The Double Life of My Hot Secretary novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Wrong Name

Vaughn's POV

At seven o'clock exactly, Tara put on her coat.

I watched her through the glass wall of my office. She switched off her lamp, squared a pile of folders and walked to the elevator without looking at me.

She had asked for that rule. I had agreed to it. I had not understood how much I would hate it.

The elevator chimed, and she was gone.

I sat there with a stack of numbers I couldn't read and thought about the back of her knee.

I had held it for only a moment, but I hadn't been able to think of anything else since.

I had called her Miss Rendell for five years, and she thought it was contempt.

It was the opposite.

On her first day, a twenty-three-year-old with a cheap blazer and a very straight spine had put out her hand and said, "Tara Kilgallon."

I had said it back once, and I had liked how it felt in my mouth.

That night my father told me over dinner that a man should never learn what he was afraid to lose.

I was twenty-eight. I already knew what my father did with the things I loved.

So I got her name wrong the next morning, and I kept getting it wrong, because as long as it was wrong, it was only a word.

And now she was gone at seven, and I had said it right on Friday night, and it had cost me a week of sleep.

On Wednesday night I drove to my father's house in Lincoln Park.

The house was large and warm and smelled of roast lamb. Richard Draycott met me at the door in his grey cardigan.

"Vaughn." He kissed my cheek. "You look tired."

"I'm fine."

"You never are."

He poured two whiskies in the study, where the fire was lit and the leather chairs were arranged just so.

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