This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Echelon Press
9735 Country
Copyright © 2005 by
Lois Bonde
ISBN: 1-59080-394-9
www.echelonpress.com
All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any m
First Echelon Press
paperback printing: February 2005
Cover Artist:
Nathalie Moore
Editor: Tullye
Ralph
Printed in
Dear
Readers,
With each new day comes opportunity for growth. In an industry that has embraced the very
physical world of erotic fiction, we wanted to offer
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romance genre has offered stories filled with emotion and tenderness. Now Echelon Press invites you to step to the
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bring you the second book in our Entice: Ultra Sensual line. We've intensified the sexual tension and
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Lois Bonde has brought the characters of
Want more of our Entice line? Don't miss the
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MY HEART.
Echelon Press is always pleased to hear your thoughts
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house! Please send your comments to
suggestions@echelonpress.com.
Happy
Karen L.
Syed, President
Echelon Press
To women who keep on trying to be all they can
be.
Chapter
One
"Yes!"
Karn Borden concentrated on the screen of the computer. The passwords from JP had worked, but the
outmoded machine was taking forever. She
glanced at her watch. Less than five
minutes before the secretary would walk in.
"Come on.
Come on," she whispered. She
stretched out her fingers to relax them.
What if the relic was too slow? She had no recourse but to continue. She had to download her program.
Her fingers poised over the keyboard, she listened
to the welcomed silence behind her in the hall of the
Director Vincent Graves, whose office was on the
left, had the afternoon off. No
potential problem there. The other door
led to space formerly dedicated to public-relations,
but now awaited the arrival of James Berg, Jr., due back next week after
heading the company's
Karn quickly tamped down the anxiety she felt from
merely thinking about seeing James again.
She had several more days yet to steel herself, but just thinking about
him brought a familiar heat and tingling between her legs. She inhaled deeply and tried to refocus on
the empty office and not on James. But it wasn't easy.
She'd heard that Morrison wasn't happy about losing
his PR staff area, but there hadn't been much he could do. JP, James P. Berg, Sr., the owner of Berg
& Son, needed the area for his returning son's new office.
The computer drive hummed and the screen finally
changed, drawing Karn's attention. She
rapidly keyed in another short directive.
Her hands remained steady over the keyboard with a confidence born of
several years of professional investigative experience, preceded by years of
hacking while a computer-major at college.
The screen changed and she inserted a floppy disk to facilitate
installing her program.
"That's the way," she whispered as she
absently wiped a little stream of perspiration running down her temple from
under her wig. Time was running out, but
as she watched the screen, she smiled.
She loved this kind of work.
Never a dull moment. Her heart
beat faster as she waited.
She pressed her damp palms against her wildly-patterned miniskirt.
She'd picked this particular one because it was too short and way too
tight. The black heart-shaped beauty
mark below her lip tickled, but she couldn't remove it yet. Both were to draw any observer's gaze to
something that she could easily alter.
Then the witness would not be likely to identify her as the woman they
saw.
An echoing ding from the arriving elevator sounded
from down the hall. "There's the
bell. End of round one," she
announced in muted tones as she keyed in the last command. Her task completed, she jumped up from the
chair and pushed it back under the desk.
After dropping the ejected floppy disk into her enormous cloth shoulder
bag, she pulled out a hand-written note specifically prepared for this
eventuality. She darted around the tall
silk-leafed plant to the visitor's side of the L-shaped desk and posed bent
over to appear as if she'd just written the note. If someone came in the office, she hoped her
exposed thighs would take their attention off her face.
She couldn't hear anyone in the carpeted hall, but
sensed someone was coming when the door to the hall opened and the secretary,
Madeline Cory, walked in. She viewed
Karn with open-mouthed alarm. Her hand
flew to her chest as if to steady her heart beat.
Karn resisted smiling. She knew her see-through blouse and mini-skirt,
not to mention her curly red wig, were a far cry from a conservative image
created by James' secretary. Madeline's
graying hair, her gray suit, and high-necked blouse were exactly the appearance
Karn would expect to see there: proper and staid.
Madeline continued to press her hand on her chest
above her ample bosom. Karn hoped her
unauthorized appearance had not been too great a shock for the older
woman. After a long moment, Madeline
inhaled deeply and asked, "Who are you and.
"
Concluding the secretary wasn't close to fainting,
Karn waved the note in Madeline's face as she walked to the hall door. She spoke in a nasal voice with as much
Madeline Cory flushed and tried to focus on the
paper fluttering in front of her.
