My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: In the Walls

I didn't open the door any wider.

"Say that again," I said.

Clint glanced up and down 6th Avenue.

"Come home. Just tell Hugh it was nothing. Tell him Shayla's confused and you were upset and you said things." He was talking fast now, the way he did when he was closing a charter. "He likes you. Everybody saw it. If you tell him it was nothing, he'll take me back. And we still have May sixteenth. The venue's booked. It doesn't have to change."

"Shayla's living in your house, Clint."

"She's staying there. Temporarily. She had nowhere else to go."

"She's wearing my robe."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"I'll get you a new robe."

I almost laughed. It came up my throat.

"Here's what I want," I said. "Forty-eight thousand dollars. By Christmas. That was my mother's life insurance, and you know it was."

"Edie. I don't have forty-eight thousand dollars. It's in the walls."

A horn blared.

A white Audi sat at the curb with its hazards on. Shayla was behind the wheel.

She laid on the horn again, long and loud, until a man walking a pug crossed the street to get away from it.

"She drove you," I said.

"My truck's in the shop."

"Funny how that keeps happening."

The Audi door flew open.

Shayla came up onto the sidewalk in a camel coat and heels, straight past Clint, and shoved my door open with both hands.

I stepped back before it hit me.

"Since you won't give it to me," she said, "I'll just wear it home."

She marched past me into the shop.

Bonnie came out of the workroom with a mouthful of pins and stopped dead.

Shayla went to the back rack, unzipped her garment bag and dragged the gown off its hanger in a rush of silk.

"Hey," Bonnie said around the pins. "Hey!"

"Your boss is holding my dress hostage. So I'm doing my own fitting."

She disappeared into my fitting room and whipped the velvet curtain shut.

From behind the curtain came the sound of a zipper, and a coat hitting the floor, and heels kicked off.

Bonnie spat the pins into her palm.

"Is she getting naked in our fitting room?"

"Yes," I said.

The curtain flew open.

Shayla stood there in fourteen thousand dollars of ivory silk, unzipped up the back, the bodice clutched to her chest with one arm. The cathedral train spilled out behind her onto my carpet.

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