After Being Accused as a Mistress, I Married My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Slap
At the Kirkbride gala Cora is slapped, stripped of her gifts and branded a mistress while Hayden swears he has never seen her, and the man who watched from the doors offers her a ring.
The slap landed in front of two hundred guests and a photographer from the Chicago Tribune.
Ten minutes earlier I had been standing under a chandelier in a green dress, trying to look like I belonged there.
It was the fortieth anniversary gala of Kirkbride Hotels, in the ballroom of their flagship on the Gold Coast.
Hayden had texted me that afternoon.
"Dad's announcing something boring tonight. Don't read into it. I'm all yours, babe. Stay close to Tabitha, she's got you."
Tabitha was his cousin.
At least, that was what he had told me for fourteen months.
She had taken me shopping for my shoes the week before.
She had fixed my zipper in the powder room an hour ago, smiled at me in the mirror, and said, "Don't be nervous. I won't let anyone bite."
I believed her.
Hayden had promised that tonight he would finally introduce me to his family as his girlfriend.
I had brought a lemon tart from my bakery in a box, because I don't know how to walk into a room empty-handed.
At nine o'clock his father tapped a fork against a glass.
Stanley Kirkbride was tall and silver-haired, with a gold ring on every important finger.
"Tonight I get to announce the happiest news this family has had in years," he said. "My son Hayden is engaged. To Tabitha."
The room clapped.
I clapped once before I understood what I was clapping for.
Tabitha stepped up beside Hayden in a cream silk gown and put her hand through his arm.
A waiter held out a tray of champagne.
Tabitha waved it away.
Stanley took her glass off the tray himself and drank it, and nobody seemed to notice.
I looked at Hayden.
He was looking at his shoes.
"Hayden?" I said.
My voice was small and it carried anyway.
Tabitha turned.
All the warmth went out of her face as if somebody had flipped a switch.
"Oh my God," she said, loud enough for the back of the room. "That's her. The woman who's been sleeping with my fiancé."
Then she slapped me.
My head turned with it.
My cheek went hot, and I tasted blood where my teeth had caught my lip.
"Hayden," I said. "Tell them."
He lifted his head.
He looked straight at me, blank and cold, as if I were a stranger.
"I don't know her," Hayden said. "I've never seen this woman in my life. She's been following me for months."
Somebody laughed.
A phone came up, and then ten more.
A woman in a black dress pushed through the crowd.
It was Hayden's mother, who had never once answered a message from me.
"You thief," she said.
She grabbed the diamond necklace at my throat.
Hayden had given it to me on my birthday, and the clasp bit into my neck before it broke.
She tore the bracelet from my wrist, and the watch from the other one.
"Take her coat," she said to a waiter. "Everything on her belongs to my son."
The waiter looked at me, looked at her, and took the coat off my arm.
The dress was the only thing left, and I had paid for it myself.
"I'll call security," Stanley said, pleasantly, to the room.
The photographer's flash went off in my face again and again.
I found Tabitha's eyes through the glare.
She wasn't angry.
She looked like someone checking that a job was finished.
I could have begged.
I could have cried until someone felt sorry for me.
Instead I walked to the bar, set the lemon tart on the white tablecloth, and took out the phone Hayden had given me.
I laid it next to the tart, face up.
"Fourteen months," I said. "Every one of you watched. Remember tonight, because I will."
Nobody answered me.
So I stepped out.
The doors at the end of the ballroom were propped open.
A man stood beside them with a phone held low against his leg, his thumb moving.
He was tall, in a plain charcoal suit, with grey at his temples and a scar through his left eyebrow.
He had been standing there the whole time.
I had seen him when I walked in, and I saw now that he had not crossed the room once, not even when the necklace broke.
His eyes followed me through the doors.
Outside it was pouring, and I had no coat, no phone and no ride.
A black car pulled up to the curb and the back door opened.
The man in the charcoal suit stepped out, took off his jacket, and put it around my shoulders.
It was warm, and it smelled like cedar.
"Your name will be on every phone in the city by midnight," he said. His voice was low and very calm. "I can change what it's attached to."
"Who are you?"
"Declan Kirkbride. Hayden's uncle."
Rain ran down his face and he didn't wipe it away.
"Marry me, Cora," he said. "Then Hayden will have to call you Aunt."
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