The CEO's Unwanted Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Husband in the Lab

Dalton watches her work, orders her to his grandmother's dinner, and in the lobby Vanessa says she knows what he signed.

"Mrs. Merrow," said the graduate student with the pipette, in the voice of a man seeing a ghost.

"Dr. Voight," I said. "In here, it's Dr. Voight."

Dalton's eyes flicked to the student, then back to me.

"I need ten minutes."

"I'm in the middle of a run."

"Then I'll wait."

He did not wait in the hall.

He walked down the aisle between the benches with his hands in his pockets, and the whole lab moved out of his way without being asked.

He stopped at my station and looked at the screen.

A field of pink dots filled it, thousands of heart cells dividing under the glass.

"What am I looking at?"

"Heart muscle," I said. "I grow it from skin cells. The goal is to patch hearts that stopped working, without the body rejecting the patch."

He leaned closer.

I smelled cedar soap and a little coffee, and my body remembered the smell before my head could object.

"These are alive," he said.

"They're beating. Watch the corner."

The tiny pink cluster in the lower left pulsed, all together, once, twice, three times.

For a moment he forgot to look like himself.

Then he straightened.

"You wrote all of that on the whiteboard?" he asked.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Six years of notes. You've seen the wall in the study."

"I thought that was decoration."

"I know," I said.

Becca coughed loudly at the next bench and found something urgent to do on the other side of the room.

Dalton's gaze dropped to my hand on the mouse.

"Where's your ring?"

My thumb stopped moving.

"In my locker. Rings and gloves don't mix. A scratch on a glove ruins the sample."

"It's never been off before."

"It's never been in a lab before," I said, which was almost true.

He kept looking at the empty finger. I let him.

"My grandmother's birthday dinner is Thursday night," he said at last. "At the house. Seven o'clock."

"I know when it is."

"She wants you at the table beside me. She was specific."

"Where will Vanessa sit?"

"Vanessa is not invited."

I turned all the way around on the stool.

In four years he had never said that sentence about anyone.

"Did you decide that?"

"My grandmother did. She called me at seven this morning and told me to go and see where my wife works."

"And did you?"

"I'm standing in it."

He said it flatly, but his jaw had gone tight.

"Thursday at seven," I said. "I'll be there."

"I'll send the car."

"I'll take the train."

"Linnea."

He said my name slowly.

For a second I thought he was about to say something else, something with a crack in it.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he looked at it, and the crack closed.

"I have a board call," he said. "Thursday."

He walked out, and the lab did not breathe until the door had clicked shut behind his driver.

Becca came over with both hands over her mouth.

"He looked at the cells," she whispered. "Did you see his face? He looked at them like they were in love with him."

"He looked at my ring finger."

"And you lied."

"I took the ring off in the elevator yesterday. I'm leaving it on his desk on Saturday."

"You are terrifying," she said, delighted.

I worked until five and let the numbers hold my hands steady.

At the end of the day I took the stairs down to the lobby so I could breathe for two flights.

The lobby of the science building had a long glass front, and Vanessa Endicott was standing in the middle of it, in cream and camel, holding two paper cups from the good coffee place.

She smiled when she saw me, and it looked like pleasure.

"Linnea! I brought you a latte. Oat milk, no sugar, right?"

I took it because refusing would have been strange.

"That's kind."

"You looked so tired yesterday. I felt terrible." She lowered her voice. "Can I say something, just between us?"

"Of course."

She stepped close enough that her perfume reached me.

"I was in the office after you left yesterday. The folder you gave Dalton was still lying open on his desk."

I held the cup with both hands.

"I read the top page," she said gently. "It wasn't a lab form, was it?"

The cup was hot against my palms.

Vanessa's free hand went to the cream envelope in her bag and rested there.

"Don't be scared," she said warmly. "I'm not going to tell him."

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