Free Reach For the Spy by Diane Henders Page B

lumbered into the
office yet again, I squelched my irritation and concentrated on my
entries. Even at nine o’clock in the morning, I caught a whiff of
alcohol on his breath when he loomed over me from behind. I’d been
working and trying to ignore the sound of his breathing for about
ten minutes when I felt the touch on my hair.
    It wasn’t noticeable
enough for me to comment, and in fact I thought I’d imagined it the
first time. A couple of minutes later, though, there was no
mistaking the feel of his hand stroking down my back.
    I stood immediately and
turned to face him, Eddy’s warning ringing in my head. “Don’t touch
me.”
    “Geez, you’re uptight.
Relax.”
    “Get away from me. I
don’t work until you leave.”
    “I’m paying you.” His
hard little eyes squinted even smaller. “Sit your ass down in this
chair and give me what I’m paying for.”
    “I am giving you what
you’re paying for. You’re not paying for the privilege of touching
me.”
    “Well, I’m paying more
than anybody else in town. Seems to me I should get some extra
services for that.”
    Shit, I’d had a bad
feeling that extra charge was going to come back and bite me. But I
was exhausted and on edge, and I was feeling distinctly threatened.
My temper flared despite my best efforts to control it.
    “You’re paying extra
because your working conditions are disgusting. If you want to pay
regular price, you’ll have to let me take the work home.”
    His enormous hand shot
out, remarkably fast for such a big man. He crushed my wrist in his
grip and yanked me toward him. “You’re gonna work here. And I’m
gonna get what I’m paying for.”
    Adrenaline flooded me
as I glared up at him from close range. “You have exactly three
seconds to let go of me.”
    “Or what?” He grabbed
my breast and squeezed. Hard.
    Pain and fear turned
into violent rage in a split second. I didn’t even consciously aim
the vicious kick that connected solidly with his crotch.
    In the second that it
took for the impact to register in his brain, I was already jerking
my arm out of his grasp. As he started to fold, I locked my fists
together and used my coiled-up momentum to unwind into a whistling
two-handed blow that caught him in the side of the face.
    The desk rattled when
he hit the floor. Completely out of control, I snatched up the
ledger book and flung it savagely at his head.
    “ I quit,
asshole! ” My voice was harsh and unrecognizable even to my own
ears. I stood panting for a few long seconds, fists clenched, using
all my willpower not to kick him into a bloody pulp while he lay
there clutching himself.
    At last, control won by
a tiny margin and I let out a wild roar of frustrated fury and
stomped from the room.
    I shoved past the two
incoming staff members and forged straight out to my car to burn
rubber out of the parking lot, mindlessly heading for the
highway.
    Common sense whispered
that I was far too upset to be driving.
    I pulled the car over
at the small community park and got out, shaking all over. Still
driven by a massive overdose of adrenaline, I launched myself into
a berserk sprint, circling the park until my heart threatened to
burst from my chest.
    My knees suddenly gave
out between paces, and the jolt of my body hitting the ground
knocked some sanity back into me. I lay sprawled where I’d fallen.
My pounding heart darkened the edges of my vision while I gasped
for air.
    The ground vibrated
with the rapid thudding of feet approaching at a run.
    For shit’s sake, could
this day get any worse? I’d thought I was completely alone, and the
park was surrounded by trees. Nobody should have been able to see
me.
    I groaned with the
sheer injustice of it all and resisted the urge to pound my head
against the ground. For one thing, it would be embarrassing to get
caught doing that. For another thing, I couldn’t lift my head
yet.
    “Aydan!” Kane’s voice.
“ Aydan! ”
    What the hell was he
doing here?
    I concentrated