Griffin picked up the newspaper and flipped pages. It fell open to the middle, where someone had clearly been reading.
The two-page splash was full of pictures of him. Him with Maylee, him with that blasted Saxe-Gallia princess.
Lord Verdi sows some wild oats with one of his American mistresses.
Dried tear-stains rumpled the paper, and Griffin suddenly knew why his assistant had abandoned him.
Chapter Twelve
The flight back to New York was interminably long. Griffin spent most of it on phone calls. First were the cancellations of the rest of his Bellissime appointments. He was scheduled to stay in the country for at least another week, and had to make his excuses to everyone, most of all his mother. Then there were calls to Kip to arrange his travel home, a car to pick him up, and a million other things that seemed to pile up everywhere he turned.
How had Maylee managed to keep it all straight? He found her Post-it notes stuck to his laptop, and grew frustrated all over again.
She hadn’t trusted him in the slightest. That irritated him and wounded his pride. He’d been at her side every moment of the trip. When did she think he’d have time to go philandering about on her? Hadn’t he let her wear his family’s jewelry? Didn’t she realize what a privilege that was?
He’d give her a day or two to let her emotions calm down, he decided, and then he’d talk to her. Once she realized how foolish she was being, she’d return to him and he’d take her to bed. Then, she’d feel silly she ever doubted him.
Griffin slept on the plane, pleased with his plans. He returned to his townhouse, greeted a rather spotty Kip, and waited for Maylee to contact him.
A few days later, however, he hadn’t heard from her, and he was rather concerned. Was she not aware that he’d followed her home from Bellissime? He searched for her phone number, but it was nowhere to be found. Blast, that was rather irritating.
So he texted Hunter. Tell your assistant to call me. It’s important.
A few minutes later, he picked up the phone. “Maylee?”#p#分页标题#e#
“Hello, dick.” That was not Maylee.
“Gretchen,” Griffin greeted, his lip curling with dislike. “Why are you calling me?”
“You told Hunter to have his assistant call. Looky there, we’re on the phone. Magic, right?”
“Where’s Maylee?”
“She quit.”
“What do you mean, she quit?”
“I mean, she quit, you asshole. She just emailed me and asked me to forward her last check to her apartment. Said she couldn’t work for Hunter anymore. What did you do to her, you prick?”
“You really should quit calling me names—”
“You really should stop being such a total dickbag—”
He hung up on her. Griffin stared at the phone for a minute, and then picked it up to call back.
“Hello,” Gretchen said in a sweet voice.
“Just give me Maylee’s address. I’ll go talk to her myself.”
“I want to know what you did to her first. Were you mean to her?”
He sighed. “I was not.”
“Really? Cause I don’t believe that.”
“All right, I was mean to her in the beginning—”
“That I believe—”
“—but then we grew to like each other.” How did Hunter ever get a word in edgewise?
“That I don’t know that I believe,” Gretchen said. “It would take a lot to make that nice girl quit, but you managed to do so in the space of a single trip. I mean, do you know how often Hunter snarls at her? And she just sucks it up and takes it. But then here you come in, and we find Maylee’s packed up and run off.”
I’m a Meriweather. We don’t run and hide from our troubles. You can be as mean to me as you want, Mr. Griffin, but I’m going to do my job to the best of my ability, no matter how nasty you are.
“If you’re trying to make me feel guilty, you cannot possibly make me feel worse than I already do.”
“What if I told you that she’d called me up, bawling her eyes out?”
His breath caught in his throat. “She did?” His poor, sweet, sunny Maylee must have been so hurt. He felt like such a royal ass.
“Well, no. I was just curious what you’d say if I told you that.”
He hung up on Gretchen again.
A moment later, his phone buzzed with an incoming text. Maylee’s address is here. She listed the address and followed it with a YOU’RE WELCOME.
It killed him to type thank you, but he did anyhow.
***
Maylee’s building was repugnant. Griffin frowned to himself as he headed up the steps, eyeing the tinfoil in several of the windows. Air conditioners dripped condensation from above, leaving trails on the brick and making the entire place look as if it were weeping. He didn’t blame it. The building was a hovel.