My Husband Never Touched Me, So the CEO Doctor Took Off His Gloves novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Handshake
A client's fingertips drop Pamela to the boardroom floor on camera; she chooses to go up to the CEO's floor instead of home, and he says he has not touched anyone in four years.
At ten forty on a Tuesday, I handed a folder to a client in the boardroom on forty-four, and my knees gave out.
His fingertips had brushed my knuckles. That was all.
Heat ran up my arm, dropped into my stomach, and kept going lower.
A sound came out of me that I had never made in front of another person.
Every head at the long table turned.
I grabbed the back of a chair. It slid, and I ended up sitting on the carpet with my skirt rucked up and my hands shaking.
The client stood there with his hand in the air. "I'm so sorry, I didn't even..."
"It's not you," I said. My voice cracked. "Please keep going."
At the far end, a man in a gray shirt held up his phone. The red recording light was on.
Lacey was beside me before I could get my feet under me.
Lacey Hollingworth had sat next to me in every meeting for four years. She had brought me soup when my mother died.
"Breathe, Pam. I've got you." She hooked her arm under mine and stood so her back blocked the phone. "Everybody look at the slides, please. Low blood sugar. It happens."
She walked me out to the quiet corner by the copier.
Her hand on my back made the burning worse. I flinched hard, and she let go at once.
"Sorry, sorry." Her brown eyes were wide and kind. "Is this the third time?"
"The fourth." I pressed my forehead against the cool wall. "Elevators, the break room, now this. Lacey, what is wrong with me?"
"Stress. You work too hard." She tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear, quickly, and I held my breath until her fingers were gone. "Did you drink the chamomile I left on your desk?"
"I haven't kept down tea since the flu four weeks ago. I can't stand the smell."
Lacey looked at me for a second.
Then she smiled. "Well, that's probably it. Your body's just run down. Don't worry about the video, I'll make sure it gets deleted."
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was Colin.
Lacey called me. Don't make this bigger than it is. I've already emailed HR to put you on leave. Go home and rest and I'll make your tea tonight. Love you.
I read it twice.
Colin and I had been married thirteen months. He had never touched me, not once.
He kissed my forehead good morning and good night. He slept in the guest room because of his back.
He made me a cup of tea every night, and he stood in the kitchen and watched me finish it.
I had told myself that was what being cared for looked like.
I put the phone away and walked to the elevator by myself.
On forty-six, the nurse in Occupational Health took my blood pressure and checked my pulse and looked at the screen for a long time.
"Everything is normal," she said. "That's the problem. I can't clear you for work and I can't certify a leave this long."
"Who can?"
"Anything over two weeks needs the CEO's signature." She turned her monitor toward me. The company group chat was open, and my face was in it, with three laughing emojis under it. "He's the only person in this building who still holds a medical license. He was a trauma surgeon before he was Mr. Delamere."
"Quincy Delamere does physicals?"
"He sees staff himself, Tuesdays and Thursdays, when he likes the file." She lowered her voice. "Your husband's leave request came in twenty minutes ago. If it lands on Mr. Delamere's desk first, you're home for a month."
I thought about the kitchen, and the guest room, and the cup waiting for me tonight.
I thought about a month of Colin's soft voice telling me to rest.
So I didn't take the elevator to the lobby. I took the other one, to forty-seven.
The reception area was glass and white stone and nothing else. No plants, no magazines, no chairs anyone had ever sat in.
A man's voice came from inside. "Come in. Don't touch the handle bare-handed. Use the cloth."
There was a folded cloth hanging beside the door.
I opened it with the cloth.
Quincy Delamere sat behind a glass desk in a charcoal three-piece suit, a stethoscope around his neck and thin blue gloves on both hands.
I had seen him in the lobby twice, from across a crowd. Nobody stood within six feet of him. That was well known.
He didn't get up.
"Pamela Ashcroft, analyst, forty-four. I watched the video. The man who sent it to the group chat no longer works here."
I stared at him.
"You came to be signed off or examined," he said. "Which?"
"I don't want to go home."
"Good." He stood and came around the desk, and I could smell soap and cold air. He stopped an arm's length away. "Then I'll need to touch you. I haven't let anyone near me in four years."
His gloved hand lifted toward my collar.
"Take off your jacket, Ms. Ashcroft."
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