"Jimmy indeed," she muttered.
Karn cracked her gum for emphasis. "But I can't wait no more. He don't need a note
anyhow, ya know. You just tell Jimmy
I'll catch him at home. Gosh, I can't
wait to see his new place. Thanks ever
so much, hon."
Stepping toward the door, she crumpled the note and
stuffed it into her bag. "Ya know, you're a real peach.
I was real curious to see what his secretary was like. Ya know, see my competition
and like that. I'm real glad he's got a
secretary like you, ya know." She
giggled. "I'll bet you can even
type good."
Karn slipped out the door with a little wave. She had to sidestep to miss a man entering the
office in a hurry. He was just under six feet, about fifty-five with well-trimmed
graying-brown hair. Director Vincent
Graves. She made a mental note of his
preoccupied demeanor. Muttering to
himself, he obviously was worried about something.
She wondered what he was doing heading for his
office when he had requested the whole afternoon off. She exhaled through pursed lips, thankful he
hadn't returned earlier to find her at the computer outside his office. She hurried down the hall to the far door in
the bank of elevators. Her heartbeat was
still rapid, but thanks to staying in shape, she wasn't breathing hard. She glanced back to see Madeline still at the
door watching her. She smiled and curled
her fingers in another little wave.
But when she pushed the call
button, she froze with her hand in mid-air as the bell sounded and the first
elevator door opened. A tall man exited
and without a glance back in Karn's direction, turned down the hall toward the
office where Madeline stood.
"Why, Mr. Berg, you're here early!" the
secretary cried. "Oh, your father
will be so glad to see you. He's been in
here twice looking for you."
"He knows I just couldn't stay away,"
James responded with a laugh.
At the sound of his deep voice, goose bumps pebbled
on Karn's arms and back. She watched
James walk down the hall, his tight buns and muscled
legs encased in a dark gray business suit.
Six years had passed since the night when she saw him last, but there
was no mistaking that black wavy hair and t
Karn blinked her eyes, trying to erase his image as
he turned and looked back down the hall at her.
She felt his gaze sweep over her garishly clad body. His dismissal of her was instant, but that
didn't prevent her nipples hardening, hoping for his touch.
"I'll pop up and let him know I'm here,"
he told the secretary without taking his gaze off of Karn. He turned and started walking back in Karn's
direction.
She gasped and looked away. He hadn't recognized her so far, but he would
if he got closer. Her hand shook as she
repeatedly pressed the elevator call button.
The elevator doors opened and Karn darted in. She pressed the button to close the doors
rather than waiting for them to close automatically.
"Hold the elevator!"
Karn ignored James calling to her. The doors slid shut and she glanced at the
two men standing behind her, wearing identical frowns. Knowing they would expect her to try to open
the doors, she shifted to hide the operations panel as she pretended to do so. But the car jerked
upward and Karn exhaled the breath she'd been holding. She turned to the men and shrugged. They went on with their discussion and paid
her no mind. Seconds passed that seemed
like hours before the doors opened on the next floor.
Karn exited alone, and with her head lowered, she hurried down the carpeted hall to one of two unmarked doors in the center of the carpeted hallway. A glance up and down the hall told her no one saw her as she ducked through the door and closed it quietly behind her.
The long conference room in which she stood
contained a highly polished walnut table surrounded by burgundy-leather
upholstered chairs. The drapes on the
windows were drawn closed, but the open weave of the
almond-colored fabric provided plenty of light to allow her to cross the room
and enter another unmarked door.
Switching on the light in the private powder room,
she took a welcome moment to breathe deeply before she got to work on totally
changing her appearance.
A long, navy-wool skirt and matching jacket came out
of her oversized shoulder bag and went on right over her miniskirt and
blouse. She whipped off the outrageous
wig and pulled on a grayed one with a bun, covering her long hair she'd pinned
tightly against her head under a wig cap.
The beauty mark peeled off easily. With a tissue with cleansing cream already in
it, she wiped away the gaudy lipstick while she buttoned the jacket.
She winced as she peeled off the long eyelashes and
then slid large-rimmed glasses into place.
The big, gold clips came off the shoes, leaving sedate modest navy
pumps. The gum landed in the toilet with
the soiled tissue. She flushed away the
evidence. The wig, shoe clips, lashes,
and the collapsed bag went into the thin leather briefcase that had been inside
the huge bag all along.
