His Secret Desire (3 page)

"Why are you laughing?" He asked.

"You have no idea how totally ridiculous what
you just asked me is. Like I said, I don’t do exclusivity and as
for you learning everything there is to know about me? Forget it.
You either trust me or you don't, so the answer is no. We can
discuss you hiring me on the usual terms, but that's as far as it
goes."

Clayton took a breath and then leaned forward
onto the table between them.

"That Ms. Maldon, is unfortunately a bigger
problem than you spotting my technology or being able to evade it.
A much bigger problem. But it's not the problem I'm most concerned
about."

A huge part of Katy wanted to just bolt and
run. This was unwanted interest at its most intense, but if she
just ran wouldn't it only make things worse?

Clayton leaned in even closer towards her.
There were only a couple of people in the café now and just one
teenage staff member busy cleaning off a counter top.

"Come here." He said to her. Katy didn’t like
being told what to do. Not usually, but there was something about
Clayton that was different. Her heart hadn’t stopped racing since
he had sat down in front of her. She had no interest in rock stars
or celebrities, not unless they were clients, but this man was
making her feel like a little girl again looking at her favorite
boy band member. It was compelling, intoxicating and incredibly
frustrating all at the same time.

She leaned in towards him.

He looked into her eyes with only inches
between them and my God was he gorgeous. She could only imagine
melting into bed with him, feeling his mouth against hers, his arms
surrounding her, and then in an instant he was there, really there;
his lips were against hers.

This was happening. This was real and the
sensation was intoxicating. The daring nature of his public act of
stolen intimacy sent a rush of excitement swirling through her. it
was more physical contact than she had had with a member of the
opposite sex in years.

The pressure of his lips lasted just a
moment, just long enough for him to reassure himself that she would
not pull away from him, at least not for a moment, and then he was
gone again.

"That," he said with complete composure, "is
the biggest problem of all."

He stood up, put his glasses back on and
smiled.

"Don’t look so shocked." He said. "Surely I'm
not the first man to lose control of himself in your presence."

Uncharacteristically, Katy had nothing to
say.

"I'll be in touch." He said and then walked
out of the café, leaving Katy sitting in a daze.

Maria, the little old lady sitting opposite
Katy who she regularly sat with and bought coffee for, caught her
eye and smiled.

"Sometimes you have to give a little to get a
little honey. Don’t be like me and hide it all away your whole
life. Nobody even knows who the hell I am anymore…" her voice
trailed off into a mumble and the smile left the old woman's
face.

Katy set the business card onto the passenger seat
beside her and started her drive home. She lived a little outside
of town in a small farm house that she had converted into a
sanctuary of absolute privacy. It was invisible from the road that
led up to it and if you didn't know it was there you would never
guess that any one lived there.

She still had an impulse to throw the card
away and forget about Clayton Hargrave. In fact, she felt an
impulse today to throw everything away and to disappear again,
leaving no trace of her existence in the little north eastern town
she had called home for nearly a year. The encounter had left her
profoundly unsettled. Her business had depended for a long time on
a complex interaction of technology and instinct and today
threatened to be her first major screw up. She shouldn't have
introduced herself as a privacy specialist, that was a major
mistake. Over confidence maybe? Or had she been caught off guard by
the good-looking stranger?

Then there was the eye-wear. It would have
been better if she had just let him record her than to challenge
him on it. Facial recognition would bring up nothing about her, she
had made sure of that and there wasn't a signal coming off her that
could be traced to anything, anywhere. She conducted regular scans
to make sure she was clean.

This was what you would call a bad day at the
office.

She arrived home and let herself in just as
her cell phone went. It would be her celebrity client asking how
things were going in shutting down the story of his x-rated, class
A indiscretions.

No more celebrities.
She swore to
herself. Business people were better; more rational and more
serious about their privacy. This celebrated idiot was blaming her
for his cocaine fuelled episode with hookers, something she had
never guaranteed she could protect him against. Her specialty was
electronic privacy, not damage control for idiots with
self-destructive behavior patterns.

"Maldon." She answered the phone coldly.

"Katy Maldon?" The male voice was too
familiar, too frighteningly recent. She had only left the café a
bare half hour ago.

"How did you get this number?"

"I got it from Peter Goldstein, he
recommended your services very highly."

"Who is this?"

"My name is Dale Hargrave, of Hargrave
Robotics."

"What the hell is this crap?"

There was a pause.

"Peter told me you weren't exactly friendly
but this is a little too much." The man said.

Katy's mind raced; first she meets Clayton
Hargrave in her favorite local java house where he calls her out on
her privacy technology but also offers her a high paying job in his
company. Then he plants his gorgeous lips on hers in public,
leaving her stunned. Now she gets a call from someone else from
Hargrave Robotics trying to contract her services as well?

Too much of a damn co-incidence. This day was
crazy enough as it was, she was not going to let it get any
worse.

"I'm not taking on new clients at the moment
Mr. Hargrave. Thanks for the call."

"Now hold on a minute Maldon, you haven't
even heard me out yet."

"This conversation is over."

She ended the call and sat down. This day
wasn’t getting any easier. She would need to unwind somehow, so she
headed to her bedroom and got her running clothes. There was a
quiet five mile run she did regularly in the woods behind her home
that always helped to get her back on track when she couldn't shake
the unease. She put on the sneakers, grabbed her iPod and headed
out. She was about a mile into the run when stopped, removed the
buds from her ears and did a slow, full three sixty turn, scanning
the forest all around her and the trail behind. It was something
she had never thought to do before, but today she had the constant
gnawing feeling that the pounding music in her ears was masking
something else, hiding another noise in her surroundings.

