Just the Number

EVANDER'S POV

Hollis was waiting in the back of the car with two tablets and a folder.

"Good morning, sir. The New York team moved the call to ten, and the Singapore numbers came in overnight. They're better than we feared, but not by much." He held out the first tablet. "And about the Audi from the other night, I've started.."

"Later."

He closed his mouth and put the tablet on his knee.

The car went down the drive and through the gate. I watched the canyon go past the window and tried to think about Singapore, and I thought about my wife instead.

Last night, in the back booth of the club on Sunset, Wells had leaned across the table and asked me her name. It should have been the easiest question anyone asked me all week. I had opened my mouth to answer, and I'd realized I didn't know it. I had signed a marriage certificate beside her, and I had never once looked at the line below mine. I'd covered it with a drink, and Wells had laughed at me for ten minutes.

Somewhere around the bottom of the second glass, the dream had come back.

I'd had it on and off since I was sixteen. There was always a wedding I didn't remember agreeing to, and a bride in white at the end of an aisle whose face I could never see. I only ever knew that when I reached her, everything I had would start to burn. I'd never told anyone about it, not even Grandma. Last night, for the first time in months, it had come back while I was awake.

So I had gone home.

I wasn't going to think about what happened after that, but I did anyway, the whole way down Sunset. In fourteen years of running this company I had never lost control. I didn't lose it in negotiations, and I didn't lose it with women. I didn't lose it when my uncle sat across a boardroom table from me and smiled. Last night I had found my wife on the floor of my balcony with a script on her knees, and I had forgotten every reason I had for keeping my distance.

She hadn't trapped me. That was the part I couldn't get past. I had asked, and she had looked at me for a long moment, and when she said yes, it had clearly cost her something to say it.

This morning she had stood up at the breakfast table to tell me something, and I'd stopped her. I told myself it was because I didn't want to hear another story. The truth was that I didn't trust what I would do if she said something I wanted to believe.

"Hollis."

"Sir?"

"Get me her number."

He blinked at me. "Mrs. Pembroke's number?"

"Unless I have another wife."

"Of course, sir. Mrs. Quarles is setting up her accounts this morning, so I'll have her number, her full name and her banking details by noon. I can send you her whole file as well, if you'd like to.."

"Just the number."

He looked at me a second longer than he usually would. Then he nodded and wrote it down.

The Singapore call ran from two until almost six. Halfway through it, my phone lit up on the table beside my laptop.

Household card: $38,400.00 at Maison Pembroke, Beverly Hills.

I turned the screen toward Hollis without a word.

"Ah," he said. "Sir, that's the stylist. You sent.."

"One day," I said. "She's had the card for one day."

"Sir, if I could just explain.."

"As expected."

I went back to the call. Hollis opened his mouth, closed it again and wrote something in his notebook that I chose not to read.

By the time I got to the car that evening, Hollis's message with her number was waiting at the top of my inbox. There was no name with it, only ten digits, exactly as I had asked. I looked at them for longer than I needed to. Then I opened a new message and typed six words.

This is my number. Save it.

I sent it before I could think of a reason not to. Then I put the phone face down on my knee and looked out of the window at the traffic.

It buzzed before we reached the freeway.

Saved. Thank you for the clothes, Mr. President.

She had called me Mr. President, the name my staff used. It wasn't my name, and it wasn't husband either. I read it twice, and I didn't know whether she meant it as a joke or a wall, or which of the two I wanted it to be.

The phone rang in my hand before I could decide. It was Grandma.

"Evander." There was no warmth in her voice tonight, and no hello. "Your wife ended my call two days ago."

"The signal was bad in the west wing."

"The signal was fine, darling. I heard a door shut and I heard her breathing, and then the call ended. Calls don't drop themselves after somebody says hello twice in that bright little voice." She was quiet for a moment, and in all my life I had never heard her this quiet. "So tell me. Why would a girl who begged me for months to marry you be so afraid to let me see her face?"