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Hi! This is Iris Hughes. There seems to have been an unfortunate miscommunication. Mr. Abbott wasn’t expecting me and he hasn’t responded well to my presence. Please could you call him to clear up this misunderstanding? He’s kind of threatening to have me arrested. Thanks so much.
She stared at the text for a while, but it remained unread.
“Come on, Iris,” she chastised herself. “A watched pot never boils.”
Iris was a big believer in self-motivation. She often verbalized her problems and thoughts to herself—it was just easier for her to work out solutions that way. It did mean that she was often muttering to herself and giving herself little pep talks. She was aware that it made her seem a bit of an odd duck, but she was way past caring what people thought of her.
She checked the time. It was close to midnight. God, it had been a long, long twenty-four hours and Iris desperately needed to sleep. Mr. Quinn lived in London which was an hour behind South Africa at the moment. She didn’t think he was the type of man to be in bed by eleven p.m. on a Friday night, but it was pretty late to be expecting people to check their texts immediately.
PS. I’m really sorry to be texting you this late.
She stared at the second message in satisfaction. Her mother would be proud. Iris’s parents had raised her to always be considerate of others.
She set aside the phone for now. Her parents had already sent a reply to her previous message, dramatically thanking the gods that she was safe, and then immediately following that up with a voice note asking if she had enough warm clothing. She grimaced—of course her parents would know that the weather here sucked. And, of course, they would have expected her to be aware of that fact too. Yes, Iris had known that she was flying into winter, but she’d expected it to be a mere nod to the season. Light-cardigan weather at best. Not this ice-cold hellscape.
She reassured (lied to) her parents about being more than prepared. And deflected their further questions about the mysterious assignment she was on, telling them via voice note that they would soon understand the need for secrecy.
They didn’t push her further, wishing her a good night and admonishing her to call them in the morning and to stay in regular contact.
Hoping that her next call wouldn’t be from jail, begging for bail money, Iris promised them that she would text and call regularly.
Evan hadn’t yet replied, and Iris knew her bestie was probably out having a ball somewhere.
She cleaned the sparse dishes she’d used and went to the bedroom where she put her phone back on charge. After haphazardly making the bed—exhaustion making her movements sluggish—Iris crept under the covers and instantly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Chapter Three
Iris had a moment’s disorientation when she opened her eyes the following morning. A few seconds later memories of the previous night came flooding back and she went from pleasantly warm and sleepy to alert and tense in an instant.
She jerked upright and grabbed up her phone to check her texts. Nothing from Mr. Quinn. Worse, her messages to him remained unread.
Shit.
She would try emailing him and then calling him.
It had just gone eight a.m. here. It was probably a little too early to call him on a Saturday morning. But if she sent an email to his business account—the only address she had for him—he’d probably only check it on Monday morning. That meant—if Trystan Abbott was true to his word—Iris could quite conceivably spend the weekend in a jail cell.
God, she couldn’t do that. She literally couldn’t. She wouldn’t survive it.
She was legitimately starting to freak out now. She only hoped that The Dickhead—as she’d start to think of her reluctant host—was in a more reasonable frame of mind this morning. Hopefully he’d be in the mood to give her a fair hearing.
She pushed the covers down over her legs with a groan. Seriously, she’d much rather bury her head under the warm comforter and not surface again until she knew for sure that the situation with The Dickhead—TDH for short—was resolved. But she knew nothing could be fixed by hiding her head in the sand, or under the comforter, as it were. She had to be proactive about this and figure this shit out.
She got out of bed and bit back a yelp when her bare feet hit the icy tiles.
She had nothing to wear on her feet, her trainers and socks had been left sodden after the misadventures of the night before and she hadn’t found any type of footwear in the closet belonging to her mystery benefactor with the statuesque supermodel proportions.
All of which meant Iris had no option but to brave the cold floor in her bare feet. Not ideal.
She stumbled her way to the door and tried the handle again, just in case TDH’d had an attack of conscience and unlocked the door while she was asleep.
No such luck.
She hated this. Last night she’d been too exhausted to fully comprehend what being locked in here meant, but this morning she wanted to crawl out of her skin at the sheer terror of being trapped.
She needed to clear up this misunderstanding as soon as possible. She had to make that unreasonable man listen to her.
She put her ear to the wood, hoping to hear some signs of life. She heard faint music, and the low gravelly undertone of his voice. Which meant he was out there, awake, aware, and basically ignoring her very existence.
