Jilted at the Altar, I Married His Billionaire Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Seventy-Two Hours

Reagan goes back on the steel during the three-day wait, refuses to leave the hoist when Hayden fires her in front of her crew, and Anson names her lead connector; then her father calls to say he saw Anson the night his wife fell.

On Monday I got to the City-County Building at eight-fifteen.

He was already there.

Anson Strahan sat on a marble bench outside the license office with two coffees and nothing in his hands but those.

"You said nine," I said.

"You said eight-thirty." He held out a cup. "I wanted to win one."

The clerk didn't look up until she typed his name.

After that she looked up a lot.

"Thursday," she said. "Seventy-two hours. Then any judge in the building can do it."

On the steps outside, Anson asked what I planned to do with three days.

"Work."

"Hayden will be at the gate."

"Hayden's always at the gate. That's where the news cameras park."

"Be careful on the steel."

"I'm always careful on the steel," I said. "It's the ground that keeps hitting me."

Tuesday at a quarter to six, the sky over the North Shore was dirty gray.

My gang was sitting on the gang box at the bottom of the hoist with their thermoses.

There were four of us on the raising gang, plus the operator up in the crane.

My bolt-up partner, a woman in her thirties with a laugh you could hear over an impact gun.

The old connector, sixty-three, who'd taught me to walk a beam when I was twenty.

The apprentice, nineteen himself, who still said "ma'am" to the crane.

Nobody said anything when I walked up.

Then my bolt-up partner set a pickle jar on the box.

Someone had taped a label on it in marker. JILT JAR. FIVE BUCKS A MENTION.

There was already a twenty in it.

"That's mine," the apprentice said. "I'm paying ahead."

"For what?"

"For saying that dress looked really nice on you. Before he did that."

My partner laughed so hard she had to put her coffee down.

The old connector put a five in the jar without a word.

"What was that for?" I said.

"For thinking it."

I laughed for the first time since Saturday.

"The money's for a new dress," my partner said. "One that fits a better man."

"I'm marrying his uncle on Thursday."

She put her own five in. "Then it's for a better dress."

I didn't hear the truck until it stopped.

Hayden got out in a navy suit and a white hard hat that had never been scratched.

Two security guards came with him, and a woman from human resources with a folder.

A news van was parked across the street.

I was already standing inside the hoist car with my harness on.

"Reagan," Hayden said loudly. "I need you to step out of the hoist."

"I've got steel on thirty-eight."

"You don't. As of this morning you're off this site."

He nodded at the woman with the folder. "After Saturday's public breakdown, you're emotionally unfit to work at height."

My gang stood up off the box, one at a time.

"Public breakdown," my partner said. "Is that what we're calling you getting dumped into a microphone?"

"Stay out of this."

"I'm in it. I'm her partner." She folded her arms. "Who's going to hold her bolts? You?"

Hayden smiled toward the street, where the camera was.

"Everyone here saw her on Saturday. She proposed to a stranger in her wedding dress."

"I'm not letting a woman in that state walk a beam over forty people."

I held on to the hoist gate.

"You let me walk beams for three years," I said. "You put my picture on your dating profile doing it."

The apprentice put another five in the jar.

"Get out of the car, Reagan," Hayden said. "Or I'll pull the whole gang."

The old connector walked past him and stepped into the hoist beside me.

Then my partner did.

Then the apprentice, who was shaking so hard his lunch pail rattled.

"There's room for one more," I told Hayden. "You can come up and fire me on thirty-eight. Bring your hard hat."

He took a step toward the gate.

A black car pulled through the fence behind him.

Anson got out in a dark suit with a scuffed yellow hard hat under his arm.

He put it on before he walked onto the site.

Every ironworker there noticed that.

"Morning," he said to my gang. Then, to Hayden, "What's this?"

"A personnel issue."

"With who?"

"With your fiancee." Hayden said the word like it tasted bad. "She's unfit."

Anson looked into the hoist car at me.

"Who's your lead connector on this gang?"

The old connector answered. "Me, till Friday. My knees have been voting for her for a year."

"Then she's lead connector," Anson said. "As of now."

Hayden's face went a shade I'd never seen on it.

"Construction is my department."

"The building's mine." Anson didn't raise his voice. "And so is the bolt report she sent me. Go back to your office, Hayden. Read it."

The woman from human resources closed her folder very quietly.

I hit the button.

The hoist lurched and climbed, and Hayden got smaller and smaller in his clean white hat.

Thirty-eight floors up, the wind came off the Allegheny cold enough to make my eyes water.

I told myself that was why.

I walked steel until four.

That night I sat on a stack of moving boxes in my half-packed apartment, eating cereal for dinner.

My phone buzzed.

DAD.

He hadn't said a word to me since the ballroom.

"Hey," I said.

He didn't say hey back.

His voice was rough from the porch and the beer.

"I was at the bottom of that hoist the night his wife fell," my father said. "Don't you marry him."

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