Chapter 21: Please Play the File

Joel's POV

Leah wore green, and I forgot the name of every person in the room.

The Lakeside ballroom held four hundred guests, a string quartet and a crystal chandelier.

She walked in beside me with her hand through my arm and her head up.

Conversations stopped as we passed.

Everyone in Duluth who shipped anything had come to the Paulsen Freight winter gala.

Most of them had seen the bakery video.

"They're staring," I murmured.

"Let them."

"You said you wanted the front row."

"I do."

She squeezed my arm, and it was the only sign that she was scared.

Ingrid was allowed in the room tonight, and Leah had said yes to it herself.

Ingrid stood on the stage at the far end of the room, in white, with a microphone stand beside her.

She looked radiant.

A black bracelet showed at her ankle under the hem, and she had made no attempt to hide it.

She raised her glass to me across four hundred heads and smiled.

I didn't smile back.

Leah leaned close to my ear.

"Say it back to me. What do we do if the vote goes badly?"

"We sit still."

"And?"

"We wait for you to say go."

"I'll say go," she whispered. "Not before."

Her breath on my neck was the only warm thing in the room.

I wanted to take her out of that ballroom and lock a door behind us.

I stayed where I was, because she had asked me to.

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