“The letter was good. She said it helped. I appreciate you suggesting it.”
“It helped? Please explain how. You lost your auditorium gig.”
“Yes, but apparently not my pay. She says she got calls about my email, and there is more to come on that, whatever that means.”
“I’ll be interested to see what that means, too. It’s good you kept your pay, right?”
“Yes. Of course it is, but I guess the money wasn’t what really mattered. I mean, it did, and it does—I need it—but the job and my duties were personal to me. I felt like I did good work that just didn’t matter in the end.”
“You feel unimportant,” he supplies and then motions to my dress. “You’re dressing for success, looking good, doing good work, and it just didn’t seem to matter.”
God, this man understands me. I do love and adore him. “Yeah. It sucks.”
“Well, for the record, you’re important to me. And I have to believe that Kara is telling you that there is something unexpected brewing for you.”
He has no idea,I think.
“Can you believe that Akia actually asked me to go to lunch with him to ‘talk’? You know, he wants me to show him how to look good. I told him no.”
He arches a brow. “And he said?”
“This is not his fault. Neil is an asshole who just decides to hate people, and Neil is a friend of his father’s, which works in his favor.”
“In other words, he gets special treatment. Does Kara know that? You should go talk to Kara.”
“Who knows if anything Akia said to me is even true. Kara warned me not to trust him.”
His brow inches upward. “Really? She’s never said anything negative about anyone in all the years I’ve known her.”
“Same here, and yet she spoke that warning to me.”
“Go talk to her,” he urges.
“I need to just take a breather. I need to be here, right here, on floor three, and lost in books. I know you get that in a way so many other people do not.”
He gives a nod. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I do. But before I let you be, I have to ask about your father and the meeting.”
Mentally I resist even talking about this again, but this is Jack asking. I catch him up and finish with, “So now you see, I’m sure that I just need to be here, really right here, lost in books.”
He scowls and scowls some more before he says nothing more than, “Yes. Yes, I do believe I do.”
It’s a bit of an unusual reply from a man who is opinionated on my life, which comes to me with mixed feelings. He’s acting weird, but thank you, Lord, for it, because I can’t talk about this anymore.
My phone on my desk rings and I grab the line. “Mia Anderson.”
“Mia, it’s Kara.” She sounds weak, her voice softer than usual. “I’m sick again. I can’t believe the timing. I’m having more tests. Just please stay positive and hang in there. Akia might take the auditorium job, but there are things happening for you that you don’t see yet. I promise.” Someone speaks to her, and she says, “I have to go. Just remember this: I never break a promise. And I just promised you that things are happening for you that you don’t yet see.” She disconnects.
I share the information with Jack, and he uses her promise as encouragement, but later, when we’re both back at work on our own,I’m back in my own head and not in a good way. The conversation with Kara is now playing like a taunt.
She never breaks a promise.
Adam’s words.
I’m seeing Adam everywhere I look, and I can’t seem to look away.
Chapter Seventy-Three
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus ...
