Found A Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty-Eight Dollars

Katie buys Quinton a thrift suit, shaves him, and marries him at the clerk's office, then a black SUV and a man in a camel coat are waiting: 'Mr. Stuyvesant.'

"Where did you get that?" I said.

"It was my mother's." Quinton closed my fingers around it. "I've carried it in my coat since June. Nobody robs a man for his lining."

"Quin, this is worth more than my building."

"Then don't lose it."

"You could have sold it. You could have had an apartment. You've been sleeping on concrete."

"I had reasons."

"What reasons?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Ask me again after you've married me," he said.

I should have pushed.

I was cold and humiliated and my mother's voice was still in my ear, so I put the ring in my pocket and said, "Nine o'clock. Don't be late."

He smiled under the beard.

I'd never seen him smile like that.

"I don't have anywhere else to be, Katie."

At seven the next morning I was in the thrift store on Milwaukee Avenue, holding a charcoal suit up against a stranger my husband's size.

"Forty-two long," the old man at the register said. "Thirty-eight dollars. You want the tie?"

"Does it come with the tie?"

"Nothing comes with the tie."

I bought the tie.

Quinton was waiting on the bottom step of my building at seven-forty, exactly where I'd told him to wait.

"Upstairs," I said. "Shower's on the left. Don't use the purple towel."

"What's wrong with the purple towel?"

"It's mine."

He came out twenty minutes later in a cloud of steam, in the suit pants and nothing else, with his hair wet and the beard dripping.

I looked at the ceiling.

"The shirt's on the chair," I said.

"I know where the shirt is."

"Put it on."

"You're blushing, Verrill."

"I'm not anything. Sit down. I'm shaving you."

He sat on my one kitchen chair.

I stood between his knees with my grandmother's old scissors and cut the beard down to stubble.

Then I lathered him up with the drugstore cream and took the razor along his jaw.

He held perfectly still.

His eyes stayed on my face the whole time.

The face came out of the beard a stroke at a time.

A hard jaw. A straight mouth. A small white scar along his hairline I'd never seen.

He was not a little handsome.

He was the kind of handsome that makes a room go quiet.

I finished his upper lip and stepped back with the razor in my hand.

"Well?" he said.

"You look like somebody."

Something flickered behind his eyes.

"I am somebody," he said. "I'm the man you're marrying in an hour."

The Cook County clerk's office does weddings on Saturday mornings for people in a hurry.

There were six couples ahead of us.

A girl in a prom dress with a sailor.

Two gray-haired women in matching Christmas sweaters who held hands the whole time.

My boss from the café came as our witness, still smelling like espresso, and shook Quinton's hand without asking a single question.

"Huh," he said. "You clean up."

The judge wore a cardigan with a reindeer on it.

She read the vows fast.

Quinton said "I do" like it was the easiest thing he'd ever said.

I said it like I was jumping off something.

"The ring?" the judge said.

I took his mother's ring out of my pocket.

He took it from me and slid it onto my finger himself.

It fit.

"You may kiss the bride," the judge said, already reaching for the next folder.

I tipped my face up for something polite.

Quinton put one hand on my jaw.

He didn't kiss me politely.

He kissed me slowly, like he'd been thinking about it for a while and wanted to get it right.

His mouth was warm, and he tasted like my toothpaste.

I grabbed his lapel to stay on my feet.

He made a low sound against my lips and tilted my head with his thumb, and the kiss went deeper.

The room went away.

The two women in sweaters started to clap.

The sailor whistled.

When he finally lifted his head, I was holding his lapel in both fists.

"Okay," I said. My voice cracked. "Okay. That was convincing."

"Good," Quinton said. His voice wasn't steady either.

"Next," said the judge.

Outside on the steps I took a photo of the marriage certificate and sent it to my mother.

No message.

Just the paper, with his name and mine.

I watched the word "Delivered" come up under it.

Then I read the paper properly for the first time.

Quinton Alexander Stuyvesant.

"Stuyvesant," I said. "Like the..."

A black SUV pulled up to the curb at the bottom of the steps.

The back door opened, and a man in a camel coat got out.

He was in his fifties, with a gray crew cut and a face like a closed door.

He came up the steps and stopped in front of my husband.

He didn't look at the thrift suit.

He didn't look at me.

"Mr. Stuyvesant," he said quietly. "Your uncle's people were at the overpass at six. They had a photo of you."

Quinton's jaw went tight.

"How many?"

"Two. Plus his driver."

I looked from one of them to the other.

"Quin," I said. "Who is this man?"

Quinton turned to me.

For six months he'd looked at me from a concrete ledge like I was the best part of his day.

He looked at me like that now, and also like a man about to lose something.

He opened the back door of the car and held it for me.

"Get in, Mrs. Stuyvesant," he said. "I owe you the truth."

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