Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,133

at the hotel. On top of the phone was another folded note which she removed and opened out to read.

This is for us. I have programmed my number into it and I have yours.

The bill is all taken care of.

I don’t expect you to call me and I will obviously not call you.

But I just want to know that we can reach each other.

Whenever, wherever.

Merry Christmas my beautiful angel.

Tears pricking at her eyes, Elise removed the phone from the box and powered it up as Cole looked across and whistled.

“Whew! That’s some serious phone hardware there. He’s got taste, I’ll give him that.”

Elise looked at the phone in awe; she had never had anything so high tech before and she wasn’t even convinced she would know how to use it. Checking out the rest of the box, she found the charger unit and various connecting leads along with a stunning lime green diamante cover for the phone – her favourite colour – she had no idea how he knew that.

The phone began to chirp and she hastily looked at the screen, pleased to see that it was displaying a text message with a ‘click here to view’ button so she didn’t have to work out how to read it.

Opening the message she saw that it was from Vaughn. The message was timed first thing that morning so he must have sent it before he headed off to his sister’s house. It was short and to the point:-

Just checking. Text me back if you can. I miss you. x x

Helplessly she looked over at Cole who was busily reading the instruction manual and almost salivating over the various features and apps. She showed him the text message.

“Any idea on how I reply?” she asked.

Cole shook his head at her mystified. “You really don’t do technology, do you?”

“Shut up. I can’t help that I’m a sweet and innocent that’s lead a sheltered life.”

“Ha ha – as if, Elise Grayson. Give it here – let me have a look.”

Elise handed the phone over to Cole and took a moment to consider the gifts that Vaughn had given her. Polar opposites of each other but equally symbolic in their own way and both allowed the two of them to have some form of contact with each other whilst they were apart. No one had ever given her anything so beautiful and she found herself falling deeper and deeper into this man. Apart from what Olivia had said, he had given her no reason to doubt his intentions towards her - to the contrary in fact. She just hoped that Olivia had been lying; otherwise she really didn’t know how she was going to recover from this one.

Chapter Thirty

It had only taken Cole a matter of minutes to work out how to use her phone so after a quick ‘training’ session, they had left the safety of the meeting room and Elise had braved her desk and the vastness of the office again.

She could almost feel the eyes boring into her as she walked back but she was getting used to it now and almost felt sorry for most of these people. They clearly didn’t have anything else going on in their lives.

Stephen was on the phone when she returned so she tucked her presents into her bag discreetly and powered up her computer to do some work. Once again, she thanked her lucky stars that the big bosses were on the top floor; otherwise she would have had some serious explaining to do over the last few days with her relatively constant disappearing acts.

She had just started to tackle her in-tray when her phone rang and she picked it up.

“Elise Grayson.”

“Hello? Oh er, Hi. Is that Miss Grayson?” The voice was hesitant and not one that Elise recognised.

“Yes, speaking.” she said, deciding it was probably a new client lead.

“Oh, Miss Grayson...it’s Edwin here, Edwin Dunn, you know – from the...conference.”

Ah. The sleazebag. The cause of Vaughn’s fight and at the end of the day, just an ordinary man needing a bit of luck.

“Oh yes, Mr Dunn – hello, how are you feeling now?” She didn’t particularly care but she had no idea why this man was calling her and so decided to go with pleasantries.

“I’m much better now, thank you.” He replied, “I was just calling to let you know that I’ve come clean with my family and they all know exactly what happened. I wanted to apologise again - my behaviour was uncalled