Jilted Girlfriend, I'm the Tycoon's Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sixty Guests and a Ring
Dylan dumps Lena at his birthday dinner and announces his engagement to her best friend; Lena says she married his brother that morning, and Harrison says she did.
Dylan tapped his champagne glass with a fork, and sixty people stood up for his thirtieth birthday toast.
I stood with them, holding the flute a waiter had put in my hand at the door.
His family's house sat on the lake, and its dining table ran the whole length of the glass porch.
At five that afternoon he had texted me: "Tonight changes everything. Trust me, babe."
I had bought a green dress for it.
I had practiced my surprised face in the bathroom mirror.
Camille slid in beside me and hooked her arm through mine.
She had been my roommate for six years and my best friend for ten.
"Whatever he says tonight," she whispered, "I need you to know that I love you."
"Why would you say that?"
"Because I do," she said, and kissed my cheek.
Every place card on the table was in his mother's handwriting.
Her own seat was at the head, and Camille's card sat beside Dylan's.
Mine was at the far end, between a man from the company board and Dylan's older half-brother.
I figured his mother had run out of room.
She had hugged me at the door and told me green was my color.
His mother's name was Cynthia, and his half-brother Harrison was the chairman of Trelawny Holdings.
In four years he had said maybe thirty words to me, all of them polite.
Ten minutes earlier he had bent down beside my chair.
"Where's your coat?" he asked.
"In the cloakroom."
He nodded and went out.
Headlights crossed the porch glass, and a car pulled up at the front of the drive and stayed there with its engine running.
I thought he was leaving early, which he always did.
"Four years ago," Dylan said, "a girl in scrubs spilled coffee on me at a bus stop."
People laughed. I smiled, because I was supposed to.
"Lena, you're the nicest person I know," he said. "That's the problem."
The laughing stopped.
"I'm not in love with you. I haven't been for a long time, and I'm done pretending in front of my family."
Somebody near me said, "Oh, no."
A phone came up, and then six more.
"Camille," Dylan said, and held out his hand.
She let go of my arm.
She walked to the head of the table in her cream dress, and he lifted her left hand for everyone to see.
The ring on it was a small sapphire in a gold band.
My grandmother wore that ring for fifty years, and "L.B. 1961" was engraved inside it.
Dylan had borrowed it in June to have it resized for me.
"We're engaged," he said, and the room clapped.
Cynthia came down the table to me with a plate of bread in her hands.
"Sit down, sweetheart," she said gently. "Have something to eat."
I did not sit.
I was thinking about forty-one thousand dollars.
It was three years of transfers from my clinic paychecks and my mother's life insurance, into the house account Dylan had set up for our down payment.
Camille was crying prettily, and nobody was looking at me except the phones.
Then I saw Harrison at the side door of the porch.
He was the one person in the room not looking at the head of the table.
He was looking at me, with my coat over his arm.
So I put down my glass and said it.
"Dylan, you're a little late. I can't be your girlfriend, because I married your brother this morning."
The porch went silent.
Dylan laughed, short and sharp. "Lena. Don't do this."
"It's not a joke," I said, and my voice held, which surprised me.
"We went to a judge at ten. We were going to tell everyone at cake."
Nobody moved.
I couldn't look at Harrison.
I had just told sixty people and seven phones that I was married to a man who had said thirty words to me in four years.
He would call me a liar, and I would have to walk out alone.
"She did," Harrison said.
He crossed the porch without hurrying, and the guests moved out of his way.
He opened my coat and held it up, and I put my arms into the sleeves.
"That's not funny, Harrison," Dylan said.
"No," Harrison said. "It isn't."
He rested his hand lightly at my back.
"We haven't picked out rings," he said to the room. "She wanted to wait."
Cynthia's plate of bread was still in her hands, and she had stopped smiling.
Camille was looking at me, and her face was the one I had known for ten years, wide open and scared.
I wanted to ask her who she was.
I walked out through the porch doors with Harrison's hand at my back, and nobody said a word.
His car was at the bottom of the front steps, with the passenger door already unlocked.
I got in.
The engine was warm, and the heater was on.
He pulled out of the drive, and neither of us spoke until the lake house was gone behind the trees.
"I didn't mean to say any of that," I said. "I'm so sorry. I'll tell them it was a joke on Monday."
"They have it on video," Harrison said. "It will not be a joke by Monday."
"Then why did you say it?"
"Because it was the only thing in that room worth backing."
He kept his eyes on the road.
"There's a judge who owes me a favor. Nine o'clock tomorrow."
My phone buzzed in my lap.
It was Dylan: "Nice one. You have until morning to tell everyone the truth."
I turned the screen face down.
"Nine o'clock," I said.
"Yes or no, Lena," Harrison said. "Before the bridge."
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