Page 22 of Spooked

“I’ll ask.” I checked my watch—the bus left in ten minutes, and the stop was almost half a mile away. Crap. “Or maybe I could email?”

“Is there a problem?”

I almost said “No, everything’s fine,” but if I did that, Mr. Vale would keep on expecting me to work in the evenings, wouldn’t he? And I hated going home late. It wasn’t only the bus ride; the walk from the bus stop to my apartment made me nervous. Most of the streetlights were out, and drug dealers used one corner as an office.

“Actually, there is. My bus leaves soon, and I don’t want to miss it.”

Blank look. “Why are you taking the bus? Your résumé says you have a driver’s licence.”

“My car needs repairs.”

“Well, get it fixed.”

“Oh, just like that? I have news for you, Mr. I-spent-five-thousand-bucks-to-sit-in-a-tree—repairs cost money, and I don’t have any.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. This is why I shouldn’t drink alcohol at a work event.”

“You honestly believe I’d leave you to make your own way home at this time of night? Do you really think that little of me?”

“Uh…”

“On second thought, don’t answer that. My driver will take you. And assuming you decide to come into work on Monday, ask Rhonda to give you an advance on your salary so you can fix your car. I’ll authorise it.”

He had me. He knew he did. The smug smile gave it away. Now I’d have to work next week, and several weeks after that too, because if Mr. Vale paid me enough money up front to cover a fuel pump and four new tyres, I couldn’t leave Dunnvale Holdings until I’d paid him back.

“I’ll go ask about The Treehouse.”

* * *

“Oh, wow. Do you get to keep the shoes?” Meera asked.

“I tell you my boss is running a sex club in the basement of his office, and that’s your question? Do I get to keep the shoes?”

I wasn’t entirely sure I should have disclosed that snippet of information under the NDA, but the legal jargon seemed more concerned with protecting the clients’ identities, and I’d definitely keep quiet about those. And technically, Meera Adams worked for Mr. Vale anyway.

“Okay, I’ll ask a different question—do you get a free membership at the sex club?”

“Meera!”

“What? If you got laid, maybe you’d loosen up a bit.”

“You know why I don’t get laid.”

“No, I know why you didn’t get laid at college. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

“Massachusetts.”

“Whatever. Your dad isn’t spying on you now. You have the freedom to sleep with whoever you want.”

My father had made no secret of the fact that my future husband would expect me to be a virgin. I’d received several stern lectures on the subject before I left for college, all of which avoided the word “sex” and instead focused on sin, shame, and the importance of traditional values. Values I’d stopped sharing when I saw just how much of the world I was missing out on. My father hadn’t even wanted me to go to Harvard. Only the influence of my grandfather had allowed me to pursue my dreams. I’d always known I was on a time limit, so I’d pushed myself to graduate high school early and headed straight to college, but after Daada had passed away in my final year of med school, I’d lost that layer of protection, and things had gone rapidly downhill.

Over the years I spent in Boston, I’d had the worst luck with men. I’d heard the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech twenty times, and after the tenth such episode, I began to suspect that it was in fact me who had the problem. Did my breath smell? Was I a terrible kisser? Or had my refusal to jump into bed on the first date been the source of the problem?

No.

No, it hadn’t.

Potential suitor twenty-one at least had the guts to tell me the truth. That my father’s spies watched me, and if I got too close to a man, he paid them to break it off. And while twenty-one had spilled the beans, he’d still taken the cash. Two thousand bucks. That’s how much I was worth. In those days, I’d owned purses that cost more.

Meera told me I should just pick up a guy in a bar and have a one-night stand, get it over with, but that idea didn’t sit right with me either. While I didn’t view marriage as a necessity, there had to be feelings involved. To me, sex was a meeting of hearts and minds, not simply a set of instructions from a biology textbook.

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