***
The question still bothers me days later in spite of all the fun I’m having with Grant around London. One evening, while Grant is out drinking with some old friends, I place a call to Lindsey from the hotel suite.
“You’ve reached Lindsey Holland. Please leave a message.”
I wait for the click, shifting the receiver to my other hand and putting the other on my hip. “Hi. It’s Abby. I’m calling from a hotel in London and I—”
“Hey!” Lindsey picks up the phone. “How’s London?”
“Good,” I answer, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“But you don’t feel the same way, do you?” she asks, picking up my lack of enthusiasm. “What’s so wrong that you need me and not the app?”
“Well, your app actually said for me to get answers so here I am.” I take a deep breath. “I just have one important question. Is there something you and Grant are hiding from me?”
“What?”
“I’m not accusing you and Grant of having a relationship other than your business partnership or anything. It’s just that I’ve been thinking and putting little bits together, and I think I’m feeling paranoid.”
“Your female sense is tingling, and it’s telling you something’s off.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“Well, what do you think we’re hiding?”
I shift the receiver back to my other hand. “When we first met, you firmly believed that Grant was using me and then there’s the fact that I caught Grant saying once that you were his idea. What’s up with that?”
Lindsey sighs.
“Please tell me.” I slide down to the carpet, pulling my knees to my chest. “We’re friends, right?”
“All right.” She takes a deep breath, and I hold mine. “Grant wanted my apps from the start. He called me up to make the offer. I said no, but he wouldn’t take that for an answer. So I challenged him. I told him if he could make a woman fall in love with him, then I’d consider his offer. You won’t believe the women he started sending me. He claimed they were in love with him, but I saw right through them. I didn’t only turn them down, I turned them against him. I never thought he’d be able to send me a woman who was really in love with him.”
“And he sent me, didn’t he?” I place my hand over my chest, which suddenly feels tight. “Well, he made me think it was my idea but he was actually grooming me for it all along.”
“I’m sorry, Abby, but hey, Grant ended up falling in love with you, too, so it doesn’t matter, right?”
I don’t answer. The end justifies the means just doesn’t cut it right now.
“Abby?”
“I’ll talk to you soon,” I say, not feeling like talking anymore. “Thanks. Bye.”
“A—”
I hang up, dropping the phone on the carpet as I bury my face in my arms.
I knew it. Even so, I can’t believe it. Grant tricked me. He did try to use me just like he used the mother of that maid, all those other maids, and all those women before me. Just like all those men used my mother.
Suddenly, the memories of that first week I came to work for him rush back. No wonder he was acting all weird then. He was desperate to make me fall in love with him. And then I turned him down and he took a different approach, making me believe first that he was in love with me.
And I fell.
I fell in love with him.
I fell into his trap.
I throw my head against the edge of the bed, running my hands across the sides of my face.
How could I have been so blind?
But he fell in love with you, too. He fell into his own trap.
Did he?
Just then, I hear a beep from Grant’s laptop on the table, letting me know that he has a new email. Since I manage his emails, I have access to his account. Out of habit, I check what came in, my eyes growing wide and my heart seemingly shrinking as I open one attachment of the message after another, all of them files of different women between twenty-two and thirty, all of them beautiful and from rich families.
Each click feels like a piece of my heart falling off until finally, when I’m done, there’s nothing left.
There’s nothing left of me.
Grant doesn’t love me. He used me and now that I’ve fulfilled my purpose, he’s looking for the next target, already having files on the candidates.
Just like he had a file on me.
For a while, I don’t move, frozen in front of the computer as my tears fall on the keyboard. Then, like a racer who’s just realized the gun has gone off, my body jolts into action. In a blur, I change my clothes and gather my things. Not even bothering to make a goodbye note, I leave.
There’s no need for goodbye when something never really started.
I was just passing by.
And now, it’s time for me to go.