Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
A Warder-Away of Bad Things
IRINA
Talk about whiplash!
One second he was kissing me like a man possessed, the next he was adjusting his glasses and pulling up a spreadsheet like nothing had happened. Only the hectic flush on his cheeks, and the way he surreptitiously adjusted himself under his desk, told me that he was just as affected by it as I was.
“We need to talk?” I repeated, too flustered to think straight. La dracu! That kiss … I’d have let him do whatever he wanted to me …
“I’ve been compiling a database of all the potential risks to this little scheme of ours.” He turned the screen towards me. “If we can list all the weak links, we can plan for multiple contingencies, and minimise the risk.”
My eyes roved over the screen without really taking anything in. “Okay?”
He scrolled down, scanning the text. “I’ve identified all the ones I can … but I don’t know who on your end knows the truth about your expired visa. So, let’s start there.” His fingers were poised over the keyboard, ready to type.
“I …” D?-m? dracului, I needed to get my fuzzy, kiss-muddled brain to work! “Well, there’s Kat, obviously—that’s my best friend, and my flatmate.”
Henry typed her in, moving to a new row. “And?”
I shrugged. “Well, there’s Rumi, the ex.”
“Rumi—that’s her name!” he muttered, finding an earlier entry and making a change. “I would consider her a high risk, given she’s made overt threats towards you already.”
I nodded mutely.
“Anyone else we should include?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Possibly my swim coach and my boss at the swim school—they knew when my visa was due to expire, but they haven’t seen me since I was supposed to leave …” I scowled. “Fucking Finley.”
“The girl who was harassing you at the pool?”
“That’s the one. But I gave her an excuse that buys me until at least the end of May. And I doubt I’ll run into her again, as long as I don’t head back to the pool.” A pang of sadness rocked me at the thought of not being able to train, it was a small price to pay to keep myself safe.
“I might have a solution for that too,” Henry muttered thoughtfully, typing Finley into the spreadsheet.
“You have a solution for everything.”
“Not even close. Anyone else?”
I wracked my brain. “Well, Gus … he’s the one who suggested I start a Tickle account, so I could still make money without having a visa.”
Henry stilled. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned him before.” There was a thread of tightness in his tone, and it made me stupidly giddy.
“Is that jealousy I detect, Hubby?” I teased, scooting my chair close enough to bump his shoulder. “We wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for Gus. After all, it was Tickle that brought us together.”
He was silent and still for so long, I worried that I’d offended him. I chanced a glance his way—he was watching me with an odd light in his eyes.
“Well. That’s a very good point.” He typed Gus into his little database, stuffing another piece of fairy bread into his mouth, hiding the way his lips tweaked up at the corners.
Pizd?, he’s adorable! I want to kiss him some more.
I grinned. “Well, I think that’s it for people who know the truth about me. Next question?”
“Who knows about our marriage? Just Kat?”
I frowned. “No … no one. I haven’t told Kat. I don’t think I will.”
Henry turned to me, his eyes meeting mine just long enough to raise an enquiring eyebrow. “Why not? We need to have witnesses from our social circles who will testify that we have been in a relationship for months. Kat would be an obvious choice for that, don’t you think?”
I sighed. “When you put it like that, yes.” I rubbed my arms. “But I don’t want to ask that of her. The lying, I mean. I’ve already got you, Lucian, Liv and River fucking Riley lying for me. It feels like I’m asking a lot of everyone else for nothing in return.”
Warm hands covered mine, squeezing my fingers. “Not for nothing.”
I shook my head. He could claim that him being married meant not being harassed by gold-digging women all he liked, but I knew, deep down, that this was a completely selfless act for him.
Just as I knew that I couldn’t call him on it because he needed me to think he wasn’t just doing this for me, to assuage my guilt.
Better than other men.
“Anyway. Can we not tell Kat? She’s got a lot going on with her mother, and she’s doing this intense one-year musical theatre diploma …
and there’s a guy she’s … well not involved with, but …
” I waved a dismissive hand. “It’s too long a story for right now.
She just found out her dad has Alzheimer’s too, and she’s …
well she’s a hot mess, to be honest. I can’t lump my problems on top of all of that—it’s not fair on her. ”
Henry nodded. “We’ll come up with a story that excuses your best friend being in the dark.”
