My Fiancé Took Her on Vacation Instead of Marrying Me? I Married WAY Better novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three O'Clock

Kylie takes Amanda's desk and her Coral Bay folder, Bryce tells the office she'll be back Monday, and Amanda waits alone at City Hall until a stranger sits down and says he's her three o'clock.

My grandfather was quiet for a long moment.

Then he laughed, low and pleased.

"Well," he said. "Henry will enjoy that."

"Does he know about me? About Bryce?"

"He knows you're my granddaughter and that you've been working somewhere under your own steam. He doesn't need the rest unless you want to give it to him."

"I'll be at City Hall at three."

"So will he," Grandpa said. "Amanda?"

"Yes?"

"Don't go back in there and cry."

"I'm not going to cry."

"Good girl. Go get your things."

I hung up and sat on the cold step for one more minute.

Then I went back up the stairs.

When I pushed open the glass door to the design room, Kylie was sitting in my chair.

She had pulled it out from my desk and was spinning it in a slow half circle with her toe.

My succulent was in her lap.

My Coral Bay folder was open on the desk in front of her.

It was the thick blue binder with four months of my work in it.

Supplier rates, villa floor plans, boat schedules, forty-one slides of notes in my handwriting.

"Oh," she said, and didn't get up. "I thought you left."

"I'm leaving now. That's my plant."

She looked down at it.

"Bryce said I could have the window desk while I'm prepping the pitch. The light is better for my skin on calls."

"Bryce said."

"He's letting me present on Monday," she said. "Isn't that crazy? My first big pitch."

"He says I have a natural presence."

The whole room was watching again.

I held out my hand for the plant.

Kylie took her time.

She set it in my palm, and some dirt fell on my boots.

"Oops."

I put the plant in a paper box from the supply closet.

Then my mug, my cardigan, the framed photo of my parents on a ski lift and the spare flats I kept under the desk.

It all fit in one box.

Three years, one box.

I reached for the blue binder.

Kylie put her hand flat on top of it.

"That's company property," she said sweetly. "Bryce said."

Behind me, I heard his office door open.

Bryce came out with his phone to his ear and his suit bag over his shoulder.

He saw the box in my arms and covered the phone.

"Are we done with the theater?"

"I'm done."

"Okay." He looked around the room like a teacher waiting for a class to settle. "Everybody, relax. Amanda needs the afternoon. She'll be back Monday."

"I won't."

He didn't even look at me.

"She'll be back Monday," he told them again, smiling. "Where else is she going to go?"

Bryce pointed at me with his phone.

"Send me the Coral Bay margin sheet before I board. Kylie needs the numbers."

"Kylie has my binder. The numbers are in it."

"Kylie can't read your handwriting."

"Then Kylie has a problem."

He uncovered his phone and went back into his call.

"Sorry, my fiancée's having a day. Go on."

I walked out with the box against my hip.

Nobody stopped me.

At the elevator, the girl from accounts slipped in beside me just before the doors closed.

She didn't say anything.

She just held the elevator door at the lobby so I could get the box out.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I'd have quit too."

I put the box in the back of my car and drove downtown.

City Hall was gray stone and big steps, and the wind came straight off the mountains.

I got there at 2:40.

I had pictured this day a hundred times since December.

Bryce in a good suit.

Me in the cream dress I'd bought on sale and hidden in the back of the closet so he wouldn't see it.

I was wearing a navy work blouse and boots with dirt on them.

I sat on a wooden bench outside the clerk's office and held my bag in my lap.

A young couple came out holding hands, both of them crying and laughing.

My phone buzzed.

Bryce.

Boarding in 3 hrs. Still waiting on that sheet.

Then another one.

Don't make me come get you.

Then a third, a picture.

Two airport cocktails on a bar top, one with a little paper umbrella.

He'd sent it to the wrong chat.

He'd meant to send it to Kylie.

I watched the three dots appear and disappear.

The picture was deleted.

A new text came.

Ignore that.

I turned the phone face down on my knee.

At 2:58 the clerk leaned out of the doorway with a clipboard.

"Langley? Three o'clock?"

"That's me."

She looked at the empty bench beside me.

"Is your partner on the way, hon?"

I opened my mouth.

I didn't know what was going to come out of it.

Footsteps came down the hall behind me, unhurried, on the stone floor.

A tall man in a navy overcoat stopped at the bench.

He had dark hair going gray at the temples, and he was holding a pair of reading glasses he folded and put away the second I looked at him.

He sat down next to me.

"Amanda Langley," he said. It wasn't a question.

I nodded.

He turned to the clerk and gave her a small, polite smile.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "I believe I'm her three o'clock."

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