After Being Accused as a Mistress, I Married My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Aunt Cora

Fired by text and on the front page, Cora pours a coffee over Hayden when he offers to keep her as a real secret mistress, then dials Declan and says yes.

"No," I said.

The rain kept coming down on both of us.

"I don't marry strangers," I said. "I don't marry men who stand next to the door while a woman gets her necklace ripped off."

Declan Kirkbride looked at me for a long moment.

He did not argue.

"Then let me drive you home," he said. "Your coat and your keys are in that ballroom, and nobody inside is going to hand them back."

I got in the car because I had nowhere else to stand.

He didn't say another word until I told him my street in Pilsen.

When we stopped, he took a card from his breast pocket and pressed it into my palm.

It held a name and a phone number, nothing else.

"It works until noon tomorrow," he said.

I climbed out in his jacket and a green dress and did not say thank you.

Romy was sitting on the stairs outside our door with her chef's jacket on over her pajamas.

She stood up so fast her bandana fell off.

"Four million views," she said. "It's been three hours and it has four million views."

"Hi to you too."

"I called you a dozen times. Where's your phone?"

"On a bar. Next to a lemon tart."

Romy stared at me for one second.

Then she put her arms around me and swore at the entire Kirkbride family for a full minute without repeating herself.

We sat on our couch with a bag of frozen peas on my cheek while she scrolled.

The video was half a minute long.

It showed Tabitha's hand, my head turning, Hayden's face saying that he had never seen me in his life.

The comments were worse.

"Gold digger got what she deserved."

"Imagine going after a married man's engagement party."

"Bet she thought the diamonds were hers."

"He wasn't married," Romy said to the screen. "He was dating her. For fourteen months. I ate dinner across from that man."

She went on reading anyway, and she didn't stop until three in the morning.

At six, the city woke up and the Tribune put me on its front page.

The headline said MISTRESS? in tall black letters.

Under it was my face, wide-eyed, with Stanley Kirkbride's hand in the corner of the frame and his son's back turned.

At seven Romy's phone buzzed with a text from the owner of the bakery where I had worked for three years.

"Tell Cora I'm sorry. We can't have this kind of attention on the shop. Don't let her come in Monday."

Romy read it out loud, and then read it again, slower.

I took the phone from her and set it down very carefully.

Somebody knocked on the door.

It wasn't a reporter's knock.

I knew that knock, short and polite, two taps.

Romy reached for the rolling pin she kept by the door.

I shook my head and opened it myself.

Hayden stood in the hallway in sunglasses and a gray hoodie, holding a coffee for me.

He had gotten my order right.

"Cora." He took off the sunglasses. "Thank God. Can I come in?"

"You said you'd never seen me."

"That was for the room."

He said it as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

"Listen," he said, and lowered his voice. "Dad's giving me the company after the wedding. Three months, maybe four. I just need you to keep quiet until then."

"Keep quiet."

"I'll pay your rent. I'll get you a nicer place, a real one, in Lincoln Park. You won't have to work." His smile was the one I had loved. "It'll be like before, babe. Nobody has to know."

Romy made a sound behind me.

"You want me," I said slowly, "to be your mistress."

"I want you to be mine." He looked hurt. "Why does everything have to be a fight with you?"

I looked at the coffee in his hand.

Then I took it, opened the door a little wider, and poured the whole cup over his hoodie.

"Don't come back," I said.

I shut the door on his shouting.

It took him two minutes to stop pounding and leave.

When the hallway was quiet again, Romy said, "I'm going to be sick. Or I'm going to kill him. Which one do you want?"

"Neither."

I was standing at the kitchen counter with Declan Kirkbride's card in my hand.

It was ten minutes to nine.

I had until noon.

I picked Romy's phone back up and dialed the number on the card.

He answered on the first ring.

"Yes," I said.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend