My Bride Chose Her Publicity Stunt novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Obsessed Fan

Lena's team turns Wayne's video into a stalker story and serves a restraining order, then she arrives with cameras and a thousand roses to stage a reconciliation, and Wayne refuses on camera.

By eight the next morning, my video had four million views and a new caption.

*OBSESSED FAN CRASHES LENA MONTAGUE'S SECRET WEDDING.*

Somebody had cut my voice in half.

You could hear me say, "I've been her fiancé for seven years."

You could not hear the clerk say the license was three weeks old.

Lena's team had posted it first, with a crying emoji and a statement.

*Lena and Brandon are grateful for everyone's love. Please give a troubled fan space.*

I sat on the edge of my bed in my own apartment in Van Nuys and read the comments.

*Imagine thinking Lena Montague would marry a guy with sawdust on his shoes.*

*He's been stalking her for years, it's so sad.*

My phone rang. It was a number I didn't know.

I let it go. Maura's card was on the nightstand, and I hadn't called it yet.

Somebody knocked on my door.

A man in a gray jacket held out an envelope.

"Wayne Burdick? You've been served."

I opened it standing in the hallway.

It was a restraining order. It said I could not come within five hundred feet of Lena Montague.

It had been signed at 9 p.m. the night before, six hours after the courthouse.

She had planned for this too.

I went to the window to breathe, and then I saw the truck.

A white box truck was backing up to my building, and a crew was jumping out of it with cameras on their shoulders.

A van behind it said *Meridian Records.*

Then the doors of a black car opened, and Lena stepped out into the street in a cream coat and big sunglasses.

The crew was already filming.

Two men started unloading white roses from the truck onto my sidewalk.

They kept carrying them until the whole front of my building looked like a funeral.

A thousand, I guessed. Lena always did things in thousands.

My neighbors were leaning out of their windows with their phones.

I went down the stairs, one flight, then another, and stopped in the doorway of the building.

Lena took off her sunglasses so the camera could see her eyes.

They were red.

I had known her seven years and had never seen her cry on purpose until that moment.

"Wayne," she said, in the soft voice she used on talk shows. "I'm not angry. I just want you to come home."

"I'm not allowed within five hundred feet of you," I said. "You made sure of that."

The camera turned to me, then back to her.

"That was only my lawyers being careful," Lena said, and gave a small, brave laugh. "I never wanted it."

She stepped forward onto the roses.

"Yesterday was a misunderstanding. A publicity thing for the label. Brandon is my dear friend, and the paperwork means nothing. Come home, and we'll make it right."

She held out her hand to me.

Her left hand, the one I had put my grandmother's ring on, eight months before.

The ring was still there.

Behind her, three assistants held up phones.

I looked at her hand and not at her face.

"If it means nothing," I said, "who signed it?"

Her smile did not move.

"Wayne."

"Whose name is on that license, Lena? Say it so the camera can hear."

The cameraman's lens moved closer.

"We can talk privately," she said, through her teeth.

"We can talk right here."

"Fine," Lena said, so quietly that only I could hear. "Then listen."

She stepped close and put her hand on my chest like she was fixing my collar.

"Nobody will ever believe a carpenter over me."

Her perfume was the same one she had worn since I met her.

I felt the old pull of it, and I hated it.

"Take the roses and the offer," she said. "Or I'll make you wish you'd stayed a nobody."

Then she stepped back and turned her face to the lens, crying again.

"Please give him space," she told the crew. "He's unwell. I love him."

A man from her team handed me a thick envelope as she walked away.

I opened it before the cars were even gone.

It was a settlement and a non-disclosure agreement.

The number on the first page said fifty thousand dollars.

Below it, one line had been highlighted in yellow.

*Recipient agrees never to speak publicly about the Montague-Pendleton relationship. Signature due by Friday.*

A thousand white roses lay on the sidewalk around my feet.

Fifty thousand dollars was what she thought I was worth.

I owed my mother a call, and I owed Maura one first.

I took her card out of my pocket and dialed.

It rang once.

"I told you not to answer anything from her," Maura said. "Did you sign?"

"Not yet."

"Good," she said. "Meet me in forty minutes at the diner on Sepulveda. Bring the envelope."

I looked at the roses one more time.

Then I kicked a dozen of them into the gutter and went to find my keys.

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