“So? Can you tell your father to call off this charade?”
The whole pantomime is so unnecessary. Ourfamily businesses are already aligned. To cement them with a marriage between parties is grossly archaic.
If our fathers were to die tomorrow, we’d still co-mingle our operations. It’s a no-brainer.
My face is a mask of hope.
“If I don’t marry you, my father will go to the next name on his list. Currently, that’s Philip Milovic. Even if I didn’t want to marry you, I’m not getting hitched to that piece of shit.”
Milovic is sixty if he’s a day. He buried wife number four back in May last year. Given how many decades younger she was than her husband, the smart money is on him having killed her.
Her and possibly the three who preceded her.
“What if we—”
“If you take him out, there’ll just be another one. If we’re being brutally honest, no. If I had my choice of partner, you wouldn’t be the one. But since we’re going by my father’s list, you are.”
A horn honks outside and Kari glances over her shoulder, making a signal to whoever’s waiting in the car. “It’s interesting that your dad’s so set on this. Could you imagine how angry he’d be to find out you snuck my nemesis into your room? Perhaps angry enough to turn you in.”
She blows me a kiss while a horrible sinking feeling swallows my good humour, then sweeps out the door.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I mean, she probably won’t use it against me, but she might. Her behaviour has been erratic lately.
What was I doing, feeding her information she can use against me? Even without specifics, I’ve just given her leverage.
I hate these people. Why did I align myself with them? Iwant to go back in time and say no. Turn down my father’s catastrophic proposal like he’d refused every opportunity to be part of my life to age sixteen.
In a fit of pique, I head back to my room, startled to find George outside, struggling to get back in with a set of keys.
Not that the latter part of that is any surprise. Mine are in my hand.
“Those are a spare set to Kari’s room,” I tell her, taking them from her and swapping them out for the real ones. “Did you need something?”
“I was just looking for you.” The edges of her words are all mushy, still half asleep. “When I couldn’t find you, I came back here.”
I dump both sets of keys on the table inside and hunt my spare set for my room out of the desk drawer, holding them up so she can see the blue tag rather than the pink. Kingswood is so proud of having entered the twentieth century they’re not sure about hauling themselves into the twenty-first. “You can take these.”
Given what just transpired with Kari, I should probably get myself back to the common room and show what a caring boyfriend I am, giving up my room to a girl in need but not succumbing to the temptation to crawl into bed with her.
On the other hand, I can’t stand to be alone and don’t want George to be, not when she’s so vulnerable.
I’ll deal with the consequences tomorrow. Tonight, I clamber into bed behind the girl I adore and fall asleep with her in my arms, taking just as much comfort from her as I’m giving.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GEORGE
Lachlan’s phonebuzzes us both awake the next morning. My brain is scrambled, trying to work out what’s going on, only able to retain a few fragments, not enough to create an entire thought.
He kisses me goodbye and goes, and I immediately fall back to sleep. The next time I wake, an annoying tone fills the room. I don’t know what’s making the noise, let alone where it is, and have to get out of bed to hunt the aurally offensive device.
It’s my phone. Not the one shattered into a million pieces by Mr Softball Bat but the old one Lachlan gave me.
I grab it from the sidetable, hoping to see a call from Dad, but it’s just a wake-up alarm that I quickly disable. The moment I put it down, it buzzes again, this time with a message from Lachlan.
