The Double Life of My Hot Secretary novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Day I Quit
Tara quits her cruel boss in front of the whole floor, goes to the club where she strips, and finds the fifty-thousand-dollar private client is Vaughn.
Two women in the elevator were guessing the size of my boss's cock, and I was standing right behind them.
"It has to be tiny," said the one holding a folder against her chest.
"Nobody is that cruel unless something's missing."
"That's what I heard," said the other.
"Why else would he make a man from accounting cry in front of the whole board?"
I held my coffee and kept my face blank.
They were wrong, and I could have proved it.
Two years ago I walked into Vaughn Draycott's office with a contract.
I found him alone at his desk with his hand around his cock.
He didn't stop.
He looked right at me and said, "Leave it on the chair, Miss Rendell."
My name is Tara Kilgallon, and he has never once got it right.
The woman with the folder saw me in the mirrored wall and went white.
"Isn't that his secretary?" she whispered.
"Oh, God," said the other. "She'll tell him. We'll be gone by lunch."
"Relax," I said. "I'm quitting today, and nobody's hearing anything from me."
Their mouths fell open.
I turned back to the doors.
On forty-one I took out my second phone and sent my usual Friday message to the contact saved as Pharmacy.
Friday. He's at his desk. All normal.
The reply came before the doors had finished opening.
Thank you, dear. Don't let him rattle you.
I put the phone away.
Nothing about today was going to be normal.
The forty-first floor was glass and silence.
Eighty people sat at their desks, and every one of them went quiet when the elevator chimed.
Vaughn stood behind his desk with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and one hand on a file.
He didn't look up.
"Miss Rendell. These need handling before lunch."
Five years of that voice.
Five years of dry cleaning, dinner reservations and midnight calls, and his hand dropping a folder in front of me without a glance.
I picked up the folder and threw it back on his desk.
Pages slid across the glass and fell on the floor.
"I quit," I said.
His head came up.
For the first time since I'd known him, he had no line ready.
"Are you ill?" he asked.
"No." I tucked my hair behind my ear, which I always did when I was about to lie. "I'm awake."
The whole floor was watching through the glass wall, and nobody moved.
"You made me miss my friends' weddings," I said.
"You made me miss my birthday four years running."
"You have called me Miss Rendell for five years, and my name is Kilgallon."
"You can't quit, Tara."
It was the first time he had ever said my first name.
My stomach dropped, and I hated that it did.
"Watch me," I said.
I turned for the door, and his hand closed around my wrist.
He spun me back and pinned me against the glass with his whole body.
His forearm pressed my shoulder, and his breath was hot against my temple.
Out in the bullpen, eighty people looked away at the same moment.
"People don't walk away from me," he said, very low.
I could feel every inch of him through his shirt.
I hated that I could.
"Then you're about to find out they do," I said, and my voice shook, and I made it work anyway.
"You're controlling and arrogant, Vaughn, and you think the world is yours."
"It isn't, and I'm done being part of it."
Something moved in his face.
His jaw tightened, and then his grip loosened.
He let me go.
I walked out past eighty desks with my chin up.
At reception I laid my badge on the counter, and I took the stairs, because I did not trust myself in an elevator.
Ten minutes later I was in a taxi, giving the driver an address that wasn't home.
The Lantern was dim and loud and smelled of glitter and gin.
In the back room I peeled off the blouse and skirt I had worn for five years.
I put on black lace, silver heels and the mask.
In the mirror there was no Miss Rendell, only Ember.
I started dancing three years ago because my mother's stroke left a bill I couldn't pay.
I kept going because on that stage nobody owned me.
I danced until my legs burned and my head went quiet.
Afterward Gus found me in the corridor, rubbing his bald head.
"Someone's asked for you," he said.
"I don't do privates."
"He knows that. He's offering fifty thousand dollars."
I stared at him. "For one night?"
"One hour, and I checked him out. He's clean, and I'll be outside the door."
Fifty thousand would cover my mother's care home for five months.
I had just quit the job that paid for it.
"One time," I said.
"One time," Gus agreed, and pointed down the VIP hall.
The room was dark and warm.
A man stood at the far end with his back to me, shirt off, shoulders square against the low light.
"Hello?" I said.
He turned around.
Vaughn Draycott looked at me, and he did not know me.
Not the mask, not the hair, not my voice, which I had pitched low.
He saw a dancer.
I could have walked out and kept my pride.
So I stayed.
He took a slow step back and gestured to the velvet couch.
He didn't snap and he didn't order.
"Sit," he said, and then, "Please."
In five years, I had never heard him say it.
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