The CEO's Unwanted Wife novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Dr. Voight's Husband

The plate on the door was brass, and it was covered with a grey cloth.

It was a Thursday in May, five months after the gala.

The whole third floor of the institute had come out into the corridor.

I stood in front of the cloth in my good grey suit with a pair of scissors in my hand.

My heart was going like a fast centrifuge.

The director stood on one side of me.

The postdoc from the next bench stood on the other, grinning, holding a paper plate with a slice of cake on it.

Becca had flown in on Tuesday and had so far eaten a whole wheel of cheese, which she insisted was a medical necessity.

Agnes sat in a wheeled chair somebody had found for her.

Her cane lay across her lap, and her best black coat was buttoned to the chin.

"Go on, dear," she said. "We have all been standing here since the Middle Ages."

"I'm making a speech."

"You are not."

"I wrote a speech."

"Then give it to me, and I'll read it on the train."

Laughter went down the corridor.

I looked at the cloth and the scissors.

"I didn't want my name on a door," I said. "I wanted a bench with a window."

"We could arrange that too," the director said, deadpan.

"For four years I carried a name nobody asked me whether I wanted. I took back the one my parents gave me."

My voice didn't shake, which surprised me.

"Thank you for letting me keep it."

I cut the ribbon.

The postdoc pulled the cloth.

DR. LINNEA VOIGHT, said the plate.

REGENERATION LABORATORY.

Nobody had printed another word on it, and I found that I liked it exactly that bare.

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