The CEO's Wife is A Badass novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Front Door
Siobhan walks in the front door and wins the eleven o'clock collector from the cafe next door, then learns her husband approved Blair a month ago.
At nine the next morning I walked through the front door of Harrington Gallery.
I had slept three hours.
My sketchbook was drying in a towel on the kitchen counter, and my husband's side of the bed was still empty.
Scott was in Singapore until tonight.
He had called at two in the morning, when the news had reached him, and I had told him I had it handled.
I had no idea if that was true.
The guard stood up when I came in.
"Mrs. Harrington," he said. "I'm sorry about last night. She said it was your husband's order."
"Did you hear that from my husband?"
"No, ma'am."
"Then it's not an order."
He nodded slowly, and he buzzed me through the inner door himself.
The registrar was at her desk with a box of my things in front of her.
My mug, my desk plant and a framed photo of Scott on a dock.
She looked at me and slid the box back across the desk.
"I didn't pack it," she said. "She told me to."
"I know."
"Your office is locked."
"I know that too."
I picked up the plant.
"Is the eleven o'clock still on the calendar?"
The registrar glanced at her screen, and for the first time that morning she smiled.
"It's the only thing on the calendar she hasn't touched."
The eleven o'clock was a collector.
He had spent six months looking at one painting, a huge dark canvas of a rail yard at dusk.
The price was four hundred thousand dollars.
He had asked for me, by name, each time he came in.
At ten fifty-five he walked through the glass doors in a gray coat.
Blair got to him first.
She came down the stairs in a pink suit, arms wide.
"Welcome! I'm the director now. Siobhan has moved on to other things."
The collector took her hand and let it go in about a second.
"I made this appointment with Ms. Doolan."
"Ms. Doolan isn't handling clients anymore."
"Then I'll wait until she is."
Blair's smile held, but I saw the muscle in her jaw.
"I know the whole collection, I promise. I can tell you everything about the rail yard."
"Can you tell me which of the painter's years it came from?"
She opened her mouth.
I stood in the doorway of the registrar's office with a desk plant in my arms, watching her find out she did not know.
"It's an early piece," Blair said. "From his strongest period."
"It's not," the collector said.
He turned and saw me.
His whole face changed.
"Siobhan."
"Good morning."
"Would you like a coffee?" I said. "The cafe next door is better than ours."
He looked at Blair, then at me, and then he offered me his arm.
We walked out the front door together.
Blair did not say a word, and I did not look back.
The cafe next door had a corner table with a window.
I put the plant down beside the sugar.
"It's from 1998," I said. "He painted it after his studio closed and he was sleeping in a boxcar for a week."
"I thought it was the boxcar year."
"It's the boxcar year. The light in the sky is the only warm thing he put on a canvas until 2004."
He laughed once, quietly.
"I've been looking at that painting for six months and nobody has told me why it hurts."
"It hurts because he was cold."
He took out his phone, typed for a moment and showed me the screen.
A wire for four hundred thousand dollars.
"I want the rail yard," he said. "And I want it hung where you'd hang it."
I sat very still so I would not do anything stupid.
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't thank me. I've been buying from this gallery for four years, and it's been yours the whole time."
He took a sip of his coffee.
"I almost didn't come today. I got the memo about the new director last month and thought the place was changing."
"What memo?"
"The one from Scott Harrington's office."
He said it kindly.
"It said a Ms. Kingsley had been approved to join the gallery. Your husband signed it himself."
The cafe was suddenly very loud.
I watched my own hands on the table.
"When last month?" I said.
"The fourth."
I had been at this gallery every day since the fourth.
Scott had been home eleven nights.
He had kissed me every one of them.
He had never once said her name.
← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend