"Call her Aunt." That was how my ex-fiancé found out I married his uncle. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Terms

Dessa sets four terms and her money back, tears up Gwendolyn's cashier's check in the lobby, and tells Preston to bring his guests Saturday as Ford steps out beside her.

"No," I said.

Ford finally turned from the window.

He had put his jeans back on and nothing else.

"I didn't say yes to a wedding," I said. "I said yes to a night."

"I know."

"You don't marry someone you met nine hours ago."

"People do it in Las Vegas every Saturday," he said.

"They're drunk in Las Vegas."

"You're not drunk."

I pulled the sheet up under my arms and sat against the headboard.

My whole body felt used, in a way I didn't mind.

"Why?" I asked.

He looked at the phone on the sill.

"The manager downstairs reports to my sister-in-law," he said. "She knows which room I'm in and who came up with me. She'll be in the lobby by nine."

"So she knows I slept with you."

"Yes."

"And?"

"And Gwendolyn will offer you a way out of this that doesn't cost her son anything," Ford said. "She'll be kind about it. You'll go back, and you'll sit in that house on Sundays for thirty years, and all of them will know what you did that night and what you let them do after."

It was exactly what I had been afraid of since the elevator.

"That's not a reason to marry you," I said.

"It's the one you'd believe." He shrugged. "The other one is that I've sat at the end of that table since I was six, and nobody ever stood up in that room. You stood up yesterday."

I looked at him for a long time.

"That's nice," I said. "It isn't a reason either."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

"So I'll make terms."

"Make them."

I held up one finger.

"Ninety days. Then we're done and nobody says a word."

"Fine."

A second finger.

"Separate beds."

His mouth twitched. "I have a couch."

"No sex."

He took a moment with that one.

"After last night?"

"Especially after last night."

"Fine," he said, and the corner of his mouth said otherwise.

Third finger.

"You never lie to me. About anything."

"I'll tell you anything you ask."

"And my money." I held up the fourth. "Thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars. When the ninety days are up, you pay me back out of your own pocket, not Preston's."

"The day you leave," he said.

"I don't take charity."

"It isn't charity," Ford said. "It's rent for the best night I've had in years."

I threw a pillow at him, and he caught it.

At nine I put on yesterday's clothes and went down to the lobby with my hair still wet.

Gwendolyn was sitting in a wingback chair by the front desk with her handbag on her knees and a gardenia on her lapel.

She stood when she saw me and held out both hands.

"Dessa, sweetheart."

I did not take them.

"I won't ask where you were," she said gently. "I won't ever ask. A girl does a foolish thing when she's hurt, and nobody has to know."

"Nobody knows," I said, "except the man at the front desk, and you."

She smiled at that, warmly.

From her bag she took a cashier's check and held it out.

It was made out to me for thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars.

"The lodge, the caterer, the band, all of it back," she said. "Come home, apologize to Preston for the scene, and the wedding is on Saturday as if none of this ever happened."

"Apologize."

"Of course, dear. You did embarrass him."

I took the check.

I read the amount twice, and the signature, and the line under it where she had written the word Gift.

Then I tore it in half, and in half again, and put the pieces in her open handbag.

"I'll collect it," I said, "from the people who owe it."

For one second her smile stopped.

Then it came back, so smooth that I wondered if I had seen it go.

"You'll change your mind," she said.

Through the glass front doors I could see a black SUV at the curb.

Preston was leaning on the hood in his shirtsleeves, arms folded, watching the lobby.

I walked out into the sun.

"Dess," he said. He looked tired, and he looked angry, and he looked sure. "Get in the car. We'll fix it."

"No."

"Babe, you're not going to leave me over a few texts."

"I'm leaving you over nine months of them."

"Where would you even go?" He laughed, a short, kind laugh. "You've got a lease in my name and a nursing job and a mother in Kannapolis. Who else would marry you?"

Behind me the glass doors opened.

Ford came out of the hotel with his work shirt unbuttoned and his keys in his hand and stopped beside me.

He did not touch me.

Preston stared at him.

"Uncle Ford?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Dessa and I have a courthouse to get to," Ford said.

I took a breath.

"Saturday," I said to Preston. "Four o'clock, at the lodge. Bring your guests."

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