Heartbreak Brings Mr. Right novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Thora meets the hired fiance in the dark, learns his rules and rehearses over diner pie. On party day her stepmother says her father will sign the wedding gift tonight.

Level three of the Fifth Avenue garage smelled of rain and old oil.

I parked under the one blue light, as instructed, and sat with the engine off and my hand on the door lock.

At two minutes to midnight a man stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.

He was tall, broad through the shoulders, and he kept just outside the circle of light.

A cap was pulled low over his eyes, and his coat collar was turned up.

I rolled my window down two inches.

"You're early," he said.

His voice was low and unhurried, with a roughness at the bottom of it.

Something in my chest turned over, and I could not say why.

"I'm Thora," I said. "I understand you don't give a name."

"No."

"Do you have a reason?"

"I do." He tilted his head. "You'll like me better without one."

"That's a strange sales pitch."

"It's not a pitch. You're the one who called me."

I got out of the car, because sitting in it made me feel like a child.

He stayed where he was and did not step closer.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

I told him everything except the study and the port.

I told him I had an engagement party in eight days, a fiance who deserved to be shamed and a photograph of me in a stranger's arms.

"Here is the plan," I said. "You arrive late. You walk in as if you've been invited. You say you're the man in the photo."

"And then?"

"And then I take your hand in front of everyone and say I'm sorry, but it's true."

"You want to be seen leaving him," he said.

"I want him to be seen being left."

He was quiet for a moment.

"It's weak," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Saying you're the man in the photo makes him the wronged husband. People like a wronged husband." The cap tipped. "He gets a week of sympathy and a bigger party."

I opened my mouth and shut it again.

He was right, and I hated that I hadn't seen it.

"What do you suggest?"

"Don't be the woman who cheated," he said. "Be the woman who was engaged to somebody else all along."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning I walk in and say you're mine. Not a hotel. Not a mistake. Mine."

My pulse jumped in my throat.

"That's a lot to ask of a stranger from an agency."

"I'm telling you what works."

"And the price?"

"I don't take money."

"Then what do you take?"

"I pick the ring," he said. "You don't argue, and you don't ask me my name."

"That's the whole fee?"

"That's it."

It was ridiculous, and I should have walked away.

But for the first time in a day somebody had told me what was true without wanting something back.

"Fine," I said. "You pick the ring."

"Then we shake."

He held out a hand, and I took it.

It was big and warm and callused along the thumb, and I let go too fast.

"Diner," he said. "Two blocks. I'm hungry, and you need to hear me lie."

We sat in a booth at the back of a place called Dot's, under a flickering Pepsi sign.

He took the side facing the door and kept his cap on.

I could see a jaw dark with stubble, a mouth that looked as if it had learned to hide a smile, and nothing else.

"Order," he said.

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten in a day. Your hands are shaking."

I looked down, and he was right.

I ordered the apple pie.

He ordered three eggs and told the waitress, "Coffee for her, black, no sugar."

I had not told him.

"Lucky guess," he said, before I could ask.

I speared a bite of pie, and my fork was steady for the first time all day.

"Let's rehearse," he said. "Pretend I'm walking in. Where are you standing?"

"By the staircase. Hollister will have his arm around me."

"Then I stop three paces away and say your name once. Not loudly."

"Why not loudly?"

"Because quiet makes a room lean in." He set his coffee down. "You turn around. What's on your face?"

"I don't know."

"Show me."

I tried a shocked face, and he shook his head.

"Think of the worst thing he's ever said to you."

It was easy.

I thought about eight months of dinners with a girl who counts the olives, and my face went still and cold.

"That one," he said, softly. "Keep that one."

We went through it four times.

At one point he said, "You hold your fork like someone who works with her hands."

"I restore paintings."

He nodded slowly, as if he had known it.

I could not shake the feeling that I had met him before.

When we parted, he walked me to my car and waited until I had locked the door.

"Saturday," he said through the glass. "Don't be afraid of me."

"I'm not."

"Good."

He turned and walked into the dark, and I watched him go until the garage swallowed him.

Eight days later Sherilyn zipped me into the dress I had chosen for my own engagement.

It was plum silk, with a neckline that Hollister had told me was too low.

She smoothed my hair with her cool fingers.

"You look lovely tonight," she said. "Your father is being brought from the hospital by ambulance, you know, just for the toast."

"I didn't know he was coming."

"He wouldn't miss it." She smiled at me in the mirror. "He'll sign the gift in front of everyone, and then it's done."

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