Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Another Spanner in the Works
IRINA
It wasn’t Cockerels Cap.
“Who is that?” Liv asked as we squinted through the window of the wheelhouse.
Josie, the yacht’s captain, and Parker stood beside us, equally invested in the showdown happening on the jetty.
Lucian stood on one side of the barred gate that kept the non-owners off the marina, his stance immovable, his arms folded.
I could just imagine the surly expression he’d be wearing.
Lucian’s mouth moved, and the man on the other side took a step back. I gasped, recognition dawning.
“That’s Henry’s dad!”
Liv groaned. “Not him! I can’t stand that bloke! He’s another one who calls all the time expecting a piece of Henry.”
“He threatened to turn me in to the authorities if Henry didn’t help him out last time,” I whispered, straightening. “I should go down there.”
“Are you insane?” Liv hissed, grabbing me by the arm. “The last thing you should do is go anywhere near him! Let Lucian deal with it.”
I shook my head, tugging out of her grasp. “He has no proof of anything. Maybe me going down there and shaking him up a bit might get him to back off.”
I strode for the gangplank, Liv on my heels.
“Fucking Eastern Europeans and their stubborn streak!” she muttered.
I chuckled, picking my way barefoot along the jetty.
Despite the autumn weather, the sun was still hot enough to have me hopping on my toes, wincing as the soles of my feet prickled with heat.
“Here she comes!” Warren crowed as we approached. “And who’s the pretty little thing with her?”
Lucian turned, fuming in our direction before glaring back at Warren. “None of your fucking business. Now leave, or I’ll have my team escort you back to the street,” Lucian snarled. Warren ignored him, swaying on the spot as he peered through the bars at us.
“Oh, but I’ve been hoping to meet my daughter-in-law for weeks! You know, since they got married so secretly that no one knew about it for months …” he tapped the side of his nose, winking hideously in my direction, as if sharing a little secret joke with me.
My stomach roiled. How had this decrepit slob of a man had anything to do with my beautiful, kind Henry? I could see no family resemblance, in looks or in behaviour.
My mouth lifted into a sneer. “Oh, Warren, no need to be bitter. We kept our wedding very private, so of course you weren’t aware. Only those closest to our hearts were in attendance.”
Warren’s face twisted. “Any of your family fly out for the happy day?” he asked. “Or are you an ungrateful little brat just like my son? That boy happily mooched off his old man until he was old enough to leave, and then abandoned the man he owes for his very existence.”
Lucian slammed a hand against the gate, making a godawful clang. “You lying piece of—”
“Don’t bother, Lucian,” I interrupted, heart hammering with rage against my ribs. “Men like him will never learn. I’ve dealt with enough of them to know.”
I eyed Warren with intense dislike. “You know, children don’t go no-contact with their parents for no reason.
You might want to think about that for a bit, maybe take a good, long look at your own belly button while you’re at it.
You know, self-reflection, or whatever the smart people like to call it.
Maybe then you might work out what it is about you that’s so repulsive to him that he chose to protect himself over forcing a relationship with you. ”
“Men like me?” Warren snapped, spit flying from his mouth.
“Women like you, more like it! You don’t want me to have a relationship with my son because you want to hoard all the money for yourself.
Anyone who so much as blinks at you can see that you’re a filthy gold digger—no one who looks like you marries my son for anything but his money! ”
Lucian growled, stepping closer, but Liv gripped his arm, holding him back. Meanwhile, I blinked to clear some of the red rage from my vision.
“I married your son,” I began coldly, “because I have never known a sweeter, funnier, smarter man. Like I said, I’ve known your type my whole life, and Henry is like a breath of fresh air.
Clearly, every single thing I love about him is something that grew in him in spite of, not because of you.
Now, kindly fuck off our property, and don’t come back. ”
I turned to leave.
“He owes me! I raised him alone, and he owes me for that, at least!” Warren shouted. I turned back in his direction.
“And you took your payment last time you showed up here, uninvited, unannounced and unwanted. I think a stolen loaf of bread was a more-than-fair trade for whatever you put Henry through in his childhood.”
I snapped my fingers at Lucian, as if I had the power to command him. I momentarily relished the thought, even as he fixed that glower on me instead of the man on the other side of the bars.
“Have your team escort my father-in-law back to whatever hole he crawled out of, will you, Lucian?”
“With pleasure,” he muttered through gritted teeth, and as I hopped and skipped my way back over the scorching jetty, with Liv on my heels, I let out a shuddering breath.
“That was incredible! And … you just said you loved Henry!” Liv panted, trotting to keep up with my much longer legs.
“I didn’t!”
“Oh, you absolutely did, and it slipped out so easily, almost as if you didn’t even need to think about it!”
