My Sister Stole My Billionaire Husband novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Curb

Rival billionaire Alistair Crowe tells Tavi why her sister did it, Tavi takes the ring back off Gwen's finger in the penthouse, Reuben has her walked out, and on the pavement she asks Alistair to marry her.

The cold hit me on the hotel steps, and I realized I was still holding my toast card.

I had picked it back up off the podium without knowing.

A black car idled at the curb with its back door already open.

Alistair Crowe stood beside it in a charcoal suit and no tie, hands in his pockets.

"Mrs. Hallam," he said.

"For about another hour, apparently."

"I'm not offering you a ride to be kind."

"Good," I said. "I'm out of kind."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth, and he held the door.

I got in because the alternative was standing under a camera crew's lights in a green dress.

He sat across from me and the driver pulled out into Michigan Avenue.

"Your sister did it on purpose," he said.

"Everyone in that room saw her do it on purpose."

"I mean the ring. And the husband."

He looked out at the traffic.

"Two years ago, at the Lakefront Ball, I was waiting for my coat."

"Gwendolyn Lasker came up to me and said she'd heard I was lonely."

I laughed once, a bad sound.

"I told her no," he said. "She asked why. And I said, your sister is the only Lasker I would have crossed a room for."

The car was very quiet.

"You've known that for two years and never said anything?"

"I said it to her, not to you. It wasn't a thing to give a married woman."

I looked at his hands.

The right one had a long scar across the knuckles.

"So she took my husband because you turned her down," I said.

"She took your husband because she wanted to see your face when you lost something. I was just where she pointed."

I should have been furious at him.

Instead I was thinking, very calmly, that I wanted my ring.

"Turn around," I said. "Take me to Lake Shore Drive."

The doorman at Reuben's building did not meet my eyes.

Alistair came up with me and stopped in the hall outside the penthouse door.

He leaned on the wall.

My key card still worked.

It was eleven forty.

I stood in the bedroom I had decorated and pulled my suitcase from the closet.

I got as far as my grandmother's quilt and my father's watch box.

Then the front door opened and I heard my sister laughing.

She came into the bedroom in white with her shoes in her hand, and Reuben came behind her with his tie undone.

They both stopped.

"Oh, for God's sake," Reuben said. "Tavi. It's a quarter to midnight."

"I'm leaving at midnight. You said so."

Gwen smiled, easily, and held up her left hand to the light.

"Isn't it beautiful on me?"

I crossed the room.

I took her wrist in my hand and she flinched, then looked past my shoulder.

Alistair was standing in the doorway.

I saw it happen on her face.

For half a second she decided she would rather lose the ring than lose her dignity in front of him.

She did not pull away.

I slid my grandmother's sapphire off her finger and put it on my own.

It was warm from her skin, and I wanted to scrub my hand raw.

"Thank you for keeping it warm," I said.

"You can't just take it," Reuben said. "Gwen's wearing that tonight."

"It was my grandmother's. She left it to me, in a will, with a lawyer. You can ask him."

"I'll ask my lawyer to ask yours." He pulled out his phone. "Security to the penthouse. A guest is refusing to leave."

I looked at him, the man I had made breakfast for 1,400 mornings.

"I'm not a guest," I said.

"After midnight you are."

Two men in gray blazers filled the doorway beside Alistair, who had not moved.

"Mr. Crowe," Reuben said, with such pleasant contempt that I nearly admired it.

"Collecting strays now? Take this one home, then."

"I'm here at the lady's invitation," Alistair said.

"The lady has no invitations left."

I picked up my father's watch box, the quilt and the suitcase, and walked out between the security guards.

In the elevator I tried my debit card at the little screen to pay for a car.

DECLINED.

My phone said my cards had been closed an hour ago.

On the pavement it was nearly one in the morning and raining.

I had a suitcase, a quilt, two hundred and twelve dollars in my wallet and a ring on my finger.

The black car was parked down the block, and Alistair stood beside it with the door open again.

I looked at the big cold building that was no longer mine.

Then I turned to him.

"Marry me," I said.

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