Chapter 6 - Two Minutes in the Coat Room
I didn't plan to take him anywhere. I just turned away from the ballroom lights and started walking, and he followed, the way I knew he would. Past the donor board with our names in gold script, past the double doors where the music thinned out, down the short hall to the coat alcove where the attendants had stepped away for the speeches. The air was cooler there, smelling of wool and leather and someone's spilled perfume.
I pushed the curtain back and went in first. Racks of coats pressed close on both sides. He ducked under the low frame and closed the space behind us with his body more than the curtain. For a second neither of us spoke. I could hear my own breathing, too fast, and the low murmur of the program director on the microphone back in the ballroom.
"You've got two minutes," I said. My voice came out lower than I wanted.
Daniel looked around once, then back at me. Up close the tattoos on his neck moved a little when he swallowed. That cross caught the single bulb over the check-in desk.
"I asked to work tonight," he said. "I told the staffing guy I'd take barback, cleanup, anything. I needed to see you."
My stomach dropped. "You could have called."
"I did. Three times last spring." He didn't raise his voice. "Your assistant said you were in meetings."
I remembered the pink slips stacked on my desk, the unfamiliar number I hadn't returned. I'd assumed it was a solicitation.
"So you come here?" I glanced toward the curtain. "In front of three hundred people? In front of my board?"
"I didn't come to ruin you, Elena." He said it plain, hands open at his sides. "I swear on my mom, that's not why."
The way he said my name did something to me. Nobody here called me Elena. It was Mrs. Ward or Elena Ward on the program. Hearing it like that pulled me straight back to the county road out past Miller's orchard, seventeen years ago, heat coming off the asphalt and his old pickup idling while he pressed that same cross into my palm and told me not to cry.
I blinked and forced myself back to the coats, to the present. "That server with his face covered. Did you set that up?"
Daniel's jaw tightened. "That's—"
A sharp rap hit the wooden frame outside the curtain. "Hello? Coat check?" A woman's laugh, wine-loose. "I left my wrap, the gray one with the fringe?"
I froze. Daniel stepped back a half step, putting a rack between us.
"Just a second," I called out, and I hated how steady I sounded, the board-member voice kicking in automatically.
"Elena," Daniel said quietly. "Let me finish."
The curtain twitched. The woman's shadow moved on the other side. I could see her heels shifting, impatient.
"We're done," I said. I kept my eyes on his, even as I smoothed my dress with both hands. "I can't do this here."
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"Then where?" he asked.
I didn't answer. I pulled the curtain back with a practiced smile and stepped out into the hall, leaving him standing among the coats with his question hanging in the warm, close air.
