Read Bonbons and Betrayal: Book 3 in The Chocolate Cafe Series for Free Online

Sabrina looked no bigger than she did when she was a child. Her body still tiny, her soul too big to hold it in, her best friend looked as lost as she had almost twenty years ago.
     
    “We have to find him.” Sabrina said, haphazardly wrapping herself in a seat belt, “You have to help me find him and figure out what the hell is going on.”
     
    ******
     
     
    The two girls stood in the shadows of the computer science department building at New York University. All the lights were out, seeing that it was only a few hours before the sun came up. The building stretched out before them, all brick and darkened windows in the chilly spring dawn.
     
    Mac turned to Brie, who was shifting her weight in an almost psychotic manner. Right foot, left foot…all the while twirling one of her overlong stands of hair between her fingers.
     
    Even though they had spoken about it in length for the last hour, even though it had been the first question Mac had flung at her friend…she had to ask again.
     
    “You’re sure he’s here?” Mac said. She wrapped her arms around herself tighter, feeling the insistent April damp against her skin.
     
    “No,” Brie said, glaring at Mac. “I am obviously not sure that he’s here. But it seems like the most logical spot.”
     
    Mac couldn’t help but roll her eyes.
     
    “Oh, so if he’s not with you, he’s at work…right?”
     
    Sabrina’s mouth formed a tight little line that Mac had seldom seen. Her English country garden beauty seemed to dissolve in a second, leaving behind the kind of lines that only come from a hard life earned hourly.
     
    “There’s no other place he’d be,” she said.
     
    She turned to Mac. The light under the doorway of the offices was dim. A few moths danced around the blasé bulb with little to no commitment. “Something is wrong.” she said, fixing her giant brown eyes on Mac. “I wouldn’t have called you otherwise.”
     
    Mac felt as if she had been slapped. Of course she wouldn’t. She knew Sabrina better than she knew herself and one thing Sabrina seldom did was call her in the middle of the night over a man, of all things.
     
    Mac took a deep breath.
     
    “You’re right.” she said. “Something is wrong. Go ahead.”
     
    Brie rolled her eyes.
     
    “With your blessing?”
     
    “Absolutely.” There was a pause when Sabrina punched in the suite numbers on the intercom and waited. The girls barely breathed as the archaic system announced one…two…three…four rings. It remained unanswered echoing off the concrete corners of a perfectly beige, perfectly safe administration building.
     
    Sabrina turned suddenly to Mac. Her jaw was set and her eyes glazed.
     
    “I’m going around the back.” she said rapidly. “His office looks out onto the park out there…I’ll go knock.” Before Mac could stop her, she was gone.
     
    What if he’s with another woman?! she wanted to yell. What if you catch him wallowing in the arms of another at 4am?
     
    “Brie…” Mac shouted pleadingly. It was too late. She had already disappeared around the side of the building. Begrudgingly and with the kind of fuzzy thinking that comes from too little sleep, Mac followed her friend to the back.

    Each of the ground floor offices had patio access out to the strangely manicured lawns that lead to a man-made lake. Mac wasn’t surprised when she discovered Sabrina making her way to one of the ground floor sliding glass doors.
     
    Her head barely clearing the perfectly manicured hedge, Mac hissed, “Seriously? Brie, honey. Seriously?”
     
    Sabrina’s hand was already wrapped around the smooth plastic handle of the patio door. Mac had to stop herself from breaking into a full volume yelp.
     
    “You don’t know what you’re going to find in…”
     
    Sabrina turned to Mac and silenced her immediately. It wasn’t the sadness in her eyes that stopped her, but the disappointment. It was deep. It was dark. There was a least a few months’