He Kept the Firm, So I Booked His Engagement Dinner novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bar

The family arrives, Cora sits at the bar beside Tobias, and Marguerite hugs her warmly, then seats her at the head of the table with forty-three menus.

On Friday I wore the black dress I had designed my first hotel in, and I got to The Larkspur forty minutes early.

Nadine put me at the end of the bar, where I could see the whole terrace and the elevator doors.

Long tables had been pushed together under the string lights, forty-three white place cards set out in a line.

Mine was at the very head, and it was in Marguerite's handwriting.

"She sent the cards over on Wednesday," Nadine said, pouring me a ginger beer. "With a note that said you'd want to sit with the family."

"I'm sure she did."

A hand slid a leather folder down the bar toward me, and I reached for the pen on top of it.

Another hand covered mine before I could pick it up.

"Don't sign that," a low voice said. "It's the table's bill, and it hasn't been explained to them yet."

Tobias Radcliff took the stool beside mine.

He wore the same dark suit, and he smelled of cedar and the cold air from the roof.

His thumb rested on the inside of my wrist, over my pulse, for exactly as long as it took me to put the pen down.

Then he lifted it, and my wrist stayed warm.

"The host's staff gave it to you by mistake," he said. "I own the stool, so I get to say so."

"Does the stool come with rights?"

"Nadine says it comes with a tab."

The elevator opened at five to seven.

The family came out in pieces. Aunts in good coats. Cousins who had never once called me. A man I had met at two Christmases and could not name.

Every one of them stopped at the glass wall and looked at the city, and then looked around for the person who was paying.

I raised my ginger beer to them.

Nobody raised anything back.

"Cora, darling!"

Marguerite came across the terrace with her arms already open.

She was sixty-one and silver-haired, in a cream coat and her good pearls, and she hugged me for a long time.

She smelled of rosewater and she held me by both shoulders when she let go.

"I'm so proud of you for coming. I told Rodrick you would. I said, that girl has more class in her little finger than this whole family."

"Thank you, Marguerite."

"I brought you something."

She pressed a flat blue box into my hand. Inside was a silk scarf, pale green.

"For the plane," she said. "Santorini is windy this time of year. Saturday morning, isn't it?"

I smiled and thanked her.

It was only later that I wondered how she knew the day, when I had changed it only that week and told nobody but a friend and a restaurant.

At that moment I only felt her fingers patting my cheek, as they had a hundred times, and heard myself saying, "Saturday. Early."

Tobias said nothing at all beside me.

The elevator opened again.

Rodrick came out first, in a navy jacket with no tie, his hair combed back, one hand lifted in a wave to the aunts.

Kelsey was on his arm in a white dress.

A white dress, to her own engagement dinner, with her left hand held out at the height of her collarbone.

The ring was big enough to see from the bar.

The family made the noise that families make.

"Oh, look at that!" "Let me see!" "Gorgeous, honey."

Rodrick found me over their heads.

He did not look guilty. He looked relieved.

He walked straight to the bar.

"You came," he said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"Neither was I."

"Mom says you booked this place yourself." He glanced at the roof, the lights, the long tables. "It's a bit much, Cora. But I appreciate it."

"I know you do."

He looked at Tobias then and held out his hand.

"Rodrick Lowell. Lowell Design. We spoke at the pitch."

"We did," Tobias said, and shook it once. "Your stair has no landing."

Rodrick laughed, a short surprised laugh, and checked that nobody else had heard.

"Kelsey's team is revising it."

"I'd hoped so."

Kelsey drifted up with her hand out for me to see, a little too close to my face.

"Isn't it perfect? He said I could pick the setting."

"It's a very big stone," I said.

"Marguerite said you'd say something nice."

I looked past her.

Marguerite stood at the head of the long table with one hand on the back of my chair.

"Cora, come sit!" she called, bright and carrying. "Right here, where family belongs. We saved you the best seat."

Forty-two faces turned toward me.

The waiter came down the line behind them, laying down one leather menu after another.

Forty-three menus, and my name on the first one.

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