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I hated lying to Cal, but I had my reasons for omitting certain key details. He didn’t need to know about my family’s connection to his grandmother or Reuben, or that Reuben wasn’t really paying me. At least not in money, and payment in opportunities to seek vengeance didn’t exactly spend the same.
For now, all Cal needed to know had been handed off in a file folder, the same one he’d been poring over since we’d boarded the plane to Venice. For now, we had to focus on the task at hand, and I had to play my cards close to the vest. While Reuben had made it seem like Juno wasn’t a person of interest in this case, I knew differently. I also knew that meeting Cal to get a sense of what he may or may not know about his grandmother’s interest in the painting was the whole reason Reuben had made us come all the way to Australia. He’d insisted on meeting one of the Hunter brothers in person. He’d wanted them all to come,but Nero’s divide-and-conquer strategy had left that option dead in the water, and Reuben had settled for an in-person meeting with Cal after feeding Nero a load of bullshit about not being interested in sharing information over the internet. Reuben was undoubtedly eccentric and more than a little paranoid, but what he’d fed Nero had been over-the-top, even for him.
But Cal didn’t need to know any of that right now. If there came a moment where I needed to be more transparent, I would be, even if the weight of withholding everything I knew sat like a lead weight in my stomach.
Which, combined with another long flight, had me battling the urge to hurl from the moment we’d taken off.
“Are you fucking serious with this?” Cal had emerged from the last row of seats to flop into the one across the aisle from me.
I knew exactly what he was pissed off about, and honestly, I was surprised it had taken him this long to start whining about it.
“Let me guess.” I pretended to think, which made Cal’s eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. “You don’t like our cover story.”
“Understatement.”
“It makes the most sense.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How does us being on a European honeymoon make the most sense? There are a million other scenarios you could have chosen.”
“What makes you think I picked our cover?”
“You live to annoy the shit out of me, and you knew this would do it.” He shook the file in my direction.
I laughed, and the knot in my stomach unwound by the smallest fraction. “I had nothing to do with the cover story. Reuben came up with it all on his own.” He wanted me as close to Cal as I could get, and the honeymoon angle meant we could share a room without arousing suspicion. Cal wouldn’t find out about that part of the arrangement until we arrived in Venice,and I had to bite my cheek to hold back the smile that threatened to curve my lips when I thought of how absolutely livid he was going to be when he found out we were sharing a hotel room.
Cal’s mouth twisted in displeasure. “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your prerogative, sweetheart, but he thought claiming we were friends of his touring Europe on our honeymoon was the best option, and he ran with it, so…”
“Where’s the ring?”
Taken by surprise, I breathed in too fast and choked on my own saliva before barely sputtering out, “I’m sorry?”
“If we’re married, where’s the damn ring?” He held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers. “I don’t see one. Do you?”
“No.”
“If this is the best thing he could come up with, don’t you think he should have gone the extra mile to make the con convincing?”
“Lots of people choose not to wear rings.”
“They do when they’re trying to peddle a cart full of bullshit.”
“Such an elegant metaphor.”
He waved away the quip. “I’m serious. If we’re going to sell this steaming pile of crap, we’re going to need to really sell it.”
I batted my eyes at him. “Why, Cal, are you saying you want me to buy you a ring?”
He reared back like I’d hit him. “I didn’t say that.”
“It was heavily implied.”
“Was not. I was just saying that I think we can come up with something better than this.” He waved the folder again.
“There’s nothing we can do. Flipping the script now would only cause suspicion and draw more attention to an already flimsy story.”
Cal’s lips tipped into a frown. “So you admit it’s a shitty cover?”