I turned, frowning at her. “I absolutely did not say … that word … to Henry’s asshole father!”
“Oh, but you did!” Liv insisted in a singsong voice. “Because you looooove Henry!”
I honestly had no clue how Henry put up with me teasing him to see a blush, because as my cheeks heated, I wanted to strangle Liv.
“Well, if I did, it’s because I’m in character.
It’s all part of the Mrs Baxter act!” I stormed off, ignoring the way my bare feet protested on the hot jetty, and the way my heart flipped and flopped.
I didn’t believe my own lie for a second.
“Let’s not mention this to Henry,” I suggested when Lucian rejoined us on the yacht, looking like he was ready to punch something.
I tensed, expecting an argument from him, but he leaned his fists on the kitchen bench, blew out a very long, weary breath, and nodded. “Agreed. He doesn’t need anything else to stress about right now.”
Shit. Was I stressing him out? Was this whole fake marriage thing weighing too heavily on him? Or was there something going on at Tickle that was worrying him?
I opened my mouth to ask Lucian, but he silenced me with a glare. “And you. Don’t ever put yourself—or Liv—in a situation like that again, do you hear me? Warren is volatile, and I had it under control before you waltzed out to inflame the situation.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You do not get to tell me what to do. I think I handled him pretty well, thank you very much!”
“No,” Lucian barked. “You didn’t. He’ll go away now and stew over every little insult you threw at him, and then he’ll plot some way he can get revenge for it.
He’s a petty, angry man, who sees himself as the victim in every scenario.
You’ve just made yourself the new villain in his sob story.
He’ll be convinced that if it wasn’t for you, Henry would have reconciled with him, and he’d be living it up on his son’s money. ”
I gaped. “That’s insanity!”
Lucian jerked his shoulders in a shrug. “You said you knew his type … clearly you also have a fetish for antagonising his type.”
Liv stepped closer. “I don’t think that’s fair, Lu—”
“It’s very fair!” Lucian snapped, rounding on her. His face softened into something less infuriated and more concerned when he looked at her. “Don’t you ever let someone rope you into something so reckless again, you understand?”
Liv nibbled on her lip, then nodded. My heart broke for her.
“How about you let her make her own decisions. She doesn’t need you acting like a controlling prick too,” I grouched. Liv’s eyes widened, darting to me, pleading. I bit the inside of my cheek. Damn it, those three glasses of vodka had loosened my tongue more than I’d realised.
“What does she mean, Liv?” Lucian asked softly. He reached towards her face, before thinking better of it, clenching his fist into a tight ball and letting it drop to his side.
“Nothing … just don’t worry about it,” she mumbled, hurrying over to the garment bags. “You know, Irina, I think that we won’t find better than the Bella Draper jumpsuit. I’ll just get back to the office and organise couriers to collect the rest.”
She bundled them into her arms, struggling under the volume of clothing. I jumped to my feet. “Let me help!”
Lucian’s hand found my shoulder, pressing me back into the bar stool. “I think you’ve done enough today. I’ll help Liv back to her car. I should double check that the boys have sent Warren on his way.”
He extricated the entire pile of clothes from Liv’s arms, hoisting them over one shoulder like they weighed nothing, and gently took her elbow, steering her in the direction of the stairs.
“Don’t you go anywhere!” he warned before ascending. I saluted him, then added a middle finger once his back was turned, pulling a face at his retreating form.
And then I headed for the windows that would let me spy on them out on the jetty. They stopped halfway to the gate, Lucian holding onto her arm like he was afraid she’d disappear if he let her go. She was talking fast, a panicked, pleading expression on her face.
She might think he didn’t know the full extent of what was going on between her and Josh, but I was sure he knew more than she assumed. He might be a grumpy jerk, but he wasn’t stupid. And he cared deeply about her—it was obvious to anyone with half a brain.
I sighed, flopping back onto the lounge and glaring at the bottle of vodka. Being honest when it came to feelings was a fucking minefield. Liv had reasons for not taking the plunge with Lucian … well, I had reasons for trying to maintain some level of distance from Henry too.
“Meow?”
I turned to find Abernathy pawing at my leg. Sighing, I lifted him up onto the lounge beside me, stroking down his fluffy back as I stared into the distance.
“You want me to stick around, don’t you, Abs?” I asked.
“Yowp!” It sounded almost like ‘yep’.
“It’s too complicated right now, to add another spanner in the works,” I explained as he nuzzled against my knuckles. “Maybe, if your daddy and I can make it through the next two years, we can have a discussion then about whether there’s a future that we can explore.”
Abernathy purred, frantically circling until he was curled in my lap. I didn’t know a great deal about cats, but that seemed like agreement.
But it had to wait. Until my future in Australia was secure, I just couldn’t risk it. Not until I knew I was permanently safe from him.