Worse. It wasn’t only my father who’d turned up, but my mother too. She unfolded herself from the passenger seat, perfectly poised as always, while my father slammed the driver’s door and went to take her arm.
I hadn’t seen either of them for…how long? A year, at least. More. Eighteen months, at my niece’s christening. My older sister had invited me because she felt she should, I’d gone out of an ingrained sense of obligation, and my parents didn’t do more than glance at me as I skulked at the back of the church.
And now they’d turned up here. Were they feeling all right?
I studied my father as he walked. He’d always cut an imposing figure, but today he seemed subdued. Frailer.
“William,” my father said.
“What do you want?”
Maybe I should have been more polite, but we’d passed the point of civility when he threw me out of the house eight years ago.
“Your father needs to speak to you. We both do.” My mother peered closer at Aisling. “You have a family? Nobody told us.”
“She’s not mine.”
Mother peered down her nose at Rania, reminding me once more why I decided to go it alone. “You’re dating a single mother?”
Rania took a step back, and I couldn’t blame her. I had no desire to be around my parents either.
“No, Mother, I’m not.” Might as well summarise to get this meeting over faster. “Aisling’s mother and Rania are staying with me and RJ since their home got burned down. Why are you here?”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Mother asked.
I’d rather not have, but the only thing worse was having a conversation with the pair of them in full view of the neighbours. I’d already seen one curtain twitch.
“Sure. Welcome to my humble abode.”
Inside, I shoved RJ’s duvet off the sofa, and my mother wrinkled her nose again as she perched on the edge of the seat. If she knew what he’d been doing in that spot last night, she’d have bleached it first, and I swallowed a snort at the thought. My father took a pew next to her, looking as though he’d rather be somewhere else. At, say, a dental appointment or a funeral.
“Would you like tea or coffee?” Rania offered.
Escape to the kitchen—good tactic.
“Do you have decaf?” my father asked.
I raised an eyebrow. “Decaf?”
“Your father had a heart scare earlier in the year. He’s cut out caffeine, alcohol, and saturated fat.”
Boy, dinner at their place must be fun now. Even eight years ago, red wine had been the only thing that got me through three courses.
“Sorry to hear that. Do you want a drink, Mother?”
“Tea would be lovely.”
“How do you take it?” Rania asked.
“Darjeeling made with filtered water and a slice of lemon.”
For fuck’s sake. “You get the choice of black or white, sugar or no sugar.”
Mother looked pained, while Rania mouthed a silent, “Thank you.”
“Is the milk organic?”
“It’s bog-standard stuff from Tesco.”
Mother pasted on the half-smile, half-grimace she used at parties when the champagne wasn’t up to scratch. “In that case, perhaps I’ll just have a glass of iced water.”
Rania practically ran out of the room, and I perched on the very edge of an armchair, ready to spring up and show them to the door at a moment’s notice.
“Why are you here?” I asked again.
Mother shifted uncomfortably, and Father cleared his throat.
“Might as well cut to the chase, son. We saw you in the newspaper last week.”
“What newspaper?”
I avoided them wherever possible, and the TV news. Nothing good ever seemed to happen in the world anymore, and I didn’t want to depress myself, or worse, Rania.
“The local one. One of your mother’s friends at the country club found the article and passed it around. It’s all got very awkward for us.”
“Awkward? What are you talking about?”
“You were jumping out of a burning building.”
“And not just any building,” Mother put in. “It looked like a council flat. People keep asking if we’ve hit hard times.”
“I’m sorry?” Did I just hear that right? “I almost got burned alive, and your biggest concern is that I didn’t escape from a mansion?”
“Well, obviously we’re glad you’re not hurt, but some of our acquaintances think you might actually have been living there.”
What was the sentence for matricide? Because right now, I was tempted to drop arsenic in her iced fucking water.
And she wasn’t done yet.
“I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve taken up with a girl of that sort after everything else you’ve done. At least she’s pretty, even if she doesn’t make the effort to put on make-up.”
“Don’t you care about anything but the superficial?”
My father leaned forward. “You have to be considerate of your mother, son. She’s in the running to be ladies’ captain at the tennis club, and the vote’s taking place next month. We need to limit the damage here.”
Damage? How much damage would I do if I rammed his smug attitude up his backside?
“Well, I promise I’ll try to avoid the papers.” I stood and took a step towards the door. “How about you take Mother for a nice cup of Darjeeling on your way back to the palace?”
