Bearing It All by Vonnie Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

couldn’t stand not knowing things.” She shrugged. “It’s just how I am. I
have
to know.”
    “Ye sound like our Colleen. She doesna miss a thing.”
    “I’d taken a report into my superior’s office. One I felt he should look at immediately. I saw a Post-it note on his monitor: ‘Check out latest video on Anisa’s file.’ I couldn’t think of any flight testing I’d done recently or any new designs I’d come up with. So, what file could the writer mean? And it looked like Mitch Franklin’s slanted scrawl.”
    “Who’s Mitch Franklin?” Ronan’s eyebrows wrinkled and his eyes bored into hers.
    “There were three CIA members in ICAT. Because America’s the most powerful nation, they had the most members in the coalition. France had two. So did Germany and Great Britain. My immediate supervisor was American Todd Anderson. He and Mitch were close buddies. Their boss, Sebastian Wells, kept himself more distant. He used the chain of command to his advantage.”
    “So, ye were in Todd’s office when ye saw this note?” Ronan crossed his one ankle over his other knee and sipped his coffee. A slow grin spread. “How long did it take ye to open that file?”
    “I needed his passwords to get into his computer files. So, I looked around his desk…”
    “Meaning, ye snooped.” His sexy grin grew. The corners of his dark eyes crinkled, softening the planes and angles of his face.
    The Scot was without a doubt a very handsome man and, at times, surprisingly jovial, which upped his rating on her sex appeal meter. She smiled and leaned toward him, twirling a strand of his honey-colored hair around her finger. “Yes, and I snoop
so damn
well.”
    He exhaled a bark of laughter. “Oh, Frenchy, there’s nay a doubt in me mind.”
    “First, I tried his drawers, looked beneath them, too. Then, I studied the top of his desk and noticed the back of the frame of the picture of his children wasn’t pushed all the way into the silver frame. I slid it out and found passwords taped to the inside of the faux-velvet backing. I copied them, put it back into the frame just as he had it, and hurried out of his office.”
    Ronan held his coffee mug almost to his lips. “Nay wonder the CIA is pissed with ye. I bet their best spy couldna keep up with yer powers of observation. Ye are one smart woman.”
    She was touched by his compliment. So touched, she wanted to lay a lip-lock on him. Oh, wouldn’t the Scot sputter and swear over that? It would be better to keep telling her story now that she’d begun.
    “I wanted to log on to Todd’s files right away, but figured he’d have a program that would alert him when someone accessed his records. To be safe, I had to wait. He stopped by my office later to thank me for the report, said he and Mitch were going for a long lunch, and did I want to join them. At first I answered I did, then I snapped my fingers, and told him I forgot I had to call my mother about Sunday dinner. It was my sister’s birthday and I wanted to ask what I should bring. Made a joke about having to answer mother’s many nosy questions, like was I dating anyone. He laughed and said he understood.” She gulped her coffee. Sharing all of the rest would be difficult.
    “Once I was sure they’d gone for lunch, I opened his files. Took me a while to find the right password for what I wanted. They had a file on everyone in the coalition except for the Americans and my French coworker, André Mouzon. My file had pictures and information about my family, my bank records, my charge card purchases, copies of my phone calls, and movies from cameras placed around my apartment.”
    “Bloody hell, the numpties were spying on ye?” A glower quickly replaced his smile. His eyes narrowed, and damned if he didn’t look dangerous.
    She stared into her cup, giving herself a minute to gather her courage. “The latest tape Mitch had written the note about was of me in the shower with my dildo.”
    Ronan slammed his