Bali? Bali, halfway around the globe? A place of beautiful beaches, brilliant seas, lush sunshine? When she’d first heard that was where she was going, she was amazed. She was new to her job. Was James Lipton the Fourth—her boss preferred using his full name—really going to give her such an incredible opportunity?
She’d looked at the brochure he’d dropped on her desk again.
Seventh Annual SOPAC-PBA Conference, it said. Inside was a heady list of speakers and workshops.
“Surely you know what SOPAC-PBA is, Miss Hunter,” Lipton had said in his usual cool tones.
Miss Hunter. The name still took her by surprise. She’d taken her mother’s maiden name after—after New York. The name was close enough to her real name to feel comfortable and she figured she’d be using it for a while.
Not that she was really worried about being found…
“Miss Hunter? Must I explain it to you?”
Grace had shaken her head. “No, Mr. Lipton. SOPAC-PBA is the acronym for the South Pacific Private Banking Association.”
“You can learn a great deal by attending this conference, Miss Hunter. Do you think you’re up to it?”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
Lipton nodded. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve decided to send you.”
What could she say to that? Nothing, as it turned out. Lipton answered the question himself.
“I am pleased with your work, Miss Hunter, and I’ve reason to believe our CFO might be leaving us soon. There’s the possibility you might be moving up. The conference is an excellent place to learn and network.”
Moving up. To a position she’d lost because she’d found out, all too late, she’d never really had it, that everything Salim had done had been for himself, for his own selfish needs…
“Miss Hunter?”
Grace had blinked. “Yes, Mr. Lipton?”
“Have your secretary make the arrangements for us both.”
“Both?”
“Of course. I’m attending as well. It’s an important event.”
Grace had her secretary arrange the details but Lipton had frowned over the results. Why a commercial flight when the company had an arrangement with a jet charter service? And the hotel rooms…Why had a regular room been reserved for him when he would need the amenities a suite would afford for private meetings and working dinners?
Grace apologized and said she would inform her secretary to make the necessary changes. Lipton said he would instruct his P.A. to handle matters herself.
Grace knew she’d lost points and promised herself she’d make up for it by making full use of the learning and networking opportunities in Bali. After all, a job she liked might be about to become one she knew she would love. And Bali… she’d always wanted to see it. Not alone. She’d wanted to see it with someone she cared for. With a lover. With…
She told herself she had to stop letting the past intrude on the present. She had a good job, there was the hint of a better one in the offing and she was lucky to get the chance to attend such a high-powered conference.
The sole drawback was that she’d have to spend the best part of a week with James Lipton the Fourth. He was occasionally brusque but she could handle that. There was something about him she just didn’t like. Not his patrician air, not his attitude of removal. It was something else, something darker, something evil.
Which was ridiculous.
Lipton was a pillar of the community. There was an arts center named after him and a stadium. His wife was on the boards of half a dozen charities.
By the time she buckled her seat belt on the chartered jet, Grace had mentally called herself every kind of fool. She didn’t have to like the man, she had only to respect his position as her employer.
That was it… At least, that was it until the plane was in the air.
It turned out that James Lipton the Fourth, that pillar of the community, wasn’t a pillar at all. He belonged at the bottom of its most rancid garbage dump. To call him a sleazebag was being generous.
Twenty minutes after leaving San Francisco, the pilot announced they’d reached cruising altitude and her dipped-in-starch employer morphed into a monster.
They were seated side by side. He had suggested the arrangement. “So we can go over some notes,” he’d said.
Logical enough.
What was not logical was the moment he leaned into her, his shoulder against hers, and said that if she grew weary during the flight, she could use the private bedroom in the rear of the plane.
“Thank you, sir, but—”
“With me in it, of course,” he added.
Or had he?
At first, it seemed impossible. Grace decided she’d misunderstood him. Maybe the whine of the engines had distorted his words. So, she didn’t reply.
But there was no way to misunderstand the fingers that drifted across her breast when he reached for a book, the hand that dropped on her thigh when he asked about a report, the lascivious flick of his disgustingly wet tongue across his disgustingly wet lips when she caught him watching her.
Still, Grace tried to convince herself her imagination was playing tricks. That might easily happen to a woman who had a decidedly jaundiced opinion of men.
She played it safe.
She retreated into work. Or pseudo-work. She stared at her laptop’s screen until she was afraid her eyes would cross. When Lipton finally left her side to use the toilet, she slammed down the cover of her computer, scurried across the aisle to a single leather seat, put her head back, closed her eyes and pretended to sleep until the pilot announced they were ten minutes from landing, which they did at four in the afternoon.
By four-fifteen, Grace knew she hadn’t misunderstood anything. The pillar of the community had feet of clay. A bad metaphor but it worked.
She had been duped.
Lipton had not brought her here to learn and network. He’d brought her here so he could seduce her, and that was as likely to happen as snow falling from the perfect Balinese sky.
A bright pink golf cart collected them at the airstrip. Lipton insisted on helping her into the cart; one of his hands brushed lightly over her buttocks as he did.
“Oops,” he said, with his I-Am-A-Trustworthy-Banker smile.
Bull, she thought coldly…and then she thought, maybe it really had been an accident. Maybe her imagination was working overtime. How could Lipton be doing any of what she thought he was doing? The driver of the cart was right there, smiling politely. She had worked for Lipton all these months, spent late evenings poring over files and accounts with him and he’d behaved like a gentleman.
