He Stole My Bill, So I Divorced Him and Outranked His Father novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Seventy-Two Hours

The Governor gives Greta a desk and a weekend assignment, Emilio wipes the pen's ink from her palm and agrees to her terms, and her suitcases arrive at the guard desk because the Spurlocks changed the locks.

The Governor's office smelled of leather and burnt coffee.

She did not get up. She had her boots on a hassock and a legal pad on her knee.

"Sit down, Peaches," she said. "I buy my peaches off a stand outside Stonewall, and the old man who sells them has your chin."

"That's my father," I said, and sat.

"I have three questions," the Governor said. "Did you write section 11?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"It has a sunset clause. Was that on purpose?"

"So the next legislature has to look at the springs again, or the money stops," I said.

"Last one. Do you want a job?"

I held the pen in my lap and said nothing for a second.

"I didn't come up here to be rescued," I said.

"Good, because I'm not hiring a rescue case," the Governor said.

"I'm calling a special session for August on the spring funding."

"I need a draft by Monday morning that Royce Spurlock's committee can't gut."

"Seventy-two hours," I said.

"You've got a desk. Emilio will find you a lamp."

Emilio found me a lamp, and a legal pad, and the Governor's long conference table on the second floor.

By nine that night the Capitol was empty.

The halls had gone quiet, and the lights in the rotunda had dimmed to gold.

The only sound in the room was my pen on paper.

He did not leave.

He sat at the far end of the table reading a binder, with his jacket off and his sleeves turned back.

At nine-thirty he put a paper sack in front of me.

It held two tacos, a cup of queso and a bottle of cold water.

"I didn't ask for dinner," I said.

"You skipped lunch. It wasn't a favor, Ms. Wehmeyer. A drafter who faints costs me a day."

I ate one taco standing up.

When I reached for the pen again, I stopped.

My left palm was black.

The signing pen had cracked in my fist in the rotunda.

I had carried the ink around for hours without noticing, and blue-black lines ran through every crease.

Emilio came around the table.

He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and said, "Give me your hand."

I gave it to him.

He turned it palm up and wiped it, slowly, one crease at a time.

His thumb moved across the base of my ring finger and found the pale stripe the ring had left.

He stopped there.

He did not say anything about it. He did not take his thumb away either.

My wrist felt warm under his fingers. I told myself it was the room.

"That's not coming out tonight," he said.

"I've had worse on me," I said.

"I saw," he said.

I looked up at him.

He had not looked surprised at the podium. He had stood against that wall and watched every second of it without moving.

I filed that in the back of my mind and did not ask.

"I have terms," I said.

"I figured you would."

"I report to the Governor and nobody else," I said.

"My name goes on everything I draft, on the cover page, in ink."

"And I keep my own hours."

"Agreed," Emilio said. "All three."

"You don't want to think about it?" I asked.

"I thought about it in April," he said.

I did not know what that meant, so I let it go.

"Then I'll call you Mr. Cavazos," I said, "and you can call me whatever the Governor does."

His throat moved.

It was a small thing, one swallow, and he looked at the floor to do it.

I told myself he was tired.

"Mr. Cavazos," I said again, more quietly, just to see.

"Ms. Wehmeyer," he said.

His voice had dropped half a tone.

Neither of us picked up the handkerchief.

The phone on the wall rang. He crossed to it and listened for a long moment.

"Thank you," he said. "Hold them at the desk."

He hung up and turned around.

"That was the south door. A driver from the Spurlock house just left two suitcases and a garment bag with the guard."

My stomach went tight.

"He said the locks on Westlake Drive were changed this afternoon," Emilio said. "He said you'd know what that meant."

I knew.

My clothes were in the lobby, and my books were in a house I could not enter.

I had eleven hundred dollars in a checking account with my husband's name on it too.

"I'll get a hotel," I said.

"It's a Thursday in June with a convention in town. You won't find a room within twenty miles."

He picked up his jacket and did not put it on.

"I have a spare room, ten minutes from here," Emilio said.

"Say no and I'll book you a suite at the Driskill and sit in the lobby until you check in."

"Either way, you won't be alone tonight."

I looked at the table, the draft, the cold queso.

I looked at his handkerchief with the blue-black stripe across it.

"Drive," I said.

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