Secret Strangers in Love novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Heir's Desk

On Monday Mr. Stanhope did not mention the coat room.

He said good morning, he asked for the recording, and I sent it to his phone.

He listened to it with his back to me, one hand flat on the window glass.

When it ended he said, "That will do."

That was all, and I was furious about how much I minded.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Now I need more than a conversation through a curtain."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning a conversation can be denied." He turned. "The groom keeps his files on twenty-nine."

I knew what he was saying, and I knew he was not saying it.

He wanted an intern to find something he could not be seen looking for.

"I'll bring you a stack of Sales binders," I said. "It's an excuse. Nobody questions binders."

"I didn't ask you to do anything."

"I know."

He looked at me for a long moment, and his gaze dropped to my mouth and came back up.

"Be careful, Dunne," he said.

It sounded exactly like a different sentence.

On twenty-nine the sales floor was empty at lunch, and the heir's corner office was open.

His assistant had left a half-eaten salad on the desk outside.

I carried an armful of binders in and set them on his credenza.

His office smelled like cologne and money.

A photograph of him on a yacht sat beside a silver letter opener, and a trophy shaped like a golden sprocket said BEST CLOSER.

I opened the top drawer, and a second phone lay on a legal pad, switched off.

I turned it over.

I could not unlock it, so I took a photograph of it and the pad beside it.

The pad was covered in scribbles in blue ink.

N.W. + G.A. on the 29th. Lake Geneva. Deposit paid. Two hundred seats.

The twenty-ninth was the day after the Ashworth gala.

Below that, in the same hand, a list.

Grover signs first. Then Stanford.

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