Everyone Used Me for Free, So the Billionaire Taught Me to Send the Bill novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: No

Troy begs Jo to call off the lease and she says no to his face, so he tells her Kayla forged her name on a $60,000 loan.

I paid the $189 at checkout with my own card, and the clerk handed me a receipt.

I put it in the shoebox, and for the first time I felt like I'd bought something instead of being given it.

The hotel's executive chef caught me in the lobby on my way out.

He was a big man with flour on his sleeves who had eaten a slice of my cake at the gala.

"Whoever made that rye croissant is wasted on weddings," he said. "My pastry cook quit on Friday. Seven days, twenty-four an hour, written contract. Interested?"

I read the contract twice at the counter.

It was a real contract, with a real rate and my name spelled right.

I said yes, and then I said, "Thank you," and then I made myself say, "I'll invoice for the extra hours."

He looked at me strangely and nodded.

By ten I was in the pastry kitchen in a white jacket, laminating dough on a marble slab.

It was the first time in years I'd made something and known someone was paying me for it.

The bill from Mrs. Lund was in my bag.

I had read it three times and I hadn't answered it.

I kept thinking about the line on the bill that charged me for chicken dinners.

At eleven the back door opened and Troy walked in.

He had no business in the kitchen and he knew it.

His hair was wet, his shirt was wrinkled, and he was holding a sheet of paper in both hands.

"Jo. Thank God."

"You can't be back here."

"I came in with the dairy delivery. The guy let me." He held the paper up. "Mason Greer's company sent this at nine this morning. Termination of the lease. Thirty days. Jo, we signed a year. The bakery is dead if we lose that space."

"Then I'm sorry for you," I said.

I meant it, and that was the strange part.

I could feel the old reflex, the one that would have said: I'll fix it, I'll call him, don't worry.

It rose up in my chest and wanted my mouth.

Troy saw it too.

He softened his voice and stepped closer.

"Babe. Just ask him. You're the one he's looking at. Tell him it was a misunderstanding and we'll pay you back with interest. You know how Kayla is, she got carried away."

I put the rolling pin down.

"Troy."

"Yeah?"

"No."

He blinked.

"What?"

"No. I'm not asking him." My voice was shaking, so I said it again slower. "I'm not calling him. I'm not fixing it. No."

I had never said that word to anybody's face.

Troy's smile went away.

"You're really going to do this to us?"

"There is no us. You stood on a stage and told three hundred people I wouldn't miss it."

"That was Kayla's idea!" he said. "I didn't want any of this! I told her it was too much."

"Too much how?"

He looked at the door.

He looked at my hands.

Then he said it the way people do when they're more afraid of the next thing than of the truth.

"The loan."

"What loan?"

"The sixty thousand." He took out his phone and swiped, and his thumb shook. "For the buildout. The ovens and the counter. She said she had it handled. I thought you knew, Jo, I swear I thought you knew."

He turned the screen to me.

It was a photograph of the last page of a bank form.

Under the line that said Co-Signer there was a name, written in blue ink.

Joanna Pennock.

It was my signature.

It was exactly my signature, with the loop on the J that I'd drawn since the seventh grade.

And I had never seen that page in my life.

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