He Waited for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 2 of 48

Chapter 2: Spoken For

Nicholas faces down Bryant in the ballroom and walks Christina out, sets his terms in the car, and tells her Russell Hartley killed his father.

For a second nobody at the table moved.

Then the whispers started, spreading out from us.

"Santoro? The Montana Santoros?"

"I thought he was a rumor."

I picked up the handkerchief and pressed it to my cheek.

It smelled like cedar and cold air.

Bryant's laugh came out too loud.

"Spoken for. By you."

"By me," Nicholas said.

"You walk in here in a suit from your father's closet and tell me who she belongs to?"

"I didn't say she belongs to anyone. I said she's spoken for. She spoke."

A man at the next table snorted into his wine.

Bryant's face went dark red from the collar up.

Shelby slid her hand into his.

"Bryant, don't. He's obviously been put up to it. She's paying him to embarrass you."

Nicholas looked at her for the first time.

He kept looking a beat too long.

"Miss Hartley," he said. "I know your father."

The color left her face so fast I almost missed it.

Then the tears came back, right on time.

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"It means I know your father."

Bryant stepped between them.

"Listen, farmer. Whatever her daddy offered you, it's not worth it. Two months in a house with her and you'll be begging to go back to your cows."

"I don't keep cows," Nicholas said. "I keep a telescope."

Somebody behind us laughed out loud.

The girls from prep school had gone quiet.

One of them had her phone up, filming.

Nicholas pulled out my chair.

"Do you want to stay?"

I looked at the table. The tipped water glass. The silver box upside down on the carpet. Bryant's ring turning and turning on his finger.

In my last life I stayed through the whole dinner with blood drying on my face.

I stood up.

"No."

He nodded once and offered his arm.

He didn't put it around me. He held it out where I could take it or not.

I took it.

We walked the length of the ballroom.

Every table turned to watch.

At the doors a reporter got in front of us.

"Mr. Santoro! Is it true? Are you engaged to Christina Ferraro?"

Nicholas stopped.

I felt his arm tense under my hand, just once.

My father had said nobody hears until it's signed.

Nicholas looked down at me and waited.

"Yes," I said.

The flashes went off like a hailstorm.

Outside, a dark SUV with Montana plates was idling at the curb.

The driver got out and opened the back door.

I slid across the seat and Nicholas got in after me.

The door shut, and the noise of Fifth Avenue fell away.

I lowered the handkerchief.

The cut had stopped bleeding.

"Let me see," he said.

He turned on the reading light and looked at my cheek without touching it.

"It won't need stitches. Ice tonight."

"Are you a doctor too?"

"I grew up on a ranch. Everything gets hit by something."

The SUV pulled into traffic.

I watched the lights slide over his face.

Up close he looked older than his photo and more tired.

"My father called you this afternoon," I said. "At five, maybe. The gala started at eight. Montana's a four-hour flight."

"I was already in the city."

"You never come to the city."

"I came this week."

"Why?"

He looked out the window at the park going by, black and full of trees.

"Your father didn't tell you what I asked for."

"He didn't tell me you asked for anything."

"I asked for one thing. I'll ask you too, since it's your seat now."

I waited.

"Sometime this spring, Hartley Energy is going to come to the Ferraro board with a deal. When it does, I want to be in the room."

I knew that deal.

In my last life it came in May, wrapped in a bow, and Bryant carried it.

"Why do you care what Hartley Energy does with our company?"

"Because of who owns Hartley Energy."

"Russell Hartley. Shelby's father."

He turned from the window and looked straight at me.

His voice didn't change at all.

"Russell Hartley killed my father."

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