in Lucas’s name and the term “pharmaceutical.”
Several results came up, but she could tell immediately that none of them was the man she was looking for. One was too old. One was too young. One was in California. None were in Boston, and none of their photos matched the man she had met.
But she was determined not to give up.
He was attending a conference in Rome, she reminded herself. Maybe that’s a place to start.
A quick search turned up the name of the conference. The dates matched the dates she and Lucas had been in Rome.
Elise felt a thrill of anticipation. This has to be it. She found the conference website, thanking her lucky stars that it was still active.
And there, at the bottom of the homepage, was the word ATTENDEES.
Elise clicked on it, hardly daring to breathe.
The list that came up was of businesses, not people. Dozens of pharmaceutical companies, all of them with similar-sounding names. Where was she going to start? She couldn’t possibly look into the employees of all of these companies.
She wondered if there was a way to tell which ones were headquartered in Boston. But even that sounded like a lot of work. There were so many of them.
But each of these companies had almost certainly sent only a handful of individuals to the conference. If she could get her hands on that list, the list of people who had attended, maybe she could figure out which company Lucas worked for. Then she would have a way to contact him.
Maybe.
She fired off a quick email to the conference organizers asking whether it would be possible to get a list of the attendees.
The response was surprisingly quick.
Unfortunately, we are unable to release any personal information about conference attendees. That information is protected by GDPR regulations.
Elise sighed. So much for finding Lucas that way. She wasn’t ready to give up, but she knew she would have to turn to some other method if she wanted to have any hope of finding him.
Another new message appeared in her email. Elise clicked it open before she realized who it had come from—the employment agency.
All thoughts of Lucas flew out of her mind as she read the message.
They had gotten her an interview.
A real job interview.
Elise had begun to feel as if she would never schedule a job interview. She had felt as if she might be stuck here at her parents’ house forever. And now here it was. Someone wanted to meet with her, and maybe to offer her a job.
She read the email three times, memorizing the details. Where she needed to go. Who she would be speaking to. It was a phone sales rep job at a company called Quadra-Well, and they wanted to meet with her tomorrow afternoon at two.
She could hardly wait.
She jumped out of bed and went to her closet, rifling through her clothes, trying to find the perfect professional outfit. If she could make a good impression in the interview tomorrow, her job search might be at an end.
I could be employed by this time next week, she thought. I could be bringing in a paycheck again.
And because her parents had been so determined that she should keep living with them until after the baby was born, Elise would be able to put away all of her earnings, saving up for the future. Preparing to provide for her child.
That was a big deal. The email hadn’t said how much Quadra-Well would be willing to pay, and sales jobs were always unpredictable when it came to salary. Elise might be making as much as she had made at her last job. She might be making more.
She might be making a whole lot less.
If that was the case, it would definitely help her to have a robust savings account in place.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, she thought firmly. You don’t have the job yet.
It would be a bad idea to start taking things for granted, to assume that she had this job locked up. That mindset could easily just lead to more disappointment, and Elise felt as though she had had enough disappointment in the past few weeks to last a lifetime.
But she didn’t want to allow herself to feel defeated either, after all, and it was possible that she would get this job. She was a good employee. She came with a lot of experience. And even though she had been laid off from her last job, she was pretty sure that her ex-employer