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THE BUILDING LOOKED even more intimidating up close than it did halfway across town. Before going inside, I stood a moment on the marble steps, gazing upwards so far that I pulled a muscle in the side of my neck. A dozen identical businessmen in identical suits scurried past me, each of them looking like the world was about to end. I gazed after them in wonder.
All these people work for Dylan?
I again ignored the impulse to call Tommy for a pep-talk and marched with determination up the stairs. The only way in or out was through a gilded set of those electronically rotating doors that secretly terrified me. I crowded in the back of a group of too many people so as not to be alone, pressing awkwardly against a man in a fourteen-hundred-dollar suit. A man who, at that moment, was probably as keenly aware of the fact that I was covered in dirt as I was.
I grimaced apologetically and splintered off the second we were inside, drifting away from the crowd headed towards the elevators, and heading towards reception instead. The desk was manned by a trio of identical blondes and flanked on both sides by nine-foot-tall men who looked like they could eat me for breakfast.
I gave each of them a charming smile, before drifting to the girl in the middle. The one who looked the nicest.
“Hi,” I said nervously, tucking my hair behind my ears, “I’m here to see Dylan Murphy.”
She looked me up and down before barking out in a dry voice, “Which branch?”
Wrong. Definitely not the nicest.
My eyes flickered helplessly to the other two. “I’m sorry?”
A thick manila folder slammed down in front of me, making me jump. “I said, which branch are you looking for?” This girl clearly didn’t have time for the likes of me. “Civil? China? Litigation? Public Affairs?”
Despite her bristly demeanor, she was giving me as many hints as she could. I simply didn’t know what to tell her.
“Oh...just him. Dylan himself.” The three Barbies exchanged a look, and I quickly added, “He’s an old friend.”
This time, the girl in the middle smiled. A cruel kind of smile. Like a kid on a playground about to pluck the wings off a fly.
“And I’m assuming your old friend isn’t expecting you?”
I bit my lip, well aware of how ridiculous this looked and how much more ridiculous it sounded. “No,” my voice was quiet, “he’s not.”
“What’s this about?” she asked.
“We need to settle some business.”
She chuckled. “Really?”
“I get it. You don’t believe me. Just call him and tell him Rose is in the lobby. I promise you he’ll come right down.”
“You two go way back?” she asked with a smirk.
“We grew up together in Wessler, Tennessee.”
“Did you read that somewhere?”
I crossed my arms. “I can’t believe it’s this hard to get in to see my own husband! Just tell him his wife is down here waiting.”
They all laughed.
“Aww, she thinks she’s married to him,” the one blonde said snidely.
“Yeah, in her dreams,” the other laughed.
“Maybe she’s delusional,” the other one said. “I bet she’s off her meds! Just like the last one that showed up here.”
I was about to give up and walk away when the three girls came together for a spirited impromptu huddle.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Let’s let the crazy chick up.”
“Eloise, right? This could be perfect!”
“Exactly what the wench needs. A little trouble to mess up her day.”
“I still can’t believe they promoted her to—”
“Yes,” the girl in the middle surfaced with a pleasant smile, “we’ll send you up right away. Mr. Murphy’s office is on the top floor.” She had me sign a visitor’s log before gesturing me toward the elevators. “Straight up to the penthouse.”
“She wrote down Rose Murphy!” the blonde chuckled.
“She actually believes she’s his wife!” the other said.
I hesitated when she handed me my visitor’s pass—afraid of what the little schemers were getting me into. But I’d flown out here for a reason. If Dylan was on the top floor, then the top floor was where I’d go.
“Thank you,” I said politely, my Southern manners shining through to a fault. “Have a wonderful day.”
The girl’s answering smile sent chills running up my back.
“Have a good meeting,” she replied.
Oh...there wasn’t much chance of that...
Pinning my new badge on the hip of my artfully faded jeans, I headed toward the elevators, joining a crowd of openly gawking junior associates. When I pressed the button for the penthouse, there was an audible gasp from behind me. My eyes closed painfully, and I tried my best to tune out the whispers.
Dylan wanted to know why I never visited him in New York? This was why. Right here.
Everything from the elevator to the talking hot dog. Actually, seeing as my single bag of luggage had been diverted to the capital of Thailand, I’d have to revise that. Everything from the elevator to the flight.
The higher we traveled, the more ridiculous I felt. As more and more people began to leave the elevator, filing off at lower floors, I began to seriously wonder what exactly I was doing here. My mind flitted back to my conversation with Tommy at the baby store.
Just go to New York and ‘sort things out’. It had seemed so simple then.
