Intimate Exposure by Portia Da Costa Read Free Book Online

Perhaps she could chat him up on the way to the hotel?
    But as she smiled and exchanged small talk with him while he took her bags and stowed them in the back of the long dark car, it dawned on her that her type had suddenly changed.

    What she wanted now was a big man. A substantial man. One who was dark and provocative with a pirate’s beard and metal-rimmed spectacles that framed the most peculiar yet compelling eyes she’d ever seen.
    Red Goddamn Webster.
    So it didn’t really bother her when the chauffeur slid up the privacy barrier and put paid to any chance of chatting him up. As he started the engine, Vicki was secluded alone in the sumptuous environment of the deluxe car, breathing in the heady scent of fine leather and cataloguing the gleaming fixtures and fittings.
    Was this a car Shanley himself used? The man was a multibillionaire, powerful and secretive, so this lush, quiet, almost hermetically sealed world must be a normal mode of transport for him. She tried to imagine that rich, mysterious man sitting where she was sitting, stretching out long legs clad in achingly wonderful tailoring while his keen, acquisitive mind decided which company or conglomerate he’d absorb into his vast empire next.
    The thought made Vicki smile, disquieting as the idea of Shanley was. At least it made a change to be fantasizing about somebody other than Red Webster. It put what had happened with him back in proportion. Yes, she’d done something crazy and unwise with the maddening photographer, but it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t a bad thing, per se. Just a wild blip, something mad and outrageous to laugh to herself about in her old age. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d seen him again since the incident. She’d refrained scrupulously from making enquiries, but when she’d missed him around the building the following day, it had seemed logical to assume that his assignment for Shanley was over, and that was the end of it.
    As the car purred away from the pavement, she settled back and attempted to clear her mind. This unlooked-for breather was a godsend really. It forced her into thinking outside the box of her normal routine.
    I’m bored with Wickham-Drake. I’m bored with offices and business. And I’m really, really bored with insurance.
    It was a radical notion for someone whose entire working life had been bound up in an office world, but it was the truth. Red Webster’s arrival on her scene wasn’t the only thing that had unsettled her recently, although she had a feeling his showing up had crystallized things. Until a short while ago, she’d loved her job, liaising on the phone with clients and with others like herself, representing other companies like Wickham-Drake, climbing the office ladder, working the hierarchy, earning more money. Now she wanted something more, something fulfilling to her soul rather than to her bank balance and her day-to-day security.
    At least she was a free agent now. Because she lived fairly quietly, she’d built up modest but healthy savings. She could kick over the traces. Last year, she’d been subject to the needs of others. The responsibility for her widowed mother, who hadn’t been in the best of health for years, and for her sister, who’d always shown an uncanny knack for losing jobs and taking up with terrible, unsuitable men who treated her badly.
    But in the space of a few months things had changed for the better, and she was happy for both her mother and her sister. The former, miraculously, had fallen in love with her new heart specialist and married him, and her sister too had finally met Mr. Right and was leading a settled, contented life with a guy who adored her.
    Which leaves me with an excellent job…and nothing.
    Red Webster’s laughing bearded face swam into her mind, even as she acknowledged her situation. A second later, the memories of being across his knee rampaged back too, in a tidal wave that lashed her senses against the rocks.

    So