The Dirty Secret Read Free Page B

Bengt jiggled the ice cubes in his plastic glass. “Dad brought me in when I was eighteen. He’d overheard me mispronounce the word clitoris , so I got an anatomy lesson.”
    “From her?” Killian spluttered, blinking against images of Donna Edith on her couch, reclining on the cushions. He sucked at his Coke until his head hurt from the ice.
    “No!” Bengt said.
    The waitress stopped, holding his plate inches from the table.
    “Not you,” he told her.
    She set the plates down and left.
    “She placed me with a girl who wanted her labia pierced, but didn’t want to go to the shop all alone.”
    “What happened?” Killian shook red pepper flakes onto his chicken pad Thai.
    “I got a whole lot of insight into female genitalia. And sixteen-gauge nipple rings.”
    “I always wondered why you got those.” Killian fought with his chopsticks for a moment before giving up and stabbing a heap of noodles. He bit through the tangle.
    Bengt drew a breath, pulling his shirt taut across his chest, and circled a nipple with a fingertip. “You want to touch them?”
    “No!” Killian said through his food, then shook his head at the waitress again. “Not you.”
    The woman gave Bengt a wide-eyed look as he toyed with his chest. She set the fresh Cokes down and backed away, while Killian laughed at his friend’s dismay. “You said ‘the first time.’ So what about the second?”
    Bengt reached for the soy sauce bottle. “I was curious about something.”
    “Your sexual orientation?”
    “Not exactly.” Bengt stared off at some vision only he could see, but there was a glint in his eye, some savage satisfaction that made him more than the spoiled son of the boss, more than the big blond flirt who was good with girls. “So did she Sherlock you?”
    “Right from the start.”
    Last Tuesday, he’d been shown into her office by the receptionist. Donna Edith had glanced at him and told him to have a seat.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and she turned from her tea pantry to reappraise him. She was older, ten years and probably more, and so elegant he felt like a maladroit teenager staring back at her.
    “Bengt Bjorn referred you to me, did he not?”
    “Yes, ma’am. We went to college together. I work at his mother’s firm.”
    “There’s more to you than just that, Mr. Fitzroy.” The woman sat at the other end of the couch, and crossed her magnificent legs. Her movements were smooth, her expressions deliberate, like all the actresses who had ever played Catwoman. “You’re from the South, but not very deep. Appalachia.” She pronounced it like a native, with each A short. “Eastern Kentucky?”
    “Harlan County.” Three years in New England had not frozen his accent much, but no one had ever guessed so close to home.
    “You’re not a wealthy man,” she continued. “Your shirt is more than seven years old, and fraying at the neck. You do not have a woman in your life who would buy you a new one, nor do you take the time to pay attention to such things yourself. You wear a tie, even though it makes you uncomfortable, perhaps because it gives you a certain white-collar status, above the roots from which you were raised. Are you the first in your family to go to college?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “The first to graduate high school.”
    “You’ve worked hard for your education, then. You’re driven and clever. But you’re not arrogant—you’re here, which means you aren’t afraid to ask others for help. You say you work at Bergman and Bjorn, not for , which indicates you have some status there, and your calluses suggest you use a pencil as much as a keyboard. Mr. Bjorn referred you to me, so he sees you as much more than a fellow alum or a coworker.”
    He didn’t bother nodding.
    “You’re starved for sex,” she said with a knowing look in her dark eyes that went straight to his gut and groin, “but you’re not here to satisfy that hunger. Your desperation is professional, not personal.