The briefcase latched, Karn did a quick check in the
mirror. Her ID tag straightened on her
lapel, she patted the lace hankie displayed in her jacket breast pocket. A quick coat of pale lipstick and a powdered
nose completed the desired appearance of a sedate older woman.
She thought of how easy it had been to enter the
office and access the computer illegally.
No wonder the industrial spy she was looking for was working here. Though she sometimes worked like a thief, she
was not on the wrong side of the law.
Her job to uncover the industrial spy had brought her here.
Another of the reasons JP had hired her was to have
her appear in various offices without an ID, as she had in Madeline's, to test
the security procedures. Armed with the
results of her tests, he would have the evidence for instructing the company in
better security measures for the business in the future.
If the employees functioned properly when she
appeared without ID, they would call security at once. Nonetheless, the idea of getting
caught was abhorrent to Karn. She
played her roles as carefully, or more carefully, than a crook would. With a change of clothes and wigs, she could
move in and out of places that her male counterparts could not as easily, or as
willingly.
The industrial spy, who was stealing bid information
and designs, was making serious inroads into the company, which warranted the
hiring of an investigator. Having been a
life-long friend of the family as well as a determined private investigator,
Karn felt all the more focused on succeeding in this
case.
She ached to relax against the cool tiled wall, but
her experience working as a PI would not allow her to drop her guard. Not yet.
Not until she knew for certain she was in the
clear.
She wanted to think her dedication to her job
contributed a great deal to putting Borden and Company on the leading edge of
investigating white-collar crime, especially computer fraud. She had worked for her father's firm since
college and wanted her father, who started the business when she was a kid, to
think that, too. He never said if he
did, and although that saddened her, it hadn't stopped her for a minute.
"Karn?" a male voice called from the
conference room. The thick carpet in the
conference room had muffled his approaching footsteps.
More tense than she realized, Karn
jumped but recovered easily. Satisfied
with what she saw in the mirror, she reached for the knob, switched off the
light, and exited the small room with her briefcase. "I'm here, JP," she responded with
an easy smile.
"How'd you make out? That timing was tight."
JP's pure-white hair contrasted with his dark suit
that he'd accented with a silk jacquard tie.
A tall man, he was like a loving uncle to her. Grasping his offered hand, she placed an
affectionate kiss on his cheek.
"Piece of cake," she said, laughing
quietly so he wouldn't know just how close she had been to being discovered and identified.
Because he'd hired her, she had a responsibility to him, but as his
friend, she didn't want him to worry unnecessarily. He had enough to worry about with a spy among
his ranks.
"I was done when I heard Madeline arriving, but
Vince passed me just as I was leaving.
If he'd shown up a few minutes earlier, I would have been in a sticky situation. But he paid
absolutely no attention to me. Just
charged toward his office, like a man with something important on his
mind. Didn't he take the afternoon off,
JP?"
"He did. Told me himself at the meeting yesterday. Said he had to take some personal-leave time for the day."
He raised his hand to snap his fingers. "By the way, at the meeting, Morrison
was complaining more about the small space he was down-sized to, in order to
make room for James' office. He's known since we began the reorganization, but he can't
seem to accept it. Nothing seems to
please him anymore, and I suppose that's something I should consider now."
Karn could see the look of dismay and pain on his
face. JP obviously cared for his
employees a great deal.
"Damn, I hate suspecting all these people who
have worked for me for years." JP
absently rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "Sorry, my dear. I still want to believe that no one who works
for me would steal from me."
"Well, Vincent is back in his office now. Just when we're looking for someone who's
behaving in an other-than-normal fashion, everyone
decides to act differently."
"I don't know what Vince is up to, but the
public-relations director, Morrison? He
complains all the time about something, but give me a room full of reporters
trying to sniff out something going on in Berg & Son, and I'd pick Morrison
to calm them down every time."
"And your trouble started before you downsized
his space," she commented as she rested her briefcase on the arm of the
end chair.
"I nearly forgot." JP's face lit up with a broad smile. "Everything is happening at once
today. You'll be happy to hear that
James is back already."
Karn's body seemed to cease functioning at his
reminder, except for her fingers, so tightly wrapped around the briefcase
handle that they had turned white. Her
heart was pounding so rapidly she felt certain it would burst. The pounding echoed in her ears. She remembered his gaze as it had swept over
her by the elevator. His gaze had felt
as real as if his long fingers had they slid over her naked body. "Yes, I.
