Chapter 14: No Scenes

On Monday night Jasper's car came for her at seven.

She had spent the whole day on one sentence of Nolan's.

I never saw a letter.

She had drunk Daphne's tea on Sunday and said thank you, and watched her sister's hands pour.

They had not shaken once.

Willa did not know yet what she would say to her. She only knew she would not say it at a dinner table.

Jasper sat in the back in a black suit, and he did not touch her when she got in.

"The Meridian Club," he said. "Forty people. Ambrose's friends and my father's old partners. They've all been told."

"Told what?"

"That you're my fiancée."

"I'm your mistress."

"Yes." He looked at the glass between them and the driver. "That's what I want to talk about."

Willa waited.

"I'm ending the contract," he said. "Tonight."

"Why?"

"You keep the money and the cottage, and you owe me nothing. I won't have a mistress on a term and a fiancée on my arm."

"Why not?"

"It makes you both. I'm not going to do that to you."

She stared at him.

Three nights ago he had held her in a shower.

Now he sat across a car seat and offered her the door.

"No," she said.

"Willa."

"No. You made rules, Mr. Quarles. No office, always available, and no scenes."

"I'm not making a scene."

"You are. You're deciding for me in the back of a car, and you didn't ask."

She leaned forward.

"You said the term was the term. I'll hold you to every line of it, and to the end date."

His jaw moved.

"This will be uglier than you think," he said. "Your family will watch you take my arm by day."

"And?"

"And watch you leave my room at night."

"They will."

"You don't care."

"I care very much," Willa said. "I'm choosing it anyway."

He was quiet for the length of a block.

"Then the term stands," he said.

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