Chapter Nine

Two and a half years ago

I alternated between staring at the heavy wooden doors and glaring at my watch. A notepad with a new pen sat waiting at my fingertips, but I wasn't even tempted to doodle. Dean Sherman had my complete and utter attention, and he wasn't even in the room yet.

What would I say to him? Hi, Dean. I sent you a letter every day for a month, but I never got one from you. That sounded too harsh. Especially since I knew he had never gotten a single one of my letters. I had sent them out religiously once I moved to New York to work for the Saunders family, but after a month of no replies, the postman had handed me a stack of unopened letters. Something in the address Dean had given me had made them undeliverable.

You could have just told me you weren't interested. Instead I waited for you. I asked my landlord to forward all my mail, but I never got anything. Not even a postcard! No, that wasn't fair either. It was very possible that my landlord just was lazy and threw