“I don’t like pearls. Very grandmother-ish. Oysters, though, I’ve heard they’re an excellent aphrodisiac.” I waggled my eyebrows, hoping I’d fluster him enough to drop the subject. For once I knew what this English phrase meant, but thinking about my dream, and how I could never have it, always soured my mood.
His cheeks did flush, but he met my eyes earnestly for a split second before his attention turned to the view out the window.
“I mean, you have a sports science degree. You have been a competitive swimmer the whole time you’ve lived in Australia. Surely you have a goal for yourself, in that field, perhaps?”
I sighed, toying with the napkin. “When I was ten, I decided I was going to the Olympics. It was a crazy dream—I had no formal training, and everything I knew about the sport I’d learned from YouTube. I taught myself freestyle in our indoor pool, with my cousin Stefan play-acting as coach. I had no idea if I was doing it right, but I was fast. And I was strong. And I was damned determined that I was going to win Olympic Gold one day.”
“Well, your medal count from UniSport Nationals would suggest your dream isn’t so far from your grasp,” Henry reasoned.
I shook my head. “That’s the thing, though. I’m fast, and having access to a coach here in Australia really improved my technique and my times. But I will never make it to the Olympics. Do you know what age girls usually peak for freestyle-sprint events? Seventeen. I was already too old by the time I arrived in Australia and started getting some actual formal coaching.” My eyes prickled, and I turned quickly to look out the window.
Warmth engulfed my hand as Henry tucked my palm between his two big ones. “You have every right to cry over this, Irina. I’m guessing your family wasn’t supportive of your ambition?”
I shook my head, a wet laugh bubbling up. “You could say that.” No one except Stefan had even known about my silly pipe dream, but I could just imagine what my uncle would have had to say about it, and it wouldn’t have been good.
“So, even if the Olympics were off the table … that doesn’t mean you can’t still compete, if that’s what you’re really interested in.”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t find words, and when the waitperson interrupted us with our meals, it felt like a reprieve. I picked up my fork and took a bite of scrambled eggs. Henry didn’t let go of my hand, and even though at some point I’d need my knife to cut through the sourdough toast under my eggs, I wasn’t all that keen to let go of him either.
“Once I had that dream dashed, I didn’t really let myself think about the future. I made my life about living in the moment. I still swam, but I didn’t think further than the next race meet. I’d been very … sheltered, in Romania, and I let loose in a big way my first couple of years here. I partied. I slept with loads of men and women.”
His fingers twitched against mine, and a little thrill tickled through me that he didn’t like thinking about me with other people. A brief thought of his body over Cadence, her silky blonde hair spread out like a fan as she cried out came to mind, and I choked back my own envy.
“And then when it came close to time for me to graduate, and toreturn home, I realised that I couldn’t put myself back into his … into that environment.” I quickly shovelled more egg into my mouth, hoping he’d missed my slip of the tongue.
I chanced a glance up at him. His mouth was a downturned line as he moved food around on his own plate. I was sure he’d noticed, but at least he wasn’t pressing the issue.
“So … what I’m saying is, I hadn’t really let myself think about my life here, past getting my permanent residency.” Past knowing I was safe.
He gave my hand a squeeze and then let go, picking up his knife and cutting into his own toast and eggs. “Well, I’m saying that we can start thinking about what our future might look like.” He shoved a huge forkful into his mouth.
The way he said ‘we’ and ‘our’ liquified my insides in the nicest possible way. I’d always felt alone. Ever since my father died, I’d looked out for myself, because no one else did. It got to the point where even people I would have called close confidantes—Kat, and Stefan, and before she showed her true colours, Rumi—I never truly let them in. Because in the end, I had learnt that relying on others was just a recipe for pain.
But with Henry, the idea of ‘us’ was so tantalising. Even when this was all playing pretend … or perhaps the pretend part made it easier to want that unattainable partnership. I had to remind myself that I couldn’t fall under the spell of ‘we’. This was a contractual arrangement, and not a true marriage.
“I like the sound of that,” I murmured, digging into my food properly. I caught the upward curl of his mouth as he chewed, and the urge to touch him, to feel that connection, even if it was never anything more than physical, became unbearable. I stretched my leg out, finding his ankle and curling my foot back against it. His fork froze halfway to his mouth, his eyes darting to mine.
I kept my face neutral, taking another bite as I slid my way up the back of his calf. The redness in his cheeks spread, but he did nothing to stop my exploration. I found myself wishing I could run my hands over him there, feel the ridges of his muscles, strong from swimming, just like mine. I imagined sliding my hand up, past his knee, along the firmness of his thigh … his butt, which in his swim trunks had been enough tohave me salivating to sink my fingers into it. And then sneaking my fingers around to the front, tucking them under the waistband of his?—
“Your breakfast is getting cold,” he reminded me softly, gesturing his fork at my still mostly full plate. I dropped my foot to the ground and forked a giant helping of eggs into my mouth, chewing viciously.
I’d been about to have a vivid sex fantasy about my fake husband … over brunch. And I wasn’t even sorry.
“Fancy running into you two here!”
I almost choked on my eggs, my face heating when I recognised that broad Australian accent.
“River!” I winced at the squeak in my voice. I hoped I seemed starstruck, and not horny and frazzled.
“River,” Henry grunted, and my eyes flicked back to him at the unimpressed tone in his voice. Did he not like River? Impossible! This was Australia’s Most Likeable Man.
He reached out, fingers clasping around mine where they rested on the tabletop. A tinge of red spread across his face, and I had a sudden thought, accompanied by a myriad of butterflies, that perhaps it wasn’t River himself that was the problem, but that he’d interrupted our time together.
“I was just popping in to grab a coffee before I came up to meet with you,” River explained, one hand in the pocket of his khaki trousers, the other casually dangling a Keep Cup. “But I can see you’ve got a much more important meeting taking place right now. Please, don’t rush your meal for me, I’ll just grab my drink takeaway and have a little wander around waterside. Get your assistant to call me when you’re ready to see me.”
He turned to go.
“River, wait,” Henry barked, squeezing my hand. “Pull up a chair, we can have this discussion here. After all, this isn’t just my decision—Ri should hear what you have to say, too.”
