His Secret Desire Read Free Page B

more physical contact than she had had with a member of the
opposite sex in years.
    The pressure of his lips lasted just a
moment, just long enough for him to reassure himself that she would
not pull away from him, at least not for a moment, and then he was
gone again.
    "That," he said with complete composure, "is
the biggest problem of all."
    He stood up, put his glasses back on and
smiled.
    "Don’t look so shocked." He said. "Surely I'm
not the first man to lose control of himself in your presence."
    Uncharacteristically, Katy had nothing to
say.
    "I'll be in touch." He said and then walked
out of the café, leaving Katy sitting in a daze.
    Maria, the little old lady sitting opposite
Katy who she regularly sat with and bought coffee for, caught her
eye and smiled.
    "Sometimes you have to give a little to get a
little honey. Don’t be like me and hide it all away your whole
life. Nobody even knows who the hell I am anymore…" her voice
trailed off into a mumble and the smile left the old woman's
face.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Katy set the business card onto the passenger seat
beside her and started her drive home. She lived a little outside
of town in a small farm house that she had converted into a
sanctuary of absolute privacy. It was invisible from the road that
led up to it and if you didn't know it was there you would never
guess that any one lived there.
    She still had an impulse to throw the card
away and forget about Clayton Hargrave. In fact, she felt an
impulse today to throw everything away and to disappear again,
leaving no trace of her existence in the little north eastern town
she had called home for nearly a year. The encounter had left her
profoundly unsettled. Her business had depended for a long time on
a complex interaction of technology and instinct and today
threatened to be her first major screw up. She shouldn't have
introduced herself as a privacy specialist, that was a major
mistake. Over confidence maybe? Or had she been caught off guard by
the good-looking stranger?
    Then there was the eye-wear. It would have
been better if she had just let him record her than to challenge
him on it. Facial recognition would bring up nothing about her, she
had made sure of that and there wasn't a signal coming off her that
could be traced to anything, anywhere. She conducted regular scans
to make sure she was clean.
    This was what you would call a bad day at the
office.
    She arrived home and let herself in just as
her cell phone went. It would be her celebrity client asking how
things were going in shutting down the story of his x-rated, class
A indiscretions.
    No more celebrities. She swore to
herself. Business people were better; more rational and more
serious about their privacy. This celebrated idiot was blaming her
for his cocaine fuelled episode with hookers, something she had
never guaranteed she could protect him against. Her specialty was
electronic privacy, not damage control for idiots with
self-destructive behavior patterns.
    "Maldon." She answered the phone coldly.
    "Katy Maldon?" The male voice was too
familiar, too frighteningly recent. She had only left the café a
bare half hour ago.
    "How did you get this number?"
    "I got it from Peter Goldstein, he
recommended your services very highly."
    "Who is this?"
    "My name is Dale Hargrave, of Hargrave
Robotics."
    "What the hell is this crap?"
    There was a pause.
    "Peter told me you weren't exactly friendly
but this is a little too much." The man said.
    Katy's mind raced; first she meets Clayton
Hargrave in her favorite local java house where he calls her out on
her privacy technology but also offers her a high paying job in his
company. Then he plants his gorgeous lips on hers in public,
leaving her stunned. Now she gets a call from someone else from
Hargrave Robotics trying to contract her services as well?
    Too much of a damn co-incidence. This day was
crazy enough as it was, she was not going to let it get any
worse.
    "I'm not taking on new clients at