He Divorced Me While I Carried Twins, Now He Wants Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man From the Bar

At a hospital charity breakfast Ronan recognizes Jessa, learns she is Landon's ex-wife, and turns cold, and Landon watches from the end of the corridor.

Keyes Freight sponsored the children's wing breakfast at Kerry's hospital, and I walked in wearing a borrowed green dress.

Kerry had told me not to go.

I went anyway, because I needed to see his face and know whether he remembered mine.

The ballroom smelled of coffee and lilies.

I held the gray scarf folded over my arm.

I found him by the windows, talking to a man in a white coat, with one hand in his pocket.

He was taller than I remembered.

Then he turned his head and saw me, and the sentence he was in the middle of just stopped.

He said something short to the doctor and crossed the room.

"You," Ronan said.

His voice was lower than on the news.

"Me," I said, and held out the scarf. "You left this."

He didn't take it.

He looked at my face, then at my hair, then at my hand.

"I looked for you," he said. "Every hotel on Fifth. The bartender wouldn't give me your name."

"I didn't give it to him."

"Why not?"

"Because I was a married woman who had just found another woman's earring in her husband's car," I said. "I didn't want to be anyone that night."

Something in his face went quiet.

He finally took the scarf, and his fingers closed over my wrist at the same time.

His thumb pressed the inside of it, right on my pulse, and neither of us moved.

My pulse jumped under his thumb.

I knew he could feel it.

"Ronan Keyes," he said, softly. "You never told me your name either."

"Jessa."

"Jessa what?"

"Winslow."

"Is that who you are in your own house?"

"It's who I am," I said, "as of yesterday."

A woman in pearls swept up beside us with a tray of name cards.

"Mrs. Carrington," she said brightly to me. "We're so glad you could come. Landon sends his regrets, of course."

I felt Ronan's hand leave my wrist.

It was not slow, and it was not gentle.

"Mrs. Carrington," he said.

The woman moved on.

Ronan folded the scarf in half, then in half again, and put it in his coat.

"Landon Carrington's wife," he said.

"Ex-wife. Since yesterday afternoon."

"Since yesterday afternoon." His gray eyes had gone flat. "And seven weeks ago, you sat down next to a man in a hotel bar, and he turned out to be the one bidding for your husband's company."

"I didn't know who you were."

"Didn't you?"

"I didn't know your last name, Ronan. I didn't know anything about you except that you didn't ask me for anything."

"That's a good line."

"It isn't a line."

"The bartender said you cried into a club soda for an hour."

"He's a gossip."

"He's the only one who saw you leave," Ronan said. "I asked everyone on that block."

He stepped closer, and his voice dropped so nobody else in the room could hear it.

"Did Carrington send you to my bar, Jessa?"

I stared at him.

I thought of the garnet, and the earring, and the folder, and the stairs.

"I haven't slept in two days," I said. "I came here to give you back a scarf."

"Everyone has a reason."

"My reason is a thirty-dollar scarf that's been sitting in my bag for seven weeks because I couldn't throw it away."

That landed.

I saw it land.

His jaw tightened, and for a second he looked ready to say something that wasn't an accusation.

Then he said, "Whatever he's paying you, he's overpaying."

I couldn't speak.

My throat hurt too much.

I thought about telling him then, right there, between the lilies and the coffee urn.

About the two small shapes on the printout inside my bag.

About the date on the calendar I had not been able to stop counting.

But he thought I was Landon's spy, and I would not hand him anything else to be suspicious of.

"You're right to be careful," I said. "I'd be careful too."

I turned around and walked out of the ballroom, past the pearls and the tray of name cards.

The corridor was long and empty, with polished floors and a framed row of photographs of sick children.

I put one hand on the wall.

Behind me I heard footsteps, firm and unhurried.

For one breath I thought it was him.

I turned.

It was Landon.

He stood at the far end of the hall in his charcoal coat, with a folded program in his hand and an expression I had never seen on him.

He had seen the scarf, and the hand on my wrist.

He had seen all of it.

"Jessa," he said, very quietly. "Who was that?"

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