The Don's Fatal Tenderness novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Counter
Pamela is jilted at the clerk's window in front of the line, tears up her form, and a stranger at the next window offers marriage before midnight.
The line at the Onondaga County clerk's office ran out the door, and I was fourth from the window.
I had waited seven years for this line.
Dirk stood beside me in the navy suit I had picked out for him, tapping the marriage form against his thigh.
"You're nervous," I said.
"I'm fine," he said, and he didn't look at me.
I was twenty-seven, and I had met him when I was twenty, at a college job fair, where I was working the sign-in table.
He had been asking me for a date for a month when I finally said yes.
Now he was a county legislator with a campaign banner in his trunk, and I was about to put my name next to his.
The woman ahead of us finished her paperwork, and the clerk waved us up.
I set the form on the counter and smiled at the clerk.
Then the glass doors behind us opened, and a woman walked in with her hand on her belly.
She wore a cream coat that didn't close over the bump.
A heavy man in a gray overcoat walked beside her, and half the room straightened up when they passed.
"Dirk," the woman said.
Her voice was soft, and she was looking only at him.
Dirk went white.
"Delphine, I told you three o'clock," he said.
"It's three o'clock," she said.
I looked at the clock over the window, and it said ten past two.
I looked at the woman's stomach, and I did the math before I wanted to.
Four months, maybe five.
Dirk had told me he was in Albany for budget meetings in the spring.
"Who is this?" I asked.
Nobody answered me.
The heavy man put a folder on the counter next to my form.
"The chairman's office called ahead," he said to the clerk.
"The license is already filled in."
The clerk looked at Dirk, and then at me, and then at the folder.
"Sir, this lady was first in line," she said.
"I know," Dirk said.
He still wouldn't look at me.
"Pamela, I need to tell you something, and I need you not to make a scene."
My hands had gone cold.
"Say it in front of me," I said.
He took a breath and said it to the counter.
"Delphine is pregnant with my child, and her father is the chairman of the county party."
"Without his backing I lose the senate seat before I even announce."
"I'm marrying her today."
The room went quiet.
A man near the door lifted his phone.
I heard my own voice come out level, which surprised me.
"Seven years, Dirk."
"I know it's hard."
"I bought you that suit."
"Pamela, please."
"I paid your campaign filing fee out of my savings."
He winced, and the pregnant woman put her hand on his arm.
"You can keep the money," Delphine said.
"I'm sure it meant a lot to someone like you."
Someone like me.
A dental assistant who had spent seven years making his dinners so he could make speeches.
I picked up our form, the one with both our names printed in his careful capital letters.
I tore it in half, and then in quarters, and I let the pieces fall on his shoes.
Then I pulled the thin silver ring off my finger, the one he had bought on a payment plan, and dropped it into the coffee in his hand.
It sank with a small wet sound.
"Congratulations," I said to the room.
"He's all yours, and he can't cook."
Somebody near the door actually laughed.
Dirk's face went red, and the chairman's heavy hand came down flat on the counter.
"Take her out," he said to nobody in particular.
I picked up my bag and turned toward the glass doors, shaking so hard I could hear my keys rattle.
I made it three steps.
A man was standing at the next window over, and he had been standing there the whole time.
He was tall, in a black coat, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow, and he was holding a marriage license of his own.
His two companions stood a respectful distance behind him, and one of them was watching Dirk.
The man in the black coat looked at the license, and then at me.
He didn't smile, and his voice was low and calm.
"Marry me before midnight," he said.
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