He’d really sent that sad bastard sailing across the table, hadn’t he? That was a bloody good cut he’d gotten off, and furthermore, he was quite pleased to note that not one of those sodding nancy boys had gotten as much as a lick on him. In fact it was the bartender who, in an effort to break up the fight, had knocked Flynn across the face with the bar stool.
All in all, he’d had a rather jolly good time of it.
He was still grinning at the ceiling when the phone rang. He glanced at the clock—three in the morning, which, unfortunately, could only mean one thing.
With a sigh, he pushed himself up and reached for the phone. “Hello.”
“Flynn, darling, is that you?”
Funny how sharp Iris’s voice could sound, even from across the pond.
“Yes, Iris. Who exactly were you expecting?”
“Oh, darling, don’t be naff, please! I’ve been trying to get you for ages!”
“And now you have me,” he said, gingerly pressing the towel and ice to his eye.
“Are you quite all right? When you didn’t ring back, I began to suspect the worst.”
“I’m fine. I’ve just been frightfully busy.”
“Have you? You really mustn’t overwork yourself.”
“Mmm.”
“I’ve been frightfully busy myself,” she said with a bit of a laugh. “Eileen Fiskmark-Jones had a lovely gathering last weekend, and I must have gone daft, because I promised to help her put it on. She held it at the Royal Fitzhugh Hotel on Regent Street. You know the one, where Charles and Camilla had their spring fling last year?”
Flynn rolled his eyes.
“You simply could not imagine all the trouble we had with the caterer! Firstly, they were to have served duck, but what did they come with? Cornish game hens. Can you imagine?”
“The horror,” he muttered.
“Quite,” Iris said, missing the sarcasm in his voice. “And then, as if that weren’t tragedy enough, the flowers didn’t arrive until a quarter to. Eileen was simply beside herself.”
“Eileen is always beside herself, Iris. She’s barmy.”
“I think America’s made you cheeky.”
“Has it? I’m a bit knackered, that’s all. It is three o’clock here. In the morning,” he added pointedly.
“Aren’t you the least interested in how the whole do turned out?” Iris asked, her voice taking on a familiar whine.
Flynn sighed. “How did it turn out, Iris?”
“It was smashing, of course. Honestly, when Eileen and I put our heads together, everything goes tickety-boo!”
“Was Paul Haversham at this do?” Flynn asked calmly. “Because I know everything goes tickety-boo when you and he take off your pants, too.”
“Dear God, that’s ugly,” Iris said. “Why must you always be so cross?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Iris. Perhaps because you are my fiancée and you cheated on me? That might make a man a bit cross.”
She sighed again. “I’ve told you, it was a fling, nothing more! Are you intent on punishing me for the rest of our lives? I told you I’m frightfully sorry for it, and frankly, I cannot understand why you won’t accept my apology. Really, Flynn, you were gone for weeks, off to Monaco, then to Lithuania . . . what was I to do?”
“You were to keep your knickers on,” Flynn said coldly, and lowered the ice from his eye, ignoring her little gasp of hurt. “If there is nothing else, I’d really like to get some sleep,” he said, and quietly clicked off before she could object.
He tossed the phone aside, lay back on the couch and closed his eyes, and felt the fatigue wash over him. His mind raced with various images—Iris’s pale and delicate face, which he had once thought was so bloody beautiful . . . and oddly, the smiling, pretty face of Rachel. There was certainly a look of honesty there in her smile and in her eyes, a look that Iris did not possess, nor could she, apparently, manufacture.
As Flynn drifted off to sleep on that couch, the image of Rachel in his mind’s eye, that long thick braid of hair over her shoulder, those lovely blue-green eyes, he thought he smelled something a little curious. What was it?
Vanilla?
Interesting. It reminded him of his mother’s butter rum cake.
Flynn was still dreaming of butter rum cake when Aaron and Bonnie departed the marriage therapist’s office. They’d canceled the last two appointments because Aaron was feeling too ill from the chemotherapy. At least that was the lie Bonnie had told the therapist.
The truth was that Aaron had refused to do his homework. He had never bargained for homework when he signed up for marriage counseling, and it wasn’t until a tearful Bonnie started to pack a bag that he gave in, sat down, and did it.
And as he predicted, things hadn’t gone exactly well this morning. Bonnie was hardly speaking to him now, but he wondered what the hell she expected when that fucking therapist had given them their “marital” workbooks at the last session. He’d known instantly they were headed for disaster.