by Holly Rayner
an appointment, so maybe her doctor suggested it.”
“Okay, thanks Carlie.” I left there and as I wandered down the hall, I ran into Harlan… literally. “Damn! I’m sorry, Harlan. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“It’s fine Seth. Are you okay?”
“What? Yeah… I’m fine. I was just lost in my thoughts.”
“Okay… because you look as pale as Adele did when she left earlier.”
“You saw her before she left? Did she say anything?”
“She said she wasn’t feeling well. She asked me to help out with anything that might need to be done around here.”
“Okay, thanks Harlan.” I heard him still talking to me as I walked away, but I didn’t process the words. I went back to my office and picked up the phone. I didn’t even try her cell. This time, I called the apartment directly. It was the middle of the afternoon and Grant answered the phone. Without thinking I just blurted out, “Don’t you work?” The S.O.B. laughed.
“Well hello to you too, Seth,” he said. “Yes, I work very hard. That’s why they gave me this week off… I needed a vacation.” It was quite convenient that Adele’s “sickness” came on right when Grant was home on vacation. I felt like she was making a complete fool out of me. I slammed the phone down and ran my fingers through my hair, pulling at the ends of it. This woman made me crazy. I looked down at the papers on my desk. I couldn’t keep this to myself any longer, but if Adele didn’t care enough about her company to be at work, I would meet with the shareholders and executives on my own and handle it. I picked the phone back up and called my assistant. I told her to arrange an emergency meeting with them all first thing tomorrow morning.
“Okay sir, should I also notify Miss Morgan?”
“No, I’ll take care of that,” I lied.
~
CHAPTER NINE
~
ADELE
“Your boyfriend called again. He didn’t sound happy that I was home with you,” Grant told me.
“Good, I’m glad he’s not happy. He has no right to be worrying about what I’m doing or with whom,” I said, more confidently than I felt.
Grant rolled his eyes. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” he said. “You have to talk to him. Talking to everyone else has gotten you nowhere except hiding out at home. You cannot keep living like this. Bring that old fiery red-head back out. I liked her better.”
“Wow, that’s kind of mean,” I said. I knew he was right, I was pathetic… but he’d hurt my feelings.
“I guess I’m going to have to be mean to get you to go do what you need to do. You’re so afraid that he’s going to tell you that you’re right and he is cheating on you but the fact is that you may be wrong and you’ll never know for sure if you refuse to talk to him.”
“You’re right.”
“I know,” he said. “I always am. You can be sure that what I tell you is in your best interest too doll, because you know I love you, right?”
“I know,” I told him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He grinned, “Neither do I, but don’t say that in front of your boyfriend. I think he’s already just a tad threatened by my manliness and my boyish charm.”
I laughed, “When I have a minute to breathe, we’re going to have to talk about that poor self-confidence of yours.”
“You know you love it. It’s part of my charm.”
“It is,” I told him, sincerely. “I love you, Grant. Thank you.”
“I love you too,” he said. His face changed for a second and he lost that smug, self-assured look that he usually held there. “Adele…”
“What?”
“I… Never mind. I want more than anything for you to be happy. You deserve it.”
“Thank you, Grant. I know you do. I will never be able to thank you for everything that you’ve done for me.”
“Just be happy. That’s all I want.” He hugged me again, this time squeezing the breath out of me. Then he said, “Now get out there and get that man back and your company. Sheesh! You’ve been my role model for too long to stop now.”
I grabbed my bag and headed back out. When I got to the office, I found Seth at his desk again. He was on the phone and when I walked in, I was sure I heard the name, “Liz.” I stood in front of the desk and waited for him to hang up.
When he did, I said, “Before you snap at me, we need to talk.”
“I wasn’t going to snap,” he said. He got up and came around the front of the desk. I had a mini fantasy that he was going to take me into his arms and we could just forget about the past few weeks. Instead he walked over to the leather sofa and said, “Let’s talk.”
I took a seat and he did too. Then I said, “I’m not sure where to start.”
“Are you sick?” he asked, looking worried.
