The Gigolo by Isabella King Page B

of sick joke that he would find amusing and she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had worked for him in the past.
    ‘I said take off your clothes.’
    ‘No,’ Kara whispered as if she was afraid that someone else would hear their conversation. ‘This is wrong, Jack. It would completely undermine my position in the company.’
    ‘Your position has changed,’
    ‘Are you demoting me?’ Kara swallowed the lump in her throat.
    ‘No, I’m happy enough with your work but this is a dog eat dog world and your position in it has been changed…irrevocably.’
    ‘Why ?’ Kara refused to simply roll over and give him what he wanted and she was close to tears. She couldn’t let him see her cry. A man in her position wouldn’t be reduced to tears simply because he’d been caught in flagrante. In fact, Jack would more than likely be slapping her back and congratulating her if she’d been a man.
    ‘You allowed yourself to be exploited and in so doing you’ve put the good name of the company at risk. You have to pay for that mistake.’
    ‘ Then ball me out, dock my pay check, or sack me, but I won’t be blackmailed into your bed, Jack.’
    Jack sighed, picked up an envelope from his desk and tipped its contents onto the table in front of her – a DVD and a USB stick fell out.
    ‘ Granger gave me these before he left.’
    Kara felt some of the tension leave her body.
    ‘What happened to him?’
    ‘I’ve sent him on a sabbatical. Halfpenny went too. They won’t be bothering you again.
    ‘But what about Granger’s wife?’
    ‘He hasn’t got a wife. He lived with Halfpenny in a flat that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a decade.
    ‘The little shit lied to me,’ Kara cursed.
    ‘Maybe you’re losing your touch, Kara,’ Jack said.
    ‘C an I destroy them?’ Kara asked, crossing her fingers behind her back.
    She was hopeful that Jack was just playing with her – making her suffer for getting into such a stupid mess – although she knew he wasn’t faithful to his wife. Laura seemed to be nothing more than the token wife – a thing of beauty to hang off his arm when he went to functions. Kara wondered if Laura knew that her husband had been through most of the typing pool.
    Considering his own lifestyle he could hardly criticise her one and only discretion, especially when it wasn’t even her fault. She’d been set up.
    S he was pretty sure that Jack wouldn’t go as far as to force her into his bed against her will but she was still uncomfortable being up here alone with him.
    ‘I want something from you, first.’ Jack had stepped closer. His exhaled breath washed over her exposed cleavage as he pushed one fat hand inside the neckline of her shirt and pulled it aside.
    Kara stepped back pushing his hand away.
    ‘Not that.’
    ‘Don’t be such a prude, Kara.’
    ‘I’d like to leave now, Jack.’
    ‘I own you, now and you should be grateful that it’s me rather than that man whore who ringed your sex.’
    Kara blushed. He’d viewed the tape. It suddenly struck her that Jack had used the same strange name for William that Luke Granger had used. They’d both called him a man whore. She didn’t recall ever hearing anyone use that phrase until today…
    It was Jack! Jack was behind this whole sordid mess! Now it was all becoming clear in her mind. He must have financed the filming of her embarrassing episode with William using Granger as his stool pigeon. Now she really was scared. If he was prepared to go to such lengths to get her up here he meant to have her.
    Kara scanned the room, looking for another escape route but unless her hero was waiting on the roof with a helicopter she was going to have to front it out and leave the way she came in.
    ‘He was no good for you,’ Jack said.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Your man whore. The one who took it upon himself to video you in a compromising position and sell the tape.’
    Kara didn’t dare let on that she knew this was all down to him. She wondered