Stumbling over to the desk, she grabbed a tissue and wiped her eyes. She was behind the desk, which probably meant she was supposed to be there, but Ryder hadn’t mentioned hiring a secretary yet.
“Um…do you know where Ryder is?”
She shook her head again. “Uh…I was supposed to be here this morning to start working, but…but he wasn’t here.”
“But the door was open?”
She nodded.
“What about phone calls?”
“No. Nobody’s called.”
“Okay. If you do see him, will you please tell him Ellie is looking for him?”
The woman nodded, but wouldn’t look me in the eye. Part of me was worried to leave her alone here, but the other part of me said it was more important to find Ryder. If she was supposed to be here, then telling her to leave would be pointless. Besides, the door was already open.
Unless he never left here last night.
Not voluntarily anyway.
Storming out of the office, I rushed over to Remi, who was waiting across the street. “What if he was taken?” I asked, panic overwhelming me as a million possibilities ran through my mind.
“Taken? By who?”
“I don’t know! But she said the door was open when she got here this morning. What if he never came home because he never left the office?”
“Did you see any signs that he might not have left of his own free will?”
I gnawed on my lip as I ran over every inch of the office I saw. Nothing looked out of place, other than the scared woman inside.
“No.”
“Then that’s probably not it.”
“But she was supposed to meet him, and he didn’t show up. That’s not like Ryder. He’s always on time for everything.”
“I know. I know, Ellie.”
Tugging me into his arms, he rubbed his hand up and down my back, trying to calm me, but the panic was starting to overwhelm me. Ryder was the one person always on my side, and right now, I didn’t have a clue where he was.
“Hey, we’ll find him. I’m sure this is nothing. What does Ryder normally do in the mornings?”
“He—” The truth was, I didn’t know. “He goes to work.”
“Okay, what about before he bought the practice? What did he do then?”
God, this was so pathetic. I didn’t know anything. I went about my day, but Ryder never really told me what he did. He ran into people. He checked out jobs. But he never really gave me specifics.
And while I stood there with Remi, I realized that while I had divulged nearly every aspect of my life to Ryder, he had kept almost everything hidden from me. I didn’t know anything about his life in New York, and he didn’t tell me much of anything about his life here.
I knew he liked me. I knew he liked to go on dates on Tuesdays and Thursdays because it was less likely you’d have to spend a long time with a date. And I knew he didn’t get along with his parents. Other than that…
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
The sympathetic look in his eyes told me all I needed to know.
This was not normal. This was not a real relationship, and no matter how much I was falling for Ryder, he would never truly open himself up to me.