Come on Katy, shake it off, let's get
going.

She continued her run but didn't put the
headphones back in. Something was wrong, she just couldn't put her
finger on it and although her heart was racing from the run she
couldn't ignore the underlying trace of anxiety adding to the rapid
pace of her pulse.

She pressed on, setting a faster pace than
usual and eventually saw her house coming up ahead, the last hill
before arriving home. She instinctively breathed a sigh of relief
thinking of the relative security of being in her house again.

"Oh shit." She stopped dead in her
tracks.

There was a sleek car outside her house with
no reason in the world for it to be there. Katy Maldon didn’t do
visitors and nobody ever got lost in the woods out this way.

She looked behind her and considered running
back into the woods, but she had just come from there and had been
almost overcome by the dread feeling of paranoia.

No. She would wait and watch from where she
was. No more bad decisions today.

She began to back away down the hill away
from the house.

"Katy." The voice made her freeze. "Ms.
Maldon, I'm presuming that's you over there."

It was
him
. Him
again
. Clayton
Hargrave had come into view, standing on the edge of her porch,
still dressed to run the world in his sharp business attire and
looking as relaxed about having stalked her to her home as though
he were an old friend she had invited over for coffee every other
Wednesday.

"What do you want Hargrave?" She said,
advancing up the hill towards him, her instinct for attack kicking
into high gear. "And how did you find me? No-one has this
address."

Clayton smiled.

"Well that's hardly true, now is it?" He said
playfully. "I have it. My team has it and we aren't no-one."

Stay low. Stay clean. Leave no trace. Her
mantra, the one she shared with her oldest friend and professional
associate Suzy Falstaff, had just been seriously, possibly
irreparably violated.

"You're beginning to annoy me Hargrave. I
said I wasn't interested in your offer and you weren't invited up
here so I think you need to leave my property before I call the
police."

"Do the police have this address as
well?"

"I can give it to them pretty easily."

"Ms. Maldon, really, I think you're getting
the wrong idea here. The fact is that I tried getting your number
but obviously you haven't got one listed and as your cell phone
signal is masked and there's no fixed line coming into this house
then I had to be creative."

"This is bullshit. I'm calling the
police."

"There's really no need for that. Besides,
something tells me that someone as interested in privacy as you
probably doesn’t need any extra attention from the authorities." He
stopped and waited, calling her bluff. "Why else would you be
living out here in the middle of nowhere in a property listed as
vacant."

Shit.
Katy had to hold on tight not to
lose it. The asshole had done his homework and this was getting way
too much in a very short amount of time.

"You really are one nosy little sun of a gun,
aren't you?"

"Ms. Maldon, may I please come inside and sit
down? I'm beginning to get the impression that I'm not welcome
here, standing out on your porch like this."

Despite the fact that bringing someone inside
her home was anathema to her, Katy knew he was right. She
definitely did not want cops snooping around and asking
questions.

"Okay Hargrave, you can come inside but then
I want answers."

She walked up to the house and passed within
inches of the tall man on the porch in order to get to her front
door. He smelled good, masculine, expensive, understated, damn
sexy, but it didn't make her feel any better. If anything it was
having the opposite effect.

"You'll have to excuse me." She said. "I've
just been running."

He smiled and followed her into the
house.

"Can I get you anything?" She asked.

"Wow." He said. "No really, I mean wow. How
long have you lived here?"

"That's none of your business."

"The house was built four years ago but never
occupied. Don’t tell me you've been living here all that time."

He was right about the house but way off on
the time frame. He obviously didn't know everything, or was
pretending not to.

"What if I have?" She said.

"Well what do you have against pictures for a
start?"

She looked around. It was true that she had
never hung a single picture on the walls. They had been bare for so
long she had forgotten about them.

"I like walls." She said. "Why don’t you sit
down, I'll get you some coffee."

"Do you have any tea?" He asked, sitting down
on a barstool by her kitchen area counter top.

"No. Just coffee. I've got Costa Rican,
Colombian, some Java Sumatra--"

"Got any Jamaica Blue Mountain?"

"You don’t ask for much do you? That stuff is
a little pricy for me. Not that I wouldn't mind tasting it of
course."

"Well I think that could be arranged. If you
ever come over to my place for a visit I'll personally make you a
cup."

He was good. Really good. A charmer,
obviously used to talking and smiling his wealthy way into the
pants of swooning females. But that wasn't Katy Maldon's profile;
he was way off here.

"Is that an invitation?" She said.

"Is that an acceptance?"

"Definitely not."

She busied herself preparing coffee, grinding
fresh Indonesian Arabica beans, one of her current favorites.
Obviously not Jamaica Blue Mountain quality but still good
nevertheless. It would have to satisfy her gourmet guest's
taste.

"Let's cut to the chase Hargrave; why the
stalker act? What are you doing here and how did you find my
address?"

"I came for two reasons." He said, still
looking around the room for any signs of a personal life. "The
first is to find out if you will reconsider my offer."

"The answer is still no."

"The second is to ask you to have dinner with
me tonight."

Katy laughed harshly. Clayton had a way of
making her feel very, very uncomfortable but very intrigued at the
same time. She had never had a visitor to the house in the eleven
months she had been living there and like any recluse it made her
flesh crawlingly uneasy to have anyone in the house at all. Add to
that, that she had sworn off relationships four long years ago when
she had gone into hiding and this was making her very uncomfortable
indeed. Most guys were as easy to swat away as house flies and were
as about as desirable, but Clayton Hargrave clearly wasn't just any
guy.

"I'll cook." He added.

"Is that a threat?" She answered
reflexively.