He Put His Ex First, So I Found My True Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ring

Torben catches up with her on the harbor quay, and Isla hands back the ring. He threatens to have her registered as unclaimed, and at the lighthouse she finds a time-stamped photo of Gisela and Portia marking the envelopes.

Torben got out of his truck and left the door hanging open.

He wore the face he always wore when he was about to be reasonable.

His shoulders were loose, his palms were up, and a pleasant crease sat between his eyebrows.

"Isla. Get in. Mother is mortified."

"I've been mortified for three years," I said. "It's nice to share."

Faces had gathered at the inn's windows.

Two fishermen on the quay stopped coiling rope.

Torben lowered his voice. "You embarrassed her in front of everyone she knows. That's not like you."

"That's exactly like me. You've just never watched me finish."

I worked the ring off my finger.

It was his grandmother's sapphire, and it had never quite fit.

I put it in his hand and closed his fingers over it.

"I'm not taking it back," he said.

"You're not taking it anywhere. It's yours, and so is the bill for the champagne your mother ordered on my card."

His eyes slid past me to the man by the truck.

They stayed there a second too long.

"You're the ferryman."

"I am," Conal said.

He hadn't moved from the passenger door.

"Then you know the family doesn't do business with you after dark."

"Nobody's doing business," Conal said. "She needed a ride."

Torben turned back to me, and the crease deepened.

"Here's what happens. Tomorrow at eleven there's a brunch on the lawn. You'll stand up, you'll apologize to my mother and to Portia, and the families will forget all of this by dessert."

"And if I don't?"

"Then on Monday Mother files you as unclaimed." He said it gently. "No oath and no registered partner. Any founding house can take an unclaimed wolf's name into its registry. It would be for your own protection."

"Take my name."

"It's paperwork."

"It's paperwork you've been holding over me since the day I moved here," I said.

He didn't answer that.

So I asked the other question, the one that had burned in me since the storage room.

"Did you know the draw was rigged?"

Torben's face closed and then opened again, very fast.

"It's a tradition, Isla. It's a game."

"That isn't a no."

"It isn't a yes either." He tried a smile. "Come home and we'll talk about it properly. Portia has already moved the twins' things in. There's room."

"On the sofa bed."

"Don't be petty."

I looked at the man I had been going to marry.

He still smelled of cedar and leather, and Ember didn't so much as lift her head.

"Eleven o'clock," Torben said. "Please don't make me come get you."

He glanced at Conal once more. "Stay away from my fiancée."

"She just handed you back a ring," Conal said mildly. "You still call her yours."

Gold slid across his eyes and went out again.

The fishermen on the quay went very still.

Torben got into his truck and drove away.

Conal picked up my suitcase and held the passenger door.

"You don't have to," he said. "I meant what I said about the lock."

I got in.

The lighthouse stood on a spit of rock at the end of a narrow road.

The keeper's cottage was low and gray, with a lamp in the window and the white tower rising behind it.

Conal showed me the spare room upstairs.

It had a quilt, a washstand and a brass bolt on the inside of the door.

"Bathroom's across the hall. There's soup if you want it. I'll be downstairs."

"Conal."

He stopped on the landing.

"Thank you for tearing up the slip."

"It was a very good slip," he said, and went down.

I sat on the quilt and listened to him move around the kitchen below.

Every time he took a step, Ember turned her head to follow it.

I had known this man for two hours, and I didn't know what she wanted me to do about him.

My hands needed a job, so I took out the camera.

Everything I had shot that weekend was on the card, and every frame carried its date and time.

That was how I always worked, because a client who disputes a bill has to dispute the clock first.

I scrolled back through the rounds: the rowing, the dance, the strawberry.

Then I kept scrolling, past the lawn and the buffet, all the way back to Friday.

Frame two hundred and twelve was stamped Friday, 5:04 a.m.

I had gone into the storage room that morning to check the lighting before the caterers came, and I had taken one test shot.

I had never looked at it again.

The shelf lamp was on.

Gisela Lowell stood at the shelf in her coat, holding a stick of wax.

Portia was beside her, pressing a thumbnail into a fresh seal.

The envelopes lay in rows between them.

In Gisela's other hand, held a little apart from the rest, was one envelope sealed in black.

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