After He Gave My Wedding Away, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The First Installment

"Which chapel?" I asked when he came back in.

Caleb stopped inside the roll-up door.

He had heard me, and he knew I had heard him.

"Not tonight," he said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have." He kept his voice level. "Saturday there's a gala at the Historical Society. Sayre Holdings is getting a Small Business Champion award. Come with me, and afterward I'll answer anything you ask."

"Why would I go to her award dinner?"

"Because she'll be on a stage with a microphone, and you told your mother you'd pay her back in front of people."

I looked at him.

"You heard that too?"

"Your mother's voice carries."

"Saturday," I said. "And you answer everything."

"Everything," Caleb said.

On Saturday, Hattie put me in a green velvet dress she had borrowed from a patient's daughter, and she pinned my hair up herself.

"Don't kill anyone," she said.

"Not on a Saturday."

The Historical Society ballroom had three hundred guests, a string quartet and chandeliers.

Caleb waited at the bottom of the stairs in a black suit.

The bandage was gone from his hand, and a pink mark ran across the back of it.

He offered me his arm, and I took it, and neither of us said anything about how it felt.

We found our table in the middle of the room.

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