What the Heart Needs Read Online Free PDF Page A

rolling her eyes childishly.
    “Now be honest,” Tad laughed, “you cant tell me you haven’t noticed! That’s not even possible.”
    “He’s old,” Hannah came back, not wanting to admit he was good-looking, but not wanting to lie either.
    “He’s older,” Tad corrected. “Age recommends a man. They have been around the block a time or two.”
    Hannah rose from the desk, picking up the part of the schedule Tad had compiled for her, then leaning down over Tad’s shoulder and saying, “Now you tell me. Which would you rather buy… a shiny new car or one with a hundred-thousand miles on it?”
    Tad’s laugh followed her all the way to the copy machine. “Don’t you worry, Hannah-Banana, you are going to make it after all!”
    Hannah leaned out of the copy room, lifted an invisible hat off her head and threw it in the air.
    She had barely been able to get all the schedules from the secretaries as they scrambled to get everything squared away before the end of the workday. The entire staff practically ran out the door at five, leaving the floor hauntingly empty.
    Hannah sat there alone, the lights dimmed to ease the headache that was now banging behind her eyes. She was at Tad’s long-abandoned desk, balancing Mr. Michaels’ checkbook. He had sprung the task on her last minute just when she was about to breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of being able to go home. Who even balanced their checkbooks anymore?
    The only good thing was she hadn’t seen him in over an hour. He had been sitting in his closed office and the only sign that he was even still there was the blinking light on the phone panel suggesting the use of his private line.
    Hannah tapped on the calculator she had to go down three floors to find, lifting up one credit card receipt after another. It was amazing that one man could do so much damage to his bank account in a single week when he never seemed to leave the office except for the occasional business meeting. She filled out the spreadsheet, humming quietly to herself to ease her frayed nerves.
    She had the sneaking suspicion he had given her this job to do just to mess with her. Maybe he was trying to make her break. As much as she would have loved nothing more than to go and throw them in his face, her pride made her accept the work with a smile even though it was already well past seven-pm and she still hadn’t had a chance to eat anything.
    She never even heard the door open. She jumped a few inches and yelped when she heard him ask, “What are you doing sitting at Tad’s desk?”
    “I… er… um… wasn’t assigned a desk of my own. That could have something to do with it,” she replied, not caring how surly her voice sounded. She was exhausted and all she wanted to do was pile the receipts into a envelope and be done with the day.
    Elliott’s eyebrow raised a little as he realized, for the first time, that perhaps his office staff wasn’t as loyal as he had thought. Someone was trying to make her day even harder than it had to be. He wasn’t happy about it. “Sally should have shown you your office this morning,” he informed her, a slight annoyance creeping into his usually tempered voice.
    “As you can see,” Hannah said, waving a hand around her, “she did not.”
    Elliott sighed and nodded, holding a hand out as if he was offering it to her. “Come on then, I will show you.”
    Hannah rose from the desk slowly, her body aching in places she didn’t realize she could have strained. Not even the promise of her own office could ease the urgency she felt to get back home, make a cup of soothing tea, and fall into bed.
    She followed EM into his office and then through the door to the right which she had assumed, up until then, was a storage room or a private bathroom. He pulled the door open, reached in, and switched on the light.
    Inside was a small black desk which faced away from the huge windows that lined that whole side of the building. A long, low black