My Fiancé Called Me Boring, So I Slept With His Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Butt-Dial
Colby's pocket-dial lets Sadie hear him mock her with her best friend; twelve hours before the engagement party she picks the man nobody dares sit beside, and he follows her into the elevator.
At eleven the night before my engagement party, my fiancé's phone called mine from inside his pocket.
I was alone at a hotel bar with a club soda.
I picked up on the first ring.
Then I heard a bed.
"Colby, stop," a woman whispered. "What if Sadie finds out?"
It was Daphne.
I had known that voice since we were thirteen.
It was the voice she used on teachers and waiters, soft and sorry.
"Sadie?" Colby laughed, easy and fond. "She trusts me. She signs whatever I put in front of her."
I pressed the phone to my ear and smiled at the bartender.
He looked worried.
For two months I had searched for a way out of this marriage.
I had read every page my father ever signed that I could find.
I had found nothing.
"Promise me you won't touch her after the wedding," Daphne said.
"Look at her. I'd rather take the bus."
Daphne giggled.
I had heard that giggle at my birthdays and my graduation.
I had heard it at my mother's grave.
It had never once sounded that happy.
I opened the recorder on my phone and pressed the red button.
Then the bed went quiet.
"Colby," Daphne whispered. "Your phone. The call is still going."
It was the worst whisper I had ever heard.
Every word came through clearly.
"Is it?" Colby said, low and pleased.
I did not breathe.
"Sadie, honey, are you there? Don't hang up. This part is educational."
Daphne started to moan.
She did it very loudly and very badly.
At nine she had been cut from the church Christmas pageant for blinking on the wrong cue.
"That's what a woman sounds like," Colby said, out of breath. "Take notes."
"Colby, that's so cruel," Daphne said, giggling. "Poor Sadie."
They wanted me to cry.
I laughed out loud, and the bartender stepped back from the bar.
"Thank you both," I whispered. "Keep going."
They were handing me proof, line by line, and neither of them knew it.
I let it run until they hung up.
Then I saved the file in three places.
A recording was not enough.
My father would call it a young man's mistake and move the wedding up a month.
I needed something bigger than a recording.
I needed someone bigger.
That was when I noticed the man at the far end of the bar.
He sat half in shadow with his jacket folded on the stool beside him.
His sleeves were pushed to the elbow, and a string of dark wooden beads was wound around his left wrist.
Nobody spoke to him.
Nobody sat within three stools of him.
I had spent two weeks studying the Maddox family tree.
I knew Gerald, who owned half of Harlow Bay, and I knew Colby's cousins by their yacht names.
I had never seen this man at a single Maddox dinner.
I had found him in three photographs online.
In all three, Gerald stood beside him with a tight, sweaty smile.
I had no idea who he was to them.
I only knew that when he was in the picture, everyone stood up straighter.
The sensible thing was to research him first.
My engagement party was in twelve hours.
I slid off my stool and walked down the bar.
"Is this seat taken?" I asked.
"Yes." He did not look up from his glass.
I looked at the empty stool. "By whom?"
"Someone who's about to leave."
Now he looked at me.
His eyes were dark and level under a heavy straight brow.
"You," he said.
I sat down.
I knew what he saw.
A plain face, flat hair, a blazer off a clearance rack.
My mother taught me that at twelve: pretty gets you noticed, and noticed gets you trouble.
Men's eyes usually moved past me to the next woman.
His stayed.
"I need a favor," I said.
"No."
"You haven't heard it."
"I've heard a hundred of them." He turned his glass a quarter turn. "The answer is no."
"It's a bad decision and a short one." I nodded at the beads. "Do those help?"
"Not with you."
"A shame. I'm about to need a lot of forgiveness."
I touched one bead with the tip of my finger.
He went completely still.
"One night," I said. "No names, no follow-up. You never see me again."
"I don't do that."
"Neither do I. Let's both be terrible at it."
A muscle moved in his jaw.
"You've been drinking," he said.
"Club soda. I can say the alphabet backward, walk a straight line, or recite you a lease. Pick one."
I held his stare.
"I'm not drunk, and I won't ask twice."
"Why me?"
"You look like a man nobody has ever talked into anything."
"So what makes you think you can?"
I leaned in until my mouth was beside his ear.
"I'm not going to talk."
I never wear perfume.
I wear a faint blend I mix myself, cedar and black tea and a little vanilla, so light that most people never catch it.
He caught it.
He turned his head and breathed in slowly.
His hand closed on the edge of the bar.
Then he stood, took his jacket, and told the two men at the end of the bar, "Don't wait up."
They stared at him with their mouths open.
He did not touch me in the elevator.
The walls were mirrors, and I watched a dozen copies of us.
In every one I was small and stubborn and plain, and he was tall and silent.
All of us were breathing too fast.
"You can still say no," I said, mostly to hear it out loud.
"Was that a question?"
"An offer."
"It sounded like a dare."
The door of the room shut behind us, and the dark closed in.
His hand slid to the back of my neck.
He stopped with his mouth an inch from mine.
"Last chance."
"I know exactly what I'm doing."
I did not.
But I had decided at that bar that if my life was going to be sold in the morning, then tonight belonged to me.
I pulled him down.
His mouth was hard and unhurried, and my knees stopped holding me up.
He backed me against the door, and my blazer hit the floor.
His hands found the buttons of my blouse and did not bother with them.
Cloth tore.
I did not care.
I got my fingers into his shirt, and his skin was hot under my palms.
He lifted me by the thighs and carried me to the bed.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and felt how hard he was against me.
I made a sound I had never made before.
He laid me down and stopped, one hand braced beside my head.
His eyes moved over my face, and something in them changed.
"You've never..."
"Don't," I said. "Don't you dare stop now."
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