Chapter 7 - The Ghost at the Table
The grand dining room of the Callaway mansion was built for thirty people. Tonight, only three places were set at the head of the long oak table.
Lily sat in a modified high chair that Arthur had somehow unearthed from the attic, happily smashing a potato croquette with her spoon. Nathaniel sat at the head, and Grace sat to his right.
The silence between them wasn't the cold distance of the past four years; it was the quiet of two people who were intensely aware of each other’s presence.
"My parents used to hold dinners here every Friday," Nathaniel said, looking out at the long expanse of polished wood. "They’d invite forty people they didn't like to talk about money they didn't need. After they died, I kept the room exactly the same because I thought changing it would mean admitting they were gone."
Grace set her fork down. "How old were you?"
"Twenty-two," he said. "I was in my senior year at Harvard. One phone call on a snowy Tuesday night, and suddenly I was responsible for four thousand employees and a legacy I hadn't asked for. I spent ten years becoming the man my father was—cold, efficient, unstoppable. I thought if I became hard enough, nothing could hurt me again."
He looked at Lily, who had managed to get potato on her nose. "Then a little girl walked into my office with a purple lion and told me I looked sad."
Grace felt a profound ache in her chest. She reached across the short distance between their chairs and, for the first time, initiated contact. She placed her bare hand over his. Her skin was soft, his was rough, but the warmth was immediate.
"You aren't your father, Nathaniel," she said softly. "Your father wouldn't have saved a maid’s child’s toy."
Nathaniel turned his hand over, interlocking his fingers with hers. His grip was tight, almost desperate. "I didn't do it for the toy, Grace. I did it because when I saw her crying, and when I saw you on your knees trying to protect her... I realized I would have burned the whole city to the ground before I let anyone hurt you."
The confession hung in the warm air of the dining room. Grace’s breath hitched. She wanted to pull away out of old habit—out of the fear that this was too good to be true, that a billionaire didn't marry the woman who cleaned his floors. But Nathaniel’s eyes were locked onto hers, gray and steady, filled with a raw honesty that money could never buy.
"Mommy," Lily piped up, her spoon hovering in the air. "Nathaniel has potato on his sleeve."
May you like
The tension broke. Nathaniel looked down at his cashmere sweater, where a small white smudge of potato had indeed landed. He didn't look angry; he laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that Grace had never heard before.
"So I do, Lily," he said, wiping it away with his napkin. "So I do."
