The 23rd Deletion Bride novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Twenty-Three Times
Linnea confronts Dalton about the gala list in front of his staff, hears a heartbeat she can't spend on him, and closes the door softly.
On Thursday afternoon my husband's company gala list lost my name for the twenty-third time.
I walked across the open office floor with the proof on my phone, and forty people looked up from their desks.
My husband's glass office sat at the far end.
I didn't knock.
Dalton was behind his desk with his laptop open, and Delaney Frost stood at his shoulder with a coffee she had clearly just made him.
She was his assistant.
She smiled at me first.
"Mrs. Amory! Hi. Is everything okay?"
I held the phone up so he had to see it.
"I'm off the gala guest list again, Dalton. That's twenty-three times. I've registered every time, and every time I get a message saying I was removed."
Dalton didn't lift his eyes from the screen.
"Delaney has a Harvard MBA, Linnea, and she's been double-checking that list for me all week. Let's see what she finds."
"Then someone is doing it on purpose."
Delaney pressed a hand to her chest.
"Oh, I hope not. It's the registration system, it glitches. Let me fix it right now. And honestly, I should tidy up your inbox while I'm in there. I manage that account anyway, it's on our server."
It was a warm offer, and she made it sound like a favor.
"It's my address," I said. "I've had it for six years."
"Then maybe the address got mistyped somewhere," Dalton said. "It happens."
"I typed the one you gave me."
I said it loudly enough for the nearest desks.
"It's the address you proposed to me with, Dalton. Your whole proposal was an email that told me to write to you there for the rest of my life. Do you remember that?"
Someone outside the glass stopped typing.
Dalton sighed through his nose and rubbed the bridge of it.
"I don't have time for this. The gala is tomorrow, I have two investors flying in, and you're making a scene over a spreadsheet."
"Twenty-three removals is not a spreadsheet."
"Then ask Delaney to fix it and let me work."
Ask Delaney.
For eight months I had been getting smaller in his life, one deleted line at a time, and his answer was to send me to the person holding the delete key.
Delaney was already tapping on her tablet.
"Done," she said brightly. "You're back on, Mrs. Amory. I'll check it twice. I promise."
I looked at her screen.
My name was on it, in a neat list, right between two board members' wives.
It meant nothing.
It had been on that list before, and then it hadn't been.
At eight that morning I had sat in a doctor's office with a paper gown on and listened to a heartbeat that wasn't mine.
Six weeks.
The doctor had turned the monitor so I could see the small flicker on it, and then she had told me it was high-risk and that I needed to avoid stress.
I hadn't told Dalton yet.
I had planned to tell him tonight, over dinner, in a good dress.
Now I stood in his office and tried to find the woman who'd planned that.
I looked at the man I had given everything for.
My father's shipping company, and my inheritance, and the Carrick name that opened every door in this city.
I had walked away from all of it at twenty-three, because he had said we would build something of our own.
He still hadn't looked up.
His eyes were on the laptop, and the laptop was open to an inbox.
It was my inbox.
I knew the layout, because it was the account on the company server, and the name at the top of the screen was mine.
I saw it for a second, and I didn't understand why he had it open.
Then Delaney reached over and clicked it shut.
"Tidying," she said, and smiled.
Something in my chest stopped pulling.
It was only a small thing, a thread I had been holding for six years that came loose in my hand.
I put my phone in my bag.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?" Dalton said, finally glancing up.
"Okay. Have a good gala."
I turned around and walked out.
Behind me I heard Delaney say, in her kindest voice, "Let her go, Dalton. She just needs some air."
I didn't turn around for that either.
At the glass door I took the handle in both hands.
I didn't slam it.
I closed it slowly, until the latch clicked.
A slam would have told him I still wanted him to follow me.
Quiet told him I was already gone.
Forty people watched me cross the floor again.
Nobody said a word, and nobody looked away.
In the elevator my phone buzzed.
It was Hattie, my best friend since college, who ran the event company that handled the gala's guest list.
I read it standing very still.
Lin. I never took you off my list myself. I've put you back at Table One every single time, for eight months.
Another message came in under it.
I've been getting removal requests. Twenty-three of them. Every one of them is signed Dalton Amory.
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