Chapter 9: A Receipt, Not an Apology

Dalton had signed my patents back to me three weeks ago and never said a word, and I still hadn't decided what that made him.

So I went to his gala anyway, to look at him while I decided.

It was a ballroom with four hundred guests and one rule for me: smile.

I wore a green silk dress Ruby had picked off a rack and called "a crime against his composure."

Dalton saw me at the top of the stairs and forgot to finish his sentence.

"Mr. Aldridge," said the man he was talking to. "You were saying."

"Was I?"

I took his arm in front of everyone.

"Mrs. Aldridge," the man said, and shook my hand with real warmth. "Finally."

"Finally," I said, and smiled at him.

Dalton's arm went tight under my fingers.

It was strange, being introduced.

Three years of working for his company, and not one of these people had ever heard my name.

Now they said it like it mattered, because the whole city had seen me take his microphone.

We worked the room for an hour.

The old woman with the gold pin from the board squeezed my hand and whispered, "That motion died because of you."

The chair watched from the bar with a glass in his hand and a smile that hadn't reached his eyes.

Belinda stood beside him in cream silk with her hand on his sleeve.

She looked across the room at me and lifted her glass an inch.

I lifted mine back.

"You're doing well," Dalton said at my ear.

"I know."

"You don't have to touch me this much."

"I know that too."

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