"
"Security called from the lobby to say he's on
the way up just before Madeleine called to say he'd stopped there first. I told my secretary to send him in here. Just like James to pop up without calling to
say he was in town already. Must have
gotten back last night."
Karn shook herself mentally and fought for control
of her emotions. She could not let the mention of James' name, seeing him again, or the threat of
his walking in now, affect her like this. Years of trying to erase his image from her
memory since he walked out on her had failed.
Why couldn't she forget?
"It's a good thing you were quick,
Karn." Karn's attention snapped
back to JP's words. "He knows
that's to be his office. A few minutes
earlier and James might have walked in on you.
That would have been something to see." He chuckled at the idea.
Karn tried to laugh.
To her ear it sounded brittle.
"If he's coming, I'd better leave now, JP. I won't intrude on his homecoming. I installed the program, and we can talk
about the breaches in your security at our regular meeting Sunday
evening."
JP's eyebrows rose.
"Can't you wait here to see James?
I know he'd be delighted to find you here, but of course, you'll see him
later," he concluded easily.
"And I suppose you'd better get out of the building before someone
else recognizes you and wonders what a private investigator is doing here. After all, we don't want to ruin all your
work now."
What had JP meant about her seeing him later? She wasn't ready to face James yet, and she
wondered for a moment if she ever would be.
She raised her chin and swallowed to clear her throat that felt thick.
"Yes, I've got to get out past the security
desk the same way I came in. No one
other than you, or James, of course, now that he's back, must know I'm working
on this case for you. We want the spy to
feel safe. If he or she connects my
being here with my working to investigate this computer crime, then they'll be
even harder to catch. They'll pay more
attention to covering their electronic trail."
JP nodded.
"We'll see you as usual on Sunday evening at the house. We'll plan next week. Should be ready to bait the trap, right?"
"Whenever you're ready with the faked specs." Karn turned toward the nearer of the two
doors through which she could exit the long room.
"I'm very anxious for this nasty business to be
done with. I don't like the feeling it's
given me that I'm in the dark as to whom I can trust in my own company. And I really wanted this cleared up before
James got back."
So did I, Karn thought,
inhaling deeply. She needed to escape
quickly before James arrived. Why did he
have to come back a week early and before the investigation was all wrapped up?
"You are going to tell James what's going on,
aren't you, JP?" She hoped her
voice sounded stronger than it felt.
"I'll have to, but I think I'll wait a
bit. No sense ruining his first few days
home."
Karn smiled.
"See you Sunday, then."
As a habit, she placed a quick goodbye kiss on his cheek, something
she'd done since childhood. Over his
shoulder she saw the far door to the conference room open. A tall man in his early thirties stepped
in. Yes, thirty-two to be exact. James.
He hesitated as he witnessed a woman kissing his
father in a dimly lit conference room.
Suddenly, she felt his anger toward her like a slap on her face.
There was anger in his expression, but no
recognition! No, not with the wig and
glasses, she realized. Relieved, she was
able to draw a deep breath and step back, keeping JP between her and James.
"Father?" James
called out hesitantly.
JP spun toward the voice. His face curved into a broad smile. "James!
It's good to see you, son."
JP walked toward his son and greeted him with his arms outstretched.
Desperate, Karn sought escape. With a voice not any louder than it had to be
for JP to hear her, she addressed his back.
"Thank you, Mr. Berg."
She foolishly took one more look down the length of
the room before she exited. Embracing
his father, the man that Karn had known and loved as long as she could
remember, the man to whom she had given her virginity, the man who then
rejected her and walked away, looked over his father's shoulder at her. His gaze locked on hers. His face was filled
with bold animosity for her. Again. That same horrible glare had been directed at
her once before, the last time she saw James, the night before he left to take
over as head of the California office.
With a chill running down her spine, Karn opened the
hall door and fled down the carpeted corridor to the nearby elevators. She could hear JP saying, "We didn't
expect you until next week. Your mother
will be so pleased you're home early."
Waiting for the elevator car to arrive, she watched
them from the corner of her eye as they exited the same door Karn had used and
walked arm-in-arm down the hall in the opposite direction.
"I got in too late last night to call,"
James said.
Karn could feel the effect of his baritone voice
warming her like stepping into a hot bath after ice skating
at
"Come on into my office and let's get a cup of
coffee. You'll have to
"
The elevator doors closed behind her and cut off
their voices. Karn rode down in silence
and exited on the street level. She
concentrated on achieving a normal heart and breathing rate. She wasn't in the clear yet and couldn't let
seeing James keep her from focusing on her job.
