Chapter 6: Chairman

"Chairman of what?" I said.

He didn't reach for the phone.

He sat up against my headboard with the quilt at his waist and looked at me in the lamplight.

"Ironvale," he said.

I laughed.

It came out wrong, high and thin.

"Ironvale has a board and a trust and nobody's ever seen..."

"Nobody's ever seen the owner," he said. "I know. I've been him for four years."

I got out of the bed.

I pulled on my fleece and zipped it to my chin.

"The renewal," I said. "The doubling."

"I called my office from your grandmother's porch."

"Spence said he called the top."

"Spence has never spoken to me in his life."

"You let me pay for your coffee at the courthouse."

"You insisted."

"You let my aunt put you on a folding chair."

"It was a very sturdy chair."

"Bennet."

He stopped smiling.

"When I was twelve," he said, "two men took me out of my father's driveway and kept me in a car trunk for three days."

"My father paid. After that there were no more pictures of me. Anywhere."

He touched the white scar through his eyebrow.

"I came to your shop to meet the woman who built the best scope we've ever tested."

"Your receptionist decided I was selling something. I sat on your bench for forty minutes."

"And then I proposed."

"And then you proposed."

"Why did you say yes?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Because a man threatened sixty people with my company's name, and you told him no anyway."

"I wanted to know what a woman like that would do next."

"And the three thousand a month?"

"That's my salary. The board sets it. I never lied to you, Alana."

"You let me believe."

"Yes," he said. "I did. I'm sorry."

I sat down on the end of the bed, hard.

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