Trading Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

man. Perhaps it was some defect intrinsic to the masculine mentality that made the male of the species so determined to exert his authority. It seemed to Sabrina that she had spent a good chunk of her life defending herself against authoritarian types. At one time or another she’d done battle with everyone from her father to her schoolteachers, employers, and the IRS. The world at large had trouble handling an independent person like herself, and men in particular had trouble with the notion. Last night wasn’t the first time she’d run afoul of some male’s embittered attempt to even his score with life by punishing her.
    But the last time it had been tried Sabrina had at least known why she had come under fire. Floating in the clear tranquil waters this morning, she made another stab at trying to understand what had gone wrong last night, and failed. It was decidedly disgusting to discover that her normally sound intuition had fallen short on this occasion. Perhaps she could just blame it on the Margaritas and forget all about it.
    She dismissed that approach when she recalled that August had used his one-too-many whiskeys as an excuse. Damned if she would lower herself to his level when it came to rationalizing!
    No, last night had been a mistake. It wouldn’t happen again. Besides, in the end, she had handled a potentially dangerous encounter intelligently enough to emerge unscathed. Assuming one discounted the vague muscle ache in her thighs, of course, she added with a mental wince. Matt August was a strong, toughly built male. The struggle could have ended disastrously. Still, she had handled him.
    It was an entirely different situation from the mess in which she had become involved in California. She’d had no control at all over those events and the memory of how she had let a man cast her in the role of victim still rankled. In spite of her determination to put it all behind her, stray thoughts of that devastating experience on the West Coast flickered through her mind.
    Talbot Sheffield had been forty-nine, only twenty-three years older than his son Greg, whom Sabrina had been dating just before everything collapsed around the younger man. One year less than fifty, his body still astonishingly fit, silver hair thick and eye-catching, the president of his own computer software firm, Talbot Sheffield was a man at the height of his power and knew it. The quintessential aggressive, successful businessman. From the moment she’d first been introduced to him, Sabrina had kept her distance. He was exactly the sort of male she preferred to avoid.
    His son Greg, on the other hand, displayed absolutely no indication of following in his father’s footsteps. Easygoing, amiable, and fun-loving described Greg Sheffield. Sabrina had liked him at once. Her feelings for the man had never gone much deeper than friendly affection, but she had empathized with him, knowing herself what it was like to grow up with a forceful, domineering father.
    In spite of his casual attitude toward life Greg had had enough perception to foresee the difficulties that would arise if he chose to work for his father. Instead he had taken a middle-management position at a computer design company elsewhere in California’s Silicon Valley, and that’s where he and Sabrina had met. She had been a low-level manager in the accounting department. It wasn’t Sabrina’s first entry-level management position. She had started out in a number of them at various companies since graduating from college. But because of an unfortunate tendency to tell higher management what she thought, she rarely climbed any higher on the corporate ladder. While Greg was not outspoken the way Sabrina tended to be, they had shared similar views of the corporate environment.
    But it wasn’t Greg’s sandy-brown hair and vivid blue eyes that Sabrina recalled this morning. It was Talbot’s already magnificently silvered head and the blue eyes that had burned with a father’s