He Stole My Fiancée, So I Took His Wife and His Company novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mrs. Dunleavy Pays

Connor's wife Hazel pays the full surgery deposit at the billing desk, admits she has known about the affair since August, and tells Miles not to let Connor know she knows.

Hazel Dunleavy slid a black credit card across the billing desk without looking at me.

She wore a gray coat and no makeup, and her brown hair was tied back in a plain knot.

I had known her for five years.

She was the quiet one at Connor's barbecues, the one who refilled the ice and left before the toasts.

"The deposit for Joan Kettering," Hazel said to the clerk. "All of it, please. Sixty thousand."

"Hazel, no," I said.

The clerk ran the card.

It went through on the first try.

"Thank you, Mrs. Dunleavy," the clerk said, and printed the receipt.

I stood there with my declined card in one hand.

The clerk had read her name off the plastic.

Mrs. Dunleavy.

Connor's wife was paying for my mother's heart.

Hazel took the receipt, folded it once and tucked it into my jacket pocket.

"Walk with me," she said.

"I'm not walking anywhere until you tell me why you did that."

"Not here."

She turned and went down the corridor toward the elevators without waiting.

I followed her, because I had nothing left in my hands to stop her with.

She pressed the button and we stood in front of the doors.

A doctor passed us, and she waited until he was gone.

"I saw the video," she said.

"Everybody saw the video."

"I saw the other video too. The one from the café lot."

I stared at her.

"A woman at the next table filmed them," Hazel said. "She posted it with a lot of crying emojis. It's the third result when you type their names."

"They're in a video?"

"They're in a video, and my husband's hand is on your fiancée's neck, and he is wearing his wedding ring."

The elevator opened.

Neither of us stepped in.

"You knew," I said.

"Yes."

"Since when?"

"August."

The word went into me and stayed there.

August was the month I had picked out the ring.

"Hazel. I proposed to her in September."

"I know."

"You came to the engagement dinner. You hugged her. You said, I'm so happy for both of you."

"I did."

"You knew, and you sat at my table and ate my food and let me tell my mother."

She did not look away.

That was the thing I would remember later, that she did not look away.

"I thought about telling you at that dinner," she said. "I had the whole speech in my bag. Then I watched you stand up with a glass in your hand and look at her and say you were the luckiest man alive."

"So you let me."

"I let you have one more good night. It was the wrong call, and I'll answer for it."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"Do you want an apology?" she asked. "I'll give you a real one. But I don't think you came here for it."

The elevator doors began to close, and she put a hand on the edge.

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"I want the sixty thousand dollars to go to your mother's surgeon today."

"I can't take your money."

"It isn't mine."

I looked at her.

"It's the firm's expense account," Hazel said. "Which I sign. Which is why Connor's put his girlfriend's hotel rooms on it for a year and thought I was too boring to read the statements."

She said it flatly.

"I've read every statement, Miles."

I looked at the receipt in my pocket, then up at her.

"You're stealing from him."

"I'm paying a surgeon from an account my father funded. If Connor wants to explain that to anyone, he's welcome to try."

I did not know what to say, so I said what I felt.

"I hate that you knew."

"I know."

"I hate that you're the only person who's helped me."

"I know that too."

Down the hall, a nurse laughed at something, and a machine began to beep, and it all seemed to belong to another life.

My mother was in a room two floors up, and in four days a surgeon was going to open her chest.

Hazel was the reason it could happen.

I wanted to throw the receipt at her.

I put it back in my pocket instead.

"Why didn't you confront him?" I said. "Why didn't you leave?"

"I'm working on it."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I can give you in a hospital."

She stepped into the elevator at last and held the door with her foot.

"There's a coffee place on the first floor. I'll buy you something that isn't from a machine, and I'll tell you the rest."

I got in.

The doors closed on the two of us.

Her gray eyes found mine in the polished steel.

"One thing first," Hazel said. "Connor doesn't know that I know."

"He doesn't know?"

"He thinks I'm the wife who signs expense reports and goes to bed at nine."

She pressed the lobby button.

"Don't tell him, Miles. Not one word, to anyone, until I say."

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