Chapter 5: The Script

"Mine," Rafe said.

He said it to the stoop, to the bakery line and to the driver, in the same dry voice he used for everything.

"My mother's trust holds the voting shares. Fifty-one percent of the Foundation. I haven't used them since my father's funeral."

Preston's face went through three colors.

"That's why Mother needs me at the gala," he said to me, too fast. "That's all. He's using you, Jo."

"You asked me to stand next to you at the gala because of his vote?"

"I asked because I love you!"

A woman in the bakery line said, "Wow," quite clearly.

Preston heard it.

He stood there with his hands empty.

Then he walked down the steps, got in the black car and told the driver something short.

The car pulled away.

I stood on the stoop with my arms wrapped around myself.

"Is it true?" I asked Rafe. "You have the vote?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you say so upstairs?"

"You'd had enough of men telling you what they owned for one day," he said.

It was the right answer, and it irritated me.

He drove back to the Catskills that night.

Before he left, he tore a page off my grandmother's sewing pad and wrote a phone number on it in square pencil capitals.

He folded it in half and put it in my hand.

"I left one in a tip jar once," he said. "This time I'm putting it where you'll find it."

I put it in my bra, which was the only pocket I trusted.

The next morning, I went in early to the costume shop.

The foreman had left the lights off and a note on the door that said, Someone's here for you. Don't scream.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Lost To His E-Cup Mistress from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.