tracksuit (her working-from-home uniform), her coffee pot is full and ready. She pours a cup of black coffee into her large round breakfast cup, and takes it to the study. She isn’t wearing any make-up.
    She sits at her desk and looks at her notepad with messages from her machine last night. She switches on her computer, and while she waits for it to whirr away through the bits she doesn’t understand, she makes her first call of the day. It’s nine o’clock.
    ‘Oliver Williams, please,’ she asks the receptionist, and she types her password into her computer as she waits to be put through.
    ‘Oliver.’ He sounds so self-assured, but she knows he is not.
    ‘It’s me.’ She stares at her screen as she waits for him to say something. He always pauses whenever she calls him, as if he needs time to think about what he is going to say next. He never has that problem when he calls her. She finds it endearing and annoying at the same time.
    Grace met Oliver just over a year ago, while she was actually working. When the man she was testing went to the loo, Oliver came over and gave Grace his card. He didn’t say anything and Grace decided that she liked his style. She liked his cheek. And he was really quite sexy. She has been seeing him, casually, ever since.
    Oliver – or ‘Occasional Oliver’, as she calls him – has a busy lifestyle that should prevent him from making too many demands, although he still does. But because he isn’t the busy, businessman with a neglected wife and an indulged mistress cliché, Grace sees him whenever they both have time. It isn’t as often as he’d like. Oliver bizarrely wants to turn