Divorce Me If You Dare: The Hidden Queen's Revenge novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: A Hundred Roses
Brooks kneels in the lobby of Lenhart Tower with roses and a ring, in front of cameras. Cora says no and asks him where she grew up; he can't answer. Then she is served a divorce petition with a prenup page she never signed.
Brooks was standing in the lobby of Lenhart Tower at eight on Sunday morning with a hundred red roses in his arms.
Cora saw him through the glass of the elevator and stopped with her coffee halfway to her mouth.
She had slept eleven hours in a guest suite on the forty-first floor, and she had not been woken by an alarm at 5:30 for the first time in five years.
Now he was here, in a fresh suit, with his hair combed and his eyes red.
Behind him stood two photographers from the lobby café and a security guard who did not know what to do.
Alexander came out of the elevator behind her.
"I can have him removed," he said quietly.
"No," Cora said. "Let him talk."
She crossed the marble floor with her coffee in her hand.
Brooks saw her, and his face opened up with relief so fast it almost convinced her.
"Cora." He held out the roses. "I was wrong. I was drunk on the stage, and I was scared, and I said the worst thing I could think of."
"You said it to three hundred people."
"I know." He swallowed. "I've been up all night. I called off the engagement."
Behind him a photographer lifted his camera.
Brooks noticed and did not stop him.
"Delaney was a mistake," he said louder. "My mother pushed it. I let her. The only person I ever wanted in that house was you."
Cora looked at the roses.
There were a hundred of them, tied with a white ribbon, and she realized she had never been given even one.
Brooks dropped to one knee on the marble.
A woman at the information desk gasped.
He took a small velvet box out of his coat and opened it.
The ring was a plain band with a single diamond, and it shone under the lobby lights.
"Marry me properly," he said. "A church. A white dress. Flowers. All the things I made you wait for. Come home, Cora."
The lobby had gone silent.
Every person in it was holding a phone.
Cora felt the old ache go through her, because for five years this was the exact thing she had wanted him to say.
She had wanted it so badly she had rehearsed her answer.
She looked down at him, and she noticed that his knee on the marble had not moved even slightly.
He had planned the kneeling, and he had planned the lobby and the cameras.
"Get up, Brooks," she said.
"Not until you say yes."
"Then you'll be there a while."
A few people in the lobby laughed.
His face flickered.
"Cora, please. I'm trying to fix this."
"You announced another woman on Saturday night," she said. "You're proposing to me on Sunday morning with her ring still warm. Which one of us is the mistake?"
The laughter grew.
Brooks stood up fast and shut the box.
"You don't understand how things work," he said, low, so only she could hear. "You can't just leave, Cora. You have nowhere to go. Come home and we'll sort out the rest."
"The rest of what?"
"The papers. The arrangements. You don't need to worry about any of that."
She tilted her head.
"Brooks, where did I grow up?"
He blinked.
"What?"
"Where did I go to school? What was my mother's name? Tell me one thing about my family."
His mouth opened, and for one second nothing came out.
"Ohio," he said at last. "Somewhere small."
"I was born at Northwestern Memorial," Cora said. "Two miles from this lobby."
There was a murmur behind them.
"You never asked me," she said. "Not once. I'm saying no, Brooks."
His hand closed tight on the box.
She saw something cold cross his face, there and gone, and then the sorrowful look was back.
"I'll wait," he said loudly, for the cameras. "I'll wait as long as it takes."
He turned to go, and a man in a gray suit stepped out of the revolving door and into his path.
"Mrs. Farwell?" the man said to Cora.
"Yes."
He held out a thick envelope.
"You've been served."
Cora took it.
Brooks stopped at the door and did not look back.
Alexander moved up beside her, and she tore open the flap and pulled out the petition.
It was Brooks's divorce filing, dated that Saturday, before the gala had even ended.
He had asked for it before she ever said the word.
She read page after page, and the words went into her head and stayed there, as they always did.
On the ninth page was a paragraph about a prenuptial agreement.
It said she had signed away all rights to marital property, support and any share of any company.
A signature sat under it, with her name.
Cora looked at it for a long time.
"Alexander," she said.
"Yes."
"I signed one page at that courthouse. One. A clerk slid it across a counter and I signed it standing up."
She turned the petition toward him and tapped the signature.
"That page had four lines on it," she said. "I remember every word. This page has a paragraph I have never seen in my life."
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