There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, Ms. Palmer, but the partners are tied up in a meeting and won’t be available for most of the day.”
It was a lie, and Sabrina knew it. She could hear it in the receptionist’s voice. Not only had the partners fired her, they had instructed the receptionist not to put Sabrina’s call through. What was going on?
“Thank you,” she mumbled and hung up.
But they wouldn’t be rid of her so quickly. She scrolled through the contact list and found the direct number to Celeste, Mrs. Vogel’s assistant. She dialed it.
“Mrs. Vogel’s office,” Celeste answered on the second ring.
“Hello, Celeste. This is Sabrina Palmer. May I please speak to Mrs. Vogel?”
The quick intake of breath she heard coming through the line told her that Celeste was searching for an answer to her request. “Uh, I’m sorry, Sabrina, but she’s out of the office. I don’t expect her back until tomorrow.”
Sabrina paused for a moment. The receptionist had said that all partners were in a meeting and now Celeste was telling her that Mrs. Vogel was out of the office.
“Celeste, please I need to speak to her. It’s an emergency. I know she’s there.”
“I’m really sorry, Sabrina, but I can’t put you through.”
Sabrina fought back tears. “Celeste, please tell me what’s going on. I just received a certified letter terminating my employment. I’m just trying to find out why. But nobody will talk to me.”
Celeste hesitated, then lowered her voice to a level where Sabrina had to strain to hear her. “I’m sorry. We were all shocked when we heard about you being fired. But, you know, you can’t really blame them.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t do anything! They praised my work before I left on vacation.”
“It’s not about your work.” Celeste sighed. “It’s about the article in the New York Times a few days ago. The one in the society pages. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
The call was disconnected.
For a moment, Sabrina stood there, stunned. An article in the society pages of the New York Times had gotten her fired? With a racing heart, she ran into the house, realizing too late that she’d left her coffee mug on the stone fence, and rushed upstairs.
She reached the room she shared with Daniel a few moments later and snatched the laptop from the bedside table. She brought it to the little desk below the window and sat down. While the computer booted up, she nervously tapped her fingers on the wooden surface.
The moment her laptop was showing her the welcome screen and she had logged on, she opened the browser and typed in the website address of the New York Times. The site came up instantly. She didn’t lose any time by scrolling through the stories, but used the search function instead, typing in her own name and hitting return.
The search results came back within a second.
She clicked on the first hyperlink. It brought her to the engagement announcement that had run several weeks earlier. Beneath a photo of her and Daniel, two paragraphs had been written about their upcoming nuptials. There was nothing incriminating in the article. In fact, her employers knew full well whom she was marrying: a business tycoon from an extremely wealthy and well-connected family in the Hamptons. They were also fully aware that Sabrina didn’t need to work if she didn’t want to. Yet, she didn’t want to merely be Daniel’s trophy wife. She’d insisted on getting a job where she felt she was contributing something. She had made it clear to her employers after the engagement had been announced that she intended to continue working after the wedding.
Sabrina clicked the back button and returned to the search results. She clicked on the second hyperlink. The same photo as before appeared and Sabrina was about to click the back button again, when her eyes fell on the headline: Business Tycoon Daniel Sinclair to Marry High-class Call Girl.
Her heart stopped for an agonizing moment. This couldn’t be happening! But as her eyes flew over the text underneath the headline, dread and shame settled in her stomach.
A little birdie tells me that successful entrepreneur and millionaire Daniel Sinclair, whose equally wealthy family lives in Montauk, NY, has decided to marry outside his class. According to a reliable source, his fiancée, Sabrina Palmer, worked as a high-class escort in San Francisco, where she met Mr. Sinclair, who was a client of the escort service which employed Ms. Palmer. Neither Mr. Sinclair nor Ms. Palmer could be reached for comment.
Had somebody stumbled over the little white lie of being an escort that she’d told Daniel on the night they’d met, and thought it was true? The only other people besides Daniel and herself who knew about it were Holly and Tim. And Sabrina knew that neither of them would ever mention a single word about it to anybody. But who else? Could Hannigan somehow have found out after he’d surprised them at their little weekend getaway in Sonoma? She wouldn’t put it past her former supervisor at her old law firm who’d so desperately wanted to get into her pants to make allegations like these if he suspected something. After all, he’d lost his job because of Daniel.