Page 74 of My Forbidden Boss

“She must have been under enormous pressure. How did you not see this?” Tristan says.

All questions scouring the inside of my skull. None I have answers for. I was hell bent on my obsession. To take. To have. To win, that I failed in my duty as her lover to see what was underneath.

I now understand Adeline’s hesitant reluctance. Her jittery nerves. Her quiet moments. Her demeanor that was years beyond her age.

She let me take her virginity, for Christ’s sake.

“She tried to tell me.” Memories scrape my skull, impacting one after the other. In the restaurant before Samantha interrupted us, in my bedroom before I made love to her for the first time, at the conference when all I was concerned about was changing her mind. The courage she would have needed to pull together, and each time I shut her down. They weren’t the actions of a guilty person.

They were the actions of a cornered woman.

And I said those awful things to her. I told her to go. To leave me. That I never wanted to see her again.

My gut churns, filled with shattered glass.

I need to see her; to ask her about Bourke, beg her forgiveness and then smash my fist into the face of this SD. As I should have done hours ago.

“I’m going to make things right,” I say.

I can drive to her apartment. It’s only across town.

But I don’t know her apartment number and I can’t go knocking on three hundred apartment doors.

How can I not know her apartment number? How could I have let her live in that suburb? Who can I ask where she is?

“Intranet,” I say.

I log onto the intranet and into the secure section where I can see my employees’ details and click on Adeline’s profile. Her address is missing. There’s nothing there but a blank line. Andrea said she couldn’t track Adeline’s address down and she’s very thorough, if nothing else.

“I don’t know where she lives,” I say. “I don’t know where to find her.” She’s one person in a population of eight and a half million people in New York City.

“You said she was from Moss Creek?” Tristan says. “Her mother will know where she is. She’d have her mother’s number on her phone.”

That’s great. Hi, Mom. I’ve destroyed your daughter. By the way, can you tell me where she is so I can drive the nail in further?

Is there a choice? I’ll take whatever Adeline’s mother has to dish. I’ll take everything. It’s the least I can do.

I navigate to her contacts on her cell. There are only two. SD in one. Maddy, her friend, is the other.

“She only has two contacts on her phone. One is this SD, and the other is her friend Maddy,” I say.

There’s stunned silence on Tristan’s end. “That…makes no sense.”

Steph has friends going back to elementary school. Hundreds of contacts from her dancing class, her cheerleading friends, her older school friends and probably her college friends. All the people she’s met. Adeline should be no different.

“I’m going to call her friend. I’m sure Adeline would have called her,” I say, hoping like hell that’s exactly what Adeline did. Then I’m going to beg her friend to help me contact Adeline.

I call Maddy. She answers on the second ring. “Adeline?”

“You haven’t spoken with me before, but I’m Adeline’s…boss, David Chandler. I’m calling on Adeline’s phone because she left it in the office,” I say.

The long pause is another never-ending moment that stretches into infinity. “I know who you are.” Her tone is quiet. Aware. Wary.

“I need to speak to Adeline. Do you know where she is?” I say.

“I don’t think she wants to speak with you,” Maddy says. “I don’t think I should talk to you either.”

Before she can hang up and I lose my chance forever, I jump in. “Look, Maddy, I made a mistake. A huge one. I want to apologize to Adeline, and explain myself, but I don’t know where to find her.”

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