“Are you the new representative from Guangzhou?” a man asked me politely.
My eyes flickered to his for the briefest of moments, then I looked away.
“Pleasure to meet you.” The man shook my hand energetically before the doors dinged open on his floor. “I look forward to what you have to say at commerce this afternoon.”
I offered him a smile. “It’ll be a barn-burner.”
Finally, after what felt like an impossible amount of time, the elevator was empty and I was the only one left. I pulled in a deep breath as the doors dinged one final time. Half expecting to meet some sort of legislative firing squad, I braced myself against the wall as they opened.
The sound of classical music greeted me instead.
I ventured forth like a hermit emerging from a cave, staring around at the sparkling light fixtures and indoor fountain with wide, disbelieving eyes. Eyes that then fell with a very heavy heart on the new trio of blondes waiting behind reception.
I’d thought the first three were bad? They were nothing compared to this.
There was not a stray hair or ounce of extra fat between them. Every nail was perfectly manicured, and every inch of skin was carefully concealed behind a designer dress. They were beautiful, there was no doubt about it. But it was like something between walking into a fashion show and a morgue—their faces were so vacant and expressionless.
Expressionless that is until they saw me.
Before I’d taken three steps forward, the girl in the middle half-rose from her chair.
“I’m sorry.” She looked me up and down like there must have been some sort of Titanic-sized mistake. “I believe you’re in the wrong place.”
My eyes flashed, but I kept my cool. Where I came from, we quite simply didn’t lose our tempers with people we didn’t know. We waited until after the first course.
“No, I don’t think so,” I replied, stiff—but polite. I crossed over to the desk and showed them my freshly printed visitor’s badge. “I’m here to see Dylan. Dylan Murphy,” I added, in case there was another titan of industry named Dylan residing on this floor.
There were no wasted smiles here. No passive aggressive sneers. The girl I was talking to stared me down with nothing but complete and utter disdain. Like I was something she’d pulled off the bottom of her pointy shoe.
“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Murphy?”
The corners of my lips twitched up in a hard smile.
I’d just had the most beautiful honeymoon with Mr. Murphy after he bought me one of the world’s most coveted diamonds. But sure. An appointment.
“Not really,” I said sweetly. “The thing is, he’s kind of my...”
But my voice cut off suddenly. I glanced from the two framed Monets hanging on the wall to the thousand-dollar koi circling the indoor pond.
I didn’t fit it. That much was obvious. How much trouble was he going to get into for being my husband?!
This building. The buses. The Armani suits scurrying this way and that. He was responsible for all of it. We were married now and hadn’t signed a prenup. This was no longer some life-altering problem on my end—this was a national event. An international event.
There was quite simply no way that we could do this. No way that we could hope to fly under the radar. There was no reason I should even be here.
Simple as that.
“Actually,” I breathed, backing away to the door, “I think you’re right. There’s been some kind of mistake.”
I couldn’t press the button for the elevator fast enough, cringing away from the triumphant looking blondes.
The phone rang and one blonde whispered to the others. They all laughed and pointed at me. I guess the others had called from downstairs.
“I’m sorry for wasting your—”
“Rose?”
My eyes snapped shut of their own accord. When I opened them again, Dylan was standing in the lobby—staring at me with a look of bewildered delight.
I lowered my finger slowly from the button and turned around. “...hi.”
He dropped the papers he was holding on the counter and strode forward, looking like the sun had just come out for the first time. Before I could stop him, he swept me off my feet and spun me around in a circle—arms wrapped around me in a bone-crushing hug. Blondes one, two, and three stared between us in open-mouthed astonishment.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the one in the middle stammered, “you...you know this girl?”
Dylan didn’t take his eyes off me, as he set me gently back on the floor.
“She’s my wife. And I love her more than anything in the world.”
He admitted it like he was proud, making my heart flutter.
“What are you doing here?” he asked excitedly, completely oblivious to the small uproar going on behind reception.
I did my best to keep my eyes on his face but having just entered the corporate world under five minutes ago, I was less immune to the stares.
“I was hoping we could talk,” I tucked my hair again behind my ears, wondering, randomly, if I was the only non-blonde in the building, “you know—in private?”
“Of course!”
Without sparing his secretaries so much as a look, he wrapped his arm around me and steered me gently down a little hall. The second we disappeared, a small explosion of whispers rippled through the lobby, but although I glanced nervously behind me, Dylan remained completely immune.
He opened the door to his office, like a kid showing off his dorm room for the first time—casual on the outside, but monitoring my every reaction with careful, hungry eyes.
