My Husband Chose My Best Friend Over Me, So I Took Everything Back novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Gala

Anthony Crane wore a tie to my grandmother's door.

It was black, and slightly crooked, and he had clearly tied it himself in a car mirror.

Bea looked him over from his shoes up.

"Well," she said. "You clean up."

"Thank you, Mrs. Lang."

"Don't let her out of your sight. Don't let her drink anything she didn't see poured." She tapped his lapel. "And if the Rowan girl comes at her, you step forward."

"I intend to."

"Good. Now go, before I decide to come."

I wore black, with my hair up and my father's watch on the inside of my wrist.

In the car neither of us said much.

At the ballroom doors Anthony held out his arm.

I looked at it.

Then I took it.

The room was gold and white, with a stage at one end and a screen forty feet wide behind it.

Two hundred people stood in clusters with champagne.

Howard caught my eye from across the floor and lifted his glass an inch.

He had changed the AV password on Friday, and the hotel's technician at the back table had been told to run only the file the firm's own IT department gave him.

Bree no longer had a way to touch the screen.

I had told myself that, all the way across the city.

She came in at half past eight.

Clark was on her arm. He looked ill in his tuxedo.

Bree wore gold, bare-shouldered, with her hair down, and she moved through the room the way she always had, touching a sleeve, laughing at the right time.

Every head turned.

For nine years that room had loved her.

She spotted me before I could look away.

She smiled.

It was the same smile as always, and it was the worst thing I had seen all month.

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