Red Collar Read Free Page B

you to the top.”
    Kate gave her a small, nervous smile. “Madge,” she asked, hesitantly. “Has he been here? Do you know what he likes?”
    Madge hooked her arm through hers and led her towards the reception. “No. And even if he was our client, we never kiss and tell.” She gave a light chuckle and put her finger to her lips. “Don’t worry. Men like to tell you what they want. Especially if they’re paying for it.”
    “What about your commission? We never arranged that.”
    Madge shook her head, bouncing her brunette curls. “That’s been taken care of. From this point on, you belong to Reid Enterprises.”
    Clayton Reid, corrected Kate silently. And she wasn’t sure if she liked it at all.
     
    *****
     
    She entered the lobby of her new employer’s apartment building at precisely five minutes to ten o’clock. It was the rich Italian granite floors and the imported anigre wall panels that first caught her eye. This was a world vastly different from the one she knew. There was a white gloved doorman at the entrance, a concierge service and an attended reception waiting on the residents of the building, regardless of the time. When she entered the elevator, a fresh chypre fragrance suffused the air. This most certainly was a world apart from what she was accustomed to.
    She pressed onto the button to level 22. She noticed that it was the penthouse. As the elevator rose, she mentally repeated the rising floor levels reading on the elevator position indicator display, hoping that it would ease her relatively rising nerves.
    At 22, the elevator halted with that familiar ding as it swished its doors open. Kate hesitated briefly before she alighted from it. She walked slowly to the only door across it. Gathering her courage, she pressed onto the doorbell camera.
    “Who is it?” someone answered. His voice was heavy, almost baritone and commanding.
    “It’s Kate Ripley,” she said, into it.
    “Who?”
    “Kate Ripley,” she repeated, a little more loudly. “I… er…was hired by Bob Whitton…yesterday. He…um… told me to be here at ten…tonight. To see Mr Reid?”
    The man, on the other side of the camera, grew quiet. His silence began to cloud a doubt into Kate and she instinctively reached for her bag to recheck the address. But the door clicked open instead.
    She noticed the contrast of the dark, ill-lit interior to the bright hallway in which she stood. She inhaled a deep breath and proceeded into the room.
    There were a few wall lamps lit and yet despite the darkness, she could tell the apartment was richly and elegantly furnished. Probably, by an expensive and popular interior designer, she surmised in her mind. She tried to recall any names she was familiar with. But she could only remember one- Clodagh, the Irish designer who worked on projects such as the Tufenkian Heritage Hotels in Armenia. No, she would not have known her either. This acquired trivia was thanks to Bridget, who was particularly fond of the designer’s talent to meld feng shui into her masterpieces.
    “So, you’re Kate Ripley,” said the man, interrupting her thoughts.
    He was standing by the dark windows, overlooking the Hudson River. The distant lights of the city managed to outline his figure as he stood watching her, his hands in his pockets.
    “I am,” Kate answered as confidently as she could.
    “You know why you’re here?”
    “I do.”
    “You accept the terms of your contract, then? I’m not going to go through them again, Ms. Ripley. But if there are any doubts as to why you are here in my apartment at ten in the night, I suggest you leave and get them sorted first with Bob Whitton tomorrow. I have never forced myself on a woman and I do not intend to start tonight.”
    Kate gulped.
    “If you’re shaking your head, must I remind you that it’s dark and I can’t see you? So do you understand Ms Ripley, why is it that you’re here?” he continued.
    “I understand,” she said, quietly.
    But she knew