“I need a drink.”
“Dinner is in an hour. You were early.”
“I wanted to have a drink with my wife before dinner,” I said wryly. “But I think I’m drinking alone.”
Sorcha shot me an apologetic look before she retreated. Well, marriage wasn’t all roses it seemed.
Sato walked by right before I entered my study.
I glared at him. “You knew how much that painting cost.”
He shot me the same apologetic look Sorcha had. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her. She was so excited to find that piece.”
“Where did she find it anyway?”
“A flea market in Brooklyn.”
“How much was it?” I walked through my office and paused. My gaze zeroing in on the thing sitting on my windowsill. “What the fuck?”
“It was eight hundred dollars, but Lucy haggled it down to six fifty. She was very pleased.”
I turned to Sato and pointed at the window. “Please tell me that’s not a plant.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Kirill
It was a twisted feeling:dreading going home and at the same time eager to get it over with.
After Lucy’s home decorating fiasco yesterday, whatever progress I thought had been made with my wife screeched to a halt. It might have even reversed into a flimsy guardrail and fallen off a cliff.
I had Sato take out the plant, and just my luck, Lucy was standing right outside my office.
“Put that in the TV room, I don’t care,” I told Sato.
“It has better light in your office,” my wife insisted.
“Who do you expect to water it?” I asked. “Me? And do you know how that water would ruin the wood paneling?” I exhaled heavily. “It seems you need to hire an interior designer.”
“You’re saying I don’t have taste?”
“I’m not falling for that trap,” I said. It was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. It was like the question Aralina asked me one Thanksgiving about whether she looked fat. And I told her, “Baby fat is cute,” and I paid for that comment for months.Aralina was mute, but her silent treatment spoke volumes. “Do you want a drink?”
“Yes. But not with you!”
“Fine.” I walked into my study and slammed the door.
We shared an awkward dinner afterward. I’d been wrestling with an apology, but by then Lucy had shut down. I’d never seen her shut down like that. She always had a smartass reply, and she rarely backed down. I didn’t know why that troubled me more. We didn’t spend time past dinner. She retreated to her room and claimed a headache.
Which was why I had no patience for the man being tortured in front of me. Normally I would be focused on getting information out of him, but it was the apology flowers sitting in my office that were yelling at me to go home to my wife.
“It wasn’t me who leaked the route,” the man cried.
Kolya was the executor of the hurt. I had no desire to get blood on my clothes, delaying my arrival home if I had to change clothes.
“You got this?” I asked Kolya impatiently.
