Hit the Jackpot! My Broke Chef Husband Is a Billionaire novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Her Terms

In a courthouse hallway she sets her own terms and marries the chef, then finds a PAID bill marked PAST DUE and overhears a call that proves her husband is not broke.

The marriage clerk at the Lakewood municipal court had a fresh sticker on her badge that said "Ask me about notary."

She told us the next ceremony slot was in forty minutes.

Maude said that was plenty, and went to find a vending machine.

That left me in a beige hallway with a man who was six foot four and apparently trying to look smaller.

"Do you want to go for coffee?" Ewan asked. "Before. To think."

"I want to give you my terms first."

"Okay."

He folded his arms, and the jacket pulled tight across his shoulders.

I held up one finger.

"I sleep in my own bed."

"You'll have mine," he said at once. "I'll take the couch."

"That's two fingers."

"I only heard one."

"The second one is that I pay half the rent."

He blinked.

"Rosie. It's eleven hundred a month."

"Then five fifty. And half the groceries."

"The groceries are the restaurant's."

"Then I'll pay the restaurant."

He looked at me for a long time, and something at the corner of his mouth gave up.

"Half," he said. "Fine."

I held up a third finger.

"If I want to leave, I leave. Any day, no reason, no speech."

"Same," he said. "For me, I mean."

"And nobody owes anybody a night."

He went very still.

"I read the papers, Ewan. They say that."

"But I want it said out loud, by the two of us, with nobody's grandmother listening."

"Gram is behind the ficus."

"I know," I said. "She's been behind the ficus for two minutes."

The ficus rustled.

"Nobody owes anybody a night," he said, in a low, careful voice.

"Not tonight. Not unless you say so. If it happens, it happens because you walked to me."

My face got hot, and I decided I would look at the carpet.

"That was a lot of words for a man who says nothing."

"I'm saving them. I have a few."

Dale was waiting in the parking lot when we came out to find Maude.

He had his hands in his pockets, and he'd put on his big smile.

"Congratulations," he said. "Your mother sends her love. She'll be so thrilled that you're finally somebody's problem."

"Dale."

"I'm only saying, don't come crying to me when he's a deadbeat. That kitchen has been on a payment plan since the day it opened."

"His grandmother," I said, "is standing right there."

Maude held up her cane and waved it at him.

Dale went red up to his hairline.

The ceremony took less than five minutes.

The clerk read the words in one breath.

Maude cried into a napkin from the vending machine.

Ewan's hand shook when he put the ring on me.

It was a plain silver band, a size too big.

He closed my fingers over it so it wouldn't slide.

"We'll get it fixed," he said.

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. I measured wrong."

"You measured at all?" I asked. "On a day's notice?"

"Gram handed me a string."

That was the first time I laughed in two days.

His apartment was over the restaurant, up a back stair that smelled like onions and bleach.

It was one big room with a small bedroom closed off behind a sliding door, and a couch that looked about five feet long.

There was an espresso machine on the counter the size of a motorcycle engine.

There was a stove with six burners and a brass plaque that said Molteni.

I'd seen that stove online once, when I was bored in the break room.

It cost more than my car.

"It was a gift," he said, watching me look. "From a supplier. He went under."

"Lucky you."

"Very."

Taped to the inside of the door was a shut-off notice from the gas company, bright yellow, curling at the corners.

I walked over to read it.

Printed across the middle in big letters, under the marker, it said PAID IN FULL.

Someone had written PAST DUE over it in thick black pen.

The pen had gone through the paper in two places, because whoever wrote it had pressed too hard.

I turned around.

Ewan was standing by the couch with the most innocent face I'd ever seen.

"It's embarrassing," he said. "Please don't read it."

"I won't," I said. "Do you have a toothbrush I can borrow?"

He gave me a brand new one, still in the package, and a T-shirt that came to my knees.

He gave me the bedroom, and he took the couch, and his feet hung over the end by a foot.

I lay in the dark and listened to the pipes.

At midnight I heard the back door open and close, soft as a cat.

I went to the window.

He was standing on the fire stairs in his socks with a phone at his ear.

I couldn't see his face, but I could hear him through the glass.

"Move Columbus to Thursday," he said, in a voice I hadn't heard yet.

"No. Have the car at five, behind the bins. And nobody calls this number. Nobody."

He listened, and then he said, "Thank you," and hung up.

I got back into his bed and pulled the blanket over my face.

I was grinning so hard my cheeks hurt.

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