Marrying My Ex's Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Napkin

Truman introduces her to the whole company as his fiancee, then in a service stairwell tells her he needs a wife by December 1; she writes the terms on a cocktail napkin and they sign, until his mother opens the stairwell door.

He walked me up to the stage with my hand still in his.

Four hundred people parted for us.

I kept my chin up and counted the steps, because counting is what I do when I am about to throw up.

The host handed him the microphone and backed away.

Truman Shaw looked out at the room for a long, quiet moment.

He did not smile, and he did not clear his throat.

"Good evening," he said. "I'm told I'm late."

A few people laughed, carefully.

"I don't make speeches. I have two things to say."

He turned his head and looked at me.

"The first is that this is Claire Adair, who works on the fourteenth floor, and she's my fiancee."

The silence broke.

"The second," he said, "is that Mr. Bierbaum's award stands, and so does his bar tab. Enjoy the evening."

He put the microphone back in its stand.

Down in the front row, Colin had gone the color of old paper.

Tatum was staring at me with her mouth open, and for the first time in nine years I did not feel sorry for her.

Truman steered me through a black door beside the stage that said STAFF ONLY.

It opened on a concrete stairwell that smelled of floor cleaner and old fryer oil.

The door clicked shut behind us, and the party became a low roar through the steel.

I let go of his hand.

"I am so sorry," I said. "That was insane. I'll put in my notice Monday morning. I'll write you a letter."

"Why?"

"Because I grabbed the CEO's lapel in front of the entire company."

"You grabbed a stranger's lapel," he said. "I'm the one who happened to be standing there."

He leaned on the railing, hands in his pockets, and looked at me.

"Do you actually have a receipt for the four thousand one hundred?"

"Eleven of them," I said. "Colin signed two."

"Good."

He nodded slowly.

"Here's the thing, Claire Adair. I have to be married by the first of December."

I laughed.

He did not.

"My grandfather started this company," he said. "When he died, he put forty-nine percent of the shares in a trust."

"My mother votes them until I have a wife."

"The day I do, they're mine."

"That's medieval."

"It's Pittsburgh," he said. "On December first the shareholders meet."

"My mother has the votes to take my chair and give it to a man she likes better."

"Who?"

"It changes by the week. She has a friend with a daughter."

He rubbed the bridge of his broken nose.

"I walked into that bar tonight planning to find someone to ask. I didn't expect to be asked."

I stared at him.

"You want me to marry you."

"I want you to marry me for a year. You get a year of standing over that man with my name next to yours."

I looked at the steel door, and the roar behind it.

Colin's voice came through, muffled, doing the laugh again.

Somewhere in my chest, something small and hard turned over and stayed.

"There are terms," I said.

"I would expect so."

"Do you have paper?"

He looked at his hands, and at the staircase.

I took a cocktail napkin out of my jacket pocket, where it had been since I'd wiped my hands at the bar.

He found a pen in his breast pocket.

I put the napkin against the wall and wrote fast, in capitals, because I always write contracts in capitals.

"One. Twelve months, a clean divorce at the end."

"Fine."

"Two. I keep my desk on fourteen. My review, my raise, my name on my own work. You do not help me. No favors, ever."

"That one will cost me."

"Three. I take no money from you, except what we spend on the house."

He paused, and then very slightly he smiled, for the first time.

"Four," I said. "No lying to anybody I love."

"Done."

"Five. In public, I'm your fiancee, and I'm good at it. In private, you leave me alone."

"Understood."

"And six. Whatever happens, you don't get to decide what's good for me."

The pen stopped over the napkin.

He read the line twice.

"Six," he said, "I'll try."

"Don't try. Sign."

He signed under me in a hard, square hand, and I signed over the wet ring where his glass had sat.

I looked at the napkin in my hand, soft and ridiculous, and I didn't feel crazy.

I felt like I had finally written a number down.

"Why me?" I asked. "You could have said no and let me fall on my face."

He took a moment.

"You were the only person in that room who did something," he said.

Something moved behind his eyes, quick, and gone.

I decided I had imagined it.

Then the stairwell door opened above us, and a cane tapped once on the concrete.

A small woman with a snow-white bob stood at the top of the steps in black wool, looking down at the napkin in my hand.

"Truman," said Honoria Shaw, in a voice like a closed drawer. "Who is this girl?"

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