“Please show George where the bathroom is. She needs to fix her face.”
“Jesus, Dad. She doesn’t need an escort. Gerald took her phone.”
“When you’re inside my house, you follow my rules. How long have you known this”—that lip curl again—“young woman?”
“About three”—his father’s stern expression relaxes—“hours.” It tightens again.
“Stick to her side throughout the evening,” he tells the maid. “And you.” He points a finger at Lachlan. “Get her surname to Menzies so he can perform a background check.” He reserves one last stinging glare for his son. “You should have done that immediately.”
“She’s not—”
“Immediately.”
He steps forward, looming into his son’s personal space. A pity because Lachlan’s hands have returned to cup my hips, so he mostly invades mine. Not that the elder man appears to remember I exist. He’s far too focused on his progeny to notice the girl being used as a shield.
“Unless you’ve finished playing whatever game this is, whereupon you can send her home.”
My chest lurches in excitement. I’ve been trying to live in the moment since whatever-this-is first started. Not a hard task given the moments after his proposal have been spectacular.
To have a clutch of staff at the city’s leading department store clean me, dress me, and fix my hair had been a dream. I’ve never been much of a girly-girl, but I have my moments and today fell squarely into the fantasy camp.
The car as well, that was excellent. I hope Lachlan’s still too drunk to drive when we leave because tearing along the highway at midnight sounds like a splendid end to the evening.
But leaving right now and not having to make small talk with party guests of such a high calibre that they don’t even pretend to be polite? That sounds pretty damn good.
Leaving before I find out exactly what Lachlan means byeverything and anything, sign me up.
Instead he growls, “I’ll find Menzies.”
A man breaks away from a nearby group and wanders over. “Are you taking my name in vain?”
“Could you perform a background check on this young woman? George…?” Creighton looks at me expectantly.
“Lytton,” I say, then spell it out, nerves spiralling out from my clenched jaw.
“Just a moment.” He taps a message on his phone and smilesin that polite way that indicates he’s waiting, and it won’t be long enough for a conversation, then his phone beeps. “No one under that name.”
Lachlan’s hands tighten on me again, then he lets his arms fall away. It feels like he’s abandoning me to my fate.
His dad’s expression grows even darker. “Any other names yourfriendgoes under?”
“Oh… ah…” I gulp and wring my hands together. “Isn’t me not being on a database a good thing?” The strained pause lasts long enough for me to get the message.No.
“Do we have a problem?” Creighton asks his son, raising his eyebrow.
“No problem,” I hastily interrupt, trialling a laugh before giving it up as a bad joke. “George is short for Georgina…” I trail off as the man shakes his head. “But it’s also my middle name, so you could try Yvette.”
Another few taps on the keys and Menzies expression doesn’t look hopeful. My dad has been adamant that we keep our real names under cover in order to skate under whatever radars might seek us out. He made me swear to keep it secret.
A simple thing to agree when I’m not standing in front of a man able to perform a background check almost instantaneously from hisphone.
“There’s n—”
“Or you could try my father’s surname,” I babble, desperate to confess anything if it means I’ll be left alone. On the one hand, Lachlan’s dad might just kick me out of the house if he can’t verify my identity, leaving me to make my way home by myself.
That sounds like a pretty comfy option, but he might equally shoot me in the head, dump my body out the back, and research everything he needs to know in the morning.
That’ll mean he uncovers who I am, revealing the extent of the debt we left behind in Auckland. Except by then he can’t go, “No worries, just wanted to make sure you weren’t targeting me,” because I’ll still have a hole in my skull where my brains leaked out.
