Page 40 of What Maple Heard

“Thanks, Jenny. I’ll just be a minute.”

“There’s coffee—“

“No time, but thank you.”

I was already moving down the hall toward Kyle’s office. The door was slightly open. I could hear him on the phone.

I was about to push the door open when I heard Maple’s name.

Kyle was talking to someone about Maple.

I stopped. I stood in the hallway outside the office and I listened.

“She was never going to fit in.” Kyle said. “Cade knows this.”

Silence.

“Don’t worry. They will not get back together.”

Another pause.

“Come on, Saph.”

Saph.

Sapphire.

“I’ve already done what I could do. The rest of it will happen on its own. Maple will not forgive him after what he said.” A pause. “Sure, we did set up the situation for him. And yeah, I pushed him too far that night. You may have sent her upstairs. But what came out of Cade’s mouth? That was Cade’s doing. All the way through.”

I put my hand flat on the wall next to the door.

“I don’t know, Saph. If he doesn’t like you, what can I do? I can’t make him fall in love with you.” Another pause. “I have to go. Cade’s coming to pick me up. I’ll talk to you later.”

He hung up.

I stood in the hallway, trying to comprehend the words I had just heard.

And what I should have seen a long time ago became suddenly, unavoidably clear.

As I pushed open the door, Kyle looked up from his desk. For one half second, something moved across his face. Then it was gone and he was smiling. The easy, warm, thirty-six-years-of-friendship smile that I now understood differently than I had five minutes ago.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

I smiled back.

“Ready to go?” I said.

“So, for a twenty-seven point eight million dollar funding from Sonnenberg Industries, the estimated return on investment for the project will be at least triple in the next two years.”

Kyle clicked off his last slide.

Seven senior members of the Sonnenberg Industries board applauded politely. And then all eyes were on me. Because whatever I said in the next two minutes would determine whether this happened or not.

Kyle looked at me too. He had been looking at me with increasing uncertainty since the elevator ride down from his office, during which I had talked about the weather and the traffic and absolutely nothing else.

I stood up.

“Kyle has been my best friend since I was three years old,” I said.