I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Medallion

I walk into her press lunch and ask one question about the ceiling, and win a trial job, in the hotel where she's about to be married.

The Sea Cliff's press lunch was at noon on Tuesday.

I was there at eleven forty, in Ivy's dented Subaru, with my hair pinned up and a pencil through the knot.

Ivy had lent me her one blazer. It smelled faintly of bar lime.

"If anyone throws a drink at you," she said on the phone, "throw it back. That's a direct order."

"Nobody's throwing drinks at a lunch."

"You've never been to a rich person's lunch."

The hotel sat at the top of a cliff.

Gray shingles. Crooked turrets. A wraparound porch with half the railings missing.

Somebody had loved it once, very hard.

I walked up the steps.

Nobody stopped me. People rarely stop a woman holding a tape measure.

The lunch was out on the porch, twenty reporters at round tables with lobster rolls.

Margaux stood at the front beside an easel of mood boards.

White suit. Ring flashing. Phone propped on a little tripod, recording herself.

Beside her, in a wicker chair with a blanket over her knees, sat a tiny old woman.

She had white hair cut short as a boy's and very sharp blue eyes.

The owner. Eighty-two, according to the article, a widow who'd run the place for fifty years.

"The Sea Cliff deserves to be what it was," Margaux was saying. "A dream."

She tapped a board covered in pale pink fabric swatches.

The Sea Cliff had never been pink in its life.

"I brought the same heart to this," she said, "that I put into the Fitzroy ballroom."

A reporter raised a hand. "Can you tell us about that project?"

"Eighteen months," Margaux said. "Every inch."

I stepped out from behind a pillar.

"Then you can tell us about the medallion," I said.

Twenty heads turned.

Margaux's smile slipped, then came back brighter.

"Oh. Hi, Neve." She said it to the room, gently, like I was a sad cousin. "You came all this way."

"The center medallion in the ballroom," I said. "Eight feet across. What's painted inside the rim?"

"I'm not doing this with you."

"It's an easy question. You spent eighteen months on it."

She laughed.

"It's a rosette," she said. "Hand-gilded. Twenty-four karat."

"The rosette's in the middle," I said. "I asked what's inside the rim."

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

The owner, in the wicker chair, leaned forward an inch.

I took out my phone and walked it to her, not to Margaux.

"May I?"

"Please, dear," she said.

I showed her the photo.

Me on the top of a scaffold, flat on my back, paint in my hair, a tiny brush in my hand.

Over my face, upside down on the plaster, wet gold letters.

"N.G. 3/14."

"Neve Gorman," I said. "March fourteenth, the day I finished. You can send anyone you like up a ladder to check."

The owner took my phone and held it close to her nose.

Then she held it out to the nearest reporter.

"Get a picture of that," she said. "Get a good one."

The reporters stood up so fast a chair went over.

Margaux reached for my phone. I stepped back.

"She's obsessed," Margaux said to the room. "She was the assistant. She held the ladder."

"I was on the ladder."

"Brennan told me you'd do something like this."

"Brennan's never been up a ladder in his life."

A reporter laughed out loud and then looked embarrassed about it.

The owner put up one small hand, and everyone went quiet. I liked her already.

"Miss Lorillard," she said. "What color is this porch?"

Margaux glanced down. "Gray?"

"It's Sea Cliff gray. My husband mixed it in 1971." She turned. "You. What's the green in that ballroom?"

"My own mix," I said. "Verdigris, two drops of raw umber, a little black. Eleven tries."

The owner nodded slowly, as if I'd passed a test I didn't know I was taking.

"Miss Lorillard, you're fired," she said. "Take your easel."

Margaux went white under her bronzer.

"You can't fire me. We have a contract."

"Then sue an eighty-two-year-old woman. It'll look lovely on your little videos."

The reporters were filming everything.

Margaux snatched her phone off its tripod and stalked off down the porch.

The owner looked up at me.

"You," she said. "I'm not a sentimental woman. One room. One week. The bridal suite."

"I'll do it."

"I haven't said what I'm paying."

"I'll still do it."

"Never say that to a client, dear. It's how they get you." She patted my hand. "I'll pay you properly."

I had to look at the ocean for a second.

Nobody had ever said that to me.

Down the porch, Margaux had stopped by the steps.

She turned around and her smile was back, wide and perfect, aimed straight at me.

"Didn't you hear?" she called. "Brennan and I booked this place last week."

The reporters' cameras swung back toward her.

"Our wedding's the first event when it reopens. June twentieth."

She laughed and tossed her hair over her shoulder.

"Congratulations on the job, Neve. You'll be decorating my wedding night."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend