The 23rd Deletion Bride novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Table One

Linnea walks into the gala past Delaney and her clipboard and sits at Table One, until an investor stands up for her.

The Amory Group gala was held in the Harborview Hotel ballroom, and four hundred people were already coming through the doors when I got there.

I wore my mother's green gown.

Hattie had steamed it herself, and she had zipped me into it in the loft with her mouth full of pins and a look of grim pleasure.

"Walk in like you own the building," she said. "I'll be in the booth. If anything goes wrong, look at the big screen."

"What's going to go wrong?"

"Everything, I hope."

She kissed my cheek and went around the back.

I went in through the front.

Delaney stood at the registration table in a white dress, with a clipboard against her chest and a silver pin on her collar.

The pin read: Host.

Guests were lining up in front of her, and she greeted each one by first name.

When I reached the front, her smile didn't change at all.

"Mrs. Amory," she said sweetly. "Oh, I'm so sorry. There's a mix-up. I can't find you on my list."

"You added me yourself yesterday."

"It's the system." She turned the tablet toward me and tilted her head. "See? Nothing. I'll have to ask you to wait while I call someone."

Behind me the line went quiet.

A woman in a sequined shawl leaned toward her husband.

"That's Dalton's wife," she whispered. "Isn't it?"

"Is it?" he whispered back.

Delaney had heard them, and she let the silence run.

I looked at the tablet.

I looked at the people watching.

Then I looked at the white dress and the silver pin, and I understood that she wanted me to argue here, at the table, where I would look like a woman making a scene over a spelling mistake.

So I didn't argue.

"Thank you," I said. "I'll wait inside."

And I walked around the table.

"Mrs. Amory, you can't," Delaney said, and for the first time her voice went up. "Security!"

Two guards in black suits stepped toward me.

One of them was a young man I'd brought coffee to at last year's holiday party.

He stopped when I looked at him.

"Evening, Mrs. Amory," he said uncertainly.

"Good evening."

"I'm supposed to..." He looked at Delaney.

"She's not on the list," Delaney said.

"Hattie Beaumont has her at Table One," I said. "Call her. I'll be at my seat."

I kept walking.

Nobody put a hand on me.

The ballroom was gold and white, with a hundred round tables and a stage at the far end and an enormous screen hanging behind it.

I walked the full length of the room in the green gown, and I felt four hundred pairs of eyes follow me down the aisle.

Table One was at the front, closest to the stage.

There were ten place cards.

Two of them were mine and Dalton's, set at the center, side by side, and mine said Mrs. Dalton Amory.

Delaney's card read Hostess, and she had been seated on his other side.

I pulled out my chair.

It was the one beside Dalton's, and I sat in it.

I put my clutch on the white tablecloth and folded my hands.

My heart was beating very fast, and I thought of the small flicker on the doctor's monitor, and I breathed in slowly.

Stress, I told it. I know. I'm sorry. We're nearly done.

Dalton arrived from the stage steps with two men in gray suits.

He was laughing at something one of them had said, and he saw me, and the laugh was gone.

"What are you doing?" he said, very low.

"Sitting."

"I told you not to come."

"You told me to stay home. I'm a wife, Dalton. I'm not a dog."

One of the gray suits glanced at the other.

Dalton put a hand on the back of my chair and bent down, smiling for the room.

"Get up," he said through his teeth. "Right now. Delaney is going to sit there."

"It says Mrs. Dalton Amory."

"It's a card."

"I know. I read it. I'd like to know which one of us it's for."

Delaney had come in behind him, flushed, with the clipboard still against her chest.

"Dalton, she's disrupting the evening," she said, and her eyes were bright and wet. "I tried so hard to be kind."

"I know you did," he said, and put a hand on her arm.

I watched that hand.

It rested there a beat longer than it needed to.

"Security," Dalton said, louder. "Remove her."

A hush spread out around Table One, table by table, until the string quartet at the edge of the floor dropped out of the song they were playing.

The two guards stood where they were.

The young one looked at his shoes.

I didn't move.

I put both my hands flat on the cloth, so nobody could see them shake.

"Dalton," I said. "Tell them to put me out of my own husband's gala."

He opened his mouth.

A chair scraped at the other end of Table One.

A man had stood up.

He was tall, in a plain navy suit, with dark hair going gray above his ears, and he hadn't touched his water glass.

I had never seen him before.

He walked around the table without hurrying and stopped across from me, and when he spoke it was to the gray suits and not to me.

"Gentlemen, I'm Cullen Stroud, managing partner of the Anchor Fund. I flew in for tonight's presentation, and I'd like to say now that I'll be sitting beside Mrs. Amory for it."

Then he looked at Dalton.

"Mrs. Amory is the only guest I came for."

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