From a Humiliating Bet to the Boss He Can't Have novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Where Birdie Lives

By midnight the ballroom was empty except for the cleaners and one long table by the stage.

Blaine's mother sat at the head of it with Birdie asleep against her arm, and I sat across from her with a paper cup of the hotel's bad tea.

Blaine stood at the end of the table because nobody had asked him to sit.

Carly and Nate waited by the doors, close enough to see and too far to hear.

"I'll answer your question," I said, and looked at Birdie's dark-blond head. "She asked where she's supposed to live."

"With me," Blaine's mother said. "I've found a two-bedroom near her school. I'll rent out the spare room."

"On what?"

"The part of the pearls I didn't sell." She almost smiled. "I'm sixty-one, Jo. I can do arithmetic too."

"And me?" Blaine asked.

Neither of us looked at him.

"You will find work," his mother said. "A real job, with a boss, in an office where nobody knows your name. You will pay your daughter's rent from your first check."

"Mother."

"I will not be saying it twice."

Blaine's eyes went to me, wet and pleading.

"Jo, I'd never keep her from you. You know that. I only cut the call because Cynthia said..."

"Cynthia told you to take me off the school card. Cynthia told you to cut the call."

"She was my oldest friend."

"I was the one who talked Birdie through her panic when the school nurse called, from three hundred miles away." My voice was level. "I'm not saying that to hurt you. I'm saying it because it's true, and you've never once said it aloud."

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