Protecting The Boss. Beverly Long

said. “Given that I almost married him.”

       Chapter 5

      Seth scratched his head. “Come again?” he said.

      She sighed. She so rarely ever talked to anyone about this. “We were engaged. At the time of the accident.”

      “How old were you?”

      “Twenty. We’d been dating since I was seventeen.”

      “But suddenly you had responsibility for Abigail.”

      “She was fourteen. It was devastating for her.”

      “You’d lost your parents, too. And your fiancé was flying the plane. Couldn’t have been a walk in the park for you, either.”

      She said nothing.

      “So what happened between you and...the guy?”

      “He recovered. A couple surgeries, so much physical therapy. But he was young and healthy and he worked really, really hard.”

      “Who ended the relationship?”

      It was a very personal question but she wasn’t surprised. She got the feeling that Seth considered very few topics as off-limits. “I did.”

      “Because you couldn’t forgive him?” he said.

      “Sort of,” she said, looking at her shoes. “Not for the crash. That was an accident. He adored my parents.”

      “What then?” he asked.

      “I couldn’t forgive him for continuing to fly planes.”

      Now, it seemed, Seth had nothing to say. He just stared at her.

      “Seth Pike speechless,” she said gently. “Why do I think that doesn’t happen very often?”

      He shrugged. “You gave him an ultimatum and maybe he came back with the only answer that he could have. A pilot, somebody who loves to fly, can’t just give it up.”

      “I understand. But for me, that was the wrong answer.”

      “It might have been easier for him to give up a kidney. Or both kidneys. Throw in a spleen.”

      He didn’t say it unkindly. More so just knowingly.

      “We should go,” she said.

      “What was your fiancé’s name?”

      “Logan Lewis.”

      “And you’re a hundred percent confident it’s not him?”

      “Yes.”

      “Maybe you should call him. See if he’s gotten a similar message.”

      She had not spoken to Logan in over ten years. Once their engagement had ended, there had been the intermittent card or brief conversation for the first couple of years, as if neither one of them could completely cut the cord. But then even that had stopped. Her college roommate had married his best friend. And while Megan was still friends with Didi, and made a point to see her when she was in New York, where the woman had moved after college, by some tacit agreement they never discussed Logan.

      What would he say if she called him out of the blue?

      But perhaps not out of the blue? Not if he’d gotten a similar message.

      But surely if there was something new, Logan would have called her. He’d been a nice guy. That was likely to still be true. While she and Didi never discussed it, she was confident that he’d moved on, probably had a wife and kids and a pretty house in the suburbs.

      “I don’t want to call him.”

      “Where does he live?”

      “I have no idea.”

      He stared at her. “Would you know how to reach him if you wanted to?”

      She nodded. “We have a mutual friend. But I’m not going down that route.”

      He didn’t argue. Instead, he reached for her phone. “There’s a number.”

      “I suppose that’s why I didn’t give it a second thought before I listened to the voice mail.”

      “You’re sure you don’t recognize the number?” he asked.

      “It seems sort of careless, doesn’t it?” she said, her tone thoughtful. “In this day and age when everybody has caller ID, to call from a number that displays. I’m sure there are ways to block that.”

      Yes. He knew a bunch of ways. And most any idiot who did some research online could figure it out, too. “Let’s do a reverse lookup.”

      Using his own phone, he brought up the website and entered the number. It took just seconds. “Marta’s Deli in Los Angeles. Does that mean anything to you?”

      She shook her head. “No. I mean I’ve lived in California for my whole life and I’ve certainly been to Los Angeles a bunch of times. But I don’t recall that business. Of course, I might not remember a deli. I’ve had a lot of turkey sandwiches in my time.”

      Again he used his smartphone, this time to pull up the home page for Marta’s Deli. It was simple with a clean design and some nice photos of food. He clicked on the About Us tab and found a picture of Marta. “Do you know this woman?”

      Again, she shook her head.

      He pulled up the address. “Recognize this street?”

      She shook her head. “It’s a big city.”

      “Call the number,” he said.

      “What if someone else answers? I don’t know who to ask for.”

      “Tell whoever answers that you got a message from this number but you couldn’t understand it and you’re trying to reach whoever left it.”

      “This can’t be right,” she said. “Why would someone from there—a place I’ve never been to or even heard of—call me and leave a message like that?”