I nibbled on my bottom lip. “While we’re on the subject of Kat …
I might have to keep staying at the apartment.
Only occasionally,” I added hurriedly when his brow furrowed.
“If I’m suddenly not there at all, it will be super suspicious.
And like I just said, she’s going through some stuff, and regardless of all of this—” I gestured between us— “she’s my best friend, and I need to be there for her. ”
Henry pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and massaged his temples. “It would,” he agreed. “And you’re right, you have every right to support your friends, and a good husband supports his wife’s friendships too. I don’t own you, Irina, and I—”
“You can call me Ri, you know,” I interrupted. “No one calls me Irina, if they know me well.”
“Do I know you well?” he asked, his glasses falling back into place. His hair was still a tangled mess, thanks to my hands in it just moments ago.
“I’d like you to,” I breathed, and suddenly I was the one with warm cheeks and an inability to make eye contact. I coughed and reached for another slice of fairy bread, pointing at the screen to distract Henry from my flustered state. “Who is ‘Warren’ and why is he a problem?”
Henry’s expression turned dark. “Warren is the reason I forgot the bread this morning.” He took off his glasses, hands finding his knees, squeezing. “Warren wants money from me, and he knows about our wedding … Warren thinks I’ll give him money to stop him threatening you.”
I recalled the scruffy-looking older man in the Uber Eats delivery photo. The one whose expression had sent cold working its way through my veins.
“Warren is also my father,” Henry finished on a tired sigh. “He’s a gambling addict. We’ve been estranged for a decade, but he’s kept tabs on me and has been persistent in his attempts to contact me since Tickle took off and the media started reporting that I was wealthy.”
I gaped. This gorgeous, smart, sensitive man came from that dead-eyed creep? From a creep who had no issue with threatening his own son—and me—to fuel his habit?
I shivered. “I am all too familiar with that particular type of man.”
“I wondered, after our first meeting, if maybe someone in your life had an addiction,” Henry murmured. “Because you seemed so very against my medication.”
I waved a dismissive hand, hoping it wasn’t shaking. “Like I said, my family is not a nice one. Hence me wanting to stay here in Australia.” As far as possible from him.
“Should we include your family in the database?” Henry asked suddenly, picking up his glasses. “Will they try to force you home?”
A chill crept under my skin, and I wrapped my arms around myself. Yes. That’s exactly what they’ll do. And if that happens … I’ll never be free again.
But I couldn’t tell Henry that. I couldn’t burden him with my frightening reality.
As far as the family were aware, I was reliant on his money to survive away from them.
And he was arrogant enough to think that all he’d need to do was cut me off, to have me rushing home. They’d underestimated me all my life.
“No, I don’t think they’ll bother with me,” I lied. “There’s no need for you to worry about them.”
He turned, his eyes roving me, concern and confusion written all over his face. “Irina … Ri, we’re doing all of this to make sure that you don’t have to go back there to them, which tells me I need to worry about them.”
I shook my head vigorously. “You really don’t,” I said, injecting as much conviction into my voice as I could muster.
“I’m already handling that side of things.
And don’t forget, a marriage is a partnership, so we need to …
” I wracked my brain for the saying that was on the tip of my tongue. “Decide and conquer!”
His lips twitched. “Divide and conquer, perhaps?”
I smacked at his arm, some of the chill melting from my bones. “English is stupid, and my way makes sense. We decide what parts we’re going to take charge of, and we get it done! So, you worry about the official government stuff … and let me worry about … about placating my family.”
Henry watched me, his focus darting between my eyes and my lips. “Yes. That seems reasonable. But they’re still going into the database.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d already typed ‘Rusnac family’ into the next cell in his spreadsheet. I snapped my mouth shut. I didn’t need to protest too much about this or he might get suspicious. Let him put them in his little spreadsheet, it wasn’t going to mean anything.
A plaintive yowl and frantic scratching at the door thankfully distracted Henry from any further questions he might have had.
I jumped up, admitting a bemused-looking Abernathy, who immediately wound himself around my ankles, and a haughty Trinket.
She went straight to her dad, leapt onto the desk and essentially ended the whole conversation when she strutted across the laptop keyboard.
Henry cursed, shooing her away and rectifying the string of letters she’d added.
He shut the laptop, gave her a tap on the nose that was more affectionate than annoyed, and turned to me.