My Fiance's Legal Wife Called Me to Help Pick the Ring novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Heaviest Band

At the jeweler, Odessa steers Elise to a platinum band, Hugh arrives and tries to choose for her, and in the doorway he warns her to hang up if a woman named Odessa calls.

Odessa walked into Lowe and Daughters on Oak Street at 4:30, and I followed her in.

"Platinum," she said in my ear, before the door had closed. "Nothing he can pawn."

"He's going to be here in a few minutes."

"Then we shop fast."

The jeweler came out from behind the long glass case.

She was a small, silver-haired woman in a gray cardigan, and she smiled at Odessa first.

"Mrs. Alden. How lovely. Are you here for the pearls?"

Nobody moved.

The jeweler's eyes went from Odessa's face to mine, then to the oval ring on my hand.

She was too good at her job to say another word.

"Not today," Odessa said pleasantly. "My friend is choosing a band. Her fiance is joining us."

"Of course."

"Don't tell him I was here," Odessa said, "and I'll buy the pearls."

The jeweler set a velvet tray on the glass.

It held eleven wedding bands for a man and a woman, in gold and white gold and platinum.

I touched the thin gold one, the delicate one, the one that matched the ring Hugh had picked for me.

Odessa put her finger on the heaviest band on the tray.

"That one," she said. "It weighs what he deserves."

"I'm not choosing a ring to hit someone with."

"You're choosing a ring to remember this afternoon by. Pick the one that hurts when you grip it."

I picked it up.

It was wide and plain and cool, with a blunt edge,, and it fit my finger.

My phone buzzed on the glass.

HUGH: 5 min. Don't buy anything without me, love.

"He's coming," I said.

Odessa was already moving toward the back office, and the jeweler had already opened the door for her.

"Wait," I said.

She turned.

"What if I can't do it? What if I look at him and I scream?"

"Then you scream, and I find another way, and I'm angry at you for a year." Her face was calm.

"Elise. Whatever happens, the twentieth stays the twentieth."

The door closed on her.

Hugh came in four minutes later with the street behind him.

He was six feet two in a navy suit, with silver at his temples and a leather folder under one arm.

He crossed the shop without looking at the cases.

"There she is."

He kissed my temple.

I had liked that kiss for fourteen months.

I stood very still while it happened, and I smelled his cologne and thought about the scar on his knee.

"You look tired," he said. "Did you start at four again?"

"Three-thirty."

"We'll fix that after the wedding. You won't need to." He turned to the jeweler. "What have you shown her?"

She slid the tray toward him without looking at me.

Hugh picked up the thin gold band and held it against the oval ring.

"This one," he said. "It suits her hands. She's always up to the wrists in dough, and anything heavier would catch on it."

"I like the platinum," I said.

He glanced at the band in my palm and laughed.

"Love, that's a man's ring."

"It's the one I want."

"Elise." His voice dropped, warm and patient, the voice he used when I said something wrong in front of other people.

"We have a budget, and we have a look. Let me handle this one."

The jeweler's face was perfectly blank.

Hugh turned to her. "The gold one for my fiancee. For me, the plain gold, and engrave both with H and E and nine-twenty."

"I'll pay for this one myself," I said.

He stopped.

I held out my card.

"I'll pay for mine," I said. "You pick yours. It's eleven hundred dollars, and I have it."

It was a week of my bakery's takings. My hand did not shake. I was a little surprised.

"Don't be ridiculous," Hugh said, laughing again, and he looked at the jeweler to see whether she was laughing too.

She was not.

"I'll ring it up for you, miss," she said.

The platinum band went into a small gray box with my name on the receipt, and no engraving at all.

Hugh walked me to the door with his hand flat on my back.

The street outside was bright and loud, and a bus went by with a coffee ad on its side.

"You're in a mood," he said. "That's fine. It's the stress. Everybody warned me brides get like this."

"I'm fine."

"I know you are." He put both hands on my shoulders and looked down at me. "One thing, love, and then I'll let you go."

"What?"

"If a woman named Odessa ever calls you, hang up."

I did not move.

"She isn't well," Hugh said gently. "She calls people. She says she's still married to me."

He smiled the whole time, with a little sorrow in it.

Behind him, through the jeweler's window, I could see the back office door was open a crack.

"Who?" I said.

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