At the front entrance, she approached the security
desk. The guard was checking in a
delivery, so she tossed the pass she'd unclipped from her pocket into the basket
on the desk. She crossed the lobby and
went out onto the busy sidewalk. Without
looking back, she dashed to the corner where she hailed a taxi to take her
directly home.
The taxi ride sped by in a montage of blurred street
scenes and honking horns. Her hands
trembled and hindered her attempt to hurry through the two locked entrance
doors to her building. Once inside her
apartment, she collapsed against the door that closed and locked behind her.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but still could not
erase the image of James. His physique, well-muscled from swimming, sailing, and other sports, had
filled out and matured. He'd looked more
handsome and confident than ever with his broad shoulders framing his dark suit
and his white shirt accenting his California-t
Even across the conference room, she'd seen the
light blue of his eyes set beneath his dark brows. Black hair and blue eyes. On him the combination looked spectacular. The children she used to dream they would
have one day would all have his blue eyes.
To a woman of eighteen in love, everything had seemed so simple back
then.
"No," she cried out loud, her outstretched
hand slicing through the air like a karate chop. She would not let herself think about their
last night together. She slid closed the
extra deadbolt on her door and headed for her dressing room.
Karn lived alone in her apartment. The second smaller bedroom made a perfect
wardrobe room to hold her costume disguises, wigs, and makeup. Dressing there for her special assignments
left space in her bedroom for her desk with its computer and printer stand
beside the case files. The desk chair,
dresser, and a queen-sized bed to accommodate her taller-than-average height,
filled the rest of the room.
An apartment in the city was a big advantage and
allowed her to be near the companies from which she got most of her
investigation assignments. Borden and
Company employees weren't private investigators as seen in the movies with
trench coats and cigarettes in the corner of their mouths. They were men and women who discretely
uncovered industrial fraud and found design thieves as well as other
white-collar criminals. They never
followed wayward spouses with a camera, but the Borden PIs often tracked down
manuscripts stolen from computer systems and nailed the thieves. They could show companies how to make their
computer systems safer from thieves and illegal hackers as she was doing for
JP.
There was no son to share the company name with her
father, Matthew Borden, just an only child, Karn. All her life she had been
made painfully aware that because she was a female, she didn't measure
up as a successor to his business. But that never stopped her from trying to succeed. She worked hard to replace the son Matt had
always wanted.
By now, however, she had proven she could be just as
successful as a son could have been. She
was a good investigator, and she longed for her father's praise and
agreement. Although her father had never
said as much to her, she never stopped wishing he would.
The wig and double layer of clothes off, Karn pulled
on her terry robe and only took time to brush out her long thick hair before
she sat at the computer. Her shower would
wait until she wrote her report describing exactly what transpired at the Berg
& Son offices.
Composing a thorough report, she included comments
about Madeline Cory not doing as much as she should have to identify a stranger
without an ID tag in the administrative area.
In order for the company to be secure, the staff would have to show no
hesitation about questioning strangers and calling security quickly when they
needed to.
Madeline Cory had been promoted
from her position as manager of the secretarial pool to be executive secretary
for James. Until today she was secretary
to an empty office, but that was no excuse.
Had the spy Karn was trying to uncover gotten past Madeline to steal
information from JP?
As usual she laid a great deal of blame on the
outdated computers. With the loss of
contracts since the spy began his work, JP had economized by not buying new
computers for the support staff that could have provided a much better security
system.
Having finished the report, Karn stepped into a hot
shower and let the water wash away the tension as she tried to clear her mind
of her work. Just relax, she told
herself as she massaged shampoo into her hip-length hair. She rubbed her scalp to relieve the itchy
sensation she always felt for several hours after wearing a wig.
Tipping her head back, she let the warm water run
over her head and down over her body.
She took a bar of soap and rubbed the lather over her skin from her face
to her toes. She rinsed, lifting her
breasts to be certain no suds were trapped under their
weight. Her nipples were tight and
rubbing her hands over them made them tingle.
She slid her sudsy palm over her stomach and between her furred lips. Just thinking of James had hardened the
little nub she found. She held open the lips
and rinsed away the heat, or tried to.
By the time the suds were rinsed
away, her mind had shelved the investigation in progress. Instead, it presented the picture she had
tried to discard.
James.
And thinking of James made the
heat between her legs so intense that her juices flowed from wanting him so
much.