Marry Me Twice, Mr. Granger novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Banquet

Chisolm introduces her as a used divorcee; Rhodri arrives with Leontine and Juliana answers Chisolm in front of the room.

The Drake's ballroom held four hundred people, and every one of them knew my name.

They said it behind their glasses as Chisolm steered me through the doors with two fingers at my elbow.

Juliana Merrow.

The wife.

The ex-wife.

The one who left with nothing.

I wore the green dress my father had sent, high at the neck and long in the sleeve.

Under it, the marks Chisolm had left were turning from purple to yellow.

"Chin up," Chisolm said quietly. "You're an investment."

He took me to the center of the room.

A white-haired man in a black tie stood there with a ring of executives around him.

He was the president of Calder Freight, Chisolm's boss, and the man who had passed Chisolm over twice.

"Sir," Chisolm said warmly. "May I present my fiancee."

Everyone looked at me.

I smiled as I had been told.

"Miss Merrow," the president said.

"Of course. We all remember you."

"Juliana was Mr. Granger's wife for a year," Chisolm said, in the voice of a man mentioning the weather.

"It didn't take. These things rarely do when a woman comes from a family with nothing left but its name."

A woman in the ring gave a small, delighted gasp.

"I'm told Mr. Granger returned her in good condition," Chisolm said.

"I took her off his hands. There's some satisfaction in a second owner's care."

He laughed.

A few of them laughed with him.

I stood perfectly still with my hands folded and felt the room tilt.

I had promised myself I would smile and say I was very happy.

I had promised him on the second night, with his thumb in the muscle of my arm, and I had meant it.

But I had also sat in a glass conference room two days ago.

I had struck ten million dollars out of a contract with one stroke of a pen.

No one in this room had ever done that.

I looked at the president.

"It's an interesting word, owner," I said.

Chisolm's fingers tightened at my elbow.

"Juliana."

"Since you brought it up."

I kept my voice light and clear, pitched for the ring of listening faces.

"My father owed Cornelius four hundred thousand dollars from a card room on Wells Street. The ring on my hand is how he paid it."

The laughing stopped.

"Do you know how I know the price?" I said. "He told me. Twice. He likes the number."

A man behind the president coughed into his fist.

Chisolm's face did not move, but his hand did.

His fingers slid from my elbow down to my wrist and closed on the bone.

The sleeve of my dress rode up an inch.

I felt cool air on my skin.

The president's eyes dropped.

For one second he saw it, the yellow edge of a thumb mark under the lace cuff.

Then Chisolm pulled my sleeve down and the second was over.

"My fiancee is nervous," Chisolm said. "Her father is unwell. Excuse us."

"Of course," the president said.

He did not look at Chisolm when he said it.

The crowd opened to let us through.

Chisolm marched me toward the terrace doors with his smile still in place and his nails digging into my wrist.

"You stupid girl," he said very softly. "You've just cost me my vice presidency."

"You bought a Merrow. You didn't read the label."

He was about to answer when the whole room changed.

It was like a change in air pressure.

The conversation near the main doors dropped, and I knew before I turned.

Rhodri Granger stood in the doorway in a black dinner jacket, taller than anyone near him.

His sun-streaked curls were pushed back as if he had run his hands through them on the way up.

Beside him was a tall woman in a bright blue dress with a dark crop and a mouth made for laughing.

She had his arm.

Leontine Fairgrave.

I had met her once at a wedding.

The board wanted her for him, and the newspapers had said so for years.

His eyes found me across four hundred people.

He did not move.

My heart did something it had no business doing.

I thought of Chisolm's mouth at my ear in the elevator.

Smile at him once, and I'll know.

So I did not smile.

I looked at Rhodri as I would look at a stranger holding a door.

I let my face go perfectly blank.

Then I turned my wrist in Chisolm's grip and walked on.

I heard the room breathe behind me.

I was almost at the terrace when someone stepped out of the crowd and crossed my path.

He did not touch me.

He did not even stop.

He walked past with a champagne glass in his hand, close enough that his sleeve brushed mine.

He murmured without turning his head.

"Sleeve."

Then he was gone.

My chest went tight.

He had seen it.

He had seen it from across the ballroom.

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