Ten Days To Say I Do

Chapter 4

Elena woke up to four texts from Aunt Diane, and every one of them was about flowers. One had a photo of a bouquet with "too much??" typed under it. Another said "or is June better for peonies." It wasn't even seven yet.

There was a fifth message from a number she didn't know.

Mr. Whitfield's office. Mr. Whitfield would like to meet your fiancé at 11 this morning to open the file. Please ask him to bring photo ID.

She sat up in bed. Photo ID. Of course. A lawyer wasn't going to just take her word for it. It was the first thing she should have thought of, and she hadn't, because she'd spent all day worrying about a ring.

She called Jay. He picked up on the second ring and didn't sound sleepy at all.

"Morning, fiancée."

"Don't. Whitfield wants ID. Yours. With your actual name on it, and it's going in a legal file."

"Okay."

"Okay? That's all?"

"What do you want me to say? It'll be fine."

"How is it fine?"

"Because I'm telling you it is. Dress warm, it's freezing out."

She hung up feeling worse than before, and put on her heaviest sweater anyway.

He met her downstairs with two coffees again. This was becoming a habit, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. In the taxi she kept quiet for a while, watching the wet streets go by, and then she said, "Who's Marcus?"

Jay turned his head. "What?"

"Your phone was on the counter yesterday. It lit up. I wasn't snooping, it was just there."

"Right." He took a second. "Marcus works with me. He worries a lot."

"About what?"

"Everything."

That was all she got out of him.

Mr. Whitfield's office was on the fourth floor of an old building with a very slow elevator. He came out to greet them himself, gray hair, bow tie, a cup of tea in his hand at eleven in the morning. He shook Jay's hand and said it was a pleasure, and he sounded like he almost meant it.

The waiting room had a stack of golf magazines and nothing else. Elena read the same page three times.

Inside, Whitfield sat down behind his desk and opened a folder. "This is only a formality, Ms. Brooks. Your grandfather was very particular about paperwork, so I'll need a full name, date of birth, and address for the file. And identification, of course."

"Of course," Jay said.

He took a leather card holder out of his jacket and slid out his license. He handed it over the desk without a word, and Elena, sitting right next to him, couldn't see a thing. He'd turned it the wrong way for her. She wasn't sure if that was on purpose.

Whitfield put on his glasses.

He read it. Then he stopped. It was a very small stop, the kind you'd miss if you weren't looking, but Elena was looking. His eyebrows went up about a millimeter. He looked at Jay over the top of his glasses.

Jay looked right back. And he shook his head. Barely. Just a tiny movement, left to right.

Elena blinked. Had she imagined that?

Whitfield cleared his throat. He took out a pen, wrote something in the folder, and passed the license back across the desk. "Everything appears to be in order."

"That's it?" Elena said.

"That's it. Congratulations to you both." He stood and shook Jay's hand again, and this time he held it a second longer than he needed to.

Out on the sidewalk, the wind was worse than before. Elena had her hands jammed in her sleeves and her teeth were nearly chattering. Without saying anything, Jay took off his scarf and wrapped it around her neck. It was soft. Way softer than a scarf had any business being on a man who drank coffee at bus stops.

She didn't say anything about that. She decided to say something about the other thing.

"What did he see on that ID?"

"My face." Jay put his hands in his pockets. "It's a terrible photo."

She laughed, mostly because he'd said it so seriously. She didn't believe him, though. She knew what she'd seen. But he was already walking, and she had to hurry a bit to keep up, and the scarf smelled like soap and something warm she couldn't name.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out one-handed.

It was Priya again.

OMG. Just got the email. New CEO is doing an all-staff meeting in six days. FINALLY showing his face. Everybody's losing it. Marketing has a betting pool going.

Elena read it out loud, because she needed to tell someone. "Six days. I guess I'll finally find out if he's old and grumpy."

"Huh," Jay said.

That was it. Just "huh."

She glanced over. He was holding his coffee, staring straight ahead at nothing. His face didn't have any expression at all, and somehow that was stranger than if it had.

"You okay?"

"Fine." He took a sip. "Did she say which day?"

"Which day what?"

"Which day of the week. The meeting."

"No, just six days from now. Why?"

"No reason."

Except for a man with no reason, he'd asked awfully fast. And he was gripping that cup so hard the plastic lid popped off and hit the pavement.

Neither of them picked it up.

Why did the date of a staff meeting matter to a man who had never worked at Halden?