The Discarded Heiress Returns novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Dock

Wells stood at the desk with Dale's cap in both hands.

He looked like a man at a county hearing without a suit.

"For your blessing, sir," he said. "To ask Tallulah to marry me."

Edmund didn't answer right away.

He picked up the cloth and folded it in half, then in quarters, and set it down.

"You're asking the wrong man," he said.

"Dale said..."

"Dale was right to send you. I'm still the wrong man."

Edmund looked at me on the stairs.

"I gave her away once. In a ballroom. With a lawyer and a check."

"So I'll tell you what I'd want, if I had the right," Edmund said.

"Yes, sir."

"Don't do it quietly. Do it where people can see."

"She's had a room full of people against her. Give her one that's on her side."

Wells nodded slowly.

"I can do that."

"Then you have whatever I've got. It isn't much."

Wells held out his hand across the desk.

Edmund shook it.

Then Wells put Dale's cap back on, turned around and walked out of the lobby without looking at me once.

I stood on the stairs with my mouth open.

"He didn't even ask me," I said.

"No," Edmund said, picking his cloth back up. "He asked us. You're next."

The first Friday in October, the deck was full by six.

The strip came. The surf school couple came with their dog. The snow-cone lady brought her brother, all three hundred pounds of him.

The doorman came in his straw hat, on his night off.

The pastry chef brought a sheet cake and wouldn't say what it was for.

Dorrie was at the head table, cheating Nana at cards and losing anyway.

Edmund sat beside Dale at the fryer, handing him baskets, getting splashed.

At the far end of the table sat a small woman with gray hair in a neat bun and a blue cardigan.

I didn't know her.

She knew me.

She stood up when I came out of the kitchen and held both my hands.

"I'm Wells's mama," she said. "He says you know every guest's name."

"Yes, ma'am."

"So did I," she said. "For twenty-two years."

She squeezed my hands and sat back down, and didn't explain why she'd driven from Atlanta for fish.

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