The Secretary's Scandalous Secret by Cathy Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

the snug at the vicarage, curled up with a book, half-reading it, half-pleasantly day dreaming about Luc suddenly noticing her and sweeping her off her feet. At seventeen, it had been a very nice day-dream.
    A living, fire-breathing Luc with a mission to save her from herself was more than she could bear. He was just
too much.
She felt like a moth helplessly drawn to the blinding brightness of a fire, knowing that the nearer she got the more dangerous her situation became.
    She didn’t want him to turn his attention to her; she didn’t want him to think that he had to look after her because she was incapable of looking after herself. She wanted him back at arm’s length and she knew that, if she could only put him there, then she would be able to get on with her life.
    Agatha blinked and snapped back to the present. ‘You were saying… Um, you were going to tell me what information you think Stewart wants to drag out of me. I don’t know anything about computer software. I have a laptop in my bedroom, but I hardly ever use it. When I do, it’s just to email.’
    Luc looked at her flushed face: her half-parted mouth, her wide, incredulous eyes and that cloud of tousled fair hair that made her resemble a naughty, slightly dishevelled angel. A very sexy angel. He found that it was a struggle not to let his eyes dip to the generous curve of her breasts.
    He pushed himself away from the window, suddenly restless, but it was a very small room. From whatever angle, he seemed to be confronted with the sight of her smooth skin,the shadow of her cleavage, the slope of her shoulders and her hair tumbling over them.
    ‘You’re mistaken if you think that Stewart has hunted me down so that he could use me to pick my brain about your state secrets.’
    ‘You
know that you wouldn’t recognise one of those state secrets if it lay down in front of you waving a white flag and begging to be discovered. And I know that. But
he
doesn’t, does he?’
    ‘Oh, this is hopeless.’ She had been so optimistic that life as a single girl in the dating game would begin with Stewart. But the date had failed to live up to its promise, and now this.
    ‘The man is using you, and you have to get rid of him. Never mind the personal angle. From my point of view, you become a liability the minute your trustworthiness is in question.’ He had tough lines on company security. There were no loops through which anyone could wriggle.
    Agatha gaped at him. ‘Even though you
know
that I would never do anything? Even though I’ve just told you how hopeless I am when it comes to understanding all that computer jargon? Are you saying that you don’t
trust
me?’
    Luc shrugged and lowered his eyes. ‘Sex and pillow talk can work the strangest magic. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t talk you into a little hanky panky at the office when everyone else has left for the evening? He knows the layout of the building. There’s virtually no chance that he could hack into anything important but I’m not willing to risk a situation that could cost me millions.’
    Agatha wasn’t even sure that she would have continued seeing Stewart. She had felt no real connection there. But this was about principles.
    ‘I’ll…I’ll think about what you said.’
    ‘You’ll have to do a bit more than that, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Or else I’m out of a job?’
    ‘Regrettably.’
    Agatha didn’t think that he looked like a man wracked with remorse at the situation—but then dispatching a charity case wouldn’t exactly bring him out in a bout of cold sweat and panic, would it? She was utterly disposable. Always one to see the silver lining in the cloud, she slumped into the chair, battered and dismayed.
    Luc steeled himself and let the silence stretch between them, then he left quietly, shutting the door with a click that resonated in the room like a time bomb.
    Having dug deep and uncovered Dexter for the manipulative and possibly dangerous charmer that he was, Luc had