Their Virgin Secretary

  introduced her to.

  Unless she was so hurt and angry that she decided to do away with her hymen to spite them. That didn’t sound like the Belle he knew. But he also hadn’t imagined she would skip this morning’s meeting without a word. She was definitely hurt and making decisions that could affect all their futures.

  All the more reason to find her.

  But Kinley hadn’t cracked so far.

  Tate leaned closer to Kinley, his whole face pleading. “Please just tell us where she is. I can’t stand that she’s out there hurting and thinking we don’t care.”

  Kinley’s face softened from rage to regret. “Belle asked me not to. I’m sorry, but I won’t betray her confidence. And Dom Dom here can spank me all day long.” She hooked out a thumb in Dominic’s direction. “I’m not talking.”

  Dominic stood and held a hand out to his wife. “I’ll add that to the list, too. After this child is born, you should know there’s one hell of a hurricane waiting to hit your backside, love.”

  She put her hand in her husband’s. “I accept that. I’ll do anything to protect Belle.”

  With a sigh, Dominic tucked Kinley against him and turned to Kellan. “I’m afraid she’s done. She and Belle are like sisters. I can’t say I don’t understand. I wouldn’t break a brother’s trust myself. The truth is, Belle isn’t your submissive since she hasn’t accepted your collar.” He shrugged. “If there’s anything I or the company can do to help you, I’ll arrange that, but I won’t expect Kinley to divide her loyalties anymore.”

  “We’ll hire you.” Eric stood, looking incredibly resolved.

  Kellan shook his head at his friend. They had a resource they hadn’t yet used because he’d hoped said resource was no longer behaving like a damn stalker. “Hold up on that request. I think we should talk to Tate first. He knows about Belle in a way we don’t.”

  Tate flushed.

  Bingo. Even a lawyer had tells.

  “Let’s go pack up while Tate tells us everything he knows about our girl.” Kellan gave Tate his best big-brother look. “I mean everything.”

  * * * *

  Tate let the door to their suite shut behind him, wondering if he would get punched once he told Eric and Kell the truth. He was pretty sure they were about to ask him a bunch of questions he didn’t really want to answer. But there would be no pleading the fifth.

  Eric turned on him the minute the door shut. “Dude, you told me you’d stopped the stalker stuff.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You make it sound like I’m lurking outside her bedroom window, snapping pictures of her while she’s undressing.”

  “You wanted to,” Eric pointed out.

  Of course. He wanted to even more now that he’d seen her naked. Still, even he knew there were boundaries that, once crossed, got a man slapped with a restraining order.

  “But I didn’t. So let’s stop lecturing me and find Belle. I don’t care what Kinley says. She shouldn’t be out there alone. Anything could happen to her.”

  He hated not knowing where she was and if she was truly all right.

  Kellan ran a hand through his hair, looking tired and wrung out, before he dropped onto the sofa. “We’ll find her faster than Anthony Anders, even without Kinley’s help, because you’ve obsessively memorized everything about her. Haven’t you?”

  Frustration welled. “I’m not stalking her. I only followed her home to make sure she was safe.”

  “Yeah,” Eric drawled. “You keep telling yourself that, buddy. Let’s dig through that treasure trove of trivia in your head about Belle and figure out where she’s gone.”

  She was his whole world, so yeah, Eric’s implication was a safe one. He didn’t see why that made him a stalker. He’d followed her home at night because there had been a rash of rapes in her neighborhood. Imagining what could happen to her if he didn’t see her in safely made him sick. He’d feel better after they installed a security system in her place. Or better yet, after they moved her into their house, into their bed.

  And so what if he checked out her Facebook page more often than necessary? They were friends. She’d accepted his request, giving him permission to look at everything on her timeline.

  “Think, Tate. If she’s already reached her destination, then it’s within a ten-hour drive from here. She’s likely in Texas, Louisiana, maybe Oklahoma, or even as far as Kansas. Has she talked about having friends in any of those places?”

  “She has Kinley here, but most of her friends are in New York or Chicago.” Tate sighed, trying to get his brain to work. Usually he was perfectly clear, but now he understood why his father had warned him that emotion was deadly to logic. All Tate could think about now was the fact that Belle was alone and upset, that she probably hated him…and was planning to spend her life without him. That there was even a remote chance this guy she called Sir had already taken their place.

  “I don’t think Kinley has stashed her somewhere,” Eric said. “I watched her face while Kellan questioned her. She lent Belle the car, but I don’t think she helped our girl get to wherever she was going in any other way. They’re in touch, but if Belle got a new phone before she headed out and gave Kinley the number, then I don’t believe she’s staying with or near Kinley. Belle wouldn’t want to disrupt her friend’s life that way.”

  “Since Kinley is a newlywed, Belle would refuse to be a hindrance or burden,” Kell agreed.

  Tate shook his head. Kell could say he wasn’t interested in anything long term all he liked, but any man who’d studied a woman that closely was definitely interested, even if he was a completely damaged fuck-up and behaving like a pussy.

  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.

  Chapter Eight

  “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.

  “I don’t want to talk about them,” she said to her bestie. “I just want to forget them and move on.”

  “Do you really think it’s that easy?”

  No, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.

  “Sir is doing really well. I think he likes it here. He’s napping in the window seat.” His little puppy chest rose and fell with each breath. His paws moved as though he was running in his sleep. Puppy dreams. Belle smiled faintly.

  She didn’t want to think about what she would dream of tonight. She knew. The minute she’d closed her eyes, she’d been right back in their arms, feeling their hands stroke her body, their lips claiming hers, their fingers on her nipples and in her aching pussy.

  “Don’t change the subject. They were genuinely worried. And they put me throug
h a serious interrogation.”

  Damn it. Belle hadn’t meant to get Kinley in trouble. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was fun. I rarely get the chance to be so bratty anymore. Dominic tied me up, and I swear I was begging him, Law, and Riley after about ten minutes of torture. Luckily, Law is a cuddle bear.”

  “You mean he took pity on you?”

  “Yep.” She giggled. “I cried a lot, and he gave me an amazing orgasm.”

  Wow, that was a lot of personal information. “I’m glad that worked out for you.”

  Kinley cleared her throat as if realizing that she’d just spilled way too much information. “So Sir is adapting?”