The Good Girl's Guide to Bad Men by Jessica Brody Read Free Book Online

the table and pulled a stack of glossy crimson folders from my briefcase.
    For the past few months, the success of the agency has grown exponentially. Hardly a week goes by that I don't have at least one assignment for each associate on my staff. And based on the fact that we advertise by word of mouth only, that's a whole lot of referrals being passed around out there. I guess news of a service like this travels fast.
    "Good morning, everyone," I said, pulling my chair up to the table. "My apologies for being so late. Let's get started so we can all get out of here on time."
    To my immediate left sat Lauren Ireland, a tall, slender brunette whom I had gotten to know quite well over the past year. Mostly because she was my first associate and actually part of my inspiration for opening the agency in the first place. After being the beneficiary of my services over a year ago, she was convinced that she wanted to devote her life to helping other women find the answers they were looking for. That's when she came to me and told me she wanted to become a fidelity inspector. And it didn't take long for me to figure out that there were probably others just like her out there. So I set out to recruit them.
    Lauren is also the agency's technical guru. She knows everything there is to know about networking, databases, gadgets, you name it. And those kinds of skills definitely come in handy when she's in the field. The fact that she's beyond stunning and knows how to hack a Linux server makes her irresistible to a lot of men. She's the ideal fantasy for the Bill Gateses of the world.
    Lauren's inherent technological skill set was actually the basis I used for forming the Hawthorne Agency. Because a little less than a year ago, when I was doing this job entirely on my own, I spent a lot of my free time researching and taking crash courses in everything from website development to car engines and poker in order to transform myself into hundreds of different male fantasies. I was constantly struggling to become a near expert in anything and everything in only a week's time. To avoid this kind of struggle when I formed the agency, I made sure that every one of my five talented associates came ready and armed with a unique skill set. That way, no matter what the clients think their husband or wife will respond to, chances are it already exists in this room.
    Take Katie Morgan, for example, seated on my opposite side with her knees propped up against the edge of the table. She's a petite girl in her mid-twenties with shoulder-length blond hair that she often wears pulled back in a ponytail with jaggedly cut bangs sweeping across her forehead. I always know when she enters a room because she is constantly followed by the smell of strawberry bubble gum and the sound of punk pop music blaring from her iPod.
    Katie is our resident guy's girl. She's feisty and sassy, and she loves to drink beer. She's got this cute "girl next door" look about her, but once she opens her mouth, it's quite another story. With her razor-sharp wit and cunning knack for verbal repartee, she can win almost any argument you put in front of her. She's one of those people who can convince you that you're wrong and then somehow also magically convince you at the same time that you should be grateful to her for pointing it out. It's nothing short of a Jedi mind trick. I hired her because she can outmaneuver men at all of their own games: poker, darts, pool, beer pong, fantasy football, even car racing.
    Before joining the Hawthorne Agency, Katie did what every other good-looking blonde under thirty does in this town: She acted. But the few and far between one-liner parts that she did manage to land didn't exactly pay the bills. And when she learned that the money in this job is comparable to the salary of an established soap star, she didn't hesitate for a second. Plus, it gave her the opportunity to put her acquired acting skills to use on a regular basis. And because my