I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Yes, I Kissed Him

By seven there were twelve news vans parked along the cliff road.

By eight, two of the wedding guests had cancelled their rooms by email, in capital letters.

The owner called me down to her little office behind the front desk.

She had the photo up on an old computer, zoomed in on my hands.

"Well," she said. "You've got good technique."

"I'm so sorry."

"For what? Kissing a handsome man in a car? Dear, I was married forty-nine years. I kissed my husband in worse places than a car."

"They're saying it's why Brennan left me."

"Is it?"

"No. He proposed to her a week before that kiss. On a stage. In front of me."

"Then go tell them the order things happened in," she said. "People love a timeline."

I walked down the gravel drive in my work clothes, plaster dust on my knees.

The cameras saw me coming and rushed the gate.

"Neve! Are you sleeping with Corbin Fitzroy?"

"How long has it been going on?"

"Did Brennan find out? Is that why he ended it?"

I stopped where the gravel met the road.

"I'll answer one question," I said. "Then I have forty-one rooms to finish."

They went quiet. Mostly.

"Yes. I kissed him."

The noise exploded. I waited it out.

"On Saturday, April eighteenth," I said. "Seven days after Brennan Fitzroy proposed to another woman on a stage while I stood under it, still wearing his ring."

A reporter in front lowered her microphone an inch.

"He told four hundred people we'd ended it amicably. That was the first I heard of it. The kiss was a week later. That's the order."

"Are you together now?"

"That's two questions."

Someone laughed.

Behind me, the porch door banged. I turned around.

The owner was coming down the porch steps on the housekeeper's arm, very slowly, with her cane.

The whole kitchen staff came out behind her and stood in a row on the porch.

The bartender. The housekeeper's girls. The cook in his apron.

The owner stopped beside me and looked at the cameras.

"This young woman is restoring my hotel," she said. "She kisses whoever she likes. Print that."

Then she took my arm and we walked back up the drive together.

That evening Corbin didn't come to the bar.

He didn't text. He didn't call.

At nine o'clock I borrowed the bartender's truck and drove four miles down the harbor road.

His house was gray shingle, low and old, right on the water, with one light on downstairs.

I knocked three times before he opened the door.

He was in the old salt-stained sweater, barefoot, with his reading glasses on and a phone in his hand.

He looked at me like I was the last thing he expected.

"You didn't come to the bar," I said.

"I didn't want to be photographed walking into the bar." He held up the phone. "I've been writing a statement for the press. It's my sixth draft."

"What does it say?"

"That nothing happened. That you're a designer working on an unrelated property. That I'm stepping back from..."

"No."

He stopped.

"I do my own talking," I said. "I did it this morning, at the gate. Didn't you see?"

"I saw."

"Then why are you writing a statement that says I'm lying?"

"Because they're going to tear you apart for this. For me." His voice cracked on it. "You had a clean story, Neve. You were the woman who walked away from eight million. Now you're the woman who climbed down the family tree."

"I don't care what they call me."

"I care."

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.

The room was all books and old wood, and it smelled like woodsmoke and the sea.

There was a fire going. There was a half-built wooden boat model on the table, with tiny brass fittings.

I took the phone out of his hand and set it on the boat.

"You said when I want it to happen, I'd say so."

He went very still.

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