Her Secret Weapon. Beverly Barton

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      He eased to her side but kept his arm possessively draped around her. Callie felt weightless and sated beyond belief. Drained. Sleepy. Deliriously content. Without another thought, she curled up against Burke and fell asleep.

      In the wee hours of the morning, with dawn at least an hour away, Callie gathered her clothes and crept into the loo adjoining Burke’s bedroom. She washed quickly, refusing to turn on a light or to glance at herself in the mirror. Once she had put on her clothes, she tiptoed across the room, but stopped briefly at the foot of the bed to take one last look at Burke Lonigan.

      She couldn’t believe that she’d had sex with a man she barely knew. Twice! Unprotected sex, she reminded herself, and groaned silently. Maybe he was the most gorgeous man alive. Maybe they had truly needed each other. And maybe the sex had been the absolutely greatest she’d ever experienced. Scratch that. No maybe about it. It had been the greatest sex!

      But Burke had been plastered and couldn’t be held totally responsible for his actions, where she on the other hand had been perfectly sober and could be held responsible.

      She left the bedroom, made her way down the marble staircase and rushed hurriedly through the huge foyer and out the front door. She glanced at the house and said goodbye to her lover. She’d never see Burke Lonigan again. In a few weeks, he would be nothing more than a sweet memory.

      Chapter 1

      Callie dashed out of the elevator, thankful she’d had several minutes in the lift to catch her breath. The morning had been unusually hectic. Enid had stayed over at a friend’s last night and hadn’t come home by the time the minder had arrived. Thankfully Seamus adored the plump, motherly Mrs. Goodhope, who had raised four children of her own and had ten grandchildren.

      Seamus had been fussy during the night, which was so unlike him. He’d woken Callie before dawn. She’d taken his temperature, which was normal, and had tried everything to soothe his whining. And when he’d said mama, and looked pleadingly at her with those big blue eyes of his, she’d almost stayed at home. But she couldn’t allow a fourteen-month-old child to dictate her actions. Especially not when she and that spoiled little boy depended upon her job for their livelihood.

      Callie’s quick steps clicked her sensible two-inch heels along the corridor in the office suite of Lonigan’s Imports and Exports, which comprised the entire twentieth floor of an impressive skyscraper in the heart of the Square Mile. The relatively new building, constructed in the mid eighties, blended into the landscape in and around the Barbican Center and the nearby Tower Bridge over the Pool of London. As she hurried toward her office, she nodded and spoke to various employees. She’d been employed here only two and a half months, but she already knew everyone by first and last names and could recite each person’s individual title and duties. Of course, acquiring that knowledge had been part of her job as Burke Lonigan’s personal assistant.

      “Good morning, Ms. Severin,” her secretary, Juliette Davenport, said in greeting. “Would you care for some tea and scones?”

      “Yes, please, thank you. I didn’t have time for breakfast.” Callie pushed open the door to her office, then paused and asked, “By the way, has Mr. Lonigan arrived?”

      “No, but he did telephone and leave you a message. He said to proceed with the McMaster’s shipment and that he’d be in by noon.”

      “Oh. Yes, I’ll take care of it.”

      She couldn’t help wondering if Burke had spent the night with a friend last night, as Enid had, and that was the reason he would be late coming into the office this morning.

      Callie dropped her briefcase on top of her desk, plopped down in her leather swivel chair and punched several keys on her computer to bring up the McMaster’s file. The facts and figures blurred before her eyes as her mind filled with thoughts of Burke and another woman. Some tall, leggy brunette or some luscious blonde.

      She had found out a great deal about Burke Lonigan in the past few months, and one of the few things she didn’t like about him was his penchant for womanizing. As part of the London social set, he was seen frequently in public, each time with a different attractive lady on his arm. She didn’t blame the ladies. After all, Burke was a very handsome, quite charming and excessively wealthy man, not to mention a fantastic lover.

      Just the thought of the night she’d spent with him suffused Callie’s body with heat and flushed her cheeks. That night almost two years ago had changed her life forever. For Burke Lonigan had given her more than a sweet memory. He had given her a child.

      When she had told Enid she was pregnant, her cousin had assumed the baby belonged to Laurence, but Callie had quickly corrected that misconception. Enid had been the one who’d found out who Burke Lonigan was and how he could be contacted, but Callie had refused to go to the man and tell him he was going to become a father. She didn’t blame Burke for what had happened that night. She blamed only herself. She’d been sober and in her right mind. He hadn’t. Truth be told, she had felt certain that Burke wouldn’t even remember her. And she had been right, of course, much to her own dismay.

      After endless needling by Enid, Callie had gone to Burke’s house a few months after Seamus was born. While she’d been hesitating on the pavement, trying to garner enough courage to ring the bell, a chauffeured Rolls had pulled up and Burke had emerged. He’d looked right at her, smiled, nodded and walked past her—without recognizing her. After that, she hadn’t attempted to approach him again. Not until a few months ago, when she had applied for the job as Burke’s PA. Even after working with her for over two months, the man still didn’t have a clue that they had shared a night of passion.

      Although she’d put on a few pounds, had cut her waist-length hair to shoulder length and wore the curly mass in a neat bun while at work, she really hadn’t changed all that much, had she? An eye infection had temporarily ended her use of contact lenses about six months ago, but a pair of small, gold-rimmed specs couldn’t possibly make her look that different. After all, she wore them only for reading and working at the computer.

      Callie had come to the conclusion that Burke simply didn’t remember that night. For whatever reason, he had blocked the memory from his mind. Perhaps because he’d been plastered after downing so much Scotch and had acted rather emotional for a man who, she had learned, was never emotional. Perhaps he associated that night with the agony he’d suffered not only from losing his father, but from having been denied the right to say a proper goodbye. Whatever the reason, he seemed to have no recollection of her whatsoever.

      She had learned that Burke was a tough, shrewd, in-control businessman who managed an import-export business that was worth over five hundred million pounds. Although, as Burke’s PA, she was privy to Lonigan’s records, she suspected that all of his assets hadn’t been acquired through legitimate means. Rumors abounded about Burke being an illegal arms dealer. She tried to tell herself that the rumors weren’t true, but her intuition told her that they were.

      “Here’s your tea and scones.” Juliette set the pastry, cup and saucer on the desk. “Are you all right? You look knackered.”

      Despite the fact that she had lived in London for several years and her mother had been a U.K. citizen, some British words still seemed strange to Callie, whereas she had adapted others into her everyday speech. Although having grown up all over Europe as the daughter of a diplomat, from the age of twelve her education had been acquired in the States, so she often found her vocabulary to be a mixture of American and British English. Oddly enough, the same held true for Burke. He had been born in London and had lived here for the past fifteen years, but he had been brought СКАЧАТЬ