Chapter Two: One Month to Find A Husband

POV: Lilly Roswell

I hung up and listened to the muffled chatter of someone laughing downstairs, then stood.

My knees groaned their displeasure. On the nightstand across the room sat the wedding picture, Ryan's arm around my waist, me looking up at him, a foolish grin on my face while he stared into the camera.

I flipped the frame face down and twisted the ring off my finger, until it caught on my knuckle, and set the metal band on top, and there was a tiny white mark on my skin.

Thirty days ,no husband, no marriage. How wonderful.

It took twenty minutes to pack. I left the jewelry he'd bought me, the designer bags, the shoes he'd never worn, and brought only the papers, the laptop, the gray cardigan I'd worn daily in Harden House, the elbows worn thin, and the clothes I'd bought with my own meager wages before I'd ever laid eyes on him, and it all fitted in one suitcase.

I dragged it downstairs and hovered near the landing, listening to the sounds of the conversation below.

"She'll cool off," Ryan said. "She always does."

"Of course she will," said Ivy's voice, soft as if she'd been lying on a cloud. "Don't worry about it, babe. Let her sulk, she's got no family, no friends, she'll be back before dinner crying and apologizing." A laugh. "I know her better than she knows herself."

I gripped the handle so hard the plastic bit into my palm. Eleven years as best friends and Ivy knew every soft spot in my heart. I'd shown her each and every one

I let the wheels of the suitcase thump on the stairs until I'd reached the bottom

They both turned as I walked through the doorway, Ryan with his phone to his ear. "Move the meeting to three, I want the revised numbers before the board sees them." He ended the call and turned to Ivy, who stood behind him, holding my blue mug in both hands. Her face was worried.

"What's this about a suitcase?" Ryan asked, his eyebrows raised.

"I'm leaving."

"To where?" he asked.

"I haven't decided yet."

He scoffed. "Lilly stop it, you're hurting and I get it, but you can't run off every time we have an argument."

"Every time we have an argument?" I repeated, gripping the handle tighter. "Is that what you think this is?"

"What else is it?"

I wanted to ask him if they'd laughed about me in the dark while they slept side by side, if he and Ivy had spent the night together, if they'd talked about me when I wasn't there, but instead I said,

“I’m tired, Ryan.”

His face softened, for the briefest of moments he looked almost sorry. "Then rest, we'll talk about it tonight."

"No," I said simply.

"No?"

"Not tonight, or tomorrow. I'm sick of explaining why I'm hurt around a man that doesn't know what he's done."

"Lilly honey, please." Ivy stepped forward and touched my arm lightly. "Sit down, let's all talk about it."

"Leave me alone," I said, wrenching my arm from her grasp. I looked down at the mug in her hands. "That's mine."

She blinked at me, then set the mug down carelessly on the hallway table

" You're making me sound like a monster," Ryan said, his jaw tight.

"I didn't call you one.“Then stop acting like I betrayed you!”

It slipped out, and suddenly all three of us stood very still. Somewhere in the kitchen the fridge was humming. Ryan looked away first

Something inside me clicked, locked, like a small part of me had been waiting for this and this alone. All night long I'd wondered if there was some kind of explanation that would make it easier to swallow, and there wasn't. He truly didn't think he'd done anything wrong.

I opened the front door.

"Lilly," he said quietly. "Don't make a choice you can't take back."

I looked back at him. "That's the problem Ryan, I'm sick of making choices because of you."

The door shut behind me. I stood on the step for a moment, hands shaking, and I hated myself for it, hated the fact that my body still flared like that at the sound of his voice.

I walked to my little gray hatchback, the only car I'd ever bought myself, and I shoved the suitcase in the back. When I looked up, Ivy was standing at the front window. She raised two fingers in a wave to me, a fond look on her face as if I were sending her child off to school

I started the car and didn't wave back. I found a room at the Alder, a thin hotel six blocks back from Pierce's building. The room smelled of bleach and old carpets.

I sat cross legged on the bed and looked up apartments I could afford without touching my father's money.

My stomach twisted at the prices. I'd last a few months on my savings if I ate a steady diet of crackers.

At three-thirty I washed my face and gathered the papers and walked to the building where I'd meet Pierce.

Kingsley Tower took up an entire block of the city, forty stories of black glass buildings with the company name etched into the doors in steel.

The firm occupied the nineteenth floor, and the lobby was cold and shiny and smelled of polish and expensive coffee. I was reading Pierce's text, Take the east elevators, when my shoulder bumped against something solid, and I turned to find myself nose to nose with a man.

"Careful."

Strong fingers gripped my elbow and a black folder slid from his arm as he bent. Papers scattered all over the marble floor

“I’m so sorry.”

I dropped to my knees. "It was my fault, I wasn't watching."

"Neither was I." His voice was steady, almost mocking.

He knelt besides me. We both reached for the same page. I yanked my hand back.

It was covered in numbers and marginia notes, a company name printed along the top. He watched me read the first line

"You know financial reports?"

"Enough to know when I see one."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "That's more than most people in this lobby."

I handed him the last page. "Then hold on to them tighter."

He looked at me for a moment, as if he hadn't expected that, and laughed, one small sound. It loosened something in my chest that had been twisted all night.

We stood and he was tall, and handsome and his face was unreadable, but his suit looked like it had been carved to his liking.

His eyes were the color of a cloudy winter sky and scanned over my face slowly, as if he were memorizing something he already knew

Then they landed on my left hand, and the tiny white mark along my finger.

"You've taken something off recently."

I curled my fingers into my palm. "Is that an observation or a question?"

"Sometimes it's both."

"Then let's say, I'm moving on."

"Good," he said, tucking the folder under his arm. "That's usually the hardest choice to make."

A man in a gray suit rushed past the doors and paused, panting. "Mr. Kingsley, they're waiting for you upstairs."

Kingsley.

I looked up at the steel name etched above the doors, then at the man before me. Lex Kingsley. His face had graced the cover of a business journal in Ryan's study for months. Ryan had called him a shark, had been petrified of him

"Lilly Roswell," I finally said, when his gaze lingered on me. The silence had stretched too long. My voice seemed steadier than I felt.

He repeated my name slowly, like storing it away somewhere safe

The man in the gray suit shifted foot to foot. Lex Kingsley's eyes never left me.

“One more question, Miss Roswell.”Yes?"

"Are you married?"

My heart gave a loud, ugly beat. I saw Ryan's hand on my waist in the photograph, the crooked seal of gold, Ivy's two fingers in the window

"No," I said, meeting Lex's gaze. "I'm not."

He held my eyes, and behind him the elevator doors slid open, but he didn't turn.

"Perhaps, we should talk."