Chapter 10: The Wanting

Roan lived on Mount Washington, in a converted warehouse apartment with a wall of glass that looked down on the Point.

I went straight from the luncheon, still in my wool suit, with the afternoon sun making the rivers look like melted brass.

He opened the door in jeans and a white undershirt and looked at my face.

"Rough lunch?"

"I gave away a quarter million dollars and humiliated a retired principal."

"Sounds like a good day."

"It was the best day I've had in two years, and I need to tell you something before I take my clothes off."

He stepped back from the door and let me in.

"Then tell me," he said.

I stood at the window with my arms crossed and did not look at him.

"Peyton has a copy of my father's will. She's going to read it at the gala."

"What does it say?"

"That the company becomes mine outright on my thirtieth birthday if I am married. If I'm not, the board sells it."

Roan said nothing.

"I was twenty-nine and ten months, with no one."

"Fran said to find a husband who was kind and wouldn't ask for much. I went through the payroll list."

"You picked him from a list."

"I picked him from a file room. I'd read what he did for a dying driver, and I asked him to lunch."

My voice caught.

"I proposed five weeks later. He thought I was shy."

"And he never knew."

"No."

"And you fell in love with him afterward."

I turned around then.

He was not angry, which I had not expected.

He leaned on the kitchen island with his arms folded, and he looked at me with an even, steady gaze.

"You didn't use him," Roan said. "You gave him a steady wife and a promotion he earned."

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