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“Oh.” She’d have paid good money to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. “So, I’m at a loss on what to say next. Dare I hope you found a way to get my visa renewed in two days?”
If by some miracle he had, she wouldn’t have to go back to Melbourne. She could stay here and work, burying herself in this job that had come to mean so much to her—
“Not exactly.”
Of course not. Warren wasn’t here to make all of her dreams come true, especially not the ones where she imagined him riding to her rescue like a modern-day knight in a shining Tom Ford suit.
Deflated, she fought to keep her face blank. Wouldn’t do to communicate an iota of her emotional state. That was how men got the ammunition they needed to hurt you. “Please elaborate.”
Warren leaned into his steepled hands, a move he made often, which she’d come to recognize as his game stance. It meant he was ready to get serious.
“I spoke to an immigration lawyer. He assures me the best option here is to immediately file for an extension and renewal. But, as you may be aware, that can take months and you would have to travel to the nearest consulate to get the renewal, which would be either Canada or Mexico, depending on your preference, but that means—”
“I would be out of status when I went.” The reality of the legal ramifications swamped her and her shoulders slumped. Ruthlessly, she straightened them. “They wouldn’t let me back in the country if the extension wasn’t in place yet.”
“You see the problem, then.” Warren nodded once. “The project would be on hold again and you’d be stuck in whichever country you traveled to. It might as well be Australia, at that point. The key is that you can’t be out of status when you go to the consulate.”
She felt like Warren was leading her somewhere, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out where.
“Then I would have to go before Saturday, and the renewal paperwork isn’t even filed yet.” Thanks to her employer’s snafu, she would be in a lot of trouble if she stayed long enough to let her paperwork expire. “That would be a wasted trip.”
As he’d said, she might as well go back to Australia. Maybe she could sweet-talk the firm into assigning her a job in Queensland instead of Victoria. Brisbane might be far enough away to escape Bryan’s insidious reach. Of course, if he had friends on the police force there, her precautions wouldn’t matter. He’d set up surveillance on her phone and house, like he had last time, and she’d have no recourse because he was too slippery to get caught.
She shuddered. The problem was that she didn’t want to go back to Australia. She felt safe here. Valued. As if her contributions mattered for the first time since she’d escaped a relationship where she constantly was made to feel less than. This job had saved her and giving it up was unfathomable.
But what other choice did she have? Warren wasn’t presenting any alternatives that justified his hope-inducing opening comment that she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Yes. Completely wasted. If you were out of status.” His gaze locked onto hers. “The lawyer suggested the easiest way to ensure you’re not out of status at that indeterminate point is if you already had a green card.”
“Green cards are even harder to get than visa renewals,” she blurted out. The rules were inconsistently applied, pending which way the immigration office interpreted them. And Warren was talking about a green card, the Holy Grail for someone in her circumstances. “I would never be able to file for a green card so quickly.”
Warren held up a finger. “There’s one way. If you marry a US citizen. It would be easy enough for us to go to the courthouse Friday morning and get this taken care of. The marriage would be in name only, of course. Our professional relationship would continue as is.”
The sound in her ears increased to a dull roar as she processed his meaning. He was offering to marry her in the most unromantic proposal she could have imagined. They’d be lawfully wed with no hope of any sort of physical relationship. Warren would be her husband, yet never even try to touch her.
Something was definitely wrong with her, because it sounded so perfect she feared the tears pricking the backs of her eyelids might actually fall.
But she’d fallen prey to the illusion of perfection in the past. The only way to ensure there were no repeats was to spell out every possible contingency she could think of.
“We’d be married in name only. That means no intimacy,” she said briskly. “None. Forgive me if I find it hard to believe a man of your stature would accept such a thing.”