I had to admit, under any other circumstances, I would have been impressed.
It was as though whoever designed the building had positioned his office specifically so that the entire New York horizon fit squarely into his floor-to-ceiling window. Standing so far above, the deafening horns and shrieks I’d waded through this morning were reduced to a pleasant city hum. The room itself was relatively empty, save for a desk with two chairs for visitors, a sofa, and a small coffee table stacked with leather-bound books.
I was still debating whether or not the books were for show when a quiet voice cleared behind me. I whirled around with a start.
Like I said, under any other circumstances, I would have been impressed. As it stood, I was a bit too petrified of our current situation to take in anything more than the carpet. But with the expectant look on Dylan’s face, I knew some sort of cover-up effort would have to be made.
“Wow,” I said softly, gazing around. “This is incredible.” To sell it even better, I perched lightly upon his desk. “This thing looks about a hundred years old.”
He gazed at me steadily, a little smile playing about his lips. “It belonged to Theodore Roosevelt. The National Historical Society gifted it to me last year.”
Theodore Roosevelt? As in...the President of the United States?
I stood up slowly, hoping like hell I hadn’t left any mud behind.
“What?” I teased lightly. “You couldn’t get Lincoln’s?”
He cocked his head playfully to the side. “Do you think I should?”
“Dylan, we need to—”
The door opened, and I broke off suddenly, turning away to the window as the blonde in the middle poked her head nervously inside.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she truly did look it—as well as jealous and lusty and spiteful a whole host of other unmentionable things, “your two o’clock is in the lobby, and the Deputy of the Interior is on the line for a conference call.”
“Cancel it,” he said shortly. “Cancel the rest of my day. I’m spending it with my wife.”
My eyes shot to the door apologetically as I marveled at the series of inexplicable events that had led me to inconvenience the Deputy of the Interior. The blonde hesitated nervously, obviously unaccustomed to such a command, and I put a gentle hand on his arm.
“Dylan, don’t cancel anything just for—”
“What happened to you?” he asked for the first time, glancing down with a look of concern. Blondie followed his gaze as well, only with slightly more loathing.
I pushed back my hair with a weary sigh. “I was the only person in the city to get sprayed with mud. But seriously, Dylan, we can just talk tonight, whenever you’re finished with—”
“Clara, can you please get my wife some new clothes?”
My eyebrows lifted in alarm.
...what?
“What?” the secretary demanded, before suddenly remembering herself. She turned deathly pale as Dylan turned to her for the first time, and bent over backward to correct herself. “I’m sorry, I only meant...what size is your wife? So I can get something she’s comfortable in.”
She visibly crumbled under his cold stare, and I almost felt sorry for her. His eyes swept her over once, before turning back to me.
“Something in your size, I would imagine.”
I dropped my face to the floor before she could see me smile. If I was feeling truly generous, perhaps I would use a million or two of my inheritance to pay for her therapy.
“Of course, sir,” she choked, backing away into the hall. “Is there anything else?”
“Don’t disturb us again.”
“Of course I won’t.”
The door closed shut without another word.
I brought my hand up to my mouth, still reeling from the exchange, but by the time Dylan turned around, it looked like he was already past it.
“I am...so happy you’re here.”
The exclamations and admonishments I was trying to prioritize melted clean away at his simple, genuine smile. Before I knew it, I was smiling myself.
“I’m...happy too. Happy to see you,” I clarified. “I’ve been having some major problems with your city.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Rose Garland in New York. I can see it now. The trauma, the tribulations.” He eyed me speculatively for a moment, before asking, “You got soaked by a taxi, didn’t you?”
“Long story.”
As much as my heart was racing at the mere sight of him, my nerves were frayed to the brink, my luggage was on its way to Bangkok, and I still didn’t know exactly what I’d traveled all this way to tell him.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything. But he beat me to the punch.
“I was going to ask you to come with me,” he confessed suddenly. “That last night we were together at my parents. I was going to ask if you’d fly back to the city with me.”
All my half-formed speeches crumbled away in surprise. “You were?”
He nodded a little self-consciously. “But I saw how freaked out you were—I mean,” he chuckled softly, “you almost left in a cab. I thought you might need a little time.”
I stared up at him in a daze, head spinning.
“Time to do what?”
Before I knew what was happening, he leaned in and gave me a swift kiss on the lips.
“To move to New York.”
“Right...” I brought a hand up to my head as if trying to physically ward away the headache that was coming on fast. “Yeah, I knew we had to settle some...wait...”
Move to New York?
“I’m sorry—what?!”