My Fiance's Legal Wife Called Me to Help Pick the Ring novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Photographer Knows

Elise tells Emmett everything, he unfastens a necklace Hugh gave her and his hand stays on her neck, and Hugh arrives at the studio door while Odessa hides in the darkroom.

I broke the first rule before nine o'clock the next morning.

Odessa had said not to tell anyone, and I had told her at a quarter past six that I was going to tell the photographer.

"Of course you are," she said, and hung up, and texted me an hour later: Bring him my number.

Emmett's studio was a former print shop on West Fulton.

It had a roll-up door, a long oak table and a skylight over a wall of framed faces.

He was already there with two coffees.

He listened to the whole thing standing up, with his back against the table and his arms folded.

I told it badly, out of order, with the jeweler in the middle.

When I got to the part about the license, he put his coffee down.

"The application was filed Monday?" he said.

"That's what she said."

"Then it's a public record at the county building on Clark Street. I can pull it." His voice stayed even.

"I spent eleven years around those courtrooms with a camera. The clerks know me."

"You don't have to do anything."

"I was hired to be in the room on the twentieth." He looked at me. "I'll be in the room."

I hadn't known how much I needed that sentence until I heard it.

My eyes stung, and I looked at the skylight instead, which was gray and enormous and had nothing to do with me.

"There's something else," I said.

"Tell me."

"Hugh gave me this."

I touched the necklace at my throat.

It was a thin gold chain with a small diamond.

He had fastened it on me himself in April and called it an heirloom.

"I want it off," I said. "I can't get the clasp. It's caught in my hair."

"Turn around."

I turned.

His fingers came to the back of my neck and lifted the curls, and a small cool breath of air touched my skin.

"Hold still," Emmett said.

I held still.

The clasp was tiny and the hair was stubborn, and it took him a while.

His knuckles rested against the top of my spine, and I heard him breathing through his nose, slowly.

Then the chain slid free and dropped into his palm.

He did not move his other hand.

It stayed on my neck for as long as it took me to count three.

"The chain's fine," he said, and his voice was a little rough. "I wanted to check it wasn't broken."

"Thank you."

He took his hand away.

I told myself he had been checking the chain.

In July, at our first session, he had looked at Hugh's left hand for a long moment and said, "Lose something?"

Hugh had said, "A ring from a bad year," and laughed.

Emmett had nodded once and lifted his camera, and I had thought nothing at all.

I thought of it now, standing in the gray light with my neck bare.

The thought sat in my chest and had nowhere to go.

The buzzer at the door rang twice.

Odessa came in with her heels clicking on the concrete.

She did not say hello.

She looked at the framed faces on the wall, the oak table and the camera bag.

Then she looked at Emmett and shook his hand once.

"You're the photographer."

"Emmett Voigt."

"What do you charge to be discreet?" Odessa asked.

"The same as I charge to be loud," Emmett said.

"Good answer." She turned to me. "I said no one else."

"I need someone who can stand in that room and not look surprised."

"He'll look surprised if I pay him not to."

"I'll look however you need," Emmett said. "Mrs. Alden. Have you ever watched a man get arrested at an altar?"

"I'm planning to."

"I've covered two of those at the courthouse. Neither groom wore a tie as nice as your husband's." He picked up his coffee.

"You'll want to know where I'll stand."

For the first time that morning, Odessa smiled, a short surprised one.

"I like him," she said to me. "That's inconvenient."

I wanted to laugh. I was too tired.

My phone buzzed on the table.

I looked at it, and my stomach dropped to the floor.

HUGH: Where are you, love? Your location says West Fulton. I'm outside.

"He's here," I said.

I had shared my location with him in April. I had thought it was romantic.

Odessa did not waste a second.

"Where's the door?" she said.

"Darkroom," Emmett said, already moving. "Back wall, behind the lightbox. Go."

She went.

He pulled the door shut behind her, and the red bulb over the frame lit up.

Then he came back to me and stood close, and for a moment neither of us said a word.

The buzzer sounded again.

Through the front glass, Hugh raised his hand to knock.

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