He Married His Childhood Sweetheart for Her Prank, I'm Nobody's Mistress, EVER novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Homewrecker Works Here

Delphine's crew shows up at Emme's office with signs, Rodney shields Delphine again and asks Emme to let it go, Emme is fired, and Declan is waiting on the sidewalk.

On Monday morning, three women were waiting in the lobby of my office, two of them holding posterboard signs.

I knew them.

They were Delphine's crew, and I had met them at my last three jobs.

The first sign said HOMEWRECKER WORKS HERE.

The second said SHE KNEW HE WAS MARRIED.

The third crew girl held a phone on a gimbal and walked backward ahead of me, filming my face.

"Emme!" she called. "Did you know he had a wife? Emme, look at the camera!"

Bea had driven me in and was parked at the curb with her hazards on.

She had wanted to come up with me.

I had told her no.

Now I took out my own phone and held it up beside theirs.

"Hi," I said to the lens. "I'm Emme Fairbanks. I was engaged to Rodney Ashworth. His marriage license is dated September. He proposed to me in October. I didn't know."

The girl with the gimbal stopped walking.

"I'll say it again for your followers," I said. "He hid it from me."

"That's not the story," said the girl with the second sign.

"It's the story I have a date for."

The security guard had come out from behind his desk.

"Ma'am, are these people with you?"

"No," I said. "They've done this at three other offices of mine. You can ask them to leave."

"We're a public lobby," said the first girl.

The guard looked at the two signs and the gimbal and then at me.

Nobody had ever asked him to choose before.

The elevator opened and my boss stepped out, with her coat on and a coffee in her hand.

She took in the posterboard, the gimbal and the guard.

"Emme," she said. "My office."

I didn't get to answer.

The front doors swung open behind us, and Delphine came in with tears already on her face.

She wore a cream coat and no makeup, and she walked straight past her own crew to me.

"Emme, please." Her voice shook. "I told them not to come. I didn't know they'd do this."

The gimbal swung toward her.

I looked at the phone's red light and then at the girl holding it.

"You told them not to come," I said.

"Yes!"

"And they came anyway, with signs that say my name."

"They don't have your name on them."

She was right.

I hadn't noticed.

Behind her, Rodney was pushing through the door.

He still wore last night's suit, and he had not slept.

He put his arm around Delphine's shoulders and turned her away from the lens, and I felt something go quiet in me.

This was the fourth time I had watched him do it.

The first time was after the pharmacy.

The second was the bakery.

The third was the agency before this one, where Delphine had stood in the break room crying while her crew filmed me in a doorway.

Each time, he had taken her out to the street, and each time he had come back to my apartment at midnight.

"Emme." He said it low, so the guard couldn't hear. "Let her go. For me."

"For you?"

"She lost her brother." He glanced down at her bent head. "She's got no one else. I can't be the one who walks away."

"You married her."

"It was for her, it's not real. I'll make it right."

"When?"

He didn't answer.

His hand was still on her shoulder, and her face was pressed against his coat.

Over his sleeve, she opened one eye and looked at me.

It was brief, and I did not understand it.

Then it was gone and she was crying again.

"I'm done, Rodney," I said.

"Emme."

"I'm not letting her go. She can leave me."

My boss had been listening from the elevator.

"Emme." Her voice was careful. "I've got two clients who saw the video this morning. I can't have this in the lobby."

"They're not mine."

"They're yours until they're out." She looked at the signs. "Take the day. Take the week."

"Am I fired?"

She hesitated.

"I think it's best if you clear out your desk."

It took me nine minutes to do it.

I put my mug, my plant and my gran's photo into a box, and the elevator took me down past the lobby, where the crew had gone quiet and Rodney had taken Delphine outside.

I stood on the sidewalk with my box.

Bea's hazards were still blinking.

A man stood by the curb in a navy sweater.

He had been waiting there, I thought, since before I came out.

He was tall, with short dark hair and a day of stubble.

I knew him too.

He had been at the cabin the night I went through the ice, and I hadn't seen him since Tobin's funeral.

"Emme," he said. "It's Declan MacMaster."

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