Page 70 of Runaway Bride's Guide to Love

I chuckle as I take a seat across from her. Andi is not a good liar. It could be something as small as she took the last donut, to something complex like parading around a fake boyfriend. No matter the scenario, her poker face is shit. In her defense, she did pull off the fake boyfriend thing. It worked so well he’s now her real boyfriend.

However, in this instance, she’s not hiding a damn thing.

“Let me guess,” I begin. “My former fiancé is saying that I’m an unfeeling bitch who left him at the altar. That he had no clue it was coming, and my sudden, and unexpected, choice to flee has caused him so much pain and anguish that the only remedyhe can come up with is filing a lawsuit against me for emotional damages.”

“Pretty much,” she says. “Wait! How did you know about the lawsuit?”

I stand to make myself a cup of coffee. I have a feeling I’ll need one or ten of these to get through today. “Maeve called me while I was in Florida. She didn’t want me to be taken by surprise.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I knew and I should’ve called you.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I do. I’m a bad friend. When it came to the suit, at first a bunch of us thought he was bluffing. Or just trying to talk shit. Duncan being Duncan, you know? Then he went parading around, showing the filing like he had the winning lottery numbers.”

I roll my eyes at the image in my head. I’m sure he was puffing out his nonexistent chest thinking he was so smart. “Sounds about right.”

“I wanted to trip him every time he came back to our department. Especially knowing what I know. Which no one does, and that kills me. I’ve wanted to defend you, but it’s your story, you know? I’ve quashed what I could, but it’s been hard. He’s a piece of shit and everyone is taking his side.Pleaselet me start dropping hints about the flogger. Or the money. Anything. Hell, it can be a lie or a truth. I don’t care. He doesn’t deserve the sympathy he’s getting.”

I had a feeling this was how it was going to be when I returned. Taking that time off was absolutely what I needed for my mental health, but it’s putting me at a massive deficit when it comes to damage control in the office. Especially since I don’t have my dad here to play defense for me. Not that I’d want him to, but it would be nice to have more than Andi in my corner.

Damn him for retiring.

“I knew it was going to be like this,” I say. “I’ll take a littleoffice gossip and a few weeks of being looked at funny if it means I’m not married to that lying, cheating asshole.”

“That’s a very healthy way of looking at it. Though I’m going to warn you, it’s more than a little gossip,” Andi says. “I’m pretty sure one rumor I heard was that you actually rode away from the hotel on a motorcycle.”

I nearly spit out my coffee. “Can you see me on a motorcycle? Please. That helmet would crush my hair.”

I don’t know why, but at that moment I start smiling as I wonder if Emmett has a motorcycle. I’d battle helmet head to ride on a bike with him.

Oh…motorcycle sex…

“Why are you smiling like that?”

Shit. I didn’t mean to actually smile. Just do it internally. “How am I smiling?”

“Like you’re thinking about good sex.”

“Andi!” I gasp, though I can’t think of anything to say in rebuttal, because she’s not wrong.

“Stella Banks! Did you hook up on your little vacation? Oh my God! Did you fuck a cabana boy!”

This time I don’t even try to keep the smile off my face. I also wish I could see Emmett‘s reaction if he were to find out that in this version of the story, he was my cabana boy.

“Holy shit! That good?”

“Shhh,” I whisper as I sit back down next to her. “It was, and I’ll tell you more later, but?—”

I can’t finish that sentence as the break room door swings open so hard it rebounds off the wall. And that’s when I stare straight at the man who is responsible for everything.

“Hello, Duncan.”

His snake smile isn’t fooling anyone. “Stella. Welcome back.”

Andi looks to me, then to Duncan, before back to me. I give her a nod that it’s okay to go. Yes, I’d like a witness in case I murder him, but at the same time she needs plausible deniability.

Duncan watches as Andi leaves the room, shutting the door behind her, leaving the two of us staring at each other with nothing but disgust. At least that’s my view of him. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but if I were to guess, it’s mock arrogance and a bit of anger.

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