Secret Strangers in Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Birthday Verdict
At her 25th birthday dinner Alexis refuses the husband her grandfather picked, overhears her old bully planning to pose as her, and applies for a job at his company under a false name.
My grandfather waited until the cake was lit to ruin my life.
It was my twenty-fifth birthday, and forty people sat in the Gaillard Foods dining room with their forks up.
Grover Gaillard stood at the head of the table, eighty years old and the size of a refrigerator.
He tapped his glass with a butter knife until the room went quiet.
"My granddaughter is a genius with a mixing bowl," he said.
"She has never once let me pick anything for her."
"Tonight I picked something anyway."
I put down the candle lighter.
"Alexis, in June you will marry Gavin Ashworth."
Forty people clapped, because nobody knew what else to do.
I did not clap.
I knew the name Ashworth the way you know the name of a rival school.
Ashworth Group made the ovens that our test kitchen could not afford, and Stanford Ashworth had been trying to out-negotiate my grandfather for fifty years.
"Who is Gavin?" I asked.
"Stanford's grandson," Grover said. "Raised in Zurich. Very serious young man."
"Have I met him?"
"No."
"Have you met him?"
My grandfather studied the cake.
"I've seen a résumé," he said.
The laughter that followed was nervous, and I let it die before I spoke.
"Grandpa, I'm not marrying a résumé."
"It's a merger, Alexis. Two good families."
"It's a person. I'd like to meet him before I'm engaged to him."
"The announcement already went out."
I stood up so fast my chair hit the wall.
"Then the announcement can come back in."
Every head turned.
I walked out of my own party with a plate of untouched cake still sitting in front of my seat.
My grandfather caught up with me in the hallway by the coat room.
He is loud in a ballroom and quiet in a corridor, and I have always loved him most in corridors.
"Alexis."
"You can't do this to me."
"I can't make you do anything, and God knows I've tried."
He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose.
"Stanford gave his boy the same speech tonight," he said. "Gavin doesn't want this either."
"So call it off."
"Stanford won't hear it. He says it's an old promise."
"Then tell Stanford no."
"I tried that in 1996. Sit down, I'll tell you what I can do."
I did not sit, but I listened.
"Bring me proof the boy is unworthy," Grover said. "Something real. A scandal, a lie, a bad habit I can put in front of Stanford."
"And then?"
"And then I let you out. Stanford's got the same deal with his side."
I stared at him.
"You want me to spy on a man I've never met."
"I want you to know what you're saying no to."
He kissed my forehead and put his glasses back on.
Then he went back to the dining room to tell forty guests that the guest of honor had a headache.
I stayed in the coat room, because the coats were quiet.
That was where I heard the voice.
It was soft, and it was laughing, and I would have known it in a hurricane.
"Hi, it's me," said Brooke Haldane.
My stomach dropped to my shoes.
Brooke had lived in my grandfather's house for four years, from fourteen to eighteen.
My late grandmother was her great-aunt and had taken her in.
When we were sixteen she stood on the stage at my high school assembly and read my diary into the microphone.
She chose the pages about a boy.
She did the voices.
"Alexis Gaillard the cow who cries," the school had sung at me for the rest of that year.
Now she stood three feet away behind a rack of cashmere, speaking low into her phone.
"I just heard the announcement," she said. "It's perfect."
"By Thursday, every Ashworth who matters will know me as Alexis."
"Nobody over there has ever seen her face."
"I'll be the heiress, I'll be the fiancée, and the real one can stay in her little test kitchen with her little spoons."
She laughed again, and the hangers clicked together.
I stood so still that I could hear my own pulse.
Brooke walked out without seeing me.
I stayed another minute.
Then I took out my phone and opened the careers page for Ashworth Group.
There was one opening.
Executive intern, thirty-first floor, reporting to the office of the new chief executive, starting Monday.
I typed the name my mother used to call me, Lexie, and her maiden name after it.
Lexie Dunne.
I pressed submit before I could think.
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