Come to think of it, now that he was arse over elbow after a few lagers, it was his mother who had balked at his wanting to become a homicide detective all those years ago. That had been the only thing he’d ever wanted, and Flynn had gone along with all the high teas and polo matches they’d put him through. But when it came to his life, they had been adamantly opposed to anything as pedestrian as a mere police officer. The compromise had been his stint at Lloyds, which his father had helped him get.
Flynn could hardly grouse about his occupation. Over the years, he had become one of their best investigators, and he had been to some very posh locales, had rubbed elbows with some very posh and frightfully rich people, and moreover, some very exotic women. Lloyds had paid him handsomely for it, and he really had no right to complain, not at all, but lying on the couch, listening to his mum, he felt a certain indignation. It wasn’t right. They should have encouraged him to follow his dreams—not theirs.
Now, once again, his mum was pushing her will on him. She wanted him to marry Iris so that she’d have yet another connection to some distant aristocratic line. Iris wanted to marry him for the same reason. Not because she loved him, as he had once so foolishly believed, but because she loved his income and his name.
In all honesty, he’d really known this deep in his gut since he first walked in on Iris and Paul. But now it had been birthed into the glaring light of day, bawling and wriggling around like a newborn infant. There was no avoiding it—no matter how much Flynn would have liked to have stepped around it, perhaps tiptoed out and left it in another room, or just fled to another continent to avoid it altogether, he could not.
What tormented him was how he had come to believe he was in love with Iris to begin with. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been perfectly pleasant—she’d always been polite and very keen to make sure he knew what to wear to what event and who would be attending, and so forth. And while she wasn’t an exciting lover, she had been a cooperative one.
Perhaps it was nothing more than that she’d said the right things. The truth was that he’d been quite ready to come home to a house with a wife and perhaps even children one day, and there had been times he’d arrived in Heathrow after one assignment or another feeling an impossible sadness as he looked around at all the anxious faces of people waiting for their loved ones. There he’d walk through them, nothing but his briefcase and overcoat in hand, as they embraced and cried and laughed all around him. Perhaps she’d filled that void in her own way, and he’d begun to see in her an answer to a dilemma he really didn’t know he had.
Whatever it was, it was over. Now he knew what love was, for he had fallen in love with Rachel, improbable though that may have been, and her absence in his life had created a hole in him, one that was growing wider each day that passed without her. Iris had never, not once, created a hole in him.
He was determined to fill his hole. But first, he had to rid himself of Iris once and for all, send his mum home where she belonged, and finish up the investigation into the RIHPS fraud (which was being helped along, interestingly enough, by Joe, who had taken a fancy to Dagne Delaney). And then he was going to check into a certain international exchange program Joe had mentioned.
So lying there that evening, listening to them prattle on about Prince Harry, he quietly put a plan into place.
The next day, Iris and Mum had rested up, and had gone out to do the requisite shopping. When they arrived late that afternoon, Flynn was waiting for them. He had catered in a lovely dinner and had bought copious amounts of liquor for whoever would need it. When the girls came in, they were extremely pleased with what they obviously thought was his attempt at reconciliation.
“Darling, you shouldn’t have!” Iris exclaimed, air-kissing him again.
“Oh, my lovely boy, how marvelous!” Mum had cried, clapping. “But I really must nosh up and run along.”
“Run along?” Flynn asked.
“Didn’t I tell you? I took a room at the Hilton. I can’t sleep very well here, you know, and I am quite desperate for a good night’s sleep.”
Righto. Nothing like a bit of a conjugal sleepover to patch it all up, eh, Mum? “That’s really not necessary,” he said calmly.
“Oh darling, I insist,” Mum said, checking her hair in a small mirror near the entry. “Very well, then, shall I serve? I’m really quite starved!” she said brightly, and busied herself gathering plates.
The meal passed pleasantly enough, if one could tolerate a review of each shop in Providence and what they could find, or not find. “Frankly, if one is to reside in America, it simply will not do to live anywhere but New York,” Iris opined as she lit a cigarette.
“Mmm, I would have to agree,” Mum said.
“I rather like Providence,” Flynn said. “It’s quaint.”
“Quaint!” Iris laughed. “Darling, you have Butler Cropwell for quaint!”
Flynn smiled thinly. “Here’s something that’s quaint, Iris—I have always wanted to be a homicide investigator.”
That earned both the ladies’ attention; Iris looked nervously at Mum, then laughed. “I suppose all little boys dream of being a policeman,” she said, waving her hand dismissively.