Jilted Girlfriend, I'm the Tycoon's Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eighty-One Transfers

At Cynthia's table Lena reads out every transfer behind her $41,000 and Dylan promises it by Friday; in the hallway she breaks a near-kiss with Harrison, and Camille asks to meet alone about him.

I wore my own black dress to Sunday dinner, because I was never putting on that green again.

Harrison parked in the same spot at the bottom of the front steps, and he cut the engine.

"Say nothing tonight that you can't prove," he said.

"I can prove forty-one thousand dollars," I said.

"Then say that."

Cynthia opened the door herself and hugged me for a long moment.

"Lena, you came," she said. "I was afraid you wouldn't."

She smelled of lavender, and her hands were warm.

Dinner was at the glass porch table again, only shorter this time, with two board members and their wives added to the family.

Cynthia sat me on Harrison's right and put Camille straight across from me.

Camille wore a gray sweater and the sapphire ring.

She would not look up from her soup.

Dylan sat at the head of the table in a blue shirt, and he looked entirely at ease.

"I'd like to propose a toast," Cynthia said. "To family, new and old."

Glasses rose all around me.

I did not lift mine, and neither did Harrison.

"Lena," Dylan said, and spread his hands. "I hope we can all be adults about this."

"I hope so too," I said.

I took my phone out of my bag and set it face up on the tablecloth, next to the butter.

"Eleven thousand dollars in the first year," I said. "Fourteen in the second. Sixteen in the third."

The board members' wives stopped chewing.

"Forty-one thousand, in eighty-one transfers, to the house account in your name, Dylan. The last one was nine days before your birthday."

"That was household money," Dylan said. "We lived together."

"We lived in an apartment I paid for with Camille," I said. "Your name was never on the lease."

Camille's spoon clinked against her bowl.

"It was a gift, Lena," Dylan said, and smiled around the table. "People give gifts. You can't take a gift back in front of everyone."

"You called it a down payment," I said. "You called it that forty times. I have the texts."

"Dylan," one of the board members murmured.

"I'll sort it out," Dylan said, and his smile slipped a little. "Friday. I'll have it for you on Friday."

"All of it," I said.

"All of it. Mom, tell her."

"Of course he will, dear," Cynthia said warmly. "Dylan is a man of his word."

She did not ask what the money had been for.

She reached over and patted Camille's wrist, and Camille flinched.

Harrison had not said anything in ten minutes.

He passed the bread basket to the man on his left, and then he placed his hand flat on the cloth beside my phone.

It was a small gesture, and no one at the table missed it.

After dessert, I went to find the bathroom, and I walked past it.

I ended up at the end of a long hallway lined with photographs of Trelawny boat races, with my back against the wall and my hands shaking.

I had said it all out loud, and my stomach didn't know yet.

Footsteps came down the hall.

"You have a good voice for a room," Harrison said.

"I'm going to be sick in the bread basket," I said. "Quietly."

"I didn't notice."

He stopped in front of me, closer than the terms called for.

Neither of us said anything.

The only light was a small lamp on a side table, and it lit the scar through his right eyebrow.

I had never noticed it before.

I had never noticed him, if I was honest, in four years of Sunday dinners.

He lifted one hand and stopped it halfway.

"You have butter on your sleeve," he said.

"Do I?"

"No."

His eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up.

I realized I had not moved, and that I did not want to.

I did what I do when I am scared, which is make a joke.

"Careful, Mr. Trelawny," I said. "You're about to be convincing."

Something crossed his face and was gone.

"Noted," he said, and took one step back.

He opened the door to the porch for me, and I went through it quickly.

In the car, he drove without speaking until we reached the bridge.

My phone lit up on my knee.

It was Camille, from a number I had not blocked.

"Please meet me tomorrow. Alone. It's about Harrison."

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