The Dirty Secret Read Free Page A

finished on time. I don’t need to know her life story.”
    “You’ll want to know, Killian. In fact, you’ll have difficulty keeping your hands off her.”
    He snorted. He didn’t have time to even look at girls, much less get to know one. “When can she start?”
    “I told her to be at your house at two o’clock tomorrow.”
    He stuck his finger through the venetian blinds of the boardroom window, peering at his desk and the calendar above it with red circles around the date. He hung his head. “Okay. Thank you.”
    “Is that a problem?” Donna Edith asked.
    “No, ma’am. Not at all.” He let go of the blinds. “What’s her name?”
    “Vessa Ratham. And Killian? Let her surprise you.” She hung up.
    He walked back to his workspace and sat at the small desk next to his drafting table. His computer beeped with an email, but he ignored it and entered the name into a search engine. All that turned up was a five-year-old announcement of a Vermont charity scholarship recipient, and a few crew photos from a theater production in California. No face stood out as particularly interesting.
    His phone rang again. “Fitzroy.”
    “Hey, Killer. Pad Thai?”
    He hung up the phone. “You can’t just stick your fat head over the cubicle wall?”
    A paper clip flew over the upholstered partition in response.
    Killian caught it and flicked it back. “I better not take the time, man. I’m so behind, I’ll be here until midnight.” His empty stomach protested.
    “You have to eat, dude. You’re a fucking skeleton.” Bengt leaned around the wall that divided their drafting spaces. “And I can’t flirt with the waitress if you don’t come with me.” He swiped a tissue from Killian’s desk and scrubbed at the pencil smudges on the side of his hand.
    Killian handed him the paper from the accountant. “You’ll want to keep this. Those are your numbers.” The marketing director waved at him across the workroom, brandishing a flip calendar. He turned away before she could establish eye contact. “Okay,” he told his friend. “Let’s go. Before anyone schedules any more meetings I don’t have time for.”
    They escaped out the side exit without talking to anyone. In the lobby, they initialed the sign-out log, pausing long enough for Bengt to tease the middle-aged receptionist. She clicked her tongue when he changed the time by fifteen minutes to give them a longer lunch, but she didn’t correct it. Bengt was Killian’s opposite: blond, muscle-bound and charming. Women rarely denied him anything.
    “You don’t need me to hit on a waitress,” Killian grumbled as they walked the half block to Taste of Siam. “Why can’t you perv on girls on your own?”
    “Because that would be creepy. And she might take me seriously. I don’t want to take her home, I just want extra peanut sauce.”
    The waitress greeted them by name, and sat them at a booth. “Your usual?” she asked.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Killian told her, and Bengt complimented her haircut. After she left their drinks at the table, Killian said, “I went to Donna Edith’s.”
    “Holy shit!”
    Heads turned their direction, with a clatter of forks and chopsticks.
    “She’s incredible, isn’t she? Made me feel like I was thirteen again, stammering like a dork in front of the hot mom across the street. What kind of tea did you have?”
    “Earl Grey,” Killian said. “My grandmother used to drink it.” It was the only kind he knew by name. “What about you?”
    “I told her I’d have what she was having. Big mistake. Stuff tasted like I’d licked Santa’s chimney after he’d been up and down both ways. She told me it was called Lapsang Souchong, after a mountain. But I think it’s really Chinese for ‘tastes like smoked ass on a charred stick.’” He shuddered.
    “What did you go to her for?” Killian pulled his disposable chopsticks from their paper and snapped them apart. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
    “The first time?”