“Son, at least listen to our proposal.”
Why did he keep calling me son? I hadn’t been his damn son since I was eighteen. Was it because he kept forgetting my name?
“Fine. Spit it out.”
I dropped back into the chair and kept my fingers crossed Rania wouldn’t come back before they left. This awkwardness would only be amplified if they acted like arseholes in front of her too.
“When we withheld your trust fund, we thought it would only be a matter of time before you came to your senses, but we’ve given up hope of you taking up a sensible career now. So we need to look to the future. Your mother and I have decided that you can have full access as long as you promise to buy yourself a proper home and not a cheap flat in a bad area. Something with a garden, because you’ll need to let your mother have photographs to show her friends.”
This was his version of damage control? He wanted to buy me a fucking house so Mother wouldn’t get embarrassed at tennis? Part of me wanted to stick to my principles and tell them to get lost, but then I thought of Rania. She deserved better. She deserved everything. And with the money in my trust fund, which was comfortably seven figures if not eight, I could give it to her.
“Fine. We’ll buy a damn house. Is that it? A fancy show home and some photos?”
“A Christmas card might be nice.”
“One of those personalised ones,” Mother added. “And that girl needs to see a proper hairstylist.”
“Deal,” I said through gritted teeth. “Let me show you to the door.”
I’d just slammed it behind them when Rania appeared with a glass of water, puzzled by the empty living room.
“Did they leave already?”
“My relationship with my parents works best when we see as little of each other as possible.”
“Oh.”
She stood holding the water, and I unpeeled her fingers and put it on the coffee table. Yes, I should have been working, but one more day of Geri running around wouldn’t make much difference seeing as Helene’s murder was a crime of passion. Plus I still needed to work out a way to get her onto the police’s radar. It wasn’t as if I could rock up at the police station and announce a ghost had told me who the culprit was.
The most sensible plan seemed to be to sleep on the problem. And that meant I had the rest of the day to spend with Rania, who bit her lip as she studied my face.
“Forget my parents. They don’t matter.”
I wanted to keep the news about my trust fund quiet until I saw the money. While my father usually kept his word, I didn’t want to get Rania’s hopes up until I had the access codes and some smarmy guy from the bank kissing my arse in the hope of earning commission.
“But you look upset. Can I do anything to help?”
“Yeah. You can take me upstairs and distract me.”
What would she say to that? Her forehead crinkled as she frowned, but then a secret smile spread across her face. So she had enjoyed this morning. Thank goodness. I was sure she must have, but I’d also realised that Rania’s mind didn’t always work as anticipated.
But now she took my hand. “I’d like that.”
“You and me both, beautiful. You and me both.”
***
Seven o’clock, and I didn’t care about dinner because I was curled around a naked woman and she tasted better than any food. But her silence suggested she was thinking, and thinking could be dangerous when there were two X chromosomes involved.
“Everything okay?”
Rania twisted in my arms so she was lying on her back, hair spread across the pillow as she stared up at the ceiling.
“I’ve been thinking.”
Uh-oh.
“Do I need to apologise for something?”
“Huh? No.”
“Then what are you thinking about?”
“The future. Our future.”
She turned again, and there was no mistaking the worry in her eyes.
“Good. Our future. I like that.”
And she relaxed. Not completely, but enough that the knot of tension in my chest loosened.
“About work. I need a job, and I was wondering if I could help you with your cases? I know what I said last night, but I’ve had time to consider it properly now. And I can find clues that you can’t.”
“You mean talking to ghosts? Talking to ghosts to solve murders?”
She nodded, and I ran my thumb along her bottom lip until her teeth released their grip on it. Hmm. Interesting idea. Not one I’d have dared to suggest myself, but if she was offering… Because money or no money, I didn’t want to quit my job and become a man of leisure. I’d started solving crimes because I wanted to help people and I believed in justice, and that would never change. But the opportunity to get an edge that nobody else had? I couldn’t afford to pass that up.
“If you’re sure, I think that’s an excellent idea. But I’m not putting you in danger again. We’ll work the cases together, and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep you safe.”
She burrowed her head into my chest, and I held her tight against me. No, I’d never let this woman go.
“You’re too damn sweet, Will Lawson. You turn the bad times good and soften all the pain.”
“I’ll always be here for you. Always.”
That sigh? It made more than my dick twitch. My heart pounded too.
“I love you,” Rania whispered.
Holy shit.
“I love you too, beautiful.”