AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Life works better when you aren’t carelessly tossing out landmines to step on.
Which is why I ask my assistant to repeat what she said. “Come again?”
She clicks her tongue in annoyance. “Your wife is here to see you. Shall I send her in?”
That’s what I thought she said.
Just to be clear, I do not have a wife.
I’ve never had a wife.
I’ve never even had a fiancée.
Asking Fiona to marry me was the only time I’ve ever considered that state of matrimonial bliss everyone is so keen to dive headlong into. Half of them (at least) end up bashing their brains out when they finally hit bottom, but they keep trying, poor fools. I’m not interested.
Which is why I say with complete authority, “I don’t have a wife, as you know, although I appreciate the levity.” Perhaps Agathe is having a late mid-life crisis and has decided to try her hand at stand-up comedy. “I need the Swiss National Bank report sent?—”
“Mr. Barone,” Agathe says, and for the first time in our history together she sounds on edge, “Mrs. Barone is here and she is quite distressed. Shall I send her in?”
I lean back in my chair and raise my eyebrows, looking around the office as if I’ll find an answer in the bookshelves or the nineteenth-century oil paintings, or perhaps hiding behind the heavy navy curtains. There’s no answer, just a cold draft seeping through the stone walls, and a long, blaring horn from a truck stuck in traffic down below.
“Agathe,” I say carefully, twisting my family’s signet ring on my fourth finger. “Enough. I’m not married. I have no wife. Let’s move on. For the conference call at one, I need the?—”
“Your wife. She’s here!” Agathe hisses.
I jerk back and then turn to look at the heavy oak door to my office. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and suddenly I know something isn’t quite right.
Agathe isn’t joking.
She’s never joked before. I only thought ... maybe ... but no, she isn’t joking.
Her desk is right outside my door. Which means, there’s a woman right outside my door that Agathe believes is my wife.
Fifteen feet away, twenty at most, is a woman claiming to be my wife.
I concentrate on the door as if I can see through it. I can’t, but I swear there’s something in the air. Not the ever-present tobacco and cognac scent. Not the dark, oppressive chill of my father’s legacy. Not even the feeling of loneliness and aloneness that has sat heavy on my chest since Fiona turned down my proposal. It’s a different feeling.
It’s almost like when someone whispers and you can almost, but not quite, make out the words; all you have to do is lean a little closer to them and you’ll be fine. I can hear that indistinct murmur and I’m compelled to move closer. To hear the words.
In fact, it seems imperative that I hear them.
I lean forward in my chair, placing my hands on my cool desk. I watch the door, certain that any second it will burst open.
Yet that’s absurd.
To get to the business offices of Barone Jewelry you have pass security, take the stairs or the elevator, pass reception, and then pass Agathe. There isn’t any chance an unknown and uninvited guest would turn up and knock down my door.
Yet that’s exactly what seems to be happening.
I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. It’s time to put a stop to this. “Agathe. If there is a woman claiming to be my wife in my offices, I recommend you remove her. Or I will.”
There’s a shocked gasped, and my previously unflappable assistant says in a tight voice, “This being your seventh wedding anniversary, I would expect you’d be happy to see her. Or did you forget an anniversary gift?”
Wedding Anniversary?
Myseventhwedding anniversary?
Something is wrong here. Very, very wrong.
