Claimed After Divorce by My Brother's Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Tea

Gilbert turns up at her brother's flat with her morning tea and a custody threat. Della pours the tea down the sink and says the word divorce. Polly calls in a whisper to say Imogen is sleeping in Della's bed.

My brother opened his door at midnight in a T-shirt and sweatpants and didn't ask me a single question.

He just pulled me inside and put the kettle on.

Dalton came in behind me and sat down on the arm of the couch.

My brother looked at him, then at me.

"I'll make the spare bed," he said.

I didn't sleep.

At two I was still on the couch in my banquet dress with a blanket over my knees, watching my phone light up.

Gilbert, nineteen times.

I didn't answer.

Dalton had said good night and gone out to sit in his truck, and I told myself I didn't care.

At six in the morning there was a knock.

It was not a loud knock.

It was the polite knock Gilbert used on hotel doors.

My brother looked through the peephole and swore.

"Let him in," I said.

Gilbert came in carrying a steel thermos and wearing yesterday's suit with the tie pulled loose.

He looked tired, and he looked sorry, and I knew every one of his sorry faces.

"Della," he said. "Thank God."

He held out the thermos.

"I brought your tea. You always get a headache when you skip it."

He had brought me tea.

An hour after his father called me a nanny, he had driven across the city to bring me tea.

"Gilbert, put that down," my brother said.

"It's for her."

"I know who it's for."

Dalton had come in from the hall.

I hadn't heard the truck door, and I hadn't heard him on the stairs.

Gilbert saw him and his smile slipped.

"Reeve. This is a family matter. Your pack has no business in it."

"It's my brother's flat," I said. "He decides who comes in, and he didn't pick you."

Gilbert turned back to me and lowered his voice, which always made me feel like the unreasonable one.

"Last night got out of hand. My father likes a performance. Imogen is only here to see the kids."

"Your father said the Luna's seat is hers."

"It's a formality." He rubbed his forehead. "The seat is nothing. Come home. Stay with the kids, stay in the house. Nothing has to change."

I looked at him.

"Imogen sleeps in the house?" I asked.

He paused for half a breath.

"In the guest wing," he said. "Just for now."

So nothing had to change, except that the mother of his children would be sleeping under my roof and I would be the woman who made her toast in the morning.

I took the thermos out of his hand.

I unscrewed the lid.

The tea was still hot and smelled the way it always did, of chamomile and something green I had never bothered to name.

I walked to my brother's kitchen sink and poured every drop of it down the drain.

Gilbert watched me do it.

For one second his face went completely blank.

It wasn't hurt.

It was alarm, and he hid it fast.

"Della." His voice came out thin. "That was for your head."

"My head's fine," I said.

It wasn't.

It was pounding, and I knew exactly why, and he was standing six feet from the man who made it worse.

I set the empty thermos on the counter.

"I want a divorce, Gilbert. I said it last night, and I'm saying it in daylight."

His jaw tightened.

"You can't divorce your way out of the twins. They're pack children. Under pack law they belong to the Alpha line, and you're a stepmother with a human marriage license. You have no standing, Della. None."

"I raised them."

"You were paid to," he said. "Everyone in that room knows what you were."

My brother took one step forward, and Dalton put a hand on his arm without looking at him.

Gilbert saw that, too.

"Don't try me," he said to me, quietly. "You'll lose, and you'll lose them in front of everyone, and you'll walk away with nothing. Everything you made at my company is mine. You signed that your first week."

"Get out," my brother said.

Gilbert went to the door and stopped with his hand on it.

"The tea is good for you, Della," he said. "Drink it. You'll see things more clearly."

The door shut behind him.

I stood at the sink and listened to the elevator take him down.

I had never once seen him look at an empty thermos like that.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

It was a number I didn't know.

I answered it, and I heard breathing, and then a very small voice.

"Mommy? It's Polly. I'm in the bathroom with the nanny's phone."

My throat closed.

"I'm here, baby."

"I'm not supposed to call." Her whisper shook. "Daddy says you went on a trip. But Imogen is sleeping in your bed, and Milo says that's wrong."

"Polly," I said.

"Are you coming back? Please say you're coming back."

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