The Stranger I Married novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Ladders

By nine that night the ballroom was dark except for the work lights, and Elias Hartwell was holding my ladder.

"You don't have to stay," I said from the fourth rung.

"I'm holding the ladder."

"Carly left an hour ago. The ladder will be fine."

"The ladder is not fine. The ladder has a bent foot."

I looked down.

He was right, and I hated that.

"I'm hanging a ring of birch branches from a thirty-foot ceiling," I said. "I could fall and break my neck."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Why? You'd be a widower. You'd have the whole hotel."

"I'd be the widower of a woman who still owes me seventy-five dollars."

I laughed so hard the ladder shook, and his big hand closed around the rail and steadied it, and mine nearly went through the branches.

"You remembered the seventy-five," I said.

"I remember everything. I told you."

He handed up the next bundle.

For twenty minutes we worked like that.

I threaded white wire through birch and eucalyptus while he passed up the pruners and then, quietly, a sandwich from a paper bag.

"Turkey," I said, with my mouth full. "How did you know?"

"You ordered the same sandwich from room service at one in the morning. You ate half of mine too."

I had forgotten that.

I looked down at his face in the half light.

I tried to find the man in the black funeral suit under the beard and the glasses.

He was there.

He was in how carefully he held the ladder.

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