Maylee hadn’t returned with his ceremonial jacket, and she was nowhere to be found. Annoyed and tense, he’d snapped at his mother’s equerry until the man located the suit, which had been dropped off with one of the drivers. Maylee had vanished, and Griffin felt a nagging bit of worry. She must have been sick and gone back to the hotel. He hoped she was all right. The thought of that sunny smile dampened by the flu made him feel a pang of sympathy. He’d get her some chicken noodle soup on the way home, he decided, and sent the order downstairs to the palace kitchens.
By the time his cousin was safely wedded and all photographs and public appearances were done, Griffin felt wrung out and exhausted. He didn’t care about ha**ng s*x with Maylee that night. She was sick, and he was tired. He simply wanted to go back to his room and hold her. Tangle his fingers in those glorious curls and tell her all about the brutality of his day. Listen to her sweet, drawling voice as she comforted him. Snuggle up against her delicious, curvy body.
His dick decided that it cared about having sex, though. Just a little. He adjusted his pants surreptitiously in the back of the sedan, eyeing the bagged container of chicken noodle soup on the floorboard that the kitchens had prepared for his ride home. There was a piece of white sticking out from under one of the seats, and he reached down to grab it.
When he realized it was a used tissue, he nearly dropped it in disgust, but the black smears on it made him pause. It looked like mascara. His heart gave a funny clench and he lifted the Kleenex so the driver could see it. “What is this?”
The man gazed in the rearview mirror. “Looks like a hanky, my lord.”
Sigh. “No, what is it doing in the back of my sedan?”
“The madam must have dropped it before she headed to the airport, my lord.”
He stilled. “Airport?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Griffin gritted his teeth. For once, he hated the rules that the well-trained staff of the monarchy followed, especially the “do not converse with the family.”
“Why did you drive my assistant to the airport?”
“She insisted, my lord. She was crying quite a bit.”
“Crying? Was everything all right?”
“I don’t know, my lord.” The man’s gaze in the rearview mirror was carefully neutral. “She left a few things in the car and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. They’re in the trunk.”
“I want to see them.”
They pulled up to the back of the hotel and Griffin hopped out, clenching the wad of tissue in his hand. “Open the trunk,” he demanded, and knocked on it in case the man was going to take his sweet time obeying.
A moment later, he heard the pop of the trunk release, and Griffin opened it, looking inside. Maylee’s fascinator was there, and the sight made his heart stop in his chest out of fear. What on earth was wrong? What made her cry and take off her hat and abandon him today? She was his assistant, damn it.
He picked her hat up, as well as a newspaper. Underneath the newspaper, there was a box of condoms. He picked it up as well, mystified and frustrated. She’d gone through with her flirty words and picked up the condoms. What had changed?
The driver came around to the back and gave Griffin a curious look, holding out his bag with the containers of chicken noodle soup. He must have seemed strange, clutching a woman’s feathery hat, a newspaper, and a box of condoms, but he took the soup from the man and paused. “Why did she want to go to the airport?”
“She didn’t say, my lord.” This time, there was a hint of reproach in the man’s face, as if it were Griffin’s fault.
And that irritated him. “Thank you,” Griffin said abruptly. He turned and stalked into the hotel.
When he passed the security guard posted at the elevator to his floor, he asked the man, “Did my assistant come back here earlier today?”
“No, my lord. Shall I ring the front desk—”
“No.” He tried to raise a hand to stop the man, but he was still clutching the box of condoms. Hell, he probably looked like an idiot. “Thank you.”
Griffin tossed his assorted parcels when he got back to his room and immediately headed for their adjoining door. Maylee’s room was just as she’d left it, her suitcase and clothing still in place, bags of souvenirs at the bottom of her closet. He picked up her suitcase and opened it. It was empty of everything except a small bag filled with hotel soaps and shampoos.
She’d left all her things behind. He didn’t understand. She’d left him without a word—abandoning her job—and she’d been crying.
Had a family member died? Was that why she’d been in such a hurry? Concern for her shook through him, and he thought of his soft, sweet Maylee devastated at the death of her mother or one of her grandparents. She had such a good, kind heart. It would crush her.
He immediately checked his phone to see if there were messages. Nothing. Perhaps she’d been too upset to leave one. Griffin pulled out his cellphone and checked it twice, then tried leaving himself a message to make sure it wasn’t malfunctioning.
Then, he dialed the front desk. “I want a driver here in the morning—a new driver,” he amended, thinking of the reproachful look the chauffeur had given him. “And I need someone to come up and pack my bags in the morning. And I need my plane chartered for a flight out in the morning. Did you get all that?”
“I’m sorry, my lord, did you say you need your bags packed—”
“Just do it,” he snapped, and hung up. Great, now he was feeling more helpless than usual. He’d f**king pack the things himself. Grabbing a suitcase, he flung it on the bed and began to shove clothes into it. He stopped when he’d only made it through his jackets and there was no more room in his suitcase. He only had two more and over half of his closet to go. How the devil had Kip managed to squeeze all of his clothing into these things?
Frustrated, he sat down on the edge of the bed and raked a hand through his hair. It was slicked down with gel as his usual style—Maylee had protested it this morning but he’d insisted, since he didn’t want to draw attention to himself—and his fingers caught in it. Damn it, he didn’t even like his own hair anymore. He needed Maylee to show him how to fix it again so he didn’t look like an idiot.
As he stared ahead, combing his fingers through his hair, his gaze fell on the newspaper. He’d picked it up without giving it a second thought since Maylee had left it in the car, and he’d just now noticed that the pages seemed to be curled and left open at a particular spot.
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?”
“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 ass**le. 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.
He knocked on Maylee’s door, and there was no answer. Concerned, he headed down to the first floor and looked for the apartment of the landlord. He found one door that was less beat up than the others, took a guess, and knocked.
A dirty man in an equally dirty undershirt glared at him. “What do you want?”
It took everything he had not to hold a handkerchief to his nose in disgust. “I’m looking for Miss Meriweather.”