Seoul Spankings by Anastasia Vitsky Read Free Book Online

should warn their daughters about you.”
    I stared at the floor, wishing I could sink below the floorboards. Cheeks burning, I ducked behind a coat rack. This time, Hyunkyung’s words came as clearly as if she intended me to hear. Perhaps she did.
    “Don’t be silly, Leila. She’s a client, nothing more. We’re negotiating a merger, and I’m giving her the VIP treatment. You know how it is with business.”
    Stunned, I set down my champagne glass and crept toward the door. I would have taken off the clothes Hyunkyung had given me, but the alternative was more X-rated than I wished. I was a business front for Hyunkyung, nothing more. I should have known. I had thought…our conversation at dinner, the way she took my hand.
    As crazy as it sounded, she had seemed to treat me as a friend. Maybe something more.
    I had come to Korea expecting a job interview. I would leave tomorrow after losing a potential love interest.
    Love? I scoffed at myself. Get real .
    I used to believe in love. I’d packed up all of my belongings the day Greg told me he’d cheated on me and the other girl was pregnant. I paid the apartment rent and had forked over the deposit, but he had insisted on the lease in his name.
    Look up stupid in the encyclopedia, and you’ll find my picture.
    Indi , he’d said, in the husky voice that made me lose contact with any of my surviving brain cells. Our apartment will belong to both of us, but I want my name on the lease. I want you to come home to a place I’ve provided for you .
    Down went my first three paychecks from waitressing at the university pub. My supervisor should have made me leave after I graduated, but he was comfortable and so was I. There weren’t many other options for a philosophy major. I worked hard; he left me alone. I learned the tricks to ingratiating myself to each customer, using the best methods to garner the biggest tips. Not the college boys—they were too cheap and too broke. No, it was the professors who were the easiest to fluster. A “trip” while walking on high heels, a hand planted on the counter, and a chest displayed oh-so-accidentally worked magic on the stuffy men who lusted after their graduate assistants. It turned out that more than professors wanted the graduate assistants.
    Wonder what Nietzsche would have said about that?
    Indi , Greg had said after we moved in together, I don’t want kids. Why have all the hassle of snotty noses and stinky diapers? I’ll never be a family kind of guy .
    My snarly great-aunt Matilda was right. She had told me from the beginning that if I moved in with him because he wouldn’t commit, he never would. Why make a promise to someone who already had given you what you wanted, she asked me. She said a boy like that only took what he wanted and would never give back.
    Actually, she was only half right. Greg could make a commitment, but not to me.
    “That’s stupid,” he told me on our fourth date. Or, rather, our fourth time seeing each other. He didn’t believe in dates or timelines or commitments. “I go to work to work. I don’t spend time with people to work.”
    How stupid I’d been, yet again. I thought perhaps Hyunkyung saw something in me, but I should have known. She didn’t need someone to pay her rent and bills, but she needed a front to make her business look good. She didn’t want to spend time with people to work.
    I should have been flattered someone like Hyunkyung wanted me for arm candy. I cleaned up pretty well, after all. But I darted into the nearest restroom, locked the stall door, leaned my forehead against the wall, and cried.
    Never again.
    I’d never let anyone woo me with false promises again.

 
     
     
Chapter Six
     
     
    Leila took my arm and drew me in for a whisper. “Oh, give it a rest. It’s obvious you’re smitten with each other. Use a lame cover story for the tabloids if you like, but don’t try to fool me. Is she good in bed?”
    “Leila!” I choked on my champagne.