Page 25 of Indiscretion

Sheldon, my pet tortoise, moseyed out from where he’d been hiding in the corner. Ben lifted his chin when he saw him. “Is it bring your son to work day?”

“I was at the park for his daily sunshine soak when I got a call from the alarm company. Emily gave the movers her key, but apparently, she didn’t give them the code to turn off the alarm. That’s the only reason I knew something was going on. Otherwise I might’ve showed up later and thought I’d been robbed.”

The guy working on removing Emily’s last name freed her part of the sign, but there was nothing left to support my last name now, so when he let go,Reeddangled from the wall. The guy looked over at me. “Sorry, man.”

I waved him off. “It’s fine. Though I have no idea what she’s going to do with that piece of the sign since her name is connected to the ampersand. She’s not going to hang up something that says,And Miller.”

He frowned. “No, she’s not. Miss Miller told us to take this part of the sign down because it belonged to her. But she instructed us to toss it in the dumpster downstairs before we leave.”

“Man…” Ben shook his head. “That’s cold. Just didn’t want you to have it. You’d think you were the one who’d fucked her friend on her desk and not the other way around.”

“She’s still pissed that I wouldn’t accept her apology and pretend it never happened.”

“I still can’t believe she brought that idiot to the wedding.”

“I can. She feels like she won because she had a date and I didn’t. Everything is a contest to her. It wasn’t enough to end our partnership. She had to steal all the staff and take all the equipment so she felt like she won. I’ve seen her be this ruthless for her clients, but I never thought I’d be on the receiving end of it.” I sighed.

“Think of the bright side.”

“I didn’t realize there was one.”

“Your receptionist’s nasally voice drove me fucking nuts, and now I won’t have to hear it when I stop by. Win for me.” Ben patted my shoulder. “And it’s better you found out now what she was capable of than a few years down the road.”

We spent the next ten minutes sitting in the lobby, watching the movers go in and out. There was an awful lot of boxes, so I was pretty sure there wasn’t even going to be any toilet paper in the bathroom. But it would be worth it to get rid of her. She’d made the last few months since we split pretty miserable.

“That’s it,” the moving guy said.

“You sure? I think there’s some lint in my pants pocket you didn’t take.”

“Sorry. Just doing what we were hired to do.”

“I know.”

He waited a few uncomfortable heartbeats, until I realized he was looking for a tip. “Dude, the tip comes from the bitch who hired you. Not me.”

He frowned, but didn’t argue.

Ben chuckled as the guy left. “You want to get out of here and go drown your sorrows at the bar?”

“Pretty sure she took all the chairs in the office, so I don’t think we have a choice.”

He eyed Sheldon. “What about him?”

“I have his carrier. The owner won’t care. Sheldon smells better than half his patrons.”

O’Malley’s was a dark and dreary old-man bar. A handful of guys sat alone drinking, spaced apart from each other like they weren’t looking for conversation. The depressing setting felt appropriate for my mood. I ordered a vodka seven and Ben ordered a beer.

“So how’s married life?” I asked.

He smiled. “Great.”

I smiled back. It might’ve been the first genuine happy feeling I’d had since I got back from Michigan. Unless you counted the too-many times I’d showed my laptop my teeth while looking at pictures of Naomi.

“How was Italy? Where’d you go again?”

“We started in Rome and then drove down to the Amalfi coast.”

“How was that?”

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