Stand Aside, the Billionaire Is Here novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Courthouse

Adelaide witnesses the wedding; Lionel, Grayson and Noelle come to sneer, and the first kiss lands too well.

Adelaide did not look at Joaquin so much as take him apart.

She sat at the head of her breakfast table at seven in the morning with her cane across her knees and her pearls already on.

She was seventy-eight and had run Heyward Freight's front office for forty years before I ever touched it.

"Sit," she said to him.

He sat, and he kept his hands flat on the cloth.

"Medrano," she said. "Where's your family from?"

"Here. The Fifth Ward."

"Your father?"

"He worked the docks."

I saw her fingers tighten on the silver head of her cane.

"Which docks?" she asked.

"Yours, ma'am."

Nobody said anything.

A maid set down coffee and left in a hurry.

"My father's dead," Joaquin said, mildly. "I came home to take care of some things. Daphne asked me to marry her. I said yes."

"Why?"

"She looked like she needed somebody to say yes."

Adelaide studied him for a long time.

"My son Lionel will be at the courthouse," she said at last. "He'll bring a lawyer and Grayson Chastain. You'll have to be convincing."

"I can be convincing."

"Can you kiss a woman in front of a judge?" Adelaide asked.

"Grandma," I said.

"I'm asking him."

Joaquin's mouth moved at one corner.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. Then eat your eggs."

The courthouse annex on San Jacinto opened on Saturdays for people in a hurry.

The judge, a round tired man with reading glasses on his forehead, waived the waiting period and signed with a flourish.

I wore the navy suit again because it was the only thing I owned that still looked like me.

Joaquin wore a dark jacket my driver had found in a shop that opened early, and he looked like he had been born in it.

We stood at the front of a small room with a flag and eight folding chairs.

Adelaide sat in the first row.

At the back, the door opened.

Lionel came in first.

My uncle was fifty-seven, heavy in the jaw, silver at the temples, and he dressed like he was always about to be photographed.

He had a lawyer on one side.

On the other side was Grayson Chastain with Noelle on his arm.

Noelle wore a pale pink dress and would not look at Joaquin.

"Daphne," Lionel said, and his voice was warm and false. "What a surprise. I assumed your fiance was a joke."

"He's not a fiance," I said. "He's my husband in about four minutes."

"A dock rat," Grayson said, loudly enough. "In a rented jacket."

Joaquin turned his head and looked at him.

It was not an angry look.

It was the look of a man reading a number on a gauge.

"Good morning, Mr. Chastain," Joaquin said. "How's your father's liquidity?"

Grayson's mouth tightened.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing," Joaquin said. "Just asking."

The judge cleared his throat.

We said the words.

I had not planned to feel anything.

Joaquin said "I do" in that low, level voice, and my knees went strange.

When the judge said "You may kiss your bride," I turned to him with every eye in the room on us.

I meant to give him a quick brush of lips.

Joaquin put one hand along my jaw.

He bent his head slowly enough that I could have stopped him.

I did not stop him.

His mouth was warm and sure.

He kissed me, and he took his time.

My hand went up his chest on its own and held his lapel.

When he lifted his head, I forgot where I was.

Behind us somebody coughed.

"Well," the judge said. "That's legal."

Adelaide was smiling into her cane.

I turned and saw my uncle's face.

He was not smiling.

He looked at Joaquin the way he looked at a bad line in a budget.

"Mr. Medrano," Lionel said. "I'll want to know a great deal more about you."

"Ask anything."

"I will." He folded his hands. "I'll have you investigated before the vote."

Joaquin only nodded.

In his pocket, his phone began to buzz, and it kept buzzing.

He took it out, looked at the screen for half a second, and put it away.

I saw the number started with a plus and a long string of digits I did not know.

"Who's that?" I whispered.

"Wrong number," Joaquin said.

He kept his hand at the small of my back.

It was the first lie I caught him in, and I only half noticed.

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