Shayla Black - Their Virgin Secretary

Hmm, maybe he hadn’t completely forgiven Kellan for last night.

“Right,” Tate agreed. “She doesn’t have a ton of family. Her dad died when she was a kid. No brothers or sisters. Her mom lives too far away. She just lost a grandmother, but Belle didn’t know the woman.” In fact, she’d brought him a copy of her grandmother’s will a few weeks back to look through.

“So she probably hasn’t gone to family.” Eric paced by the windows, staring out as if he hoped she would show up at any moment and open her arms to them.

Tate hoped she would too, but he knew better. What he didn’t know? Where the hell she’d gone.

“Even if we find her, what are we going to say?” Tate asked. “We talked for hours last night about shit between us, but what could we say to persuade her to give us another chance? Belle can be stubborn.”

He couldn’t stand the thought of her shutting them out. He’d tried so hard to get behind her walls, but Belle, while friendly, could be shy and very private. After a year of working with her and watching her more closely than he should admit to, Tate still found her a mystery. Belle possessed layers and layers he might never delve. That realization choked him up.

He’d been her friend because the others hadn’t been ready to be her lover. He’d gotten as close to her as she’d allowed. At this moment, that friendship didn’t seem to be helping him.

“Doesn’t she have a college friend who moved to Oklahoma City?” Kellan asked. “She mentioned something about being shocked that her very urbane friend had fallen in love with the Midwest.”

Yes, but Belle wouldn’t go there. She was hurt. She wasn’t the sort who’d seek a shoulder to cry on. No, Belle suffered in silence. She would go deep into herself. For that, she would want privacy. If she’d taken off somewhere in the middle of the night and abandoned her job before a meeting, that meant Belle sought to start over.

God, she was leaving them and if he couldn’t find her, he might never see her again. Every single second she was gone, she drifted further and further away. The longer they let her stew in her own anger, the less chance they’d have to get her back.

And that dude she called Sir? Tate had to believe that was some exaggeration on Kinley’s part. The Belle he knew wouldn’t turn to someone else now. She would mourn. She would shut down.

“Hey, didn’t she have a cousin who married a guy from Houston?” Eric had pulled out his laptop and started browsing the firm’s vacation calendar. “Yeah, here it is. She went to the wedding six months ago. Maybe we should contact her cousin.”

Belle’s family was few and far between, so she held every member dear, she’d explained to him once. Her father’s death when she’d been so young had been a tragic blow. He remembered the moment she’d told him about that terrible winter vividly. The sun gleamed across her blue-black hair and illuminated the tear on her cheek she’d tried to hold back. She’d fingered the picture she kept framed of him on her desk, looking at it so wistfully. Right then, Tate had ached to tell her that he, Eric, and Kell would be her family. But she hadn’t been ready to hear that any more than she’d been ready to know that he wanted to make a family with her.

Now, Tate paced the suite, trying to shove out the panic that threatened to scatter his logic. Belle liked to feel close to friends and family, but she wouldn’t burden them with her troubles. So that ruled out New York or Chicago. She couldn’t have driven there in ten hours or less anyway. So where would she go? What money did she have without a job? Sure, she had a little saved in her bank account, but nothing that would last long without a paycheck. She’d need a roof over her head.

Jangling the change in his pocket, Tate crossed to the other side of the room, turning all the possibilities over in his head. Somewhere in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana—

Tate’s head snapped up. That was it. Her late grandmother had left her a house in the French Quarter. Belle hadn’t known the woman, but when he’d looked over the will, she’d admitted that she wished she had. It was a free roof in a new town. Somewhere she could start over. According to the documents he’d seen, the house was older and needed both repairs and updating. Belle would probably love to get her hands on the place. She could throw herself into that project. It would take her mind off the fact that her heart had been ripped out by three dumbass men who couldn’t get their act together.

“She’s in New Orleans. Give me two minutes and I’ll tell you where exactly.” He needed his laptop. He’d scanned in the files she’d given him because he’d served as her lawyer in this matter.

Kellan moved in behind him and stared over his shoulder as he started hunting down the file. “Why do you think that?”

“Because her grandmother left her a house,” he explained as he located the document on his hard drive that had been prepared by a Malcolm Gates, esquire. At the time, the man had advised Belle that the will would take a while to go through the probate system.

“How did I not hear about this?” Eric looked over his other shoulder.

“She needed someone to look at the will and the transfer documents. By the time she received them, her grandmother had already been buried. I think she was sad that she’d never get to know the woman. Apparently, she only met her grandmother once. I guess her father and his mother had a falling out and they never repaired it. When we talked about the house, Belle didn’t know what to do. She wondered if she should donate the house to the city as a historical site because she didn’t have the money to fix it.”

“She still doesn’t, does she?”

“No, but if she gets a new job there or fixes it up herself…” Tate shrugged. “You know how she can be when she’s determined.”

“Yeah.” Kellan glanced down at the address on Tate’s screen and whistled. “Shit. That’s right in the middle of the Quarter. That’s a multimillion dollar property. Fixing it up would make it worth a few months of Ramen noodles and bologna sandwiches.”

Tate frowned. He hadn’t known that. “I never saw any documentation about the value. If they sent anything like that to Belle, she didn’t forward it to me. She just said the place needed a lot of work.”

“She’s going to go there and sink herself into refurbishing that property, isn’t she?” Eric asked.

The challenge would call out to her. “I’m almost certain of it.”

“How can we be sure?” Kellan said. “I don’t want to waste time on a wild goose chase.”

“If we rent a car and drive to New Orleans, it’s roughly eight hours,” Tate pointed out. “Even if we were able to catch the next flight, by the time we factor in check-in and wait times, it might not be much shorter.”

“She would have to get into contact with the lawyer to make sure it’s out of probate. If it was, someone would need to let her into the house, get her keys, and have her sign some paperwork to transfer the ownership.”

Eric groaned. “So she called him. Awesome. She bought a burner phone that we can’t trace and she’s going to use it for all her business.”

“Not necessarily.” Kellan grinned. “Do you remember how we tried to teach Belle to put contacts into her phone and she still wouldn’t do it?”

She kind of hated technology, Tate recalled. “Yeah. She would have to get the attorney’s number from an e-mail. She might dump her phone, but she won’t change e-mail accounts.”

Belle wouldn’t even know how. Thank god for that.

“Still, her e-mail is password protected,” Eric pointed out.

Tate felt himself flush. Shit. Yeah, this might be the stuff he didn’t want to admit to.

“You know her passwords, don’t you, you magnificently perverse asshole?” Kellan slapped him on the back.

He pulled up her e-mails because there was just no comeback except that he was her perverse asshole. He sifted through her messages and found what he needed. He also read that, according to the lawyer, the house Belle was very likely settling into at that moment was notoriously haunted.

Lucky for him, he didn’t believe in ghosts.

“Let’s get packed.” He closed the laptop. They were headed to the Big Easy.

“I think you’re wrong about them, hon.” Kinley’s voice sounded through the speaker of her new phone.

Buying a new phone and changing her number had been Belle’s idea because she’d suspected her former bosses would call, at least to settle any items related to their business. She couldn’t stomach the thought of talking to them in cold, business-like terms. She’d left her office passwords and the statuses of her most important tasks with the intern—whom she hoped would remember all the information. He said dude a lot and often reeked of herbs that were illegal in most states.

She dusted off the gorgeous Queen Anne desk she’d found in what seemed to be her grandmother’s office. The heavy cherry-wood antique anchored the room now with its elaborate moldings, scroll work, and mahogany inlays. After vacuuming the dupioni silk drapes, Belle had scrubbed the stained glass windows, and now sunlight poured through. She wasn’t completely sure, but she thought that might be actual Tiffany glass. The huge chandelier in the dining room certainly was. In fact, everything in the house, while old and dusty, was classic, well made, and worth a small fortune. Her grandmother had possessed amazing taste. Who knew palm reading was so lucrative?

Now soft afternoon light illuminated the whole room, and Belle surveyed all her hard work with pride. Thankfully, that hard work had prevented her from dwelling too much on her former bosses—at least until Kinley’s call.