“No, I’m just tired and anxious and upset. Seth, I came back on Friday afternoon to talk to you. I was going to ask you to dinner and I was going to accept your proposal to move in with you…”
He looked confused as he asked, “Then why didn’t you? And why do you still act like you’re upset with me?”
“Because when I got here, I stepped off the elevator in time to see you with a blonde in your arms.”
“A blonde?” If I wasn’t mistaken, he was genuinely confused.
“Liz Taylor?” I reminded him.
“Oh no! Adele! No!”
“No what?”
“You didn’t see what you thought you saw. Liz was here and she kissed me… yes, that’s all true. But I stopped it right away. I told her that it wasn’t going to happen and that I love you.”
I wasn’t sure that I believed that. I wanted to, desperately. “So, she came here to start things up with you and you said no. Did she come here uninvited?”
He looked nauseated as he said, “No. I invited her. But it had nothing to do with her and me getting together. She called me on Monday of last week. She started talking about an old merger that my father and hers had wanted. She said she wanted that too now that she was CEO. I told her that we were not looking to merge. She started making threats and knowing her the way that I do, I thought they were just idle ones.”
“And how do you know her, Seth?”
“I’m sorry? What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. You said, ‘Knowing her the way I do.’ Do you know her intimately?”
“Yeah Adele, I did. But that was way before you and only because our father’s pushed us into it…”
“Your father says that she’d do anything to get you back.” I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. I saw the look on his face and regretted saying it instantly.
“My father? You spoke to my father about this?”
“Yeah. I went out to see him because I needed to know the truth.”
“And you didn’t think you could get that from me?”
“Obviously I was right. You didn’t tell me any of this until I confronted you with it.”
“Adele, that’s because to me, Liz is nothing. She’s a non-issue all-together. As far as the merger goes… I should have told you, I know that. You have been so suspicious and angry all the time lately at me that it was hard for me to talk to you, but mostly, I was hoping that I could fix it before I had to tell you. You cannot stand my father and he treats you like dirt. For you to be willing to face that instead of me, that makes me feel like we’re even worse off than I thought.”
I hated to admit that he was right. I had been unapproachable lately. I wasn’t buying into that this was all my fault, but I did have to shoulder some of the blame. But this was my company too damn it! Something this important… “So what is happening with the merger?”
He got up and went over to his desk. He handed me a manila envelope and said, “It’s now become a hostile takeover. I called an emergency meeting with the shareholders and executives for tomorrow morning.”
“Oh my God!” I stood up. “You weren’t even going to tell me this?”
>
“If you’re roommate didn’t tell you… I called your house after you left today. I knew you were gone because I went to talk to you in your office, about all of this. You chose to leave and go home and be with Grant rather than to talk to me and figure this mess out together. I am so sick of having to think about you being with that guy…”
“Stop it! I am not with Grant! Once and for all you need to get that through your head. It’s insulting to me that you would keep insinuating that.”
“Every time I turn around, you’re with him. You live with him. You see him every morning and every night… you tell him everything. You hardly talk to me at all, Adele. What was I supposed to think?”
“I guess exactly what you think,” I said. “The same way I thought what I did about you and Liz. But you know what, Seth? This conversation about whose cheating on whom is juvenile when we have something as large as a pending takeover looming over our heads. We can’t lose this company! You risked that happening by taking this on yourself and not talking to me. That can’t happen.”
He looked like he wanted to cry as he said, “All I’ve ever wanted was for you to see that I’m not just some spoiled rich kid that daddy handed a job to. I wanted a chance to prove to you that I’m a man that you can depend on. I wanted you to see how loyal I was to you and to this company! I went about it the wrong way, but damn it Adele, I tried! I tried because nothing means more to me than how you see me. I want you to be proud to be with me. I want you to want to be with me always.”
He had tears in his eyes when he finished. I was torn between wanting to throttle him for the mistakes he’d made and the assumptions, and wanting to take him in my arms and tell him how much I love him and how proud of him I am. I made mistakes too, and I made my own assumptions. What the hell was I supposed to say? For the first time in my life I was finding over and over again, that I didn’t know what to do. I was at a complete loss. I didn’t want to make the wrong decision again. So instead of doing the wrong thing… I did nothing. I turned and walked away and left him standing there, looking after me.