After Being Accused as a Mistress, I Married My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Ferns

I told him in the morning.

Rule five said we didn't lie to each other, and I hadn't expected to need it so soon.

"She said alone," I said, over coffee in his silent kitchen. "She said not to tell either of them."

"And yet you told me."

"You're the one with the rules."

Declan set down his cup.

"I'll be in the car across the street," he said. "If you aren't out in ten minutes, I'm coming in."

"If she sees you, she'll run."

"Then I'll be a very quiet car."

I laughed, which surprised both of us.

The Lakeview Conservatory was a Victorian greenhouse on the north edge of the park, full of orchids and the damp heat of a swamp.

The glass room at the back had a single iron table and a view of a fern wall as tall as a man.

Tabitha was already there in a silk headscarf and large sunglasses.

She stood when I came in, and for a second I thought she would hug me.

"You came," she said. "Thank you."

"You said you owed me something."

"I do."

She took off the sunglasses.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she had done a very good job of covering it.

A waiter came with a menu, and she ordered ginger ale and nothing else.

"It was Hayden," Tabitha said, when he'd gone. "He told me to do it. He said if I didn't, his father would cut us both off, and I'd have nothing. I was scared, Cora. I'd have said anything."

She was good.

If I hadn't seen her face in the ballroom, I might have believed it.

"Is that your apology?" I asked.

"It's the start of one." She slid an envelope across the table. "This is the rest."

Inside was a cheque for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

It was made out to me, and signed.

"Take it," she said. "Leave Declan and the city. Hayden and I will tell the papers it was a misunderstanding, and no one will ever call you a mistress again. You can start over somewhere warm."

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