Marry Me Twice, Mr. Granger novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Signature
Juliana signs the divorce and strikes the alimony line, then her father throws her out and Cornelius Chisolm takes her wrist: he has bought her.
The divorce papers were nineteen pages long, and I read all of them.
Rhodri's lawyer watched me do it from the end of the glass table.
Thirty-one floors below us, the Chicago River was the color of a nickel.
On page seventeen there was a line with my name under it.
Settlement to Ms. Merrow: ten million dollars.
I took the lawyer's pen and drew one straight line through the number.
"Ms. Merrow," the lawyer said carefully, "Mr. Granger is offering this voluntarily."
"I know he is."
"You would be walking out with nothing."
"I walked in with nothing," I said. "Rule twelve. No claims."
Rhodri hadn't said a word since I sat down.
He stood at the window with his jacket open and his vest unbuttoned, the way he stood when he was thinking.
For a year I had watched him think in that exact spot.
He turned around.
"Juliana."
It was the first time he had said my name in four days.
"Are you sure?"
I looked at him for a long moment.
His hazel eyes were steady and tired, and for one second I wanted to say no.
I wanted it so badly my hand started to shake.
I put the pen in my other hand.
"The contract ended today," I said. "Sign it."
He crossed the room, took the pen and signed without reading a line.
The lawyer collected the pages.
Rhodri held the pen out to me, and I took it and our fingers did not touch.
That was one of the rules too.
Downstairs I stood in the elevator with my mother's glass bead in my fist.
It was the size of a thumbnail, green and chipped on one side, on a cord around my neck.
She had blown it on the day I was born.
I did not cry until the doors opened on the lobby, and then I stopped, because my father's driver was waiting beside the revolving door.
My father wanted me home.
My father's house stood on the lake in Lake Forest, with white columns and a gravel drive.
My mother's family had owned Merrow Glass for ninety years, and this house had been bought with its money.
He was waiting in the front hall with his arms folded.
Augustus Merrow was fifty-nine years old and heavy in the way of a man who has never been told no.
His face was already red.
"Where is it?" he said.
"Where is what?"
"The baby."
I stared at him.
"A year," he said.
"A year married to the richest man in this city, and you come home with no child and nothing in your name."
"It was a contract, Dad."
"It was a chance!"
He slammed his palm on the hall table, and a vase jumped.
"A Granger baby is a trust fund. A Granger wife is a seat at the table. And you signed it all away like a charity case."
"I didn't sign anything away. I took nothing because I wanted nothing."
"Good," he said, and his voice dropped, which was worse.
"You want nothing. You are nothing."
"Your mother's company is the only thing you ever had worth a dime, and it is not yours."
"Not until I'm twenty-nine," I said. "Eleven days."
"And until then it is mine."
He crossed the hall in three steps and slapped me.
It was a flat, hard sound in a marble room.
I hit the edge of the table with my hip and caught myself on my palm.
My stepmother stood on the stairs in a silk robe and did not come down.
She never came down.
I stood up slowly.
My cheek was burning, and what I felt was not shock, because I had felt this before, growing up.
What I felt was done.
"I'm going to the shop," I said. "Mom's furnace. I'll sleep on the floor."
"The shop is padlocked."
"Then I'll cut the lock."
"It was padlocked this morning," he said, "by the new owner of forty percent of it."
I went cold all over.
"Who?"
My father did not answer.
He picked up my overnight bag from beside the door and threw it down the front steps.
My clothes spilled over the gravel.
Then he looked past me toward his study, and the door there opened.
A man stepped out in a gray suit.
He was tall and thin and very pale, with brown hair parted with a ruler and rimless glasses.
A small gold ring sat on his smallest finger.
I had seen him once, at a Granger holiday party, standing behind Rhodri's executives and watching everyone's hands.
He held a black velvet box.
"Juliana," my father said, "this is Cornelius Chisolm. He has been generous. You will be Mrs. Chisolm in ten days."
"No," I said.
"It is already signed."
"I will not marry him."
Chisolm came toward me without hurrying, flipped the box open with one thumb, and took my left wrist in his other hand.
His grip was colder than I expected, and very exact.
"Welcome home, Juliana," he said, and slid the ring on.
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