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“You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.” Rolf’s voice. Closer, almost to the cabin. “You know what’s at stake here.”
The last piece of paper in place, he lowered the kitchen island’s top. It clicked softly back into place. Ruby whipped around and grabbed the potted plant, placed it on the island, and adjusted it so it was in the same spot as before. Without a single word between them, they turned in unison and hustled silently to the backdoor.
“That bargaining chip won’t always be in your possession.” The Sparrow’s voice was right outside the front door.
Lucas opened the backdoor. Ruby hurried through it with him on her heels. He was pulling it shut just as the front door began to open.
“The wedding changes nothing,” Rolf said, his voice a low snarl. “Everyone knows it but you.”
The closed backdoor blocked out whatever the Sparrow said in response. He rolled the conversation around in his head, examining the different possible meanings as he and Ruby slipped through a second gate cut into the hedges behind the Sparrow’s cabin.
The wedding changes nothing.
A reference to the arms deal or something worse? He’d known he was putting Ruby in danger by blackmailing her into this plan, but that hadn’t mattered before he’d met her. Now? It was like he’d swallowed a bag of glass shards.
Finally, far enough from the Sparrow’s cabin to offer a modicum of safety, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her to a stop beside him. His lips were on hers before his brain had caught up to his instinctual intention. She opened beneath him, wrapping her arms around his neck. It was an invitation he wasn’t going to turn down. He swept his tongue inside, plundering her sweetness and teasing one of those soft moans from her.
The kiss wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t an apology. It was a wish he knew couldn’t come true, but that didn’t make him want her any less. There was more danger in that than all the goons on Fare Island.
A rustle up ahead sent adrenaline spiking through his veins, and he broke the kiss in time to see Ingrid come around the corner. He and Ruby jumped apart like kids caught making out in a school hallway.
“Oh, there you two are,” Ingrid said, her eyes less focused and duller than usual, the air of manic energy replaced by an almost drowsy haze. “Come on, Ruby darling, you need to help with the seating arrangements. Nearly everyone has said yes, and I think Rolf invited half of Europe, and you know most of them hate each other, which is going to make dinner an unholy misery.”
Giving him a wan smile, she linked her arm through Ruby’s and led her back to the main house while all Lucas could do was watch from a distance as she disappeared inside.
Chapter Eleven
The next night, after another day of fake wedding preparation madness and frustrated attempts to steal some alone time with Lucas to search for any information about the arms exchange, Ruby cut into her lamb chop and tried to focus on her mother’s question about the wedding bouquet.
“She doesn’t give a damn, Ingrid,” Rolf slurred from behind a full plate and a nearly empty glass at the head of the dinner table. “Just do what you want.”
It might be true, but it didn’t change the fact that her stepfather was drunk and an asshole. Since he was a total prick when he was sober, Ruby had a lifetime of practice dealing with that aspect of his personality. The slurred words and bitter snarl right on the surface instead of under a thin veneer of smarm was new, though.
There hadn’t been a lot of non-Ingrid-wedding chatter at the dinner table up to that point, but the room went silent at his comment. Across the table from her and Lucas, Jasper and Talia went still, their forced cheer and false flirting quashed by the tension. Lucas tucked her hand into his under the table, and her shoulders ratcheted down from her earlobes at his warm, comforting touch.
“Are you feeling all right, dear?” Ingrid asked in a small voice from her spot at the opposite end of the table from her husband.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m sitting here surrounded by those who love me most.” He shot back the rest of the akvavit in his glass. “I’m a man who has it all, aren’t I, darling?”
He added enough derision into what should have been an endearment to force an angry heat up from Ruby’s toes fast enough she was surprised her hair didn’t catch fire. Lucas’s cool grip on her hand was the only thing keeping her grounded in the moment rather than flying across the table and letting the bastard have it, once and for all.
Her mom smiled, but it was a small one that didn’t even come close to reaching her eyes. “Of course.”
“Excellent answer.” He reached for the decanter next to his glass. “Shall we have a toast to the happy couple?”
Ruby stiffened at the words that came out of her stepfather’s mouth that sounded six shades of ugly. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
The engagement may be a cover, but her stepfather didn’t know that. She glanced down at her fingers intertwined with Lucas’s. His words stung all the more because she was beginning to wish it wasn’t all a lie, that she really was about to have life beyond the borders of Fare Island and outside of her stepfather’s criminal organization.
“You’ve never been as agreeable as your mother, have you?” Rolf asked, pouring a double’s worth of liquor into his glass. “Why is that? Have I not given you everything you could want?” He toyed with his glass so that the ice cubes swirled around inside, just one more thing he sent this way or that, depending on his mood. “If it wasn’t for me, God knows what would have happened to the little trio. No doubt your mother would be in ja—”
“Rolf. That’s enough.” Ingrid’s voice was as sharp and as mean as one of the Sparrow’s deadly blades. “May I speak with you outside?”
She pushed her chair away from the table with a loud screech and stood, her white-knuckled hands in fists at her side.
“Anything for you, darling. You know that.” Rolf’s chair stuttered as it went back, little jerks that made the ice in his glass clink hard against each other, then stood and walked with deliberate intention to the door and swung it open with more force than necessary. “Shall we?”
Heels clicking on the hardwood floor, Ingrid crossed the room with an extra bit of iron in her spine that Ruby couldn’t recall ever seeing before. First, Jasper and his secret life working with the Americans, and now her mom standing up to Rolf. Maybe Jasper was right. Maybe they didn’t need her to always be watching out for them, running interference, and cleaning up their—mostly Jasper’s—messes. If that was the case, she had no idea what to do next. Keeping them safe had been the only thing she’d